I feel like Astral & Sunset again [7th Sept 1997]

I feel like Astral & Sunset again. "It is false spirituality to neglect things carnal. Real spirituality comes from regeneration of the flesh." The Astral films are Benny Hill films, the Sunset girls are Benny Hill girls. That huge-breasted blonde in black see-through dress is a Benny Hill girl. I want to check that other striptease place. Think about how good Carnival Strip became towards the end. Thursday 18th would be good for Sunset, tomorrow for Astral.

The volcano: to let my spirit burst free in my writing; to let my spirit burst free in a relationship with someone else.

A volcano because I am holding it back. No, because it is blocked, it has no way out.

It will be good to get drunk again in the Chandos, though, won't it, staggering down into the toilets to get my penis out again in increasing anticipation of Sunset Strip I am about to get to, or Astral. I want to go see Woody Allen films in Leicester Square, come back to pub with no intention of staying out, but then a couple of pints later the rising excitement makes me go to Sunset. Tomorrow?

 

The only way to attain mastery over material malfunctioning is by adopting a more spiritual philosophy [26th August 1997]

The only way to attain mastery over material malfunctioning is by adopting a more spiritual philosophy.

"You and Virgo are at the butt of the Sun-Pluto square and that is bound to bring out a side of you that you have repressed since childhood. A transformation has been trying to occur since 1995, but circumstances or a resistance to change have meant you've been putting off what you know you must do to find yourself. A metamorphosis is going on deep in your psyche, and you have to go with it, or you'll paralyse your personal growth."

I want lots of money so I can go to models all I want [25th August 1997]

I want lots of money so I can go to models all I want. So I can see new gold dress dancers all I want. Just four more weeks to get through. I can't wait to lose myself in degeneracy, nihilism, Soho again. Those black rainy nights. The orange cauldron.

Stay serene and smiling, like that little old bag lady rustling her carrier bag in the NFT back row. I just want to live in naughtiness and masturbation.

Elastic bands snap. I snapped. You stretched me too far [22nd August 1997]

Elastic bands snap. I snapped. You stretched me too far. 

I live in India, in divine time. I am a monk. A holy man. A fakir. If I am to be myself, that means I must be silent.

Sitting here in the hot sticky 8.58 morning heat [21st August 1997]

Sitting here in the hot sticky 8.58 morning heat, with the birds hooting & chirping & whistling in the lush green fauna out the back, it's like sitting in a house in the jungle, Manaus, the Lost World, before setting off upriver to find something.

The Justice Ministry is judging myself [20th August 1997]

The Justice Ministry is judging myself, and it starts out with very big promises of the changes it will be instigating, but then bit by bit it starts to back away from them, until things are allowed to go back how they were before.
Ashamed of myself, I judged myself most viciously. Now I'm starting to like myself again, and I start to think maybe what I did wasn't so bad after all, in fact it was the ONLY right thing to have done! So now the measures I put in place to punish me, and make me alter my future behaviour, have gradually been loosened and exceptions have been allowed more and more, till the restrictions have been virtually removed altogether, and I've gone back to almost exactly the way I was before.
I'm living like a monk, day after day, that's what I want.

 

It was a shame the Carnival Strip club finished before I perfected my wanking technique (11th August 1997)

It was a shame the Carnival Strip club finished before I perfected my wanking technique. It was the perfect place for it. Pornography and writing, that has been my year. This would be my whole life, if I had the chance. The blonde Sharon in white-ribbed mini-dress.

 

If you want to be a writer you can't talk to anybody (5th August 1997)

If you want to be a writer, you can't talk to anybody. Total silence. Eyes down, distracted, preoccupied. Be yourself. I DO WHAT I WANT. BE A MEAN BASTARD.

"Withdrawal from society and inability to interact with people"

I'm in such a safe, protected position.

While reading The Daughter of Fu Manchu in the bath, I found myself thinking sexily of Jo, in the style of Madonna in that black dress; also thoughts of Dr Petrie's big breast wife Kara.

I live a quiet life, like a monk. I'm happy. It is learning how to be happy with very little.

 

The relief I found reading Moorcock (26th July 1997)

The relief I found reading Moorcock, you can be fragmented. The relief I found listening to Schoenberg, Berg, and Webern, you can be fragmented. The relief I found listening to Throwing Muses, and watching Jean-Luc Godard films, you can be fragmented. These things were so beautiful, I found them so moving, I could cry.

Trying to read something I write is like trying to eat a plateful of broken glass. My head is full of broken glass. Most people's heads are full of smooth panes of perfect glass, my head is full of a billion billion shards of broken glass. It was all smashed at birth.

 

I'm invincible because they can never get to me inside (23rd July 1997)

I'm invincible because they can never get to me inside. I am an antenna and a punchline. And I am INTELLIGENT. The whole idea of relationships is sickening: the pressure people put you under. I'd rather be abused by a million people than have to talk to one of them.

There is a majority of good people out there.

I live in my own little world, and I can't understand why everyone else doesn't live in their own little worlds. I don't think it will even seem less strange. But I have to accept it--I'm one of a kind.

I woke up this morning thinking I never want to go to Sunset Strip, Astral Cinema, again. But now I cannot wait for September, that return to London, Sunset Strip, night bars, the "hour of the flesh". Sunset Strip's notoriously louche cabaret, that's what it is. It is Mata Hari, Anita Berber, Maud Allan, Ruth St Denis.

It is only by being alone that I resolve dilemmas in my life (22nd July 1997)

It is only by being alone that I resolve dilemmas in my life, and achieve greater strength and equilibrium.

Write the pornography I'd like to read. I spend my life thinking. I wish I could do it forever.

"Such stress couldn't help but damage his mental health. He suffered severely from depression, obsessions, etc. He begged me to stay: left to himself he'd be tormented by his obsessions."

I’m fascinated by their ugliness (10th July 1997)

I’m fascinated by their ugliness. I’m hooked on it, like a bloody loose tooth. I live by the roots of this bloody loose tooth, like black smokers live in the volcanic vents at the bottom of the ocean. I thrive on their abuse. They are playing into my hands. To adapt to your natural environment. I grow fat and intelligent on ugliness. They are helping make me unique. They are helping make me a genius. I like Portillo. He’s always seemed rather a ridiculous figure, and I warm to him for that.

Tropical heat this morning (8th July 1997)

Tropical heat this morning. I'm a monk. I need to stay in a monastery and live a contemplative life. A real relationship is the only salvation. Like that blue-striped long brown hair girl staring at me intently by the Strand.

Blazing blistering hot deep blue skies (7th July 1997)

Blazing, blistering hot, deep blue skies; and it will be all week.

I'm just sitting waiting to see how long it is before my freedom ends, and I return to work. I'm frozen, petrified, in stasis. Too hot to go out. Just sit it out, with Lorca and Fu Manchu.****Kelly 18, Fire & Ice, Electric Blue. I really wanted to go to model but then we had the mind-numbing Zeta's Revenge, which killed all passion. That Chinese black bob girl with big nipples in Electric Blue!

To be up London in this burning heat, it really does make you want to strip off and f--k a model.

I will definitely keep going to Astral. I will definitely keep going to Sunset Strip in September.

They are all Fu Manchu/Mata Hari films. They are all The Story of O

 They are all Fu Manchu/Mata Hari films. They are all The Story of O.

 

My interior life became blocked up (2nd July 1997)

My interior life became blocked up. Silted up. It became increasingly unnavigable. Harder and harder to squeeze through and get through each day. Then in 1995, that deposited more silt in one go than anything before, and that was the last straw. The river completely stopped, and it flooded. Now after the black months, we could dredge it. The interior river became free-flowing again, clear and fresh, but it was still the same river. It still came from the same source, and issued in the same place. You tried to change the river’s course, and make it flow into the exterior world. You’ve improved my life by dredging the interior river and getting me moving again.

Make me strong enough to bear the loneliness (30th June 1997)

Make me strong enough to bear the loneliness, endure my writing life with no one to share it with. 

I know this morphine (this composure) is a painkiller not a cure. The disease is still there, but it’s better to have the painkiller than the pain. The disease I believe is incurable. So I will need this morphine forever. I am now finding more and better strains of it. Morphine rather than pain. Composure rather than decomposure. Voluptuous luxuries rather than black emptiness. Composure and morality, as long as people don’t get too close, then I have to go on the defensive to keep them out. 

No one is going to deflect me from my path, to the hanging gardens of Babylon, my Swiss bank vaults.

It's better to indulge yourself than keep denying yourself isn't it? (28th June 1997)

It's better to indulge yourself, than keep denying yourself, isn't it? The strength I feel in my newspaper diary on June 28 this year, compared to the weakness and fragility of last year.

The Astral or home. Go and get it out of your system. Get it over with. Do something that makes me feel really dirty and ashamed, that way I will get a creative spark the next day. A compost heap glows with all the radioactivity, all the fireflies and dung beetles feeding on it. The dung in the bats cave. All the life it supports. How inspiring Malandra model was, National Portrait Gallery vampire Tuesday was. The strength of my revulsion propels me to creative ideas.

21/6: The Sun's ingress into Cancer gives you plenty to think about. Psychologically you have been under enormous pressure, especially over sexual and money matters. In the coming weeks you have to accept many things you have been trying to avoid. You can't.

25/6: There are a series of thoughts going through your head concerning your most private passions and secret fantasies. What is obvious is you aren't satisfying internal urges, mainly due to not understanding your own psychology. If you can't, how can anyone else?

At bad times I yearn to be a monk (27th June 1997)

At bad times I yearn to be a monk, to be allowed to live for ever in total silence and contemplation. Then I think I can do that here. All that getting me to talk, it's just stupid. Being with other people just makes me so unhappy. I need my privacy and my silence. That is who I am. It hurt me because Sarah always ignored that. If you can't be alone, you need to carry that peace around with you.

Walking down the road in my coat in the drizzling rain, it felt so much like September; I thought how much I love going to Sunset Strip after Chandos in the dark afternoons. That little cauldron of colour and girls. With no emotion involved, the way it should be. Pouring with rain as I came back.

I'm looking for self-realisation, and I will only find that in my writing. I want to explore that now, now you've helped me find the secret door in.

Sex dancers who create their own fictional world in the orange light amidst the blackness, and drag you into it. God, I can't wait for September. The thought of red Gillian Anderson dancing in black lace dress. Why can't May lead into September? I want Ruby, Sneaker Pimps, Placebo, Swiss gold, Chandos, Sunset Strip, models in Brewer Street warm boudoirs before football in the black Wednesday evenings.

This vampiric period has coincided with Batman & Batgirl! Purple & black.

Am I Blue? 1920s New York jazz club atmosphere, smoky, ferns, illegal drink. The orgasmic sexy intoxication of Tristan und Isolde is no greater than when a stripper's eyes meet those of a certain man's and they just steadily look at each other for a few prolonged moments. 

We've had 11 days of continuous rain and gloom (26th June 1997)

We've had 11 days of continuous rain and gloom. It's been lovely. September weather. Phnom Penh monsoon weather. We've just got a month of hot July to get through, then we're up to August 6th, when everything should get better. 

I can hardly wait for September gloom, rain, darkness, going to pictures, Chandos with my Evening Standard, then walking through the black volcanic cauldron to Dean Street and Sunset Strip. Then coming out to go to Chelsea or the Coliseum. It's a good life. I just need enough to live on. Work for short spells to give me this. 

"But when Wilde put aside the tragic role which he played with such zest, and gave rein to his intelligence, he realised that he had not altered in the least, and that if anything prison had intensified his individuality:" "'At every single moment of one's life one is what one is going to be no less than what one has been.'" "'To regret one's own experience is to arrest one's own development.'" "'I don't regret for a single moment having lived for pleasure. I did it to the full, as one should do everything that one does.'" "'I am far more of an individualist than ever I was. Nothing seems to me of the smallest value except what one gets out of oneself. My nature is seeking a fresh mode of self-realisation.'" "'My ruin came not from too great individualism of life, but from too little. The one disgraceful, unpardonable, and to all time contemptible action of my life, was to allow myself to appeal to society for help and protection.'"

Only a week to go then we're out of June! (25th June 1997)

Only a week to go, then we're out of June! Yesterday was the darkest, stormiest, rainiest day I can remember. I can't remember the last time it rained so much. This is the rainiest week I can remember. This time next week we'll be into July. Then we'll be counting down to August 6th. In February/March 1991 I grew so much, and progressed so much, having been held back for a year. I was held back for 6 months at the Post Office. 

"Rayfield reveals Chekhov as a Don Juan, promiscuous and ferociously unwilling to allow further intimacy after sex. Since he was very attractive to women and moved in advanced Bohemian circles, there were not a few cast-off women in distress whom he repulsed and kept at bay by teasing. He also used their painful experiences as material for his plays. Not only this: from the age of 13 he frequented brothels, and liked to boast to his men friends about the exotic prostitutes he used, dusky-skinned, Japanese and French. Writers are complicated beasts. Chekhov needed privacy and freedom more than he wanted loving intimacy with sexual partners. Out of this privacy came the great stories and plays. How do we measure the sufferings of the women he hurt and abused against his greatness?"

 

 

I felt like Oscar Wilde leaving his rent boys as I left the Astral (18th June 1997)

I felt like Oscar Wilde leaving his rent boys as I left the Astral, walking the streets back, everyone watching me. I suppose I just imagined it. The films were very good. Perfect Pair. Cliffbanger. Busting Out. Shock. The very tall blonde in pink swimsuit in Cliffbanger, she was fantastic. NEVER AGAIN. £8.80. 

I'm a writer. I'm like Vincent. I'm like F.G.Lorca. I'm like Franz Kafka. Weak pathetic creatures, can you imagine them sitting at a desk in an office? Keep them at arm's length as much as possible. I just want to be left alone, in my own little world, to write my stories. 

It's no good making me go against my nature. They won't accept me. You wouldn't either. I found it difficult. Like a homosexual for a long while finds it difficult to accept his own nature. You should help me accept it and make the best of it. Was this the end of Cuba? Maybe. Already I want to see the pink bikini tall Cliffbanger girl again. 

I'm ashamed of my sleazy life, but it's my nature. Control it. Put it into my writing. 

The necessarily secretive world of Victorian homosexuals. I'm beautiful like Federico. Fucked up like Vincent, writing pathetic helpless scribbles. Cowardly like F Kafka. 

Vampires get great pleasure from sucking blood, but it's a very lonely and empty life. Oscar Wilde's shame was his rent boys; mine is the Astral Cinema, and Sunset Strip. It is a nasty, unpleasant, necessary hygienic ritual, weekly it seems. It is my gutter. I'm a prince, in dark blue & black. 

They are all Fu Manchu films.