ALWAYS THE RESPONSE TO ATTACKS IS TO DO MORE! (26th April 2006)

ALWAYS THE RESPONSE TO ATTACKS IS TO DO MORE! FLAUNT IT IN THEIR FACES MORE & MORE! WIND THEM UP MORE & MORE! PROCLAIM “STILL GETTING AWAY WITH IT!”! Aultre ne veulx estre (No desire to be otherwise) “I know very well that I would be better off living normally, better off keeping to the straight and narrow, not to be (at the age of 30 years) as futile as Cherubino di amore for Beaumarchais (…). I know that I do not have enough respect for the law, that I am as scatterbrained as a mayfly, and as unworried as a monk, I know that I do not contribute to the good of the State but that which you do not suspect and that which will cause all serious people to faint, right up until the fifth male generation, is that I am happy and almost proud of being like this and not otherwise…. I hope that this surpasses the boundaries of decent insanity…” Letter from Félicien Rops to Emile Leclerq, 1863**************Oh I get home feeling so down & depressed. I don’t know what to do. I either go repeatedly to Flying Scotsman and Sunset Strip & derange my senses & watch strippers all night, or I stay put in the flat & let another night go by inside the four walls. What a choice. Sometimes I will force myself to Phaedra or As You Desire Me or The Gothic Imagination, but I derive no real enjoyment from it–it seems so much less real than the sex dancers & the drink. I HAVE to do the writing to earn the drunkenness. I am cut off from everybody, & that’s how I like to be, & that’s how I want to be. S—– told you she liked you. H— told you she liked you. —– told you she liked you. I AM WRITING A BOOK ABOUT SEX DANCERS. ABOUT ANITA BERBER & JOSEPHINE BAKER. I USE THEM AS MY DRUGS. Poor bus stop girl. She doesn’t realise what a resolutely silent person I am. Polish D—-, G—-, M—–, were all so warm to me until they realised I am not going to talk to them, and then they become surly, & stony faced, & contemptuous. I AM DEPRAVED. LIKE SALVADOR DALI. LIKE OSCAR WILDE FEASTING WITH PANTHERS. LIKE WITTGENSTEIN CREEPING INTO THE PRATER AT NIGHT IN SEARCH OF ROUGH TRADE. LIKE HART CRANE CRUISING THE DANGEROUS & VIOLENT MANHATTAN, BROOKLYN & HOBOKEN WATERFRONTS AT NIGHT. What do I keep going to the place for to gaze at the girls dancing? I like to lose myself in it, enter another world.***************How I stir people up, while I remain the sweet, innocent stillpoint at the centre of it all. What I am doing at the Flying Scotsman is just another drop in my experiment. It is where I am focusing my experiment at the moment. It is a lens. I must bring my scientific books back here to write my book on detachment. How G— used to like me, how M—– used to like me, how Ursula used to like me, how Shreeti used to like me, how Aureline used to like me, how pig-tailed Calcutta barmaid used to like me, "Oh you're so sweet, do you know that!" But I am in a world of my own, unreachable, impenetrable. AS UNWORRIED AS A MONK. I LOVE IT IF PEOPLE ARE BECOMING FASCINATED BY ME. I LOVE IT IF PEOPLE ARE TALKING ABOUT ME BEHIND MY BACK. I PROVOKE THEM MORE & MORE.

Yes I miss those nights at Atlantic City & Sexyland & Golden Gate & Mon Cheri & Monte Carlo & Ciro & Pour Platin and Empire and the Scotsman and Sunset Strip & Cinema but you cannot keep doing it all the time (25th Sept 2006)

Yes I miss those nights at Atlantic City and Sexyland and Golden Gate & Mon Cheri & Monte Carlo & Ciro & Pour Platin and Empire and the Scotsman and Sunset Strip & Cinema, but you cannot keep doing it all the time. You cannot do it every week, 52 weeks a year. Yes I am missing out on all those experiences and all those heady nights and all those new people like Janet or Martina that might be arriving—but it is great to have some months when you do nothing, and then have some months when you go back to it. You have to deny yourself some things for a while, in order to enjoy them again. The longer I leave it the more I will appreciate it when I go back to my Pope life, my Francis Bacon life, my George Grosz life. The Broken World. The Shining Road. Once again I pore over the weather forecasts. For signs, auguries, of when the right time will be to resume my former sinful profligate life. I divine things from the weather. My sexuality is linked to the weather as much as it is linked to finance and to justice and to cathedrals. I will indulge my sexuality when the weather indicators are right, and the financial indicators are right, and the scales of justice feel right, and when in the cathedral it feels right. 

I love the wicked women. I have met some women I could trust in that broken world, Lela, for example, Ana Maria, Pamela. Diana in Berlin or Riccarda. Probably not Iga, as much as I love her! You can genuinely touch someone in that world and be touched by them, I think. I always go into that world looking for love, as I think they are the only women I could ever love. The clink of gold in the glass. The Tallulahs are probably no more cynical than the Esmeraldas. They are only nice to you as long as you are filling their glass with gold. Still, I think you can meet some exceptions, when something genuine passes between you, with Susi, with Janet, with —–. And if I am wrong, then it does not matter. Fleetingly, it felt nice to feel there was something real between us, if only in the blink of an eye. It is those moments that you keep going out looking for. That is what you keep gambling for, throwing so much money down on the roulette table for the very occasional moment when you get back more than you put in. That is what you keep trawling the broken world for, those fleeting moments when eye meets eye and some spark of electricity passes between you, and that current brings you back to life, for a couple of hours, or for one night, at least. That is what the poems of Hart Crane speak to me of: “The flesh assaults outright for bolts that linger” The wine menagerie. How you put on your beer goggles, so everything looks magical, everyone looks beautiful and desirable, and everyone seems to find you beautiful and desirable in return. If it is all commerce, simply, then no matter. There are just those brief moments when it seems so real, comes so close to being real, that it is as good as real. In every city there is Helen of Troy locked up somewhere in a room. She lives on like Orlando, like Emilia Makropolos. You go out every night searching for her, as David Tennant’s Casanova always searches for Laura Fraser. “The sight of a whore is profoundly thrilling to a man”.

How I walked away from Irina without seizing my moment. How I walked away from —– without seizing my moment.How I walked away from Susi without seizing my moment. Maybe Riccarda, too. Pamela? 

 

Some beautiful new pictures of Sunset Strip on the website, what a surprise! Including two absolutely gorgeous pictures of —–. Oh you just look at those pictures and you see how attractive that world is, how easy it is to lose yourself in it, and submerge yourself in it, and let the waters close over your head, and disappear into another world. When you think of —– dancing to Promiscuous Girl. They are the best things in life. Maybe one day I will settle down with —–. Hahaha. I am abstaining from that world completely, just so I can dive back into it so completely when I am ready. Yes I owed £3,600 on October 1st last year, but I then still went ahead & went to Frankfurt for 4 days, Berlin for 5 days, Berlin for one night only, not to mention the last visit to Munich. What real nice warmth did I ever find in that world: —–, Janet, Sylvia, Martina, Amanda. Maybe Luana? I live in the Ernest Dowson world. Don’t stick your head above the parapet unless you want to get shot at.

When I hear Maneater I want to see —– dancing to it. I am obsessed with her. “As Nietzsche put it, while recovering from his intoxication with Wagner: ‘What can be done well today, what can be masterly, is only what is small.'”