What else have I got? (18th Nov 1997)

What else have I got? I like the cold baleful stare back of the models, like Manet's Olympia, or any of Egon Schiele's models. He painted them to explore his own sexuality. I write about the strip clubs. I've had a sad life, that's not my fault, I need the colour & vitality of strip clubs and cinema. Because relationships are grey and indistinct. 

Zola and Manet didn't live in the sleazy prostitute realism of Paris 1860s just for a nine month project, the same vein occupied them for years. Vampirism will occupy me for years. 

The summer months were so empty because I was looking for some substitute for pornography to keep me occupied, failing, and entering the black hole. I only came out with my September visit to Astral & Soho Cinema, leading to Berlin 1890s idea. I have a grand ambition, but now I must return to work and earn lots of money to finance it. Do something useful with my life: does this mean going to work, or writing my book? I am a strong powerful spy, and the girls who want to love me (seduced by my mystery & glamour) must wait and be frustrated. 

I'm a writer, my models (like Manet's Olympia and Schiele's models) are the girls at the strip clubs: they don't come to my studio and lie there while I paint them: I go to them and write about them when I get home. Thursday 30th October, at Sunset then (very briefly) in Soho Cinema, was a disaster because I went so deliberately and nervously and premeditatedly, trying to fix the emotion beforehand, instead of relaxing and remaining very detached and light. I went looking for something and so didn't find it. Going with no expectations and with no sense of its importance, but simply as a time-filler, it is much more enjoyable and sensation-rich. 

So instead of no more going, go very very many times now before Christmas: Boulevard, Astral, Soho Cinema, Sunset Strip. For one day, I stop being me. I hang my normal uniform up here and go out in sinful disguise. My history resumes the next day. It is a page I tear out in advance. Tomorrow is one such "stopped" day, releasing me to do whatever my impulses demand, like the Claridges hotel room was made Yugoslav territory for one night only by king's decree.