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.

 

 

Carmen very good (13th June 1997)

Carmen very good, very enjoyable, especially the Toreadors song, and 'Carmen, I love you', when I thought of me and Sarah, Cleopatra's temple, Tristan & Isolde day. From then on I had Tristan & Isolde in my head all the time, the emotions of that day. I felt the same thing tonight. Carmen seduced me and then turned away. £8. 

Stupidly went to Boulevard. Sensational black-haired girl in black & gold underwear, eyes met and held as I came in. She then held my eyes very directly a lot. She is another black bob. Absolutely sensational, eyes flashing electrically from man to man, missing no one, smiling warmly and beaming sometimes. The vampire blonde girl was sexy too. Only four girls, saw black hair four times then left. £14.23. 

Bought £4.50 Si-Fan Mysteries Fu Manchu book and £10 Oscar Wilde biography (1946). Extravagant, but probably necessary.

 

 

What people reproach you for, cultivate (9th June 1997)

What people reproach you for, cultivate. They're jealous, of my riches. I am powerful, secure, safe in my black fortress. 

I've got my quiet intelligence. Abuse is the best thing, because it sparks your spark of originality into life. It makes you see what valuable riches you have got. Makes you cultivate your riches more, and get more out of them. They've got no inner riches, so throw abuse is all they can do. 

I like pushing the edges of the pocket; pushing people to the edge. I get what I want from them, bouncers which I can leave alone, with relief. I manipulate them into hostility which leaves me untouched. But I have to remain alert all the time, lest someone creeps up on me unawares and is nice to me, then I am beaten.

7th June 1997

 

I want to have a real relationship (6th June 1997)

I want to have a real relationship, but I don't think it's very good pretending I'm someone I'm not, it's better to accept the reality of who I am, and the limitations. Stop trying to bend me to fit in with your idea of what I should become. I like being me, but I also don't really want to be alone forever but realise I probably will be. I like being me, and I think I have worth being me. I don't want you to destroy me. Sarah was trying to destroy me, same way everyone else does

I never say anything more than necessary (4th June 1997)

I never say anything more than necessary. Doesn't that make you think that is just who I am, and to try to force me against that is going to make things worse? If you know me, you've got to accept I'm silent. My family did. I'm a silent person. I get pressure off of everybody to be just like them. It would be nice to have one person saying you don't have to be. Don't you think it's likely I will never be able to have a relationship? Can't we talk about it. The more pressure you put on someone the harder you make it for them, I think she should see that. I cannot function under that pressure, that's a fact. You've got to put your foot down with these people: they think they can make judgements on you and then you've got to change to suit them. I reject their lies completely. Behind their laughter I see their fear, their jealousy, their loathing: that I have all the things they cannot have. 

I love the sleaziness of the Astral cinema. Sunset Strip. To talk politely is repulsive, I get nothing from it. Brothels are good, because the women are stripped of their personality, it's just sex. No emotion or identity.

Pretty bleak world with no Van Gogh, Oscar Wilde, FG Lorca and yet society tried to destroy all these people (2nd June 1997)

Pretty bleak world with no Van Gogh, Oscar Wilde, F.G.Lorca and yet society tried to destroy all these people. You were trying to crush me the same way everybody else tries to crush me. You never criticised them once, you just joined in, saying implicitly that they’re right. If I said one positive thing, you’d expand it to fill your entire world. A negative thing, you’re silent, disapproving, till I come back onto your pre-set agenda. How is that helping me? Ask me why I mention autism? Why are you interested in that? Why can’t you help me be what I want to be? Why do you have to make me be who you want me to be? Crush me with pressure, put on stones till I confess to something which I know I’m not guilty of. The Crucible. The witch hunt. You piled on a few more stones. Unless I change I deserve to die. The majority’s always right. You’ve helped me be myself. You tried to force me to be like them. But the closer I got to them, the more I wanted to be like myself. Now I’m happy and content.