Go into Brussels like pulling into a great palmhouse (11th August 2006)

Go into Brussels like pulling into a great palmhouse, gigantic tropical ferns and trees and butterflies all around me. A steaming primordial paradise. With soot on the leaves. Let it become an overheated, closed, hothouse. Go into Munich the same way. Go into Vienna the same way. The more poor I became the more I travelled miserably, to Empire, Atlantic City, Pour Platin, Golden Gate. When you are happy people are attracted to you like to a magnet & you have great times. As I get poorer, I become more miserable & only have bad times. How happy I will feel when I reduce my Barclaycard to zero!!!! The long project starts here.

OK so it has taken 8 months for me to get my position this bad. It follows it will take another 8 months to get it back even to where it was before, owing £3,900. How fantastic to see that Paul Delvaux Pygmalion picture again! De Chirico’s Melancholy of the Beautiful Day! Now let me spend all these long hours in my flat, my little nest, my eagle’s eyrie, going through all my old notebooks, manuscripts, book margins, typing up everything from my previous holidays that can be of use in my journals. Finally going through all those newspapers. Oh what joy this next few days off is going to be! I will live on cokes & hamburgers from McDonald’s next door. At night I will treat myself to a couple of pints in the Calcutta. Maybe once a week treat myself to Dionysus and the Sunset Cinema and Demi or Pamela. I must get to the Rebels & Martyrs exhibition next week. Of course I cannot give up my nest. What a crying tragedy that will be. That is the best thing in my life. That is the nuclear option. If I spent £800 on beer & strippers in the last two months I should therefore be able to pay off £800 on my Barclaycard over the next two months? This is where I turn my life around, and the fightback starts. I ache to see that Paul Delvaux picture for real in the Brussels Museum of Modern Art! How I ache to see Dali’s The Temptation of St Anthony in the flesh again! 

“Today, visitors to the Wiertz Museum enter into a highly preserved atmosphere from a revolutionary era favourable for contemplation, inner reflection or daydreams… ” How fantastic to see La Belle Rosine again! Le Tresors de Satan! La Figure Tombale! How much I want to get back to Brussels! I will have to go on a pilgrimage to Felicien Rops in Namur, I think. The train to Berlin is 7½ hours and costs 236 euros!!! About £180? Wouldn’t it be better to get an Interrail pass for £380 so I can go from Brussels to Nuremberg instead for one night stay, on to Munich for two nights stay, on to Vienna for two nights, before the long journey up to Berlin for my last four nights? For sure, that is £1,200 gone just on train & hotels!!! Add on another £100 a day for expenses, that is £1,200, making a total trip of £2,400. Almost impossible to be less than that. A 12-day trip has to come to at least that. I think I am going to have to accept that I will be flying from Heathrow to each of my destinations for four-day holidays at a time. Maybe with a two month gap between each holiday? I could maybe combine Brussels & Berlin on the first trip at Halloween, £60 Eurostar plus £180 Berlin train, comes to £240, not to bad for say an 8 day trip, and then in the New Year combine Brussels with Munich & Vienna, if my savings have continued! How I ache to see the huge Fountain of Inspiration in Brussels again, and the Mars & Venus on the opposite wall. So full of personal meaning, more than ever now. Getting back to Brussels will be such a symbol of my rebirth. It will be very emotional, before then pushing on to my reunion with Berlin Plaza and Berlin Zoo. Brussels can never be enough on its own. Brussels is always the stopping off point, the starting point, the staging post. I could even go to Berlin for a one night stand in January to see La Traviata?

I think Brussels was so exciting because I knew it was just the first leg of my European tour (7th August 2006)

I think Brussels was so exciting because I knew it was just the first leg of my European tour, and after sampling the delights of the Museum of Modern Art, Wiertz, Pullman bar, and Gare du Nord, I could head off later in the week on the long train journey to Koln and Munich, and that night be heading over Bayerstraße to the White Coffin, on Saturday getting the train to Nuremberg for the Pils Bar and the Caribic, before then heading off again to Vienna, knowing that Manhattan and ML Revue and Pour Platin were waiting for me, before heading off a few days later for Berlin, knowing that Stuttgarter Platz was waiting for me and the Berlin Erotic Centre. Maybe this time I can finish up in Copenhagen for the The Makropulos Case? I want that Interrail pass again! £380 for the train pass, then maybe cheap Radisson hotels in Brussels, Vienna and Berlin? Ah but it is spending money that is the thing. Now that I have given up Sunset Strip and King's Cross, perhaps my finances will improve a bit? JUST IN JUNE AND JULY ALONE I HAVE SPENT £424 ON STRIPPERS ALONE!!!! What did Pete say? I need to see how it is destroying me. Get this: Since the New Year I HAVE SPENT £1,778 ON STRIPPERS ALONE!!! What hideous wastefulness on something that I was increasingly starting to despise. If I could have that £1,778 back now, it would pay for the Interrail pass, and every hotel for two weeks, and give me all the whoring money I could ever need. Since moving into the flat on November 17th I have spent more than £2,000 on strippers alone. And it is worse than that, because the vast majority of my drinks bill in that time---£515 in June and July alone! £1,867 since December 10th! has been consumed in the strip clubs. Without the Bell and Sunset Strip I reckon I would now be owing just £2,400 on my credit cards instead of £5,900. These are sobering figures. For sure I could go on that long train journey to Europe in December if not for that. PLEASE GIVE UP THE STRIPPERS!!!! Just concentrate on the Calcutta, Sunset Cinema, and Demi and Pamela from now on. By the end of August and September that should save me £900 alone. DO IT. Do it, so I can see Brussels again, I can see Gare du Nord again, I can go to the White Coffin again, I can go to the Pils Bar and Caribic again, I can go to Pour Platin and Manhattan again, I can go to Berlin Ciro again.

I want to write books the like of which have never been seen before (5th August 2006)

I want to write books the like of which have never been seen before. Journals of a man subsumed in a life of emptiness and nothingness, but who revels in and gorges himself on this emptiness and nothingness, like a mother eating her own placenta. Journals about the visceral pleasure in detachment of an autistic person. About transcendency, about finding lenses that enable one to focus all the rays of this emptiness and nothingness like a magnifying glass used to focus the rays of the sun to start a fire, like the mirror that Orphée steps through to enter the Underworld, and then the transcendency flares into life like a white phosphorescent explosion, and one orgies in the transcendency, in the sublime orgasmic detachment from everything and everyone around you, in the supreme quality of emptiness and nothingness stretched to the nth degree like a taut violin string that is at any moment about to break but never quite does; what exquisite pleasure is then to be found. If Guy Debord's view of life was to seek the perfect point of inebriation, mine is to locate the perfect point of transcendental orgasmic detachment. The nights I would go to the Coliseum and have to creep in the darkness to the gentleman's toilets and furiously masturbate so aroused was I. The nights at the opera in Berlin, when I had to leave at the interval in search of Kant and cunt, so highly-strung and aroused had I become.  It is possible to take an aesthetic appreciation in fine pornography, fine aids to arousal and ejaculation; indeed it is impossible not to. The night in Munich I had to leave Strauss's Arabella in desperate race back to Schiller and Goethe. It was Karl Kraus who said a woman can sometimes be an acceptable substitute for masturbation, but that it requires an awful lot of imagination. When I think of all the brief connections I have made this year with women, -----, Melani, Amanda, Pamela, Lydia, I can say that not one of them gave me an iota of the pleasure that I felt when the woman in the cinema let the men crowd around her with their cocks out, and let me wrap her hair around my cock to masturbate with in the dark. Transgression is not only possible, but beautiful. I would go further. Transgression is not only beautiful, it is essential. The double life is absolutely essential in order to save one's life.

Oh I cannot wait to get back to Nuremberg again! To go back to the Pils Bar to look for Martina! To go back to the Caribic on a Saturday night! My trips always used to be a three-way battle between Love, Art and Eros, this in the days when I was tormented by my desires and my repression, and the more I repressed my desires the more they overwhelmed me. Truly the only way to avoid temptation is to give into it. Only by indulging your tormenting desire does that desire go away and leave you free to go on with more constructive things, like writing about it. In the last two or three years, however, I have achieved a unity of the three. Love, art and Eros have been forged together so everything I do is motivated and fuelled by the combination of the three. I go to the Wiertz Museum during the day, and walk around that extraordinary single big room—alone, always alone—and already achieve a fine erection. My cock strains hugely in my trousers and rolls from side to side like a ship in a storm as I walk slowly around the room. By the time I penetrate into the three smaller rooms at the end of the corridor, it is all I can do not to remove my swollen member from its captivity and frig myself maniacally there & then on the spot. How Wiertz’s Napoleon arouses me, his Satan. Because I remember every time I have been here before, it was a precursor to the exquisite coils of desire I would envelop myself in later that night, so the Wiertz Museum serves as the appetiser, the foreplay, the anteroom on the first floor, as it were, to the brothel on the second.

Similarly, I go to the Museum of Modern Art in order to arouse myself by looking again at the deliciously dirty Paul Delvaux pictures, the Profond des Plaisirs, Salvador Dali’s Temptation of St Anthony, Tresors de Satan, and Alfred Steven’s Salome, knowing what it will lead to later. How can I not walk around art galleries with an erection! Especially if there is some sexy woman walking around the galleries just ahead of you, so you sometimes pass her and she sometimes passes you, in an erotic dance, a waltz, where you both know less than half your mind is on the pictures, and your eyes are surreptitiously looking at each other much more than at the paintings on the wall! Oh art galleries are the most erotic places on Earth! Classical music concerts, too. I have never met so many single women as I did when I used to go to concerts every week. The red scallop neck top girl who followed me back into the auditorium at the Barbican after the interval, and who as I looked up from my notebook, I made suddenly electric eye contact with. For the entire second half of the concert, as she sat two rows in front of me, her chest rose and fell like she had been running, so excited and aroused had she become about what might happen between us afterwards. Of course, nothing did. I sidled miserably home on my own, hating myself more with every step I took, but still—the mutual arousal and anticipation had been thrilling. So many times I have had encounters like this at classical music concerts. The Irish-looking lush in front of me in the Wigmore Hall ticket queue, who kept looking back at me, and then for no discernible reason bent right over, so I could see up her skirt. Women can be quite primitive in their seduction techniques sometimes. And people say to me “How boring! Art galleries! Classical music concerts!” They have no idea. The highly developed dirty mind, the truly smutty intellect, can find sex in a pot plant. And don’t get me started on tropical palmhouses and butterfly houses! Steamy indeed! Steamy in every sense of the word! I want to write smutty monographs of no more than 45 or 50 pages each, to document how deliciously dirty the world is. For the true connoisseurs of smut.

The sexiest encounters of my life were with girls at classical music concerts (4th August 2006)

The sexiest encounters of my life were with girls at classical music concerts, while I was sitting in the back row---the red scallop neck girl at the Barbican, little brown bob who sat opposite me in the Barbican lobby, black fur coat at the Wigmore, the grey skirt lush in the Wigmore lobby. The erections I have got in art galleries! Especially the Brussels Museum of Modern Art and the Wiertz Museum---I have got to go back to Brussels this autumn! To the Modern Art [gone, waiting for it to be put back in place], the Wiertz, the Cathedral, the Gare du Midi Pullman bar [gone], it is such a morbidly erotic place, even before I get up to Empire and the Gare du Nord. I got great erections in Antwerp, too. And Munich Neue Pinakothek. Oh how erotic it is to be there during the day, going to the New Pin and Lamm's [gone], knowing it is just preparation for what I am going to do later---cross Bayerstraße and round the corner of Schillerstraße and disappear into the White Coffin [Atlantic City]. My heroes are Walter Benjamin, Karl Kraus, Friedrich Nietzsche, Karl Marx. I live every day of my life now as if I am on holiday, just drinking and eating and w-----g. The gorgeous beer in the Calcutta, the gorgeous fish & chips in Dionysus [gone], the gorgeous KFC in Leicester Square. The gorgeous tuna & mayo rolls in Charing Cross Station. When in Berlin I live for the knesepfannes [gone] in my hotel bar and the ham & eggs rolls in Thobens at Berlin Zoo station. In Vienna it is the alt wiener rostbratens in my hotel bar; I no longer go to Wegenstein's after the staff attacked me. I went back once but it is always so empty there, in contrast to the warmth & conviviality of Lamm's in Munich. I think I almost go to Munich solely so I can eat in Lamm's & have a glass of their ice cold Augustiner beer. I go to Berlin solely so I can eat the knesepfannes in my hotel & the Zoo Thobens rolls. Oh I so much want to go back to Munich! But where to stay---the Regent which I love for its bar, or the Intercity for its ease? I go to Vienna solely for the cold Zipfers served by the white shirted girls in the Dorint bar before I commence my afternoon of sightseeing, which usually means St Stephen's Cathedral, the Pummerin bell made out of Turkish cannons left behind after the Siege of Vienna, the Butterfly House, the KHM, the Belvedere and the Leopold. Always the same places. Sometimes I will mix in a few Third Man sites, like the Am Hof, and the steps where Harry Lime stood when the cat gave him away and we see him for the first time. I will not go into the sewers again. 

After Lamm’s [gone] what else is there to do for me in Munich, apart from struggling to the New Pin & trying to make it back to the Intercity before I explode? Nothing. Really. Lamm’s is the be all and end all of my every day in Munich. At nights, the White Coffin [Atlantic City] becomes the be all and end all but I think even that has finished for me now, as it has become just full of memories which the here and now increasingly struggles to live up to. The more fantastic memories you have built up in a place, or exquisitely painful ones, the more blood you have left on the tracks, the harder it is to get the same thrill out of the place & the more disappointing it becomes. It becomes a law of diminishing returns. There is a rising arc of your first few visits when it gets better & better, then you reach the zenith, then level off, then the arc inexorably descends, and every trip becomes increasingly distressingly flat and uneventful. The whores get more flat-chested and unattractive every time you go. In Berlin, Yulia, Riccarda, Iga, Diana, gone forever. Maybe they were always poor but the excitement of going somewhere new made them seem more sexy and alluring than they really were. The more you return the more you tend to see the same women in the cold light of day, as it were, and you realise they weren’t all they were cracked up to be.

Oh god I miss Munich so much! (23rd July 2006)

Oh god I miss Munich so much! "The area around the Intercity hotel is slightly seedy". Oh god I miss Schillerstraße and Goethestraße at nights! All those neon lights! I miss walking back into the Atlantic City, and Sexyland even! Lamm's! Oh god I miss Berlin Plaza so much! That Berliner Pils and knesepfanne! That nighttime walk to Sarah Young and Berlin Erotic Centre, and on to Mon Cheri and Golden Gate and Monte Carlo! Or to Ciro! Oh god I miss the Wien Dorint so much! That night time trawl of the Gurtel, Manhattan and Pour Platin! Those white-shirted Dorint girls! Seriously, where am I going to find my sugar daddy to make this possible? A better job---pah! If I moved to ----- for £19.000 I would be working hard all year just to reduce my credit card debt from £6,000 to £4,000, big deal! I need a sudden injection of cash! If Lydia lent me £5,000??? It would be a mad adventure. I dread doing it & getting trapped, but I would be inspired to do it because I know it would free me to get back to Munich & Berlin & Vienna. 

Oh how I miss sitting in the Café Belge of the Ibis Brussels! Always seemed to meet single women there, not only --! Watching the trams before heading up to Gare du Nord, or Empire. How I miss the Pullman! Those lovely large rooms, especially the corner one that bends right round, or the one with the window in the deep archway. Lydia is a crazy girl & she wants me to be crazier than her. She has nothing to lose; I everything. 

Oh god I cannot wait till I can get back to the Calcutta on Wednesday! And then back to the Scotsman! Two places where you can stay for hours on your own & feel completely comfortable. Unlike the Lemon Tree, unfortunately, where I never feel comfortable. I cannot wait to get back to the cinema again, then on to Demi or Pamela.

THOSE INCREDIBLE FELICIEN ROPS PICTURES I WAS LOOKING AT THIS MORNING SO MUCH MAKE ME WANT TO GO BACK TO BRUSSELS AGAIN (13th Feb 2006)

THOSE INCREDIBLE FELICIEN ROPS PICTURES I WAS LOOKING AT THIS MORNING SO MUCH MAKE ME WANT TO GO BACK TO BRUSSELS AGAIN. IT HAS BECOME AN INCREDIBLY EROTIC PLACE AGAIN—THE TOWN OF ROPS, OF WIERTZ, OF CLARISSE. JUST TWO MORE NIGHTS TO GET THROUGH THEN I CAN GET BACK TO THE CALCUTTA & THE FLYING SCOTSMAN, AND OSCARS & THE ABCAT—I AM ADDICTED. I AM AN OPIUM ADDICT. HERE IN LONDON, IN KING'S CROSS AND WHITECHAPEL; UNDER THE CHANNEL ON EUROSTAR TO BRUSSELS; IN BERLIN, AND IN VIENNA. MY THEME: “THE VISCERAL PLEASURE IN DETACHMENT OF AN AUTISTIC PERSON”. THOSE INCREDIBLE FELICIEN ROPS AND WIERTZ PICTURES MAKE ME WANT TO GO BACK TO BRUSSELS (AND NAMUR, AND THE EMPIRE AND THE GARE DU NORD). THOSE INCREDIBLE GEORGE GROSZ & OTTO DIX PICTURES, AND TILLA DURIEUX AS CIRCE AND VIKTOR MULLER’S SALOME HOLDING JOKANAAN’S HEAD MAKE ME WANT TO GO BACK TO BERLIN (AND MON CHERI & GOLDEN GATE & MONTE CARLO & CIRO). THOSE INCREDIBLE HANS MAKART PICTURES MAKE ME WANT TO GO BACK TO VIENNA (AND THE GURTEL). 

MY OPIUM ADDICTION HAS ALREADY CAUSED ME TO RUN UP A £5,060 DEBT ON MY CREDIT CARDS. “GET TO GRIPS WITH THE IDEA THAT IT IS EATING AWAY AT YOUR MONEY, YOUR LOVE AND YOUR LIFE.” NOW I WANT TO PLUNGE BACK TO BERLIN, & VIENNA, & BRUSSELS. DIVING DEEPER INTO DARKNESS! I AM COMPLETELY UNRESPONSIVE TO A WOMAN’S PROMPTINGS, LIKE AMANDA IN SUNSET, OR --- IN THE SCOTSMAN, OR THE BLONDE ON CHARING CROSS TUBE PLATFORM. I AM NARCISSUS, I AM DORIAN GRAY. I SEEM TO HAVE FORGOTTEN THE PASSION, AND LOST THE DESIRE. THE PRIVATE LIFE OF SHERLOCK HOLMES IS “REALLY A CHARACTER STUDY OF A MAN FOR WHOM LOVE SEEMS AN IMPOSSIBILITY, AND SO HAS THROWN HIMSELF INTO HIS WORK IN AN EFFORT TO ESCAPE HIS SAD PREDICAMENT.” 

SOLIPSISM: “YOUR WANTS & WISHES ARE ALL THAT COUNT, AND YOU MUSTN’T EVEN THINK OF GIVING WAY OR GIVING IN.” THE GREATEST THING THAT HAS HAPPENED THIS YEAR WAS SEEING M-- AGAIN. THERE HAVE BEEN NO REAL GREAT EVENTS THIS YEAR, INSTEAD JUST THE LOW LEVEL PLEASURE OF BEING IN MY OWN HOUSE, AND DRINKING IN THE CALCUTTA, AND MAKING SLOW PROGRESS ON AUTISMUS, AND LOTTA, AND THE COLD ICY AIR OF THE MOUNTAINS. THIS IS WHAT I AM PAYING £541 A MONTH FOR. IT IS AN INVESTMENT TO GIVE BIRTH TO MY FUTURE PERSON. I WILL WORK HARD TO GET ME THROUGH TO BERLIN IN MAY.

Dorothy Anstruther she’s a Belgian dancer living in London (26th Dec 2006)

Dorothy Anstruther she’s a Belgian dancer living in London—the girl in the Country Girl video!!!! ********* How fantastic those porn films were in Munich Inter City! The Italian ones. There is such a special feeling when I go to Munich. Knowing Italy is just the other side of the Alps. Those memories from Munich, and Vienna, and Berlin, are the best of my life. There is a soft lubriciousness about Munich. I have to go back. 

CHECK EUROPEAN TRAIN TIMES BEFORE BOOKING TICKETS, or deciding whether to stay in Munich Sunday or get train back to Brussels. So I cannot get it out & have sex in Munich; but did I enjoy it with Pamela or Francesca? with Alla? with Margareta? I can use the kabins. I realise I can only enjoy music when I am drinking & when it is turned up full deafening volume. No I cannot have sex in Munich, but the greatest nights of my life have come there, Patricia in Atlantic City let me come on her breasts in séparée, —– —- fell in love with me, Susi & Irina, Emily in Femina let me come on her breasts in séparée, Viktoriya, Martina massive breasts in Nuremberg Pils bar. It only works if you totally lose yourself in it—music. Drink, sex. 

Perfect in Brussels to go from hotel, really drunk, to California to get turned on & sober, then back to Empire ready to feel something.

The sensible thing would be to go to Brussels Thursday (27th Nov 2006)

The sensible thing would be to go to Brussels Thursday, spend one night in the Radisson (or Ibis probably better for ease, to save travelling to & for with bags), to allow me to get to Gare du Nord & Empire, then get train to Berlin next lunchtime, arriving Berlin Plaza about 8pm Friday night. Then staying there Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday nights, train back Tuesday, Eurostar back home Tuesday night??? 

Where do I want to go in Berlin? Just Alte National Gallery. Maybe Dom. Mostly just drinking & whoring at night. It will be nice to be in Berlin at Christmas time for first time ever. 

Just one more night to get through. Off to Waterloo on Thursday lunchtime for Eurostar. The return fare to Berlin from Brussels should be around £180? Maybe leave it till I get to Brussels to see if I can get it cheaper in the Gare du Midi??? 

Check hotel reservation for Berlin Plaza! 

**********Oh now I am so turned on & desperate to get to Berlin!! 

I have booked Thursday night in the Gare du Midi Ibis, Saturday-Monday nights in Berlin Plaza, I will just have to try Radisson SAS for Friday night in Berlin? Now Eurostar will be £89 and the Berlin train will be £185, total £275! Just one more night to get through, then I can be on Eurostar to Brussels & Berlin! These last minute decisions to travel are so much more exciting. Just watching the end of that Pete Doherty Arena documentary with him singing along to Radiohead in the car made me realise that all that matters is TO GET HIGH! TO LOSE IT! Be high all the time. 'Exhilaration is the breeze, that sweeps us off the ground'.

It is sad (25th Nov 2006)

It is sad. I had SO many great nights in Munich, but it is really hard to imagine how I could have another one. The Ukrainians have clamped everything down. Nice to look for Martina again in Pils? 

Munich seems rather sad & finished now? But to check in to the Inter City again! To go back to Lamm’s! To go out at night back across Bayerstraße to Atlantic City! To get that train to Nuremberg, Pils Bar, and Caribic on a Saturday night! Where is the best place for sex? Berlin, of course. How fantastic to go from Mon Cheri, to Golden Gate, to Monte Carlo, looking for the girl with big breasts, then taking her into the James Pryde bedroom or the séparée to f–k her. Save all my money for Berlin, and for Olga & Alla, and Ciro. That will be January 11th-14th. 

How fantastic to drink in Munich in Intercity, Lamm’s], Atlantic City at night. How fantastic to drink in Brussels in the Ibis or Radisson, then the Pullman bar, then the Metropole, before Empire at night. How fantastic to drink in Berlin in Berlin Plaza, then Café Zoo, Irish Bar beneath the old Romanisches Café, then the clubs at night. Why not go straight to Berlin this week???? Fuck La Traviata in January. Yes, Berlin. For Alte National Gallery, Dom, drinking in Café Zoo, The Oscar Wilde fish & chips, egg & ham rolls in Thobens, back to hotel to sleep, down to Berlin Plaza Knese at night for pfanne & pils, then out to Stutti or Ciro at night. So I fly? Yes. Berlin THIS WEEK!

There is nothing better than travelling around Europe to see my favourite opera singers (19th Sept 2006)

There is nothing better than travelling around Europe to see my favourite opera singers. While there enjoying the brothels and strip clubs and pubs as well. Travel seems the only point to life. To travel is to be held in suspension. As soon as you come to rest, everything stops and falls. You are just left waiting until you can travel again. Between travels I will just drink and drink to make the time go faster. Four in the Calcutta. Managed to keep the box seat the whole time. Two more stunning big breast girls on the 87 to Vauxhall, black ponytail black glasses black T-shirt, and white blond, black shades, orange top over purple bra. I will go home today so I can get drunk while listening to music. That is all I do every day on my days off, get drunk. Just waiting for the time I can travel again. Thursday should be thundery, and Friday showers. The paper says we are heading for a period of high winds, torrential rain and abnormally high temperatures! Phnom Penh weather. It remains to be seen whether I can resist the lure of the illicit thrill during these atmospheric conditions. I do not want to go back to the Bell and Cotton Club and Cinema and Demi and Pamela until I am also ready to travel. Even when I get September out of the way, there is still all of October, all of November, and all of December to get through! Can I really resist travelling in December? Maybe I will just pop to Brussels? I travel to wallow in nostalgia, not see new places. But just going to Brussels would seem such a dead end, wouldn’t it? Brussels should never be a terminus, it can only be a starting point. A jumping off point. Better to wait till the New Year and combine it with the Berlin trip. One hot steamy, rainy, Phnom Penh weekend I could just pop over to Brussels couldn't I, just for a Thursday Friday Saturday night, back home Sunday morning, back to work Sunday night? Just for a couple of days drinking in the Maes Bar, couple of nights at Empire and Gare du Nord? What is the difference from a couple of days drinking in the Calcutta, couple of nights at the Bell and Soho? 

I live for gambling, I live for saving my money in periods of abstinence just so I can blow it again on wicked women in London and Brussels and Vienna and Munich and Berlin. This boom and bust is what I live for. 

“What Rodin depicted in the Burghers was the birth of a specifically modern form of despair: an acceptance that there is no external source of redemption and the knowledge that one’s life might not be capable of generating its own capacity for redemption. What solace is available in the face of this dilemma? One possibility is work, the unswerving devotion to a craft that so impressed Rilke. The other is the sexual promise offered by women. In his later years Rodin achieved a blissful combination of these possibilities, devoting hours and hours to making thousands of drawings of naked women, often in states of sexual rapture. ‘People say I think too much about women,’ he explained. ‘Yet after all, what is there more important to think about?’ In Milton–as in the Bible–the Fall comes after Adam has tasted Eve in all her tainted sensuality. This inverts the reality of the situation: that the lure of sex is one of the things that makes the fallen state not simply bearable but desirable. Wittingly or not, Milton provides a glimpse of a paradise that is endlessly regainable: ‘Carnal desire inflaming, he on Eve/Began to cast lascivious eyes, she him/As wantonly repaid…’ Rodin trained himself to draw without taking his eyes off the women who were happy to surrender themselves to him as he abandoned himself to his gaze, (William Rothenstein, to whom Rodin made the remark about the importance of women, recalls him ‘caressing his models with his eyes, and sometimes too with his hands’.)” 

I abandon myself to my gaze. I have a deep attachment to Brussels, Munich, Vienna and Berlin. I used to spend all my spare money in the Bell and Cotton Club and Soho. Now I save it all for travelling in December and January. I can moan about all the money I have wasted on sex and strippers over the past few years, but isn’t that the point of life?!!!! There is nothing I would rather do with my money. I just need to control it in London so I can also enjoy the womanly delights of Berlin and Brussels and Vienna and Munich.

When will I ever meet someone like Sylvia again? (18th August 2006)

When will I ever meet someone like Sylvia again? Maybe Caroline in Big Apple? Sylvia really was the sphinx. Will I really never see her again? I must ask Amanda one day. Now I can enjoy the eroticism of pulling into Brussels by train, before enjoying the showgirls of Empire. Then the eroticism of drawing into Munich at night by train before enjoying the showgirls of Atlantic City. Then the eroticism and intense nervousness of drawing into Nuremberg at night by train before enjoying the showgirls at Caribic. Then the eroticism of drawing into Vienna at night by train before enjoying the showgirls of Seilerstatte. It is silly to say Brussels is boring or Munich is boring, because I will be awake all night at the showgirl places, only going home at 3 or 4 in the morning,not getting up until midday, going out 2pmish for a few drinks, sleeping it off, before going out again at night. I will live a completely nocturnal existence in those places anyway.

Monday is going to be quite cool & rainy as well (15th August 2006)

Monday is going to be quite cool & rainy as well, Tuesday a bit brighter, but then Wednesday evening I can go straight home to mother’s! How I look forward to doing that now! I will come back to the flat Friday afternoon & then back to the Calcutta for a nightcap later. JUST TWO MORE NIGHTS TO GET THROUGH! I could go to Brussels for a relaxing three days and only then decide where I want to jump to next—north to Berlin, or south to Nuremberg/Munich & Vienna.

Why don’t I go on holiday EARLY, in mid September, and then pay it off by my hoarding? Die Entfuhrung aus dem Serail is on in Brussels through September….."Belmonte has everything prepared to break his beloved Constance out of the seraglio of Selim Pacha in Turkey. His project is discovered, but Selim Pacha overcomes his jealousy and magnanimously pardons Belmonte. With his 'Türkenoper,' Die Entführung aus dem Serail, Mozart clearly touched 18th century Vienna’s heartstrings: the fearful fascination with Turkish culture had hardly dissipated a hundred years after the last occupation of Vienna by the Ottoman Turks. A tender love story, generously seasoned with humour and set to sparkling music, assured this work an enormous popularity and made it one of the greatest successes of Mozart’s career. The unity of music and drama achieved in this piece provided a new ideal for Singspiel, as well as for opera in general. ” And then to Berlin Komische Oper for the Rise & Fall of the City of Mahoganny “If you are persecuted by the police, you need a lot of money to bribe the law and order of the state. If you lack money, you have to make money. Three gangsters act upon this motto and build the paradise city Mahagonny in the middle of nowhere, where people will find happiness and where they should spend their money in return. However, the undertaking would have failed, if Jim Mahoney, a simple lumberjack from Alaska, would not have found the law of human felicity: everybody should be free to do whatever he wants to – to gorge himself ad nauseam, to have excessively sex, to prove to be a real man in a boxing match, to drink himself into oblivion. Mahagonny booms, the gangsters gain wealth, however, Jim has overseen a much more important law: you can do whatever you want to – but you have to pay for it. He cannot do so and is condemned to death for his lack of money.
»Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny« is regarded as a political parable, an operatic aesthetically discourse, analysis of the functioning mechanisms of human civilization, merciless inventory of the state of human relations under the rule of the market. The works stands for all this, however, it is a synonym for much more: it is one of the most successful operas of the twentieth century and a grandiose theatre fun of amazing energy and timeliness.”

So many sexy girls on the journey home this morning. Passing me at Vauxhall 87 stop was the most amazing brunette in red jumper over the most massive breasts, brown long skirt over voluptuous arse. Stunning blonde in white zip up cardigan getting off bus in front in W-- Road. Got £45 bonus at work! That’s 66 Euros! Perhaps I should separate the Brussels and Berlin holidays. Just have four days in Brussels, Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday night, back on Sunday? Wouldn’t that be so boring, on its own? Going to Wiertz & Modern is only so titillating and arousing because it is a precursor to arriving on Babylon on the Spree, Mon Cheri, Golden Gate, Monte Carlo, Ciro, BEC, Sarah Young. It must wait until I have earned it & proved I am worth it, though, at the end of October. And like I say, if I do spend three nights in Brussels & then something exciting happens I can always stay there & forget about going on anywhere else.

Otherwise, I really cannot imagine going to just Brussels for four days. I would be so bored. I need just two nights there, for Gare du Nord, Empire, and Museum of Modern Art. Wiertz will have to wait as I would rather be on my way to Berlin for Saturday night, so I might catch Erika in Ciro. You never know, I can maybe stay in Brussels for one more day on the way back home. Remember the Eurostar has to be fixed dates non-changeable to get the cheap price! So many more sexy girls on the bus to work tonight, too many big busty girls to mention. I need some big breasts again! I have to feel them and suck them. I miss Cotton Club Cinema and Pamela. I need Martina in Nuremberg. I need Clarisse in Brussels. I need Iga and Yulia and Diana in Berlin. Anna the Mayfair Swede is pretty awesome. JUST ONE MORE NIGHT TO GET THROUGH! Then Wednesday I can be on my way back home. Via an early evening session in the Calcutta, obviously. I am hoping to save £800 till the end of October, but it is conceivable I might save as much as £1,000, which is 1,500 Euros, but only if I resist the lure of Cotton Club Cinema and Demi and Pamela, which I doubt. If just in ten weeks from mid August to end October I can cut my credit card bill by £1,000 to £4,900 that shows what can be done. If I could be as good for the other 40 weeks I could reduce my credit card bill to just £900! Before that though, as it keeps getting lower, I can keep travelling now & again. For sure, a 2 night Brussels 4 night Berlin, 1 night Brussels holiday, will cost me just over £1,000. So I will be back to square one again. Owing £6,000 on my card, with the Virgin interest about to hit me. There is no real way out. I must consider downsizing my holiday.

Honestly, one night in Brussels is all I want. Check in to the Ibis or SAS at 7pm, after several drinks in the Pullman Bar, shower, down to hotel bar, then out to Empire and up to Gare du Nord for movies & windows. Next morning, something to eat in bar, then catch train to Berlin, for beers, knesepfanne, then out to BEC and SY. Another ten weeks of saving will take me up to mid January–coincidentally when La Traviata and Carmina Burana are on in Berlin! So should I go to Munich & Vienna in October? No, Munich and Vienna should be saved for my last trip, when I can relax and go mad, nihilistically, knowing it will be all year until I can travel again.

The richer you are the more you can gamble and the more you gamble the more you are going to enjoy spectacular wins (12th August 2006)

The richer you are the more you can gamble, and the more you gamble the more you are going to enjoy spectacular wins. If you are poor you can only gamble very rarely and very small sums and so even if you do sometimes win it is only for very small rewards. How can I say Munich is boring? How can I say Vienna is boring? You carry the weather with you. If I travelled with £2,000 in my pocket I would have the time of my life there. If I went in with a million pounds I could fuck the Irina lookalike, fuck Maria, fuck Angelique, and have the time of my life. Even in Munich I could go from club to club having a drink with every girl I liked until I found the one with looser morals who would let me come on her breasts at least. But as it is now I cannot afford to look in so many clubs, I cannot afford to buy so many girls a drink in order to find the one I will, and I come away feeling frustrated & that Munich is over, when really it is only that I do not have the starting collateral to enable me to gamble freely. You have to speculate to accumulate. At the moment I cannot speculate. To do is to dare. At the moment, I can no longer dare. This is a very important thing I have realised. Munich can come back to life for me ! Brussels can come back to life for me! Vienna can come back to life for me! All these places can bloom and blossom and shoot up above me letting me shelter under their glorious smutty fronds–if I repair my finances and hoard my gold coins in London so I can gamble wildly and speculate crazily and dare everything when I go back. 

In Feb and March I spent £617 on strippers and £547 on drink, another £1,164 in Feb and March alone. So together Feb March April May June July I could have had an extra £2,700 in my Woolwich account, or £1,100 in my Woolwich account and my Barclaycard at zero! Then for sure Munich would be full of life for me and bloom and blossom. Then for sure Vienna would be full of life for me, and bloom and blossom. You should only go into those Munich clubs, Vienna clubs, Berlin bars, if you have a lot of cash to spend; there is absolutely no point if you are on a tight budget. Then no wonder you come home feeling frustrated and dis-spirited. My holidays have got increasingly worse as my debt has increased. Let me go back to those years of repression 1996 1997 1998 when I could only yearn for those occasional visits to the pornographic cinema and a whore. That repression was so sexy, I was like a tautly strung hair trigger, it was delicious. Since then, in contrast, I have been like a gambling addict, Merson or Rooney, going deeper and deeper into debt. That is over now. The girls always say in those places I look miserable. If I went in rich I would be happy & fuck them all.

Go into Brussels like pulling into a great palmhouse, gigantic tropical ferns and trees and butterflies all around me. A steaming primordial paradise. With soot on the leaves. Let it become an overheated closed hothouse. Go into Munich the same way. Go into Vienna the same way. The more poor I became the more I travelled miserably, to Empire, Atlantic City, Pour Platin, Golden Gate. When you are happy people are attracted to you like to a magnet & you have great times. As I get poorer, I become more miserable & only have bad times. How happy I will feel when I reduce my Barclaycard to zero! The long project starts here.

OK so it has taken 8 months for me to get my position this bad. It follows it will take another 8 months to get it back even to where it was before, owing £3,900. How fantastic to see that Paul Delvaux Pygmalion picture again! De Chirico’s Melancholy of the Beautiful Day! Now let me spend all these long hours in my flat, my little nest, my eagle’s eyrie, going through all my old notebooks, manuscripts, book margins, typing up everything from my previous holidays that can be of use in my journals. Finally going through all those newspapers. Oh what joy this next few days off is going to be! I will live on cokes & hamburgers from McDonald’s next door. At night I will treat myself to a couple of pints in the Calcutta. Maybe once a week treat myself to Dionysus and the Cotton Club Cinema and Demi or Pamela. I must get to the Rebels & Martyrs exhibition next week. Of course I cannot give up my nest. What a crying tragedy that will be. That is the best thing in my life. That is the nuclear option. If I spent £800 on beer & strippers in the last two months I should therefore be able to pay off £800 on my Barclaycard over the next two months? This is where I turn my life around, and the fightback starts. I ache to see that Paul Delvaux picture for real in the Brussels Museum of Modern Art! How I ache to see Dali’s The Temptation of St Anthony in the flesh again! “Today, visitors to the Wiertz Museum enter into a highly preserved atmosphere from a revolutionary era favourable for contemplation, inner reflection or daydreams… ” How fantastic to see La Belle Rosine again! Le Tresors de Satan! La Figure Tombale! How much I want to get back to Brussels! I will have to go on a pilgrimage to Felicien Rops in Namur, I think. 

How I ache to see the huge Fountain of Inspiration in Brussels again, and the Mars & Venus on the opposite wall. So full of personal meaning, more than ever now. Getting back to Brussels will be such a symbol of my rebirth. It will be very emotional, before then pushing on to my reunion with Berlin Plaza and Berlin Zoo. Brussels can never be enough on its own. Brussels is always the stopping off point, the starting point, the staging post. I could even go to Berlin for a one night stand in January to see La Traviata?

Oh how lovely to get back to my lovely little flat in the morning! How much I love it. Take that first paragraph above and turn it into a 3rd person story, say the opening chapter of The Willing Cheeks of Fu Manchu. Pulling into Antwerp station covered in trees and rainforest and diamonds everywhere. The well is not empty in Munich. The well is not empty in Vienna. You carry the water with you.

What I wrote 8th September last year? “I would not want to stay living in this house. No point having a place of my own if it is so far from London. I would want a one bedroom flat, lined with my books from floor to ceiling! Tropical ferns all over the floor. Classical music playing. My manuscripts in a drawer. It would have to be more central on a tube line. The only advantage to living in —— now is my mother.” How poignant it is to hear Kings of Leon Red Morning Light and Strokes 12:51 again! Of course I will travel again this year, and of course I will go first to Brussels. I always start in Brussels. I want to spend long long nights lying in the dark of my flat on the floor listening to my Viennese Eroticism classical music tapes or my old Abba tapes. What joy this is going to be for the next 8 weeks. I HAVE been spending almost exactly £100 a week on drink & strippers/whores for as long as I can remember, so it is not unreasonable to guess I could save £80 a week by only going to the Calcutta occasionally, and if we have ten weeks to go until end of October, surely I can save £800?

So my last night is here, and already I am looking forward to getting the bus back to Calcutta tomorrow & then up to Dionysus, then Cotton Club Cinema, then Demi or Pamela. Do the old thing: wait for the black, rainy days & then go out then! If it is horrible and hot, then stay in. How much happier I feel when I can wear my jumper. My spirits and my confidence are lifted by about an extra 40% if I can wear my jumper. That fat, voluptuous, beautiful brunette was at the 74 stop again this morning, in two tone brown top & long skirt, talking on phone as she paced up & down in front of me, her massive breasts like two conical torpedoes in that cantilevered bra. Yesterday was even better, sitting there already as I arrived, in yellow, so low cut top I could see unbelievably massive amounts of her cleavage. Wouldn’t that be great, to bring all my books here, so they stacked up against the walls up to the ceiling?! All my Nietzsche, my Freud, my Marx, my Michael Moorcock? I will take one trip to Brussels and Berlin, then a second trip to Brussels and Munich & Vienna. Always by Eurostar & train. I love trains so much. The great thing about that is I don’t have to go on to Berlin if I don’t want to. I can stay in Brussels then go home if I want. If I meet someone like Clarisse in Brussels I can stay there much longer. If Munich is banging I can stay in Munich for six days, and forget Vienna. Or if Munich is dead, I can go straight on to Vienna the next day.

I always say the great thing about Interrail passes is you can go where you feel like when you feel like it, but you can do that just with point to point tickets as well! If I get to Brussels and meet someone, I can stay & forget about Berlin. If I get to Munich and meet someone I can forget about going to Vienna. Or I just might feel like I really want to go to Nuremberg instead. But definitely I would rather go everywhere by train now–as long as I get 8-10 days from work at a time! I always want to start off with Eurostar to Brussels, before travelling on to Berlin, or travelling on to Munich or Vienna. Not only is it hot and sunny, the second 87 bus stop under the railway bridge had a closed sign on it as well! Even though the bus did actually let us on. Another reason to stay in for a couple of days? It has finally happened with Alia, she did not smile hardly at all this time. As she saw me come, she almost looked contemptuous, “Oh not you again–why don’t you just fuck off?” It will happen with the black McDonald’s girl in the mornings soon. You carry the magic with you. If I stepped into Atlantic City feeling magical again, it will be magical in there. Like the Junior Senior-J Lo-Hip Teens Don’t Wear Blue Jeans nights, the Jay-Z Threat nights, the Global DJs San Francisco nights.

That pretty blonde girl on the bus back from Vauxhall again. I felt a tension between us all the way. After the driver let her off just before Union Road, she walked along a way, before suddenly darting a look back to see if I had got off behind her. Then as bus finally passed the shops, she was coming away from the paper shop, and darted another look at the bus. I think she has feeling for me. We had the Carnival year, the Astral Years, the C– Years, Black Narcissus Year, the Hotel Years, the Flying Scotsman Years, now I feel we are stepping through a portal, a lens, a wormhole, an Ishtar Gate, into a whole new kind of life. A life revolving around travel again, but deeper travel than before. Still, I was only skimming the surface before.

Standing at Vauxhall bus station waiting for the 87 to take me on to Charing Cross, I felt so much that I was standing at the tram stop by Vienna Westbahnhof. It was an intense moment of erotic displacement. And then as I crossed the concourse of Charing Cross Station I felt so much I was crossing the concourse of the Westbahnhof. And then in the Calcutta Avril Lavigne’s Complicated came on! As I started my 3rd pint, I got the overwhelming feeling I was drinking in the bar of the Dorint, with Natalia serving me. And then standing at the 87 stop home looking up at the modernist Charing Cross architecture thinking it was Vienna. Quite extraordinary. This is what I go out for. There were so many women alone in the Calcutta at this time, I shall have to come at 8-9pm more often. So £13.75 spent. There was the most amazing feeling that everything was now different. Everything has changed. I have gone through the eye of the needle, and I am in a new universe. Yunis was gorgeous in the Calcutta. Everything has changed. Everything is new. Everything is now possible and everything is once more in play. Vienna and Munich have most definitely come back into play. So much so that flying to Vienna for FIVE days was the most exciting thought in my mind. And of course fucking Angelique, Maria and Irina double.

I want to go to Vienna & Berlin with such a big pot of money. Oh I cannot wait till I get to those Brussels windows, and it is just 2½ hours away.

Christ, I must confess I’d love to see Deborah tonight, dancing to that Calling track, She’s all that he wants, she’s all that he needs. Remember how Carol came up to me & kissed me on the cheek for no apparent reason? How Melani looked at me in the dark? Then the next week turned to me in the bar and said “How are you?” “I LOVE opera!” The events at Heathrow yesterday make me more than ever want to go everywhere by train. I went back to the Calcutta last night & it did not feel like Westbahnhof at all! Because I was still hung over and tired from the night before. I slept on & off right through to 5PM in the afternoon! All those dreams of a Hogarthian Flying Scotsman I used to have, where it had side rooms with beds where real orgies took place, and Sylvia was always there. It was a bawdy Rabelaisian Rake’s Progress place in those dreams. The great days of the Scotsman ended when Sylvia left. Janet was the only one to come close after that. Czech Republic, Hungary, how I love those Eastern European women. One day a long time from now I will go back. Once again the Calcutta was much more female after 9PM, pretty blonde bob with suitcase sitting at small table by jukebox. Another sexy brunette in white top at tall round table. These late Calcutta nights will definitely become a feature for me now. I would like next week to be a week of movies. Miami Vice, A Scanner Darkly, The Third Man. So after my first week of hoarding, how do I feel? Happy. I have saved £62.26 which means the pot now contains 92.32 Euros. That will be double next week which will mean I have practically paid for three nights in a hotel already or the price of the train ticket. Let us say that I have now covered the Eurostar ticket. I am frightened of conversation. The prospect of conversation literally terrifies me.

It was only when I got the —— Hotel job that I had the money to start travelling and travelling led to so many amazing breakthrough moments in my life (11th August 2006)

It was only when I got the —— Hotel job that I had the money to start travelling and travelling led to so many amazing breakthrough moments in my life and caused so many explosions in my mind and opened up so many new rooms in my mind that I never knew existed. I went through so many Ishtar Gates and crossed so many Rubicons, really starting from that first trip to Brussels on the hotel money where I saw Alizee’s J’en ai marre & nothing has ever been the same again. So of course I must save my hotel money and hoard it so fiercely and protect every penny I earn so lovingly, to enable me to keep travelling. I have stopped going through Ishtar Gates and so have fallen stagnant and become a fever infested swamp of lethargy and stripper addiction which brought no real joy or happiness.

I agonise about whether it is really worth going to Berlin and Vienna and Munich and Brussels now and how all my brilliant memories are so far in the past but only because I do not have the money now (10th August 2006)

I agonise about whether it is really worth going to Berlin and Vienna and Munich and Brussels now, and how all my brilliant memories are so far in the past, but only because I do not have the money now. If I was a millionaire, I would LOVE Vienna and would have no reservations about it at all. I would go there and spend 100 euros a time so freely & easily. It is only because I am so poor and so much in debt, that I now agonise about those places, and torment myself, can I go or not. If I had money I would live freely & be the happiest whorer in the world. I would fuck every one of the whores in Vienna. I would fuck Alla & Olga together in Berlin, I would fuck Erika. I would fuck twenty of the Brussels windows girls. Munich is not worse than it used to be, Vienna is not worse than it used to be, Berlin is not worse than it used to be. It is just now I owe £6,000 when I used to owe £60. If I do give up the strippers in London, and the thought of going back to Sunset or King’s Cross fills me with an almost physical revulsion, and my visits to the White Horse, Old Axe, Rainbows, Browns, Griffin, Queen Anne,  Nag’s Head were some of the most dispiriting & crushingly dull moments of my life, that will enable me to pay off more of my credit card bills than I ever did before. Really after those initial lung-bursting three ascents to Brussels, to Munich,and then to Berlin, my holidays have become increasingly dispiriting and miserable, and that is because my debt has started to constrain me so much. I would enjoy those places as much as ever if I could go back to them owing no money as I did then. 

In June and July I spent £362 on strippers and £465 on drink. Just in June & July that is £800 I could have had in my Woolwich account or I could have reduced my Visa debt from £1,600 to £800. In April & May I spent £471 on strippers and £382 on drink. That is a further £850 added to £800 makes £1,600. So from the four months April-May-June-July I could have had an extra £1,600 in my Woolwich account, OR REDUCED MY VISA DEBT TO £0! Now will it bring it home to you! “It is eating away at your money, your love and your life”. I say oh I owe six thousands pounds on my credit cards, I don’t see how I can ever pay it off, and yet just in four months April May June July I could have reduced my Barclaycard debt from £1,600 to zero.

I am on such an exciting new project now. I am as thrilled by the prospect of tightening my belt, and living like a monk, and saving money now, as I used to be by living wildly and spraying my money around and living hedonistically. It will be such a slow process before I notice any difference though. Like a supertanker, your personal finances are very slow to turn around. Your Love Is Like Poison, the song that Florence put on & I felt it was aimed at me. Yes, my love is like poison and my love of strippers had become like poison. Like alcohol poisoning your blood by too much drink, I had stripper poisoned by blood. My love was like poison to Florence, to Jolanda and to Melani. All of them started off liking me then wanted to avoid me. Finally now I have the chance to remove the poison from the blood and be clean again. Confessions of an English Opium Eater I carried around with me Friday, and really strippers have been my opium over the years, ever since I first fell into it on that dark, stormy September afternoon on the shining road of Dean Street 14 years ago. I have been in its thrall ever since. And yes in the early days it provided me with magical moments, supremely high moments, but increasingly over the years those high moments became fewer and further between as my addiction worsened, and became nothing but habit, with no joy or excitement left in it. Those red wig days, Czech Boulevard girl days, gold dress days, Carnival days, are very far in my past now. Now there are only the desperate depraved addict's memories of my appalling behaviour. How thrilled I will be now by watching my Woolwich building society account filling up and rising from minus to plus, from plus 100 to 200 to 300. That will be my high now. That will be my addiction now–hoarding money. I will get as much thrill from hoarding money as I used to from spending it. Oh, if only I could have had this revelation earlier, if only I could have had this road to Damascus conversion sooner! But it has to come when the moment is right. I had to wait until I suddenly became physically revolted. I had to wait until the poison became so bad that it reached the tipping point and where it suddenly physically made me sick.

What would I do in Munich? (9th August 2006)

What would I do in Munich? I would be bored out of my brain during the days, and coming home so frustrated at nights, after desultory dancing in Atlantic City, no more coming on breasts like with Patricia, and nothing else from all those awful expensive clubs where you cannot even touch. No wonder they are always empty. Does that not explain it? No wonder Vienna’s Gurtel bars are always empty. Who would pay 60 euros to buy a girl a cocktail or 150 Euros to fuck her? In Munich I would drink my minibar in the morning, before getting the tram to Lamm's for my Augustiner & Rostbraten, go up to New Pin for Die Sunde and all those white bandage pictures….oh but it was only so recent!!! And…what else? Boring Atlantic City at night. The great thing, and the great advantage of having a train pass, is that when a place bores you, and the well runs dry, you can just pack up and head off to the next place, off to Nuremberg for a night, and then off to Vienna for two or three nights. I don’t even feel much compulsion to go back to Venice or Budapest. I would try the Radisson SAS in Wien to be close to the Seilerstatte three strip clubs, before going  back to Dorint to be close to the Manhattan and Pour Platin. Then bored so soon, I will head off to Berlin. I am bored of Munich and Vienna, and frustrated by their overpriced whores, before I even get back there. And for that I would give up the treasure of my W——— Road little nest? 

I feel like a new life has started for me. I think the key is spend very little time in Munich and Vienna. I only need one night to go to Lamm's and go back to Atlantic City. This is the advantage of train trips. A four day stay in Munich cannot be justified. A four day stay in Vienna cannot be justified. One or two nights at the most, just to go back to Atlantic City, go to Nuremberg on Saturday night for Pils Bar and Caribic, spend one night in Seilerstatte, one night in the Gurtel. That is the thing about trains, you can just make stops on the pilgrimage, as briefly as you like and move on. The great thrill is going to Waterloo to get on the Eurostar, having some beers in the Eurostar bar, enjoying that long train ride to Brussels. Checking into the Radisson SAS for a change. Going back to Gare du Nord for videos & windows, maybe back via Empire. Next day Wiertz and Modern Art, before Gare du Nord a second time. Two nights only in Brussels, then, heading via Koln to Munich the next day. Arriving in time only to open the minibar and head to Atlantic City. Bored, depressed, head home via a Hauptbahnhof roll. Not even bothering with the Schillerstrasse bars. Next day Lamm's, of course, and not even bothering with New Pin this time, evening train to Nuremberg, for Pils Bar and Caribic, 4am train back to Munich. Check out midday, train to Vienna. Arriving in time only for minibar then Seilerstatte, girls I cannot afford, asking me why I look so miserable. Sleep tight in the Radisson SAS. Next day move to Dorint for the white shirt zipfer girls. Explore KHM and the Belvedere, back to Dorint for evening meal. Then ML Revue, shaking with nerves. 

Back along the late Gurtel, via Angelique, 20 girls in every bar and me the only man, so soul destroying and embarrassing, to walk in and sit on your own at the bar, with your head bowed over your beer, while one by one the girls boredly are forced to come up & make small talk before asking for a drink which would cost more than a f— would in Berlin. Turned on by the pornographic films but turned off by the expense of the girls, I head frustratedly back to the Dorint, miserably w—–g in front of the sport clips. Next day off to Berlin. Straight to Radisson SAS, oh do I have to? Nothing I can eat there, nothing I can drink. Please let me go back to the Plaza for gorgeous knesepfanne and Berliner Pils! In time only then to head out to Sarah Young, then Berlin Erotic Centre. With such an erection, up to Mon Cheri and Golden Gate and Monte Carlo, where at last I will get a proper w— and a 60 euro f— in the side room. Relief at last!  Stumble home, thinking was that it? Next day, off to Zoo for Thobens, then Alte National Gallery, maybe this time finally do the Potsdam thing, and the Cabaret arches thing, before Mazurka Alla & Olga, Ciro, then off to Hamburg maybe for Elena Prokina, and Copenhagen for The Mak Case. Then home to London frozen by my broken financial situation, with only a few w—s & a desultory Monte Carlo f— to show for the whole sorry fortnight; what the hell was that horrible wastefulness for? Is this what I gave up my flat and moved back to my mother’s for? 

30 Oct Berlin for Violeta Urmana in La Mort de Cleopatra, 31 Oct for Prokina in Hamburg, 1 & 2 Nov Copenhagen for Mak Case. All those plane trips to Berlin, Vienna, Munich were so boring because it took me two hours to get to Heathrow, an hour for waiting, 2 hours for flight, whereas the joy of Eurostar is it takes me just 30 mins to get there, and I can be on my way. I want to taste a bit of Brussels, the Wiertz & Modern Art & Gare du Nord, then a bit of Munich, Lamm's & Atlantic City, then a bit of Nuremberg, Pils Bar & Caribic, then a bit of Vienna, Seilerstatte, Radisson SAS, Manhattan & Pour Platin, then Berlin Plaza for knesepfanne & Berliner Pils, Alte National Gallery, BEC, Sarah Young, Stuttgarter Platz, Ciro, Violetta Urmana, then Hamburg for Prokina. I think Copenhagen would be too far. Save money (!) for La Traviata in Berlin in January with Anna Samuil.

Look at the great memories from the past–it is ALL whores and pornographic films! Almost never strippers! Not since red wig DD days, Czech Boulevard girl, Carnival Fat Bottomed Girl. Innocent days. Minnie the Moocher days. But the great joy is spending some long time in a city, and being able to relax. Settle into the hotel bar every night watching the TV, seeing the single women, like with Nephania and others in the Brussels Ibis. To try and squeeze four cities into one trip is madness. Be nice to relax in Brussels for four days, a trip to Namur?, before getting long train to Berlin, for four days there. All the time in the world to relax in Brussels, Pullman Bar, Radisson SAS or Ibis, Wiertz, Modern, Empire on the Saturday night, Gare du Nord. All the time looking forward to that long trip to Berlin & Berlin Plaza. So I can have a knesepfanne when I arrive & a Berliner Pils. Or should I leave Berlin to January for La Traviata? And go first to Munich for just two nights, then on to Vienna for three nights. Settle into Brussels and draw out all the smutty possibilities from its morbid eroticism.

Really, there is nothing unmissable that would make me go to Berlin in October, but there is in January for La Traviata. Even Prokina in Hamburg is not so riveting. Maybe maybe Urmana in Cleopatra on 30 Oct. It would be nice to go to Dresden to see the cathedral?

I think Brussels was so exciting because I knew it was just the first leg of my European tour (7th August 2006)

I think Brussels was so exciting because I knew it was just the first leg of my European tour, and after sampling the delights of the Museum of Modern Art, Wiertz, Pullman bar, and Gare du Nord, I could head off later in the week on the long train journey to Koln and Munich, and that night be heading over Bayerstrasse to the White Coffin, on Saturday getting the train to Nuremberg for the Pils and the Caribic, before then heading off again to Vienna, knowing that Manhattan and ML Revue and Pour Platin were waiting for me, before heading off a few days later for Berlin, knowing that Stuttgarter Platz was waiting for me and the Berlin Erotic Centre. Maybe this time I can finish up in Copenhagen for The Makropulos Case? 

I want that Interrail pass again! £380 for the train pass, then maybe cheap Radisson hotels in Brussels, Vienna and Berlin? Ah but it is spending money that is the thing. Now that I have given up the Cotton Club and King’s Cross, perhaps my finance will improve a bit? JUST IN JUNE AND JULY ALONE I HAVE SPENT £424 ON STRIPPERS ALONE!!!! What did Pete say? I need to see how it is destroying me. Get this: Since the New Year I HAVE SPENT £1,778 ON STRIPPERS ALONE!!! What hideous wastefulness on something that I was increasingly starting to despise. If I could have that £1,778 back now, it would pay for the Interrail pass, and every hotel for two weeks, and give me all the whoring money I could ever need. Since moving into the flat on November 17th I have spent more than £2,000 on strippers alone. And it is worse than that, because the vast majority of my drinks bill in that time–£515 in June and July alone! £1,867 since December 10th! has been consumed in the strip clubs. Without the Bell and the Cotton Club I reckon I would now be owing just £2,400 on my credit cards instead of £5,900. These are sobering figures. For sure I could go on that long train journey to Europe in December if not for that. PLEASE GIVE UP THE STRIPPERS!!!! Just concentrate on the Calcutta, the Cotton Club Cinema, and Demi and Pamela from now on. By the end of August and September that should save me£900 alone. DO IT. Do it, so I can see Brussels again, I can see Gare du Nord again, I can go to the White Coffin again, I can go to the Pils Bar and Caribic again, I can go to Pour Platin and Manhattan again, I can go to Berlin Ciro again.

I am unique. It is important to remember that (3rd August 2006)

I am unique. It is important to remember that. I am writer and eccentric, like Philip O’Connor, Friedrich Nietzsche in cold stoveless rooms, Ernest Dowson. I exist to write those extreme, bizarre, small little books, like Autismus, Black Narcissus, The Cold Icy Air of the Mountains, and Casanova. 45 page long monographs about emptiness and nothingness. Smile from Calcutta blonde: “No ice today!” I need to focus on Miami Vice, Rebels & Martyrs exhibition, classical music concerts. The sexiest encounters of my life were at the Barbican and Wigmore Hall. 

I travel uniquely, to Berlin, Vienna and Brussels. I live a bizarre and nocturnal life. I will continue to use Sunset Cinema and Demi and Pamela. There is nothing like that excitement when a man comes in with a woman and everyone crowds around with their cocks out. Day 1 of my new life starts here. No more Midnight Bell. The Calcutta only, followed by Sunset Cinema, Demi and Pamela. I will go to the Cotton Club only when Deborah is on. I am Ernest Dowson. Philip O’Connor. The Shining Roads will be exclusively in Soho. How thrilling it is to come out of the cinema with my huge cock rolling in my trousers, just around the corner to Demi or Pamela. Just getting the bus up Regent Street and along Oxford Street you see so many big breast women, making me ready for cinema even today. My life revolves around drinking & pornography. I want to take a long train journey again, thinking and writing.

I went in Dionysus again on Wednesday. Absolutely lovely. How lovely it was to be in Charing Cross Station today. I really love Charing Cross. The way in Berlin I cling like a limpet to Berlin Zoo station, and in Munich I stay in the Intercity connected to the Hauptbahnhof, and in Vienna I stay in the Dorint opposite the Westbahnhof, and in Brussels I stay in the Ibis opposite the Gare du Midi, in London my whole life revolves around Charing Cross. I love the Upper Crust girls who get my tuna & mayo rolls ready for me, the Calcutta pub who get my cokes and beers ready for me. 

I took an incredible risk watching those porn movies in the hotel business centre the Christmas before last, before w—ing in room 16. I have never been able to work out what that fantastic film was. I am sure it was a Christoph Clark but I have never tracked it down. Like that elusive E.E. Doc Smith Lensman book I read where the captain slides his hard hand down over F’s breasts while they are watching a play together on board the spaceship. Before C goes to his room and disrobes. The best w—ing of my life was the first nights I stayed in the Dorint Hotel in Vienna while I was en route to Oslo on my Munch pilgrimage,when I was in the blackest frame of mind of my life. The two things do go together. My greatest periods of unrestrained sexuality come at my times of greatest blackness & despair. I need to be low and black and destroyed. I feel like Munch in Christiana now. Too much drink and drugs and endless nights with scantily clad women have overwhelmed my senses and driven me into a spiral of despair. 

The sexiest encounters of my life were with girls at classical music concerts, while I was sitting in the back row–the red scallop neck girl at the Barbican, little brown bob who sat opposite me in the Barbican lobby, black fur coat at the Wigmore, the grey skirt lush in the Wigmore lobby. The erections I have got in art galleries! Especially the Brussels Museum of Modern Art and the Wiertz Museum–I have got to go back to Brussels this autumn! To the Modern Art, the Wiertz, the Cathedral, the Gare du Midi Pullman bar, it is such a morbidly erotic place, even before I get up to Empire and the Gare du Nord. I got great erections in Antwerp,too. And Munich Neue Pinakothek. Oh how erotic it is to be there during the day, going to the New Pin and Lamms, knowing it is just preparation for what I am going to do later–cross Bayerstrasse and round the corner of Schillerstrasse and disappear into the White Coffin. 

My heroes are Walter Benjamin, Karl Kraus, Friedrich Nietzsche, Karl Marx. I live everyday of my life now as if I am on holiday, just drinking and eating and w—ing. The gorgeous beer in the Calcutta, the gorgeous fish & chips in Dionysus, the gorgeous KFC in Leicester Square. The gorgeous tuna & mayo rolls in Charing Cross Station. When in Berlin I live for the knesepfannes in my hotel bar and the ham & eggs rolls in Thobens at Berlin Zoo station. In Vienna it is the alt wiener rostbratens in my hotel bar; I no longer go to Wegenstein's after the staff attacked me. I went back once but it is always so empty there, in contrast to the warmth & conviviality of Lamm's in Munich. I think I almost go to Munich solely so I can eat in Lamm's & have a glass of their ice cold Augustiner beer. I go to Berlin solely so I can eat the knesepfannes in my hotel & the Zoo Thobens rolls. 

Oh I so much want to go back to Munich! But where to stay–the Regent which I love for its bar, or the Intercity for its ease? I go to Vienna solely for the cold Zipfers served by the white shirted girls in the Dorint bar before I commence my afternoon of sightseeing, which usually means St Stephen's Cathedral, the Pummerin bell made out of Turkish cannons left behind after the Siege of Vienna, the Butterfly House, the KHM, the Belvedere and the Leopold. Always the same places. Sometimes I will mix in a few Third Man sites, like the Am Hof, and the steps where Harry Lime stood when the cat gave him away and we see him for the first time. I will not go into the sewers again.