Sex is good, sex is healthy (27th Nov 1997)

Sex is good, sex is healthy. Nothing erotic, and sexually stimulating is bad. The more erotic stimulation the better e.g. the Kinsey biography, the sensual, erotic, decadent Pre-Raphaelite Symbolists. Beautiful girls at Sunset and Boulevard: I like the sex dancers. Ruth St Denis inspired Egon Schiele. Anita Berber inspired Otto Dix. 

I've had a long erotic abstinence, but what have I gained? My brain being eaten away. 

EGON SCHIELE FREEDOM & RELIEF, no erotic repression. 

My Soho Cinema & Astral visit in September cleared the blockage and got me moving again. It is an injection of life blood, regular shots to keep the red blood hot & flowing, and the brain on the edge of illicit shame & stimulation, bubbling along: it helps my creativity. 

Pornography is my secret, shameful addiction: I've tried to break away from it several times. 

"Symbolism, the most literary, sensual, erotic, decadent (even degenerate and depraved), mysterious and melancholy movement in the whole history of art...The first room of the exhibition is full of these ideal creatures--Helen of Troy, Lilith, Mary Magdalene and The Beloved--all of the same kind, no matter who played painter, all of a brooding lubricity that unsettles a man schooled in sexual restraint and the belief that the lasciviousness of women is a fire of damp kindling." 

"She sees a connection between the Dracula of Bram Stoker's novel, and the mythical figure of the Wandering Jew. She also sees another link between the nocturnal Count and the Whitechapel serial killer Jack the Ripper. The Jack-Drac narrative, she writes, plays out a 'constellation of similar fears, raging from syphilis to alien invasion'. She also throws in homosexuality, feminism, decadence and imperial decline: something for everyone....Women can be bad and wicked in Gothic. Gothic is all about transgression, dealing with taboos." Why can't I visit Soho every week, like I did during the Grosz period? Looking at that picture of Talyn, I do want to go back, don't I? Astral & Sunset Strip. 

The biggest thing in my life is pornography. Philip Larkin had his pictures. Wagner had his erotic urges, which produced Tannhauser, Tristan & Isolde, etc. It is necessary fortnightly hygiene: Van Gogh did it. So I like sex films, that's the way it is. BACK TO BERLIN, 1890s, WITH A VENGEANCE!

"Collective lust roared unashamed at the theatres" (20th Nov 1997)

"Collective lust roared unashamed at the theatres": Berlin 1928, Paris 1860, London 1997. They are beautiful girls in the films. Wouldn't it satisfy my curiosity if I just went to Astral and did it? What good does it do, boasting proudly how long I've lasted, 20 days, 21 days, if I'm being eaten away inside my brain every day. Like Toulouse Lautrec, make myself at home among the sex cinemas and sex dancing. The colours & intoxication & pounding music can fuel me, give me energy. 

I love the openness & relaxation of the girls in the sex films like Egon Schiele loved his models. 

I tried giving up sex cinemas and clubs but I couldn't, it would just be on my mind. The more I try & resist, the weaker I become. How strong I felt the day after Soho Cinema's shame, how strong I felt the day after Astral and red room--it is a strong part of my life. 

Your injunction to me to "do something" takes me in the opposite direction to that what I think I want to go: as I sail down this "do something" river I feel the sense of danger increasing, the sense of being up a creek without a paddle, and moving full speed away from the main river to my destination and the territory I know increasing. But, this is my problem. I wouldn't want to bore you with my problems. I must make this choice for myself, of course. 

Haunt the balconies of the Coliseum. 

I've become sex-obsessed this year, more morphine-addicted than ever. 

I am nothing without the sleazy nightlife, don't just go to musicals, opera, cinema, I do want Boulevard, and Soho Cinema/Astral. So it's my little naughty vice: everyone needs to let off pressure. I've done nothing today, because I wasted it, consumed by sinful desire, so better to have gone and gone it, and been relaxed for the next few days: do what you need to do: a little of what you fancy. It is my project. "Theo had quietly adjusted to Parisian nightlife and the 'hour of the flesh'". Your sexuality is your most powerful force: you must indulge it. Remember that girl watching me as I read the Eric Cantona headline: how thrilling to turn by her and go in sex cinema. The day after going, I made such huge progress, because I'm no longer preoccupied by thinking should I go or not. 

IT IS VITAL RELEASE VALVE FOR ME AS A WRITER. The vampirism returns! I've got a crippling addiction. Laudanum-head, like Miranda Richardson in Kansas City. 

"They are the typical ramblings of a drug user eager for a fix but without the means to pay....But the previously unseen letters show that as well as his desperation to acquire the drug, he also shared the addict's paranoia about his habit. Although Coleridge's habit was widely known--one reference book describes it as a 'crippling addiction'--the letters reveal the large quantity of opium he took...Coleridge admitted two years before he died that despite repeated attempts, he had never broken his addiction, describing it as the 'poison, which for more than 30 years has been the guilt, debasement, and misery of my existence'. Sotheby's specialist Peter Beal said 'These letters offer a particularly vivid and rare first-hand glimpse of the compulsive habits and routine of one of the most famous drug addicts in literary history.'" This hysteria of erotic excitement. The sleaziness of life is its vitality.

Last night in bed I comprehensively decided against going to Boulevard/Soho Cinema (19th Nov 1997)

Last night in bed I comprehensively decided against going to Boulevard/Soho Cinema. Now this morning, putting on my tape, I straightaway want to go back to see the dancing girls. Isn't it terrible. This sexual festering disease in my brain, that Manu battled with, Dali, Lorca; so accept it, everyone of artistic temperament has it. 

I love the noisy sexy music and the girls stripping and dancing to it. In a debauched Parisian, Bohemian way. 

Even the Helmut Newton books turn me off now: I've had too much. Didn't go to pub and Astral, regretted it on train home. Perhaps I should have done. Better to let it out. Train girl wasn't there. Quite relieved. Perhaps she doesn't work there anymore, or gets a different train. Isn't there a lack of vitality, though, by not going? The shame speeds things up: Astral, Soho Cinema, Boulevard. You need to indulge, taste the mixture, inject it into your veins. 

The urge inside my brain to be alone is so overwhelming, and so driving, so central, so demonic. Peel all the layers away and what you get down to in the core is this urge to be alone. That's what obliterates my life, it is the black hole drive machine in the centre of me. 

Egon Schiele: cocks out: sitting in front of nude girl in stockings masturbating smiling: sitting in front of mirror: sitting in Astral Cinema. "Lautrec drawn to everything vital and beautiful:" what is more beautiful than an erect straining cock sticking out of trousers in Astral? "and so he was addicted to the lively colourful activities of the demi-monde." The inspiration comes from the rotting stuff in the gutter: "and so Soho, with everything that belonged to it, became a second home to him...he saw stars rising & falling in the cabaret heaven and found an inexhaustible source of inspiration for his work... But now he revelled in everything that Parisian night life had to offer his artistic eye: dance, theatre, circus and brothel. He became the interpreter and chronicler of this small world where it must be added, man in his individuality always remained in the forefront for him." I'm fascinated by the men with their penises out in Astral, the sexual tension. 

My favourite painters are painters of prostitutes: Manet, Grosz, Dix, Lautrec, Schiele. 

I am the interpreter and chronicler of the small world of Soho: Soho Cinema and Astral tomorrow. Men with their cocks out. 

Regain a healthy relaxation about the demi-monde, prostitutes, sex-dancers, actresses.

Going to strip clubs is all I want to do (10th November 1997)

Going to strip clubs is all I want to do. Sexual watching. Like Salvador Dali. Fear and shame. Where is my Gala? Every time you said talk to people, you panicked me again, and made me feel tense. 

How can I make something successful of my life, rich, interest in joining an accountancy course. "I hope you do something". I like the Soho Cinema & Astral films, and Boulevard & Sunset Strip: it is my shameful secret. It is Egon Schiele Monday night feeling. I love stripping and getting my cock out in public. It is a strong, powerful thing. 

Get myself into situations where I can be with real people again, be successful, make money: the poison of my autistic tendencies needs to be purged. It is now the anniversary of our last meeting, exactly a year ago today. "See you later" were your last words to me. I know about the sleazy side of Soho life. I am the cynical observer. Like Wedekind, Toulouse-Lautrec, Egon Schiele, Van Gogh, Dali: I like the sleazy side.

I'm exploring pornography (8th November 1997)

I'm exploring pornography, I'm exploring my own sexuality: like Egon Schiele. Toulouse-Lautrec. Wedekind. 

She said it's up to me to tell her what help I need and she will try to provide it: I'm clarifying it for you, so you can further improve your assistance. If we can diagnose the problem better we can treat it better, do you think?

They're ugly (7th November 1997)

They're ugly, they open their mouths and ugliness comes out, they want to smear me with their ugliness because they resent me for my beauty and my intelligence and my serenity. They hate me for being happy in myself. Well, I'm sorry, but I can give them no satisfaction. They destroyed Oscar Wilde, but they will never destroy me, I'm terribly sorry for them. They want to take my serenity away from me, well I'm very sorry for them, but they haven't got the ability to be able to succeed. They must continue to be frustrated. 

"This strategy is consonant with the tendency of Weimar society in general to test continually the limits of sexuality in relation to legal (or moral) jurisdiction. The cultural artifacts of the Weimar Republic evince a fascination with sexual transgression and the violation of traditional taboos through the exploration of pornography, prostitution, androgyny, homosexuality. Modernity to the Berlin of the mid-1920s entails a sexual expressivity outside the constraints of love or convention. Sexual secrecy--aligned with the bourgeois repression confronted by the newly popular psychoanalysis--is annihilated in an excessive exhibitionism. Accounts of Berlin, such as the following by Stefan Zweig, were common: 'Berlin transformed itself into the Babel of the world'." 

I am exploring pornography, like Egon Schiele. 

Remember Egon Schiele and go back to Sunset Strip (25th October 1997)

Remember Egon Schiele, and go back to Sunset Strip. 

Being at work makes me unhappy. Following my secret desires is marginally better. I can't escape this basic equation, and the solution seems unavoidable. 

"La Belle Epoque became a celebration of women's sexuality and beauty, in turn-of-the-century Paris. That acrobatic frenzy of limbs called the Can Can was born, where dancers high-kicked in frilly petticoats flashing glimpses of white flesh between bloomers and stocking tops. Girls drudging as laundresses ten hours a day for peanuts could suddenly have more money and fun by dancing. Star dancers such as the brazen Paris sex symbol La Goulue (the Glutton) emerged--she was the first nude cover girl and became rich and famous. Meanwhile: 'The sinuous moving of a voluptuous body, the open sexuality of an uncorseted woman and the exotic attraction of the mysterious eroticism of the North African coast made the arrival of belly dance a catalyst for the birth of striptease.'" 

Go to Sunset Strip often (but briefly): three pints inside me will make even one hour bearable, even if the Glutton isn't there. But I have to keep checking. Fine. Weekly visits to see blonde bob Glutton, like I had weekly visits to see black bob. If I could afford it then, I can afford it now.

I've had two weeks since my Egon Schiele moment without acting on it (16th October 1997)

I've had two weeks since my Egon Schiele moment without acting on it.

I think the moments looking into the eyes of gold dress blonde hair Tanya on that volcanic December 14 cauldron night were even more erotic than black bob

I think the moments looking into the eyes of gold dress blonde hair Tanya on that volcanic December 14 cauldron night, as she removed the gold dress and let her huge breasts flop around the pole and slide down it with her thighs wrapped around it and her naked pussy rubbing against it, were even more erotic than black bob. They were the finest moments of my life. I can only find warmth in this alternative way, rather than conventionally with ----- or ------, it is the scopophiliac's way. 

Raining all day today. Go back to Sunset Strip in the rain, thinking of gold dress Tanya, her big floppy breasts and long naked thighs. In the spirit of Egon Schiele.

Try going to red boudoirs tomorrow (6th October 1997)

Try going to red boudoirs tomorrow: that's the plan. Because I love being naked in the boudoir with the prostitute. Be gleeful, mischievous, relaxed and powerful about it. Because, like Toulouse-Lautrec, I prefer going with prostitutes. I totally, openly prefer going with prostitutes, rather than -----, for example. I would happily choose prostitutes every time. Because I love being naked in their boudoirs. Get up tomorrow, knowing from the first second this is my prostitutes day. The world is my oyster tomorrow. Powerful. Volcano. I am the volcano. Get out of my way. I am Geoffrey Firmin, the Consul. I am Toulouse-Lautrec. 

I love painting myself naked, like Egon Schiele. I love writing myself naked, and erect, in my pinks, and reds, and purples. 

Stop pontificating around in the middle. Go all out with prostitutes, 1890s, Moulin Rouge, Toulouse-Lautrec, Egon Schiele, go all out with work, in blue overalls. Discover my power now, discover my volcano. 

In June I felt so embarrassed leaving Astral Cinema, it was written on my face, I was red & ashamed, and everybody could see it. But the last two times I've been strong and powerful. Now be strong and powerful with the prostitutes, 1890s, Moulin Rouge, Toulouse-Lautrec, EGON SCHIELE. It is a whole new world I am stepping into. The black & purple Emperor butterfly is about to leave the chrysalis. 

Egon Schiele is the most honest, now you be honest. Toulouse-Lautrec, Moulin Rouge, 1890s. Then I could have Louise. I went into the prostitutes world of the 1890s to discover the power to enable me to have Louise. I needed sexual power to enable me to cope with the emotions necessary to cope with my need for Louise. This is my Tannhauser, in black & purple, in 1890s Paris. Find out about Tosca. 

Back to Grosz again. Enjoy life. Enjoy sex with prostitutes.  But mostly, watch myself like Egon Schiele.