I now know I am saving money so I can go to Berlin in May (31st March 2006 Serpent's Egg Day)

I now know I am saving money so I can go to Berlin in May. So I can drink and eat in the Berlin Plaza, so I can go back to the Schloss Charlottenburg, the Gemaldegalerie and the Alte, so I can go back to the Oscar Wilde Pub, so I can go back to Ciro, the Berlin Erotic Centre, Sarah Young, Mon Cheri, Golden Gate and Monte Carlo. So I can see Caravaggio's Cupid, Viktor Muller's Salome, Franz von Stuck's Tilla Durieux, Nefertiti. 

The first ice cream van of summer starts playing The Third Man tune, making me long for Vienna, for Viennese Eroticism, for Berg, Schoenberg & Webern, for the Butterfly House, the Dorint, the white-shirted Dorint girls, for Manhattan & Pour Platin, for the Belvedere and the KHM. Of course I am going to push my credit card debt up to £6,400. Better to owe money & have a good time, than owe nothing and never have experience. The fees are high but it is a great teacher. Where do all the men go in Berlin? Where do all the men go in Vienna? I do not think I will ever solve these mysteries. JUST ONE MORE MONTH TO GET THROUGH, THEN MAY IS HERE & I CAN TRAVEL AGAIN! TO TREAT MYSELF, & ENCOURAGE MYSELF TO STAY ON THE PROHIBITION STRAIGHT & NARROW IN LONDON, I WILL BOOK THE BERLIN PLAZA TONIGHT, & BOOK THE FLIGHT TONIGHT, & BOOK THE OPERA TICKET TONIGHT. 

I am feeling Berlin particularly keenly today, as it's two years today that I met the incredible Riccarda. 

I now look forward to going to work, because I am saving money while I am there, and every pound I am earning is going towards my Berlin trip. 

When was the last time I had a good f--k? Not those drunken cuddles I have with Pamela & Renata. The last time I came was with Maya in Monte Carlo in October which was nice. Before that was Anna, Berta & Eva in Frankfurt which were cheap but perfunctory. The lovely Natasha in Brussels. Before that there were the Silvia's and Sara's, then Vanessa in Monte Carlo in June, back to Diana in Berlin in March. Before that was just Maria in Vienna. Diana was the last great sexual experience I had and I never even put my c--k in her! That is a long time waiting. I imagine this time in Berlin I will have a really good dirty sexual experience again. That is what I am saving for. I think I will meet a Yulia, an Iga or a Riccarda again. Maybe an Erika, an Olga or an Alla. Oh God--just six weeks to get through!

"You may think the Grand Tour is about politics, and culture and art---and you would be quite right. But it is also about gambling, drinking and sex. Particularly sex"

"You may think the Grand Tour is about politics, and culture, and art---and you would be quite right. But it is also about gambling, drinking, and sex. Particularly sex. Young grand tourists came across it everywhere, lively, in prostitutes, and given some sort of authority by the works of art at which they looked." That is exactly the effect of Makart's Summerhouse in Berlin, or his Four Senses in Vienna, or of the Wiertz Museum and the Delvauxs and the Last Temptation of St Antony and the Tresors de Satan in Brussels. It gives 'authority' to my search for sexual pleasure at night. 

"Unlike Rome, Naples was ruled by a royal court. And where there was a king there too was opera. In innumerable letters, journals, and diaries, opera is mentoned far more often and far more specifically than art or architecture. It was, apart from sex, their most fervent passion. They adored it. Some rode halfway across the country to hear a soprano of new reputation. And in Naples opera was said to be the glory of the country. Young grand tourists fell in love with these people...with their voices rather than their bodies." How else to describe my repeated visits to Berlin, for Die Ferne Klang, Salome, La Traviata? For one night only to see Elena Prokina? Maria Grazia Schiavo 

"To Vesuvius the grand tourists were drawn like bees to honey." 

"When they went back to England, they knew how to gamble, they knew how to drink, they knew how to fuck." 

I gamble with my life. Every time you go out at night looking for someone, you are gambling. Like on a roulette wheel, you put your money down on a number black or red, & spin the wheel. Most times you will lose, but once in a while you will win, and the win makes all the losses worthwhile. All the innumerable small losses are more than made up for by the occasional spectacular win, and that is what you keep doing it for. It is to be learned--this cleaving and this burning, but only by the one who spends out himself again. Oh 

I so much want to resume my Grand Tour: to go back to Brussels now, for the Radisson SAS, for La Monnaie, for the Empire and the Gare du Nord. I so much want to go back to Berlin for the Berlin Plaza, for the Staatsoper, for the Oscar Wilde, for Ciro, Mon Cheri, Golden Gate & Monte Carlo. I so much want to go back to Vienna for the Dorint, the Belvedere, the KHM, the Butterfly House, and the Gurtel. And the videokabins! The videokabins are the glory of Europe. 

THE ONLY WAY I CAN GO TO EUROPE AGAIN IS IF I HAVE GOT PLENTY OF MONEY IN MY WOOLWICH ACCOUNT. ONLY BY NOT GOING TO THE FLYING SCOTSMAN WILL MY BUILDING SOCIETY ACCOUNT START TO RECOVER TO GIVE ME SOME SPENDING MONEY. 

I am lonely so I like to be surrounded by beautiful scantily clad women in nothing but their bras & knickers & corsets while I drink myself to death (24th March 2006)

I am lonely so I like to be surrounded by beautiful scantily clad women in nothing but their bras & knickers & corsets while I drink myself to death. Sometimes we smile & flirt a little bit but whenever I get too close they move away, or whenever they get too close I move away. How lovely to stand in the corner watching the football with M-- just a foot away from me talking to the other man, so I could gaze & gaze at the lovely voluptuous arse cupped in those white cami-shorts. The night before when L-- had stood in the same place and I could gaze at her even more voluptuous arse in nothing but a g-string under black see through top. The power of the gaze, John Berger. How lovely to have some hot eye contact with scantily clad women like A--, H--, M--, and --. I am a disappointment to girls, when they discover I have nothing to say. I am lost in my own dreamworld, my own underworld. I cannot be roused out of it. I will always be the lost boy. I think -- is still fond of me. I think she still has tenderness & affection for me. When you are a loner, and have lived in your own world so long, it is hard to give it up, even when you want to. This was Will Penny's problem. This was Stephane's problem. This was Peter Pan's problem.

It was quite strange that C——- was there last night but —— wasn’t. She was nice to me, smiling and laughing and asking if I was OK. J—— is always lovely to me. A—– was giving me such hot looks. M——‘s look, and comment to Helena. “Hello trouble”. I am Aschenbach in Death in Venice. Because I want you some more. I want you some more. I really wanted someone, but tortured by my own repression, I did not act, and missed my chance. I am drowning in booze since I got my own flat, but at least I am doing something. After sucking my ear, C—— let me touch her arse again, and then stood so close to me while collecting from the men behind me that her bum was still resting against me. The great value of the flat to me is that I can just be alone and silent here. I consider a day wasted if I cannot spend it in solitude and silence.

Despair & depression. This is how Noodles felt after he saw Deborah off at the railway station & went back to his opium den. This is how Stephane felt as he sits at the cafe table & watches Camille drive off for the last time. I deliberately destroyed my relationship with —– to stay safe. Like Noodles I am a gentle & tender man, and yet I act animalistically, like the way he rapes Tuesday Weld on the bank raid. It is the only way I know how to relate to women. Broken and empty. I want to take all my comforters back to the flat with me; my Hart Crane, my little black diary.

A lot of the girls like me but I never do anything. —– was the only one who got close. It is like I wanted to remain unknown even though I was tempted.

“Caulfield was constantly alert to the everyday excitements of living in a major city" (21st March 2006)

“Caulfield was constantly alert to the everyday excitements of living in a major city. It is unlikely that he ever read Virginia Woolf (“It seemed to deal with a middle-to-upper-class society that I didn’t know anything about and it meant nothing to me”, he once said of the mid-century English novel), but he shared with Woolf a love of urban experience, seen quite vividly, in a novel such as Mrs Dalloway, for example, in all its hallucinatory particulars: “In people’s eyes, in the swing, tramp and trudge; in the bellow and the uproar; the carriages, motor cars, omnibuses, vans … in the triumph and the jingle and the strange high singing of some aeroplane overhead was what she loved; life; London … “ And yet for the 40 years of his career, Caulfield painted places that offered respite from the noise and sheer teeming variety of city life and the jangly rhythms of modern urban existence. These included restaurants, cafes, hotel foyers and other public places, as well as bars. For many years his first call of the day was at his local, a few minutes after the bolts had been drawn in the morning. “Getting drunk: there was no doubt that that was always the quest,” Martin Amis once wrote of his father, Kingsley (who, as it happens, was a fellow-regular and morning tippler at the pub Caulfield used in Primrose Hill in north London). “Being drunk had its points, but getting drunk was the good bit.” Caulfield liked to breathe in the opening-time cellar smells and observe the shapes the slanting light cut through the fixtures and fittings; he liked to stare into the distance and listen to London. Early paintings such as View of the Rooftops (1965) and Lit Window (1969), and later ones such as Trou Normand (1997), Rust Never Sleeps (1996) and Terrace (2002) are proof that this was time well spent. The arrival of fellow customers he took as a sign that it was time for him to be on his way.” 

An uneventful journey to work, and night. Just one more night to get through. Wednesday night is Chelsea v Newcastle in the FA Cup. 

“Bob the pub waiter, in Patrick Hamilton’s 1929 novel, The Midnight Bell, establishes a pattern the author would follow until the end of his days: rivers of booze, obsessive pursuit of the wrong woman, rapidly diminishing funds, time killed in afternoon cinemas.Drink and tranquillised sleep were sympathetic conditions. “There was a fog even in the cinema,” reported Bob, Hamilton’s befuddled waiter, when he hid away in the picture palace attached to Madame Tussaud’s in Marylebone Road. Earlier, Bob had enjoyed a double-bill in the company of a friendly barmaid (taking his mind off the prostitute he was pursuing): a Richard Dix feature, followed by 20 minutes of Fritz Lang’s Spione. Like Hitchcock, Hamilton learned how to work those weather metaphors: slush, sodden streets, the yawning parenthesis of the English Channel. Autobiography, the writing of fiction, the visiting of afternoon cinemas, gradually merge in Hamilton’s addiction, his heroic attempt to drink himself to death (a macho pissing contest with Malcolm Lowry, refereed by their puce-cheeked contemporary, John Davenport). “It’s a shame,” said William Faulkner, “that the only thing a man can do for eight hours is work. He can’t make love. He can’t drink.”

I tottered back to look in Sunset Cinema then back to Pamela (18th March 2006)

I tottered back to look in Sunset Cinema, then back to Pamela. It was so lovely to see her again. She was more beautiful than I remembered. Her tits are fantastic. I asked about her Greek boyfriend, and she said “I haven’t got a boyfriend anymore”!!! Feeling thrilled, I asked what happened to the Greek, and she said “it just didn’t work out”. I told her not to bother with condom, and she just lay on top of me. Then she lay back and let me suck her breasts until they got too sensitive & she told me when to stop. She let me kiss her pussy just once! She was so sexy, and was smiling so much, and was so warm. At last I am melting her Swedish ice! I did not want to let her go, and kept pulling her back to the bed, which made her smile & laugh.

REMEMBER THE SWEETNESS OF KRISTINA LAUGHING & TELLING ME IT WAS HER FIRST DAY (17th March 2006)

REMEMBER THE SWEETNESS OF KRISTINA LAUGHING & TELLING ME IT WAS HER FIRST DAY. REMEMBER THE SWEETNESS OF THE MCDONALD’S GIRLS. REMEMBER THAT —— WANTED ME ALL THOSE MONTHS. I AM ERNEST DOWSON. I AM VINCENT VAN GOGH. I AM PATRICK CAULFIELD, SITTING ALONE IN LONDON PUBS JUST WATCHING THE WORLD PASS BY, AND LEAVING WHEN IT STARTED TO GET BUSY. GOING TO THE BAR AT THE THEATRE INTERVAL & NOT GOING BACK IN FOR THE SECOND ACT, BUT STAYING DRINKING ALONE IN THE EMPTY BAR AS THE BAR STAFF CHATTED AMONGST THEMSELVES & BUSIED THEMSELVES CLEARING THE EMPTY GLASSES. I AM A STRANGE CREATURE. A STRANGE, ECCENTRIC, & DEPRESSIVE CREATURE. —— KNOWS NOW THAT ALL IS NOT WELL WITH ME. I HOPE I SEE HER AGAIN. —— KNOWS NOW I CAN NOT BE THE BOY FOR HER BUT SHE WILL ALWAYS HAVE FONDNESS FOR ME, I HOPE. THE WAY SHE STOOD IN FRONT OF ME & LET ME PULL HER HAIR TWICE, AND JUST TURNED ROUND & GRINNED EACH TIME, AND THEN NEXT TIME PUT HER HOOD UP & WAITED FOR ME TO TURN ROUND & NOTICE HER, BEFORE WALKING OFF GRINNING, SUGGESTS THAT. THE WAY I LOOKED AT HER FROM THE SIDE AND SHE JUST LOOKED BACK TELLS HER I CARE ABOUT ONLY HER & SHE KNOWS THAT.

I WANT TO THROW A STONE INTO THE POND (16th March 2006)

I WANT TO THROW A STONE INTO THE POND. I WANT TO THROW A BOMB & BE HELD RESPONSIBLE FOR IT. THAT IS WHY I MUST PUBLISH THE BOOK, AUTISMUS, & BE DAMNED FOR IT IF NECESSARY.

I so much want to go back to the Flying Scotsman--and yet Saturday was so awful (15th March 2006)

I so much want to go back to the Flying Scotsman--and yet Saturday was so awful. I want to feel some huge massive breasts in my hands and in my mouth. 

I like to hurt myself it seems. I am Peter Pan. Deliberately hurting himself by refusing to go through Wendy's window & join the Darling family, but instead staying outside on the tree branch looking in, crying. No one was going to capture him. This is my last night. Tomorrow is my fifth anniversary at the Flying Scotsman. 

I behaved badly with -----. So the next time I met her, I thought she wouldn't want to know me, but as it turned out she was more lovely than ever. I, therefore, behaved even worse than I did the first time, so shocked that she was still being so lovely to me. I cannot cope when someone treats me with love & tenderness. "You sometimes take a very long time making up your mind about your feelings. In fact, it's safe to say that the more you care, the longer it takes you to admit it to yourself."

YOU CAN BE STRANGE AS YOU WANT AT THE FLYING SCOTSMAN! (13th March 2006)

YOU CAN BE STRANGE AS YOU WANT AT THE FLYING SCOTSMAN! BE STRANGE & ECCENTRIC, NOT DOWN & DEPRESSED! IF YOU ARE POSITIVE, & RADIATE HAPPINESS, PEOPLE WILL BE DRAWN TO YOU. I WILL LOSE MYSELF IN NIHILISM & SELF-DESTRUCTION TO PUNISH MYSELF FOR LOSING ——, LIKE BERLIN IN THE 1920S.

I never connect with anyone (12th March 2006)

I never connect with anyone. I never want to become friends with anyone. I want to stay the stranger, alone & unknown. All the years I have been going to the Scotsman now, I do not know anyone there. I do not talk to anyone. Only one person has broken through my defences,and that was —–, and when she gave me my chance, I just let her leave without saying a word. She is nice to me still, but will never give me another chance. 

I should have been a week & a half, or even two & half weeks into my relationship with —– now. Instead here I am still shut outside the window, longing to be inside, but knowing it is too late. 

I am Stephane in Un Coeur en Hiver. I am Noodles. I am Will Penny. I am Edvard Munch. 

At this moment, I do not like anyone. I do not care about anyone or anything. I am bitter and nihilistic. “I have long passed the point at which one is seriously moved by hostile criticism of anybody in these questions or can feel any more than a tolerant contempt for the point of view from which it is uttered…God or the Flesh or the Devil—an artist may be in bondage to any one or other or all of these powers and retain his self-respect—but the world mustn’t, positively must not exist for him–or so much the worse for his art.” (Ernest Dowson, 1892). 

This is the anniversary of going to the dark opulent claustrophobic Berlin bedroom with Diana. Clarisse’s breasts in Brussels! Martina’s breasts in Nuremberg! Andrea’s breasts in Soho! I really so much want a girl with massive breasts again. Where can I find one? Travelling is out of the question for me. There is just the Berlin trip in May I am committed to, when I can see Erika in Ciro, and the sisters Alla & Olga. Maybe even Evalina in Golden Gate. It turns me on just thinking about it, but I will not be able to afford it in May any more than I can now. My financial situation is stuck in a downward spiral. It is getting worse not better. I would love to jump on Eurostar over to Brussels just to look for Clarisse in Empire, and check the Gare du Nord girls, but it is out of the question. Dowson frequently quoted Baudelaire, ‘Il faut etre toujours un peu ivre’. [It is necessary to be always a little drunk]. 

I so much want to search the clubs of Berlin again. I am aching for it. To meet a Diana, a Yulia, an Iga, a Riccarda, an Erika again. If all there is is Evalina and Maya, then I will fuck them instead. I still haven’t come with a girl since Maya in Berlin in October! 

I don’t want to be liked. I make no effort to be liked by anyone at the Scotsman or the Calcutta, the only two places I ever spend my time. Except —–. I am frozen. There is a wall around my heart. I was so depressed Saturday morning at work, and then woke up with such a black fist of pain around my heart, and then had —- and —– being nasty to me at the Scotsman. You carry the weather with you. I am fighting against the consequences of that Thursday night.