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?

Solitary & private even in the midst of the crowds (16th April 2006)

Solitary & private, even in the midst of the crowds. I feel such pain, and lead such a double life. Women are drawn to me, but then can find nothing behind the withdrawnness & the reticence, but a black vacuum which they run away from. Still, they remain fascinated, and usually are drawn back again. This is Chelsea v Vicenza day when I actually came in my pants while watching that huge-breasted blonde girl in the red wig at Sunset Strip. It is also The Damnation of Faust day. I am relying on the Flying Scotsman more than ever as my life support because I cannot travel anymore. I am missing the highs of Berlin & Vienna & Brussels, and am stuck in London. I have to keep going to the Scotsman to fill that gap. 

“Very few people find their real instincts. Every now and then there’s an artist who does and who makes something new and actually thickens the texture of life. But it’s very rare…You have to be able to be really free to find yourself in that way, without any moral or religious constraints. After all, life is nothing but a series of sensations, so one may as well try and make oneself extraordinary, extraordinary and brilliant, even if it means becoming a brilliant fool like me and having the kind of disastrous life that I have had. That is it.” Francis Bacon, Francis Bacon: Anatomy Of An Enigma, Michael Peppiatt, 1996. 

“It’s only by going too far that you can hope to break the mould and do something new. Art is a question of going too far. Images can shatter the old order leaving nothing the same as before. The more artificial you can make it, the greater chance you’ve got it’s looking real.” Francis Bacon, The Brutality of Fact: Interviews with Francis Bacon, David Sylvester, 1987, Thames & Hudson. 

”Actually, I’m the most ordinary person possible. It’s just that I like throwing myself in the gutter. Every artist wants to throw himself into the gutter. It’s part of his life, it’s a necessity. You might say that I lead a gilded gutter life, I drift from bar to bar, from gambling place to gambling place, and when I don’t do those things, I go home and paint some pictures. I am completely amoral. If I hadn’t painted I would have been a criminal….I have always known life was absurd. Life is nothing but a series of sensations…….Life is so meaningless we might as well try to make ourselves extraordinary…I think of life as meaningless and yet it excites me. I always think that something marvellous is about to happen. How can I trap this transient thing? ” …Francis Bacon in conversations.