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?

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.

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.

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. 

Carnival Strip Club was just getting good (26th April 1997)

Carnival Strip Club was just getting good. Now it’s gone. Boulevard always has very big voluptuous girls but so American and open. Sunset Strip is so drab and ordinary, though there have been special moments. Astral Cinema is OK (it it remains) now and again. But I think I’m clean till Winter now. 

Carmen in a month’s time. It’s sexy to take risks. 

It feels so sexy to go into a whore’s room and strip absolutely nude and be rampant in there, waiting for her to come in. That’s the good part, when you give her the money and she tells you to strip while she goes out for a moment. If the Astral films had been better Friday I might very nearly have been tempted. To be in that warm room stark naked, waiting for her to come back in. 

I've got an intense resentment of people, and I want them to prove me right. That's a relief. Lets me off the hook. They can say these things but I'm never going to submit to that. They're never going to take away what's special about me. I have to put up with so much nastiness in my life, but I will rise above, and remain beautiful, like F.G.Lorca. People are always trying to look you in the eye, demanding something of you, and that's very tiring.

This time tomorrow I’ll be sitting in the Carnival club (12th Jan 1997)

This time tomorrow I’ll be sitting in the Carnival club, having just had three pints in the Chandos, seeing the Dixian, Fu Manchu, Mata Hari girls, after Beyond the Clouds at Lumiere. The simple pleasures. Like this till July. This is the best time of my life, just for this contentment. I’m able to mix a little bit of everything now, to keep the mixture strong. I think I’ve found the right mixture.

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!

I can go to Sunset, Astral, Soho Cinema, Boulevard (21st Nov 1997)

I can go to Sunset, Astral, Soho Cinema, Boulevard: because I'm young, free, and single. I'm not cheating on anyone. I'm attracted to that side of life: the sleazy side. I find inspiration in its vitality, and colours and music. Pure sensation. Don't have to talk. I love the naked breasts of the girls at Carnival, I love the naked breasts of the girls at the Boulevard. That's it. I love it. It is intoxicating, that sex-dancing world. Liberate myself from such restraints, and learn to love the hour of the flesh.

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.

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.

Don't be weak, I am strong (17th Nov 1997)

Don't be weak, I am strong. I want to continue to wear my ---- jumper & ----- jeans, and I will do so. Like Einstein, Karl Marx, Picasso, F.G.Lorca. That's all right, you hold on to yourself. 

Feynman went and enjoyed stripclubs while working on his quantum physics calculations book. If I had a big book to set beside me, I would be permitted to have erotic tastes in porn films and strip clubs, like Wedekind, Einstein, Toulouse-Lautrec. 

I want to do lots of xmas shopping Wednesday, back to pub for a much needed drink and read of my Evening Standard, and of course my xmas visit to the Boulevard gentleman's club.

Erotic sex dancing: Mata Hari, 1920s Berlin, Ruth St Denis, Secessionist Vienna, Maud Allan, Anita Berber (13th October 1997)

Erotic sex dancing: Mata Hari, 1920s Berlin, Ruth St Denis, Secessionist Vienna, Maud Allan, Anita Berber. What can be better? I want red boudoir again. Nothing better than a beautiful woman, dancing to a song, interpreting the music in her own way.

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.

I feel like Aphrodite & Sphynx again (7th Sept 1997 Vienna)

I feel like Aphrodite & Sphynx again. "It is false spirituality to neglect things carnal. Real spirituality comes from regeneration of the flesh." The Aphrodite films are Benny Hill films, the Sphynx 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 Caligula became towards the end. Thursday 18th would be good for Sphynx, tomorrow for Aphrodite.
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 Savoy, though, won't it, staggering down into the toilets to get my penis out again in increasing anticipation of Sphynx I am about to get to, or Aphrodite. I want to go see Woody Allen films in the Ringstrasse, come back to the cafe with no intention of staying out, but then a couple of pints later the rising excitement makes me go to Sphynx. Tomorrow?