The Calcutta was very packed even for a Friday [7th October 2006]

The Calcutta was very packed even for a Friday. I had 3½ pints before going to the Wigmore. To be honest, Frittoli was more voluptuous than I was expecting, in a three-layered black dress covered with silver diamante patterns, and I had to revise my plan to leave at the interval. She was gorgeous and fantastic. A special honour to see her and yet in my mind I conflated her and -- together so it felt I was looking and worshipping both of them at the same time, while I muttered away still talking to --. I was reminded very much of the Prokina night when she turned and looked at me at the end. "I still love him". I had a Becks in the bar downstairs, much-changed!, while reading about Pete and Kate. I will perhaps go to Sunset tonight after the Bell, if the Bell is no good. If I leave the Bell quickly I won't really be spending anything extra...? I have got my £69 gas bill and my £136 TV licence renewal bill in! Forget Berlin in the New Year. Though I think a lot about Alla. I have to keep drinking and living madly like last night. Then I can potter around town with a silly drunken smile on my face muttering to --. Better than staying in doors brooding and crying and feeling suicidal. I wish to destroy myself with drink. I plan to drink myself to death. 

I never even noticed, last night was Egon Schiele night. Things always start to become more erotic from this point on. Today is the first anniversary of being in Frankfurt and getting train to Nuremberg for the great Saturday night at Caribic and that girl in the Pils having  her stockings mauled by that man. It is the third anniversary of going with Maria in the Brussels windows before going to Munich and meeting Susi the next night. 

As I was leaving the flat last night, the little blonde Polish bob had just come in & was checking her postbox. She did not turn around but I said hello anyway and she turned around with such a big lovely smile & said hello back & she looked so gorgeous & I was glad I did something friendly. I was rewarded by meeting English teacher and Greek girl on the bus & having a good night in general. The more you give out the more you get back. It is difficult when you are in the depths and coils of a depression, but I hope to meet my Rilkean turning point, and bounce back. Given her flowers, Frittoli bowed low & all the rainwater from the flowers spilled onto the stage. Everyone laughed & she pretended to shower the front row with it. When she came out for her encore she very exaggeratedly stepped round the water & pretended to slip over.  A true star, reminding me of Jochen Kowalski catching the bouquet with one hand at the Komische Oper. 

As I entered the hall the ticket girl smiled at me "we are sold out so no one can cheat" and we grinned at each other. You will not get out of your depression by being moody and cold, you will only do it by being warm and friendly, and trying to smile and be nice to people, and then get warmth back. November 18th looms hugely on my horizon. In the meantime if I do not see her at the Bell I know I can always go back and have a good night at the Sunset. 

The fact that I have paid £600 off my Barclaycard in the space of a month shows what is possible [11th Sept 2006]

The fact that I have paid £600 off my Barclaycard in the space of a month shows what is possible. I don’t think I am going to go to Vienna in December. I think I would rather keep waiting and keep saving. So when I do travel I will have a real war chest to travel with. I was thinking in the Calcutta on Thursday that there is nothing worth spending money on except sex. If it is a choice between seeing Volver or A Scanner Darkly, or going to see a girl take her knickers off to music, then there can only be one winner. You see people who go on beach holidays, or Amalfi, and I think how bored I would be. The only holiday that means anything is in red light districts. To meet new strippers and new Esmeraldas. What is wrong with running a high debt? We will see how high my Virgin interest is when that hits in October. 

In McDonald’s most beautiful gorgeous voluptuous brunette girl, maybe 18 or 19, skin tight black top over rolls of fat and big fat huge tits, thick yellow snakeskin belt, blue jeans over fat arse, pretty pretty face, little snub nose. I could not take my eyes off her & she knew it as she finally shot me a glance as I stepped forward to order. 

Nothing in the city matters except sex, the buying and selling of it, young women stripping for you, young women lying back on the bed and opening their legs for you, men all with their cocks out in a dark porn cinema. This is the reality of my life. Vienna is still a mystery to me. With three consecutive visits to Brussels, then three to Munich, then three to Berlin, I felt I cracked the nut of all those places. I still have not achieved that with Vienna. Viennese Eroticism is very important to me. Primitive London. I am very intellectual yet I live very primitively, my animal instincts always winning out over my cerebral ones. So much drink has sozzled my brain that I doubt I have any cerebral instincts left at all. What an animal I was with Anya at the stag party; how impressed Sylvia seemed to be & so much more warm and friendly to me than she had ever been before. When people write about my life 50 years from now, they will have to write about the Calcutta, the Flying Scotsman, Sunset Strip and Carnival. About Astral, Soho Cinema, and Sunset Cinema. About Atlantic City. About Stutti Frutti, Mon Cheri, Golden Gate, Monte Carlo and Ciro.

If I do not travel to Vienna and Berlin in December and the New Year I will have no chance to meet a new Irina or Susi, Patricia or Viktoriya. Things happen when you travel. In Brussels I met Clarisse. In Frankfurt Katerina. In Berlin Erica. It is important to keep exploring. I live in a kind of Francis Bacon London. I live in the gutter like him. My writing is visceral and from the guts, full of pinks and reds and purples, like his paintings. I too am fascinated by a Pope. I am visceral and fascinated and turned on by my naked self like Egon Schiele. Do not apologise for this. Exult in it. I am priapic and I will just do it more than ever. I am saving money by not doing it so much just so I can do it more. I am going to Vienna at Christmas to fuck a couple of Viennese whores. In strip clubs every night is like Sylvester's Eve; or Walpurgisnacht. The more bawdy and raucous the better; that is why I like the Bell on Saturday nights. In London all the strip pubs are packed with men; again I ask the question, where do all the men go in Berlin? In Vienna? In Brussels?