Yes it is true I am travelling to Vienna for sex and I have always travelled for sex but by chance along the way I have also discovered so many things that I would not have discovered otherwise [19th August 2006]

Yes, it is true I am travelling to Vienna for sex, and I have always travelled for sex, but by chance along the way I have also discovered so many things that I would not have discovered otherwise--the Libertines, Elena Prokina, Heidi Klum on the billboard. You always find things while looking for something else. While looking for Susi I met Patricia & Bella Rosa. While looking for Patricia I met Emily. While looking for Viktoriya I met Martina. While looking for Riccarda I met Diana. The Libertines and Elena Prokina were complete chance discoveries that I would not have made if I had not been in Berlin and Brussels respectively, and they are now two of the most important things in my life. I am going to Vienna to see the Maria Callas exhibition but no doubt I will find something else instead. I always find something different to what it was I thought I was looking for. But if I had not set out looking for that thing, I would not have found the other thing. This is becoming the law of my life. I suppose if I go now expecting to meet some other thing I will find nothing but the original thing. Life is a see-saw. As soon as you think you have worked out its hidden laws and mechanisms, they swing back the other way and become the opposite. It is more than anything travelling, though, that keeps them swinging & keeps giving you glimpses into their internal workings, like looking inside a watch. As Kenneth Williams wrote, none of his trips to Tangier were ever what he could call truly successful, but they were important in that they kept the pendulum swinging. Ernest Shackleton kept going back South, even though none of his expeditions ever had any clear aim. It was enough to be heading South again. There is something in my soul that means it is enough to be just heading South again, and South in my case meaning my four Stations of the Cross, my four Cities in the Autumn Stars, Brussels, Munich, Vienna and Berlin, with occasional forays as far as Venice or Budapest or Oslo. I have almost forgotten what it is like to sleep at night. I just lie there and stare at the ceiling and have to give up. I love to be awake all night reading or writing while the world is quiet. Days are noisy and full of people, so it is a pleasure to sleep through them. It is cheaper that way, too. This "loan"  I have taken out of £6,000 is vital to pay for my travels which gives me my vital observations which go to form my books. You have to speculate to accumulate. To dare is to do.

“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 suspect when this period of abstinence is over I will return to my sinful ways with more of a vengeance than ever before (26th Sept 2006)

I suspect when this period of abstinence is over, I will return to my sinful ways with more of a vengeance than ever before. Did Alla and Olga really offer me jacuzzi and bed for 250 euros? And I said no? I will go back to Demi and Pamela more than ever. Back to the Scotsman and Sunset Strip and Cinema more than ever. 

My life got overheated. Overlush. 

The Libertines. Hart Crane. Ernest Dowson. “There were no good old days. These are the good old days”. “And you know how I feel out of place, until I’m levered off my face, and I can work out what she’s all about”. Schoenberg’s Pierrot Lunaire and the Flying Scotsman absolutely go together. The terrible conflict between wanting to publicly declare my deep love for the Scotsman and my desire to keep it absolutely hidden and private, for myself. It provides some of those “high moments that persuade us to put off suicide”.