And still the never ending rain continues (26th May 2006)

And still the never ending rain continues. All the greenery looks lovely in the wet, and it is muggy, despite the coldness of the rain. Massive breasts petite little South American blonde ponytail in sky blue sweater on bus, and asymmetric black hair goth with black sphinx eyes. Thoroughly depressed otherwise. Bleak and sombre. I feel like Hart Crane or Ernest Dowson, the morning after another disastrous foray into the broken world. A bad gamble. The £40 I spent on Demi and Pamela two weeks ago which I felt so happy about contrasts well against the horrible £40 I spent in the Old Axe on private dances with M—– and S——. A woman in the corner at Calcutta watching me as I came in, the same one who I looked up and found watching me before, the time I was sitting at the table & Ursula came up to collect glasses smiling. I did not see her go. The beer was warm!

Ernest Dowson and Hart Crane would both get drunk every night and usually become violent & almost insane (24th April 2006)

Ernest Dowson and Hart Crane would both get drunk every night, and usually become violent & almost insane. I am driving myself almost to insanity every night at the Flying Scotsman. So where are my poems? Try to get into the habit of going to the Scotsman just once a week, and never again on a Saturday. If I go just once a week, then I can also go into Soho afterwards, for Sunset Strip, Sunset Cinema and maybe Pamela as well. The other two days off I will concentrate on staying and writing through the night.

I always love seeing Pamela. How good it felt to be in Sunset Cinema going up & down stairs between the two cinemas with my big swollen sore cock rolling inside my trousers. The sexual charge in those places is fantastic, and now summer is coming there may be more chance of finding some girls in there, too. All artists have to throw themselves into the gutter. Face it the greatest memories of my life have come in the Astral Cinema, the Soho Cinema, and the Sunset Cinema. All the incredible hot erotic memories from those places! I drink to derange my senses & go into the dream world. From there I can go back to Soho and the Sunset Cinema. Just imagine if the Flying Scotsman did private dances as well! Thank God they do not! There is something glorious in my drunken stupidities at the Scotsman. But please–once a week! Then I will allow myself Sunset Cinema as well. Like Hart Crane cruising the violent & dangerous Brooklyn, Manhattan & Hoboken shorefronts I cannot help but going back into Soho cinemas, despite the shame & ignominy & ruin it brings on myself–because the highs are so great & so exciting! 

“…All the couples part abruptly and pull up their trousers. That’s the flâneur, caught in the spotlight, blushing perhaps but with a wry smile playing around his lips. This, at least, is Edmund White’s kind of flâneur , cruising for sex while a few yards away tourists are paying through the nose for grim dinner-dancing experiences as they float along the Seine. When White lived in Paris between 1983 and 1998, he quickly found the best places to cruise. The Palais Royal and the Tuileries gardens (especially the gravel walkways by the Orangerie) sound like delightful places for outdoor sex, though why he thought the quay near Gare d’Austerlitz would be is, frankly, beyond me. He writes: “Most people, straight or gay, think that cruising is pathetic or sordid – but for me, at least, some of my happiest moments have been spent making love to a stranger beside dark, swiftly moving water below a glowing city.” Paris: city of light, but better, city of darkness and anonymous sex. White maintains, not very convincingly and rather half-heartedly, that cruising is an extension or application of the art of the flâneur. Those practitioners and theoreticians of the art, Walter Benjamin and Charles Baudelaire, wouldn’t have had much time for that idea, and nor should we. The whole point about a flâneur is that he or she is an aimless stroller. By contrast, a cruiser is utterly directed, as Schopenhauer might have put it, towards the extinction of his desire. The flâneur's desire is much less ardent, perhaps approaching non-existence, and thus resembles the disinterested appreciation that Kant argued was characteristic of aesthetic experience.”

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I like getting wilder & wilder. Audit Day today. The —— is going to be audited. I am going to get caned. Infernal’s From Paris to Berlin is No.4 in the charts! Reminding me so much of my travels. Also the Out of Touch, Out of Time video in the Calcutta. I love the excitement of travel. IN THE LAST TWO WEEKS I HAVE SPENT £422! I COULD HAVE GONE TO BERLIN INSTEAD & USED IT TO PAY FOR THE £165 BA FLIGHT & £225 BERLIN PLAZA FOR FOUR NIGHTS, STILL WITH BEER & KNESEPFANNE MONEY LEFT OVER! I COULD HAVE SEEN THE HEATHROW PON DE REPLAY WOMAN. THEY’VE SHOCKED US AND HELPED OUR UNDERSTANDING OF THE WORLD. 12 BOOKS THAT CHANGED THE WORLD. THE HMS BEAGLE LANDED ON THE GALAPAGOS 1835. I AM A GENTLEMAN SCIENTIST. A SYNOPSIS OF HIS LIFE’S WORK. PUBLISHING IT WAS LIKE CONFESSING TO A MURDER. I shrunk from all contact with the other children in nursery. I shrunk from all contact with other pupils at school. I shrink from all contact with people now as an adult. One of the great things about me is my blissful uncaredness: I couldn’t care what ——, or M—–, or G— think of me. I am in my private world, going there for my private reasons.

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 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.

“How are you?” the stunning tall blonde Amazonian (Moldovan) girl smiled to me. “Thou hast what’s left of me” I said (14th October 2006)

“How are you?” the stunning tall blonde Amazonian (Moldovan) girl smiled to me. “Thou hast what’s left of me:” I said. “For I am now sunk so low from what I was, thou findst me at my lowest watermark. The rivers that ran in and raised my fortunes are all dried up, or take another course: What I have left is from my native spring; I’ve still a heart that swells in scorn of fate, and lifts me to my banks.” “OK” she said, a little hesitant now. I ploughed on. “Already, Death, I feel thee in my veins. I go with such a will to find my lord that we shall quickly meet. A heavy numbness creeps through every limb, and now tis at my head; my eyelids fall, and my dear love is vanished in a mist. Where shall I find her, where? Oh turn me to her, and lay me on her breast!–Caesar, thy worst. Now part us if thou canst.” She was visibly moved by my oration, and had to rush to the other side of the room so as not to let me see her crying. I purchased another pint. 

Like there can be sudden changes in the Earth’s magnetic field, in February this year my soul suddenly became completely pointed towards —–, and despite the catastrophe, despite my Actium, despite my Black Night of Downfall, my soul remains immovably pointed in her direction all of eight months later. Other women–Pamela, Melani–have come along and with their magnetic attraction have been able to flicker my pointer a fraction towards them for a short while, but it has never been strong enough to keep me from my overwhelming attaction to —–. Even if Sylvia came back that would not change anything. 

I made my first post on londonstrip last night, with the Karl Kraus quote about women being an acceptable substitute for masturbation but it requiring a lot of imagination. I do not want to throw away hundreds of pounds going all the way to Brussels and Berlin again. I want to use this money to keep paying off my cards, leaving me with money for —–. Maybe in April for Dalayaman’s Salome I will go to Berlin but not before. 

I want that Libertines world, that Hogarth world, that Dowson world. “The sight of a whore is profoundly thrilling to a man”. It has been three days since I last saw —– and already it feels like an eternity. It feels so long since I last saw her. My life is just going through the boring motions, work, work, work. The only thing that gives it a spark is my writing, and time spent with a loved one if such a thing were ever possible for me. 

“They rage there as at meat in a menagerie” The introduction to Pandora’s Box. It was going to see Lulu at King’s Cross that I discovered and fell into the world of strip clubs like falling down a rabbit hole into wonderland. They’ve even, coincidentally, got an Alice. It was a treasure to stand there watching all the posh theatre goers coming in in their suits and mink coats and pearls and their mouths dropping open when they saw the half naked girls walking around, and then quickly turning around and leaving. To the uninitiated, they must have thought they had walked into a brothel. One of the great theatrical events in recent London history for that reason, and why I also supported the idea of the ENO relocating to a King’s Cross base. I cannot believe it was a year before I went back to the Flying Scotsman, and a further year before I went back again. Finally, this time the combination of Lucky, Anya, Vicky, Czech Sylvia–who I would continue to regard as my Magic Four for years to come–plus T-- “If loving you is wrong I don’t want to be right” and Thais dancing to the Kinks Lola (people say the quality of girls is bad which baffles me, where on any stage in the world would you see six such sexy women as this?), blew several fuses in my mind. As usual I always believe I affect the weather, and when I went to leave I found London consumed in pitch blackness as there had been a power cut, and I was sure it was me, it was me that had caused this, and I had to walk all the way back to Charing Cross–and I have never been the same since. Since then it has provided me with several of “those high moments that persuade us to put off suicide”, whereas the Nag’s Head, the Old Axe, the Queen Anne, the Griffin, Browns, White Horse, Rainbow, never have. Only in time did I venture out & let go of my comfort blanket and explored these other strip pubs but found nothing that could match the visceral excitement of the Flying Scot. Things that come to you by accident are usually the best. 

I write books about a chronic inability to relate to people or to talk to them or to form relationships of any meaningful kind (3rd Oct 2006)

I write books about a chronic inability to relate to people or to talk to them or to form relationships of any meaningful kind. About life lived with no companionship whatsoever even though much may be offered. AUTISMUS. BLACK NARCISSUS. THE COLD ICY AIR OF THE MOUNTAINS. CASANOVA. NOT OF —–. I go through life with no companionship, even though —– offered me companionship and I threw the chance away. The chance to get to know another human being, and to be known by another human being, and I threw it away. “The harder we search for someone else, the more likely we are to find ourselves.” “But it is not Turgenev’s writing that interests Dessaix most, it is his life. Specifically, the 40 years Turgenev spent in supposedly chaste devotion to mezzo-soprano Pauline Viardot, trotting around Europe after her—and her husband—like a fuddy-duddy lapdog”. “He puts off visiting sites and is ultimately uninterested in peeking under the sheet to discover if Turgenev slept with his muse”. “The greatest of the 19th-century novels always centred on the journey towards that moment when one person is known by another, and is transfigured—or believes she is transfigured, or wants to be transfigured—by intimacy. From Jane Austen to Charlotte Bronte to Tolstoy, novelists created and strengthened our faith in the absolute power of the love relationship to transform a life for good or ill”. “The American novelist Richard Yates died in 1992 with few of his books in print. His life was ‘a uniquely cheerless undertaking’…Yates ‘staggered from one badly paid teaching job to another, living in unbelievably squalid apartments and somehow writing further novels.” 

You wait so long for something special to happen in your life, that when it does, you just watch it in amazement & do not realise you have to make a move to catch it before it is gone and lost. A man on a desert island for 36 years finally sees a ship sailing by and is so shocked it is gone before he realises he should do something to make it stop. It is clear I have got to back and f–k either Demi or Pamela to cope with the pain of —–. I haven’t had sex since…Francesca on the 13th July, and both Francesca & Pamela the week before that. A lonely man, who never talks, just stands quietly on his own in the corner. When the girl he loves and pines for is just a few feet away on the other side of the pub, ready for him to talk to all night long if he wished, but still he stays on his own in the corner, talking to no one. 

I am Ernest Dowson, wandering around Europe after his rejection by Adelaide, suffering the torture of the damned. That is how I like to be. Pining for —–. Longing for —–. Bleeding for —–. I had a chance to get into her life and I let it go. 

“But despite his literary success, Crane was a profoundly tormented man. Poetry sustained him in a life that otherwise teetered on the brink of collapse. When he wasn’t writing, he spent much of his time engaged in fleeting homosexual encounters and alcohol binges. In 1932, three years after meeting Lorca, Crane committed suicide by leaping from a ship into the Caribbean”. 

I am a broken man. —– can see that now.

When I feel so broken and sad like I did last night & now I need to go on from the Scotsman to the cinema to lose myself in porn & that high (2nd October 2006)

When I feel so broken and sad like I did last night & now, I need to go on from the Scotsman to the cinema to lose myself in porn & that high, and on that high, dangerously excited, to go on to see Demi or Pamela. I need to see someone to take my mind off —–. And then straightaway I am right back into my old life and nothing will have changed whatsoever! Friday night 7pm I had another missed call from Olga. I definitely need to lose myself in the spiritual high of porn and whores to get my mind off the intense sadness of my relationship with —–. That means Berlin may have to wait till April or May. I didn’t try to talk to —– or buy her a drink, because I just want things to settle down between us, which started to happen at the end, when she let her body rest against mine & massaged my shoulder, so that I will feel OK about going to see her in Plumstead on the 18th November, which after all is only SIX WEEKS away! 

I am a dreamy boy, who lives in a world of his own. I am Ernest Dowson, seemingly always submerged in a dream. He spent all his money on drink and whores. He suffered the torture of the damned because his beloved Adelaide did not love him back. I need to go to see Demi and Pamela, to try to console me over my broken heart with —–. “I have been faithful to thee, Cynara, in my fashion” But all the time I am fucking Demi or Pamela it will be really —– I am imagining is beneath me.

Finally roused myself from bed to record 11.04am Vaughan Williams: Sinfonia antarctica (1st September 2006)

Finally roused myself from bed to record 11.04am Vaughan Williams: Sinfonia antarctica.
11.48am Scriabin: Sonata No 9, Op 68 “Black Mass”. Let this be like the months preparing for the Swedish visit, after the Sleeping Beauty is a Junkie newspaper article. Berlin Phil at the Proms tonight.
All that matters is the books. Autismus. Black Narcissus. The Cold Icy Air of the Mountains. Casanova.
Do I really want to go to Vienna and Berlin so much? Wasn’t the Midnight Bell better? Those heady nights watching Florence Crazy, Hips Don’t Lie, Check On It, Martini, Janet Material Girl, Amanda, Sylvia Dip It Low, Vicki, Anya, Lucky. Bodyrockers I like the way you move. Kelly. Thais Lola. Carla. Sunny No One Knows. The Bell is so far and away the best of the strip pubs in London. Yes, I lost myself there, but isn’t losing yourself exciting. I want Berlin and Vienna for really exotic, dirty sex. Wait for the really dark, black, rainy nights before going out. I am completely carefree because I am a writer. I am Ernest Dowson and that is all that is important. I am Frank Wedekind. I am Karl Kraus. “A terrorist launched a series of bomb attacks against chamber music venues around London.” “Amidst the destruction and bloodshed, the piano player and the violinist played on, refusing to let the terrorists win”.
“Curling tendrils of black ink like blood, growing like flowers around the doorways and streets and buses. Gnarls Barkley’s Crazy started up from somewhere amidst the towering foliage. Somewhere, at the Midnight Bell, Florence started to dance.”
Yes I question if I want to go to Vienna wasting all that money after working so hard to save it, but that is to forget the excitement, the nervousness so intense I cannot breathe as my train pulls into Vienna.