"We drank hard and talked about what Debord, who drank persistently and prodigiously, had written about alcohol"

"We drank hard and talked about what Debord, who drank persistently and prodigiously, had written about alcohol. 'I admire Debord as a perfect and dedicated drinker.' We talked about how, in the early years of his career as a drinker, Debord was always in pursuit of or just arriving at a perfect point of intoxication which, unlike paid labour or any other servile activity, would reveal 'the true taste of the passage of time'. Drinking was a beautiful poetic game, with its rules and protocols. Debord devoted pages to describing this notion."

Irina suddenly leaned over to me and said to me "I'm sorry, you're a nice guy, but you drink too much" before giving me the ultimate private dance. I said to Viktoriya "You don’t like me, do you", and she exploded back with real hatred "Yes. Because you're always drunk". *****************I insist on the primacy of my own experience. My own vision. I can only be alone. I can only be in cold icy mountains. ******************Don't be unhappy, be happy! Think what immense power you have got! You have made the great separation & now live for pure Priapism. You have got money. Winter is coming. I can go to the Bell, the Sunset Strip, Sunset Cinema, Demi and Pamela. In January I can go to Berlin. This is going to  be a season of the flesh. I have got a nice little job I enjoy. I have got money coming in. I have got my own little nest. I have got a week off in December and another week off in January to go to Berlin, for La Traviata and Carmina Burana.

"Where do you live actually?" said Pamela to me. The discipline of saving money is actually a really exciting one. It has made the Bell more exciting for me. It will no doubt make Sunset Strip more exciting for me eventually. I love the things I have got away with in the past, the things I get away with now, the things I will get away with in the future. 

I have got my book-lined London home, filled with ferns, and classical music. I live like a church mouse in a little hotel earning the money to write my books, while enjoying the girls taking their knickers off to loud music, and travelling a couple of times a year to Berlin. I am still sad about --. Do what you want with your genitals, otherwise you will regret it when you're dead.

I think Brussels was so exciting because I knew it was just the first leg of my European tour (7th August 2006)

I think Brussels was so exciting because I knew it was just the first leg of my European tour, and after sampling the delights of the Museum of Modern Art, Wiertz, Pullman bar, and Gare du Nord, I could head off later in the week on the long train journey to Koln and Munich, and that night be heading over Bayerstraße to the White Coffin, on Saturday getting the train to Nuremberg for the Pils Bar and the Caribic, before then heading off again to Vienna, knowing that Manhattan and ML Revue and Pour Platin were waiting for me, before heading off a few days later for Berlin, knowing that Stuttgarter Platz was waiting for me and the Berlin Erotic Centre. Maybe this time I can finish up in Copenhagen for the The Makropulos Case? I want that Interrail pass again! £380 for the train pass, then maybe cheap Radisson hotels in Brussels, Vienna and Berlin? Ah but it is spending money that is the thing. Now that I have given up Sunset Strip and King's Cross, perhaps my finances will improve a bit? JUST IN JUNE AND JULY ALONE I HAVE SPENT £424 ON STRIPPERS ALONE!!!! What did Pete say? I need to see how it is destroying me. Get this: Since the New Year I HAVE SPENT £1,778 ON STRIPPERS ALONE!!! What hideous wastefulness on something that I was increasingly starting to despise. If I could have that £1,778 back now, it would pay for the Interrail pass, and every hotel for two weeks, and give me all the whoring money I could ever need. Since moving into the flat on November 17th I have spent more than £2,000 on strippers alone. And it is worse than that, because the vast majority of my drinks bill in that time---£515 in June and July alone! £1,867 since December 10th! has been consumed in the strip clubs. Without the Bell and Sunset Strip I reckon I would now be owing just £2,400 on my credit cards instead of £5,900. These are sobering figures. For sure I could go on that long train journey to Europe in December if not for that. PLEASE GIVE UP THE STRIPPERS!!!! Just concentrate on the Calcutta, Sunset Cinema, and Demi and Pamela from now on. By the end of August and September that should save me £900 alone. DO IT. Do it, so I can see Brussels again, I can see Gare du Nord again, I can go to the White Coffin again, I can go to the Pils Bar and Caribic again, I can go to Pour Platin and Manhattan again, I can go to Berlin Ciro again.

On way home same big breast girl got on Wandsworth Road (19th July 2006)

On way home, same big breast girl got on Wandsworth Road. Looked at her in profile, blue vest.Till she came towards me & sat in back corner, giving me a really good look at her big cleavage. Got an erection. She sat in corner half turned towards me, then made a big play of turning right towards me to untie her ipod.**************Had coke & two beers in the Calcutta. It was so hot in there, and so black. Joked with Hossain about it. After my coke, he said “oh that was just your starter?” Sexy big brunette in brown vest & skirt came in with boyfriend but left because too hot. Up to the Bell. Fantastic Arctic Monkeys Vampires song in the Calcutta followed by long extended throbbing intro to Madonna’s Hung Up. A depressing return to Sunset. Waited & waited for Melani to arrive downstairs & it was only after buying my second Fosters I saw her name was not on rota. Quite empty because it was so hot. Looked in cinema, Voyeur 18 but not much else. I’ll check it on internet if I go home tonight then can go back for it Friday if necessary. Low key day.  Two in Calcutta, two in the Scotsman, two in Sunset.

As good as Wednesday was Thursday was bad (6th July 2006)

As good as Wednesday was, Thursday was bad. It was ever thus. I was strangely not in the mood for Sunset. Stacey & Helen sitting at bar as I stood between them waiting to get my drink when I arrived, Samantha, Giselle, Daniella, Lana, but I felt uncomfortable & awkward. Had four Fosters before going up to the Scotsman but it was the worst line up ever, not one worth staying for. I could only finish about a third of my pint and left again! I felt like going straight home but felt I would feel like it had been a missed opportunity if I sat at home all Thursday night, so forced myself back to the cinema for the same films. It was a mistake. The same films never seem so sexy second time around. Resisted the thought of forcing myself to Francesca as well, and came home via a KFC, another mistake, and a tuna & mayo roll. The blonde girl grinned at me so much as I approached and said “tuna mayo!”. As I left I said cheers, and she looked up at me with the most gorgeous huge grin and a “cheers brother!”. Someone likes me at least. At the start, I finally made it to the Courtauld–what treasures! At the 87 bus stop going home to pick up my dirty washing, lovely big voluptuous Eurasian/Kazakh? looking girl was looking how to get to Leicester Square so I told her, but as I was demonstrating & explaining, she pressed her huge breasted voluptuous body in blue T-shirt & jeans right up close to me, and our bodies kept bouncing against each other. It was so erotic & she was hot.

This is Fu Manchu weather (5th July 2006)

This is Fu Manchu weather. Black, steamy, hot and humid, but raining all the time. A permanent mist of rain in the hot, steamy conditions. It is like being in Phnom Penh. This is Cambodia weather. Two in the Calcutta with white shirt Katerina with no eye contact. Sylvie was first on in Sunset followed by Jolanda. Nina was next. She is so much like Melani, but Melani is Nina x100. Nina does not turn me on though she is so beautiful. Also there Angelina, and doing the middle shift, Sandra. A quiet small brunette but she was so sexy! She made eye contact with me a lot & really turned me on. I left about 5 because it is so empty on early shift I feel uncomfortable. 

At the Scotsman was ——. After dancing she marched straight to back & sat down with me again. I bought her another Red Bull. She was so sexy in little red tartan bra & knickers only. Drinking so much so quickly on empty stomach I was feeling randier than normal, and when she left to collect, & asked me to keep her drink safe for her, I stroked her bum and had a good feel of it. She looked at me in mock shock but she was so sexy on stage. While she was dancing however, a huge voluptuous red haired girl came in with two blokes to talk to Tina. They exchanged numbers & then she came & sat where —— had been sitting, so I could get a good side on look at her. Those tits are the most massive I have ever seen in my life. Her arse was practically hanging out of her jeans & that was massive as well. She glanced at me a few times. If she ever danced there I would die with pleasure. It would be the greatest striptease I have ever seen in my life. Knocking even fat-bottomed silver-dressed girl at Carnival into the shade. They were like zeppelins. Looking past her, —— suddenly seemed so ridiculously small. —— came back for her drink & found the girl there & was then in animated conversation with her & they exchanged numbers as well. After that —— came & had a drink with another man sitting at the side bar in front of me. After collecting —— sidled up to me again, whispering "a drink? Vodka & coke". After she finished I bought it for her & she came & collected in by the gents but just walked off with it & stood talking to other men with my drink in her hands!

Vicki was quite friendly, not scowling at least. Stella smiled hello as she passed me by the gents, but I don’t think I stayed long enough to see her dance, or Kelly (Enlgish). 

I went back to look for Francesca but she was busy, so I went back to Sunset for Lana & Nikita, the end of Elektra, and one more from Sandra before she left at 9. I watched most of the France v Portugal second half then went to Sunset Cinema. The films were great. Magma Swing Party, Nympho Nurses Naughty, and Tittenalarm 17—all German films!—plus Fresh Meat 18. I thought I was turned on enough so I went back to Francesca. She lived up to her description. Her breasts are sensational. She is pretty enough as well. For an extra £5 I got her to turn over but still could not come. She offered a hand job AND TOOK THE CONDOM OFF TO GIVE IT! It is true, she lets you come over her tits just like that. Still I could not come, so I apologised & kissed her goodbye. She works Tuesday to Saturday but only to 10PM. I will for sure go back many times. 

I went back to the cinema again for more of the great films. Upstairs was bald bloke with pretty brunette girl from last week but they do not seem to do much. This time I was ready to explode, & though I wanted to carry on watching the films, I made my way to Demi, but another girl was there, Savannah. She was pretty but £30. I was tempted but she walked off angrily, so her attitude turned me off though her body was great. I went back to Pamela. It was so nice sucking her tits and the edge of her nipples at least. I could not stop sucking and love biting her. For £25 she turned over & I came very nicely again. I made her lay with me for just a couple of minutes, but could not stop laughing for some reason. She did not stay with me as I got dressed this time. I was too drunk to ask her anything. I came home after that. There was a sexy brown ponytail girl stood behind me at bus stop then she came & sat in the corner seat just beneath me, in little pink vest & I could not help keep looking down at her cleavage & her face, and she knew I was looking & I think liked it. She got off Wandsworth Road just before me. Sitting in back seat opposite me our knees touching was most beautiful blonde in long skirt, jacket over little green top, with nice big tits & cleavage on show. I grabbed a few ogles & she was so beautiful. On the next corner seat was the purple blouse girl from before! In brown leather jacket, low cut shirt with tops of breasts visible, and tight brown skirt. Red lips. She was so sexy. Sitting side on ready to get off she knew I was looking at her so much. All in all, a very sexy night. A night of a thousand breasts, and a dozen super-voluptuous vixens. Jolanda, redhead at the Scotsman, Francesca, Pamela, girls at bus stop & on bus. Sandra.

The — interview was fairly awful (22nd June 2006)

The — interview was fairly awful. At the end she was saying “You don’t seem relaxed. You seem…distant! Like there is something else on your mind. Are you all right?” How this echoes what N— was saying to me all through the training & at the end. Everyone finds me distant. I would not want to work at the —! It is funny, for the interview — sat me down at the same table where I had sat with Lydia! 

It took me an hour to get back to the flat as the 87s stopped coming along the Strand! Passing me at the stop was the most stunning brunette girl in black short skirt, black jumper tied round waist, and tight black top over the most massive soft bouncy breasts, and so so pretty face. She saw me looking and put her head down smiling as she passed. My God, I wanted to f— her brains out. I got changed & headed straight back to Calcutta for Italy v Czechs but would have preferred to watch the girls passing by. I left just before halftime to get to Sunset. Barmaid was in yellow Brasil top waving to me as I paid to come near her to get my drink & not make her walk! Then Helen. My God, Helen, another real erection watching her, and another real erection when Stacey came on again. When was the last time I got real erections at Sunset Strip, or anywhere for that matter? It takes me back to the days of red wig, and gold shoes, black feathers. The old man in front of me paid Helen a tip, so she kept coming back to him but I noticed even though she stood or lay right in front of him, her body was always angled so her pussy and or her arse was pointing in MY direction! It was thrilling. Every time she kept her eyes on him, but pointed her pussy at me. She is incredible. I left at 530 to get to the Bell, feeling tonight was the night when I would see —! As I bought my pint I looked up and there was —‘s name finishing at 7!!!

I was saying just on Thursday where are all the sexy dancers (20th June 2006)

I was saying just on Thursday where are all the sexy dancers, and yet Saturday night I felt so sexy watching almost all the Sunset girls, Luna, Adriana, Helen, Ariana, Elektra, Foxy, Esthee, as well as the ones sitting upstairs I never got to see. Atmosphere is everything. Being in the right frame of mind, and being in a crowded place. I will go back to Sunset much more often on Saturdays. All the time Saturday I was thinking “I am in a Fu Manchu film” and every time I felt tired this immediately sparked me up again & made the sight in front of me seem sexy. If I imagine my whole life as being acted inside a Fu Manchu film this makes everything sexy to me. I was thinking on the bus home this morning, when I actually felt so happy & confident, that I needed to be cockier & more confident, like I did Saturday night, to get more out of things. Definitely Fu Manchu is the paradigm I need to remember. The Willing Cheeks of Fu Manchu! The Yellow Claw! I love that foggy Edwardian London they are set in, and after all don’t I live in an Edwardian London? A ——– Edwardian London? It gives me the chance to really enjoy the pleasures of Moloch, the nighttime pleasures, and the pleasures of Berlin, and Vienna, and Brussels. It give me the chance to stay in ——– palaces in Vienna, and elsewhere. If you go in feeling sexy, it will feel sexy. How sexy Esthee seemed. Even Nikita and Anna. Everything was eroticised. I was ready to come in the cinema even after six beers. It was spitting with rain as I came home this morning, and the trees were dark green through the misty spray of the rain, and it felt so Fu Manchu.****An incredible night on Streamway. I gravitated almost straight to OpenLegs4U; she was the only one I wanted to log into under my own name anyway. As usual, she was like stone, not an answer to anyone. Yet her face was so expressive, she was so happy and laughing, and smiling. Amazingly I broke through. “You are like the sphinx” “Beautiful, enigmatic, and mysterious” And then it came, in red: “Ty”. “You set men riddles that no man can solve” I then asked her to look me in the eyes for two seconds, which she did not do, which started off a raging argument between Stooge and Popi: “If you aren’t gonna do that for sarge, why not live up to your namesake and open your legs” “Don’t be so rude”. Then, amazingly, while the battle was raging, she DID seem to look into the camera, twice, for a couple of seconds each. It felt an amazing moment of connection. “You are the most fascinating woman on this site” Amazingly, another immediate, red, “Ty”. “if you really think that,” said Stooge, “you must have led a very sheltered life. ” “No not really, ” I replied, “All the others just seem the same” “If you don’t agree she is the most fascinating person on here, why stooge are you still here?” “Waiting for some miracle, to show she has a brain or a personality” Someone then took her private & I wandered off to look at Melanic. When I came back, no one else seemed to be there for a while, until two or three new people emerged. By then I had found her email address in her photos & tracked her down on Google to her Yahoo site and more stunningly beautiful pictures. “Littlewolf” I said to her only, and she kept her face impassive, though her heart & mind must have been racing inside. Then “Would you please look me in the eye once more before I go?”, to which she without hesitation glanced sideways at me out of the corner of her eye.

Quite a grey cool 7AM start to the day as it so often is in summer (18th June 2006)

Quite a grey cool 7AM start to the day, as it so often is in summer. I just want to be going back to Sunset Strip and Sunset Cinema. I am a rebel and a revolutionary and I just do not care. I flaunt and provoke and scandalise. Just three nights to get through! Then Jolanda for sure early Wednesday. When the ———? When my life is so empty and I am so bored, what else could I do but turn to pornography, strippers and whores? Is Lydia another one I have broken the heart of? Like Lela, and Ana Maria? Maybe Pamela, too? Viktoriya? Susi? If I didn’t spend money like this is in Moloch, I would just save it so I could do the same things in Berlin and Vienna. Van Gogh, Dowson, Ravel spent their whole life with whores, it is what artists, writers, composers do. It is the bohemian way of life. And it leads to the madhouse, or the morgue. I love my little flat don’t I?! To listen to Wagner Tristan Prelude and Schoenberg’s Erwartung on my tape machine, and then watching the Francesco man on the TV talking about Italy.

How to gather together all the fragments of thoughts and impressions from this night? (17th June 2006)

How to gather together all the fragments of thoughts and impressions from this night? I went straight to Calcutta for two while watching the start of the Czech-Ghana match, then up to Sunset via Oxford Circus and Central Line. Elektra was there but it is three new girls who made the most impression on me. Luna, like another Giselle, Adriana and Helen. All beautifully voluptuous and sexy, but it was Luna especially who actually made me swell. For her second arrival she went to the pole nearest me, turned round and bent over to point her ass straight at me, as if to say this dance is for you. At 6 I went up and watched a bit of football. Foxy was there & she kept glancing round as if towards the street, and when she went in to dance, she looked anxiously back over her shoulder and I followed her with my eyes and we locked eyes with each other very intently. That was a thrilling moment. Elektra was dancing to a song “and the TV’s on” “just a little baby” something like that. The music there is so loud, and bass-deep, and thumping. I was in one of those moods where every girl was sexy, even Nikita on her back as I came in, in a double act with blonde Emma. I left for the Royal Opera House via Holborn and Piccadilly Line to Covent Garden, had a pack of crisps in the pub opposite while watching the end of the Ghana game—how fantastic when a World Cup is on! To go from pub to pub watching bits of games! Once again I remembered why I thought I would become a regular at the ROH. From that balcony position C64 the view is fantastic. You feel so close to the action. It feels so exciting. Christine Rice was great in Duke Bluebeard’s Castle in red dress. I really enjoyed it. I ached painfully when I thought I could have been in this position to see Alexandra von der Weth in Boulevard Solitude five years ago if I could have been bothered, and now will probably never see her. One of the great missed opportunities of my life, along with Violeta Urmana at the Wigmore. I was feeling very tired during Bluebeard, but forced myself back to pub just for a coke with ice while watching the Italy-USA game. I saw the Italy goal, the USA goal, and the Italy sending off, before I had to go back for Erwartung, which was also fantastic. It is so Vienna! It reminded me so much of the nights searching the Gurtel for Tallulah or Esmeraldas. That really is the music of the Viennese broken world. How you look for love and sensuality but it is always broken and twisted, and you can never believe in it. I found it very very moving, this lonely solitary questing after love and sex. 

Back to Covent Garden, Holborn, Central Line to get back to Soho. So many breasts on display in this hot weather, the black dress girl with cleavage hanging out getting on tube as I got off. There were screens in the street around Frith Street and Bateman and crowds were gathered watching the end of the Italy game, a huge roar went up before I got there, but it was a miss. I decided to go back to Sunset as it cost me no more, to see some more action. I watched the last four minutes of the game, then went downstairs to find it packed!!! With four of five girls as well. I will come on Saturday nights more often. Ariana, a tall blonde was looking at me a lot at the back, Estee was in her element with a big crowd, Foxy too was great. I went back upstairs to sit a while and saw so many sexy girls there, the one in little red bra & knickers & devil’s horns, Emilia?, a really beautiful girl smoking looking a bit like Samantha/Maria Moore. Sandra? Anna was the blonde girl from Boulevard. It closes at 1 with last admission at 1230, and I thought I might go back but didn’t. The films did not look good at Sunset but I stayed anyway. Upstairs I walked in and saw man sitting there with massive big fat cock, the fattest I have ever seen. The Hot Rod Blue adverts near the end were the best thing (Wicked Weapon, Rich Man’s Bitch), and I was really close to exploding, even after a total of six beers. The start of The Power of Love was good with Taylor St Claire and I knew I had to leave. I tried Demi, upstairs from Demi (with a Kay lookalike who said goodbye really nicely who I might go back for), Pamela’s room with a Cristina M Bell lookalike, then Lydia. I am saying nothing more except that she looked beautiful, especially at the end as she sat on bed waiting for me to dress with her hair down, black mascara running around her eyes. “Why did you come back?”

A time of illness (4th June 2006)

A time of illness, a time when we feel low, and hit rock bottom, is always good, because we can strip everything away, and just see what is really important to us. What we want to do, what we want to be, cut away all the superfluous things that have been allowed to encrust themselves to us, and concentrate on the simple essentials: classical music, ferns, the books. Then we can start to bounce back, and climb back out of the blackness, feeling stronger, calmer. 

Who is my Helen of Troy now, imprisoned in London? Is it Pamela? Or Melani? Maybe yet Jolanda?

And now the tooth ache returns. So that is two urgent appointments I must now make for next week. Now I am frightened to eat anything as well as wanting to close my eyes all the time.

***

To help deal with the pain I will try to get recordings of Phedre by both Rameau and Britten…and something of Rosa Ponselle. I escape from the misery of my life into opera. From the misery of my eye problems, and my teeth problems. From the misery of the “catastrophes of love”. It is transcendence. It is entering the Kingdom of Death, in love with Princess Mort. It is stepping through the mirror that turns into water, and escaping from the world. I am happiest in the Kingdom of Death, where the skies are always black & there is no sun. The white ruins are lit by a spectral light only. There I can meet the Kaiserin on her marble throne. I can meet Rosa Ponselle and Maria Callas. How can I explain that to people who keep asking if I am “all right”, because I seem “very quiet”? Just all go away and leave me alone, please. It is floating on my back on a lake in a steaming palmhouse, amid the palm fronds and giant lilypads, listening to Herodiade Fragments on the ancient gramophone. Somewhere in the steam my odalisques wander, and stroll, and lounge, and fuck. Suffering makes us soulful, suffering makes us spiritual. We grow lovely out of our longing, wrote Henriette Hardenberg. Longing for freedom makes us beautiful. I lie still and fearless as you enter.

Search for the Ponselle James A Drake biography in Foyles and the Charing Cross Road second hand places.

Remember those incredible dramatic hours spent watching Jolanda dancing to Nick Cave’s Red Right Hand or the Ding-Ding-Dong song?! That is when sex dancing becomes magical, up there with Anita Berber or Mata Hari or Josephine Baker. Pink touched these heights, too, as did Janet [Material Girl! Objection!] at the Scotsman, and Sylvia. Sex dancers who create a real drama, a real sense of menace almost, erotic menace, when they are on the stage. When you suddenly feel you are sheltering from a thunderstorm and lashes of lightning outside and this primal moment watching this woman on this stage is the most important moment of your life, and when it finishes nothing will ever be the same again. My eyes are always going to wear out from time to time as I spend so much of my time, and money, gazing. The sex dancers and whores who have burned themselves onto my retina! The Tallulahs and Esmeraldas who my eyes will never forget.

I can never seem to contemplate my approaching days off without thinking only of strippers (22nd May 2006)

I can never seem to contemplate my approaching days off without thinking only of strippers. I am addicted. They are my fix that I have to have every week. I suppose it is an improvement that I am now going just once a week, to Sunset Strip, rather than the three or four times a week as I was to the Scotsman. I make up the slack with Sunset Cinema and Pamela, however. The intensity of the last couple of weeks, Melani & Elektra & Sunset & Pamela on Wednesdays, followed by ENO and the Lemon Tree barmaid on Thursdays make it a very powerful drug, a very powerful fix, and means the addiction is getting worse. After such highs I keep needing at least the same highs, and then always more. So how can I just go home this week! Of course I will need Melani on Wednesday and of course I will need the Old Axe and White Horse on Friday and maybe even ENO as well.

How fantastic like on Wednesday night to be able to see girls as outrageously sexy & voluptuous & beautiful as Martina (28th April 2006)

How fantastic, like on Wednesday night, to be able to see girls as outrageously sexy & voluptuous & beautiful as Martina, as Kelly, then as Melani. How much I take that for granted. 

I’ve got a very safe sinecure in the —— Hotel which gives me the pocket money to pay my rent & to write my books, while sustaining my addictions to drinking & to strippers. Everyone at Sunset seemed cool to me Wednesday. That long unreadable look from Melani, Alison never smiling at me once, Juliana behind the bar stonily giving me two tens for a twenty without any eye contact or a smile. It is funny just as the girls at the Flying Scotsman have never been nicer to me, the ones at Sunset Strip have gone very cool. 

dook_sucks said @ 8:17pm GMT on 8th Jul My favorite physicist, Richard P. Feynman used to go to strip clubs all the time. He’d sit there and work out equations while they’d be dancing in front of him. That he could concentrate oh high level advanced physics and strippers at the same time is testament to his genius. Sorta like Sensible Erection, no? Glad to see the hawk-meister is of the same caliber. 

matt said @ 6:15am GMT on 9th Jul [Score:1 Insightful] I dunno, strip clubs are pretty good places to go to get time to think. I’ve a long history of going to them to get away from people. the Beauty of them is no one looks at you or pays you any attention at all (apart from the girls trying to convince you to have a paid private moment with them). You can just sit there with your drink, think, write, ponder, whatever, and when you look up, there’s something pleasant to cast your eyes over. Hell, you could consider them muses.

A brief visit to Sunset Strip (29th Dec 2006)

A brief visit to Sunset Strip, after the appalling enforced Christmas abstinence, to see the divinity that is Jolanda and the callipygous Helen. It is amazing how much more naked a stripper looks when she takes off her shoes. The first thing Helen always does when she steps on stage is to take off her shoes, & then slowly pads around the stage, Salome-like even without the Salome costume, on the balls of her bare feet. All strippers should dance barefoot, I think. Without wanting to get too personal, she does have the best behind in London, apart OF COURSE from Hannah/Pink at the White Horse who possesses a bottom that you would follow anywhere if you met it in the street. 

When Jolanda steps on stage it is like how Zola describes Nana: “Then scarcely was Diana alone than Venus made her appearance. A shiver of delight ran round the house. Nana was nude. With quiet audacity she appeared in her nakedness, certain of the sovereign power of her flesh. Some gauze enveloped her, but her rounded shoulders, her Amazonian bosom, her wide hips, which swayed to and fro voluptuously, her whole body, in fact, could be divined, nay discerned, in all its foamlike whiteness of tint beneath the slight fabric she wore. It was Venus rising from the waves with no veil save her tresses. And when Nana lifted her arms the golden hairs in her armpits were observable in the glare of the footlights. There was no applause. Nobody laughed any more. The men strained forward with serious faces, sharp features, mouths irritated and parched. A wind seemed to have passed, a soft, soft wind, laden with a secret menace. Suddenly in the bouncing child the woman stood discovered, a woman full of restless suggestion, who brought with her the delirium of sex and opened the gates of the unknown world of desire. Nana was smiling still, but her smile was now bitter, as of a devourer of men. “By God,” said Fauchery quite simply to La Faloise.” 

Jolanda wore a lime green see-through slip of fabric for my first sight of her, then a pink dress for her double act with Helen, finishing with that Stokerish white see-through dress. I realise now not only is she a Nana, but a blonde Zora Suleman, and there is not much better than that. For me, she is the Queen of Sunset Strip. Miss Soho 2006. Jolanda is a girl Toulouse Lautrec would have designed posters for. Why don’t they do that anymore!? 

I like big girls so I don’t know why I like Honey so much (21st Dec 2006)

I like big girls so I don’t know why I like Honey so much. An almost child-like body, implacable face half-hidden behind long wavy honey-blonde hair. She is a fast dancer. The slow, quiet cinema-seated somnolence of the Sunset often seems to be reflected in the dancers; they prowl & pad around the stage in a languid, cat-like way & if they lie on their back a tad too long you suspect they have actually fallen asleep; Honey bounces around the stage like a baby kitten. As soon as a few men are standing at the back the atmosphere immediately seems to improve. The snowball fights it seems are just a distant memory. I am sure the poor chap who always had to come around afterwards looking for all the snowballs under the seats and between people’s feet is glad about that. It was good to see the place so packed. When Honey was on I thought she is the star of Sunset Strip; yet when Jolanda came on in her almost Stokerish see-through white dress, I thought, no, it is Jolanda; then when Melani was on I thought, no, of course it is Melani; but then Fernanda is so lovely; and “French beauty” Lilou is so stunning; oh, and Lana; and let’s not forget the electrifying Elektra who wasn’t even here tonight. 

That, though, was only the start of my night of appalling debauchery. I wake up at 630AM the next morning, and just think “Shit”, still six hours until the pub opens again. What on Earth am I going to do for those six hours? They stretch ahead of me like an eternity. It is four hours until I can even get a McDonald’s Hamburger & Fries for breakfast. 

Pondering obsessively on Simon’s “lost” weekend in Amsterdam, those still unaccounted for three days. I have become so hooked on his Around & Abouts that I now want every SECOND of his life accounted for. I am The Man with the Golden Arm, and for two, no more than TWO, days in a week, I am just shooting up, lost to the world in my strip addiction oblivion.

There seemed to be a party going on in the Sunset Cinema bar (20th Dec 2006)

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

Life seems to have no meaning except to drink (17th Nov 2006)

Life seems to have no meaning except to drink. Nothing matters except getting drunk. “I give in to sin because you have to make this life livable” Strangelove—Tiger Baby. ********** 

I was absolutely hyperventilating as I waited for 96 to Horse & Groom, then as I walked along the street passing one pub after another, to find it, then pulling open the door to see…Amanda Barrington. Only three men in there. It is impossible to imagine —– working in an environment like this when she could be in the packed to the rafters Scotsman. I escaped, without asking Amanda about —–, as that would give me away, and resolved that I would now be able to go to the Scotsman after all. At Charing X there were no 91s coming, however, so I could not get to the Scotsman by 7, so might as well go to Sunset first so I could at least catch Helen. I saw her do one dance dressed as Salome, plus big Lilou who did look Danish. Snake-hipped Yasmin and Emilia who now looks like her sister, Ruby, Caroline who is Scottish, Nikita. After Helen I went up to Scotsman, already with five inside me, to see Camilla, Chloe, Arleni, Stella, Crystal, Lena. Absolutely packed. Again devastated and empty as still no sign of —–. I was thinking the danger is that now Pamela has comprehensively rejected me, I will start mourning my missed opportunity with —– again, and my mental health did indeed seem very shaky on Saturday. Back to the Sunset for some more Lilou and Caroline, and I was so drunk now I moved into the front row central. Sunset was packed now as well, standing room only, and whole back wall covered by men standing, plus blonde woman, and two Indian girls. Left after 7th beer, just as Caroline sat near me, and headed to say hello to Olga. Her hair is now wavy and looks so gorgeous. With make up on she once more looks like the woman I fell in love with & could not resist. I wish I had my camera with me at that moment. It was so good to see her. Staying with her so long, from 1140PM to 12? I missed the last train of course, and got back to the stop in time for the 20 past midnight N--. I was incredibly wide awake & crystal clear, though by the time we reached —— the headache had started and the eye ache in particular, like someone squeezing my eyeballs.

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.'”

I agonise about whether it is really worth going to Berlin and Vienna and Munich and Brussels now and how all my brilliant memories are so far in the past but only because I do not have the money now (10th August 2006)

I agonise about whether it is really worth going to Berlin and Vienna and Munich and Brussels now, and how all my brilliant memories are so far in the past, but only because I do not have the money now. If I was a millionaire, I would LOVE Vienna and would have no reservations about it at all. I would go there and spend 100 euros a time so freely & easily. It is only because I am so poor and so much in debt, that I now agonise about those places, and torment myself, can I go or not. If I had money I would live freely & be the happiest whorer in the world. I would fuck every one of the whores in Vienna. I would fuck Alla & Olga together in Berlin, I would fuck Erika. I would fuck twenty of the Brussels windows girls. Munich is not worse than it used to be, Vienna is not worse than it used to be, Berlin is not worse than it used to be. It is just now I owe £6,000 when I used to owe £60. If I do give up the strippers in London, and the thought of going back to Sunset or King’s Cross fills me with an almost physical revulsion, and my visits to the White Horse, Old Axe, Rainbows, Browns, Griffin, Queen Anne,  Nag’s Head were some of the most dispiriting & crushingly dull moments of my life, that will enable me to pay off more of my credit card bills than I ever did before. Really after those initial lung-bursting three ascents to Brussels, to Munich,and then to Berlin, my holidays have become increasingly dispiriting and miserable, and that is because my debt has started to constrain me so much. I would enjoy those places as much as ever if I could go back to them owing no money as I did then. 

In June and July I spent £362 on strippers and £465 on drink. Just in June & July that is £800 I could have had in my Woolwich account or I could have reduced my Visa debt from £1,600 to £800. In April & May I spent £471 on strippers and £382 on drink. That is a further £850 added to £800 makes £1,600. So from the four months April-May-June-July I could have had an extra £1,600 in my Woolwich account, OR REDUCED MY VISA DEBT TO £0! Now will it bring it home to you! “It is eating away at your money, your love and your life”. I say oh I owe six thousands pounds on my credit cards, I don’t see how I can ever pay it off, and yet just in four months April May June July I could have reduced my Barclaycard debt from £1,600 to zero.

I am on such an exciting new project now. I am as thrilled by the prospect of tightening my belt, and living like a monk, and saving money now, as I used to be by living wildly and spraying my money around and living hedonistically. It will be such a slow process before I notice any difference though. Like a supertanker, your personal finances are very slow to turn around. Your Love Is Like Poison, the song that Florence put on & I felt it was aimed at me. Yes, my love is like poison and my love of strippers had become like poison. Like alcohol poisoning your blood by too much drink, I had stripper poisoned by blood. My love was like poison to Florence, to Jolanda and to Melani. All of them started off liking me then wanted to avoid me. Finally now I have the chance to remove the poison from the blood and be clean again. Confessions of an English Opium Eater I carried around with me Friday, and really strippers have been my opium over the years, ever since I first fell into it on that dark, stormy September afternoon on the shining road of Dean Street 14 years ago. I have been in its thrall ever since. And yes in the early days it provided me with magical moments, supremely high moments, but increasingly over the years those high moments became fewer and further between as my addiction worsened, and became nothing but habit, with no joy or excitement left in it. Those red wig days, Czech Boulevard girl days, gold dress days, Carnival days, are very far in my past now. Now there are only the desperate depraved addict's memories of my appalling behaviour. How thrilled I will be now by watching my Woolwich building society account filling up and rising from minus to plus, from plus 100 to 200 to 300. That will be my high now. That will be my addiction now–hoarding money. I will get as much thrill from hoarding money as I used to from spending it. Oh, if only I could have had this revelation earlier, if only I could have had this road to Damascus conversion sooner! But it has to come when the moment is right. I had to wait until I suddenly became physically revolted. I had to wait until the poison became so bad that it reached the tipping point and where it suddenly physically made me sick.

What great joy there is in just drinking glass after glass of coke rammed full of ice! (6th August 2006)

What great joy there is in just drinking glass after glass of coke rammed full of ice! You do not need to go drinking beer all the time. What great joy there is in having a heavenly cod & chips in Dionysus on a Wednesday afternoon! Honestly, thinking about this cold icy glass of coke and this gorgeous fish & chips feels with me with more joyful reminiscence than all of my last year’s worth of visits to the Midnight Bell and Cotton Club put together. Tallulah is over for me. Once I started getting involved with the girls, everything was ruined. Never connect. That is the only way to maintain pleasure in this world. As soon as I connected with Florence and crossed over that line, the Midnight Bell was finished for me. As soon as I connected with Jolanda and Melani, the Cotton Club was finished for me. When it becomes personal it is ruined. Transcendency must be anonymous or it will not work. The lenses were smashed as soon as I bought a drink for those three girls. Getting to know them brought me no pleasure whatsoever, whereas lusting after them anonymously from the dark corner had meant so much, had been so life enhancing, and produced so many of those “high moments that persuade us to put off suicide”. As soon as I come out of the corner & get to know the girls, I think that’s it, I might as well end it all now. The catastrophes of love are what persuade us to kill ourselves, to hang ourselves in a Kings College Hospital noose. No one was ever pushed towards suicide by ogling a beautiful huge-breasted stripper from a dark corner with a beer in one’s hand. Those are the high moments that persuade us to put off suicide. Once you try to get involved, the pain and tension and despair and jealousy start again. Love is the death of people, not animal lust. 

I have always regretted not taking my chance to get to know Black Bob or Gold Dress in the old Cotton Club days, the Classic period, the Jazz Age, the Golden Age, the Minnie the Moocher, Sneaker Pimps and Shining Road days, but looking back now it has preserved them as perfect memories, like fixed in amber. The last night I saw Gold Dress girl in that gold dress and gold shoes, dancing to that dirty song about fucking in the jungle, after I had just come from the Emil Nolde exhibition and then The Beast at the Everyman, and it was Christmas, and the place was packed to the rafters, and the atmosphere was the greatest ever, and she seemed to dance only for me, and I did not know then that it would be the last time I ever saw her, but it has been preserved for all time as a special special memory, I will carry forward no precious memories of Florence or Jolanda or Melani, though they did once give me such high moments, because it has all been ruined in pain and recrimination and anger, because I got involved. I just want to forget them now. The high memories I have of them have been spoilt–because I crossed the line & connected. Never connect! Resist familiarity at all costs! Speak only to the girls you don’t like, never to the ones you do! 

From the disaster that the Midnight Bell has become, I carry forward only one rich memory and that is of Janet. Her extraordinarily dirty stripping I have never seen the like of before or since and will be preserved in amber within me forever. The time she danced to Madonna’s Material Girl remains one of the primal moments of my life. What could challenge it? The Spanish Penelope Cruz lookalike dancing to Sex on the Beach on my second ever visit to the Bell many years ago. Gold Dress girl at the Cotton Club. B Rosa dancing to Jay Z’s Threat in Munich. Irina dancing to Eternal Flame, in Munich. Elena dancing to Tu M'a Promis, in Munich. Susi dancing to Phil Collins in Munich the first time I saw her. Susi dancing to Garbage No 1 Crush and Sting’s A Thousand Years in Munich, when I amazingly saw her again. It is no wonder I kept going back to Munich. It is like people say you should never meet your heroes, because you will just be so disillusioned. I wish I had kept Florence and Jolanda and Melani at a distance. The actor Rodney Bewes tells the story of how he used to worship Peter Osgood when he supported Chelsea in the 60s and was so thrilled to meet him in a restaurant, but Osgood just made some lascivious comment about Bewes’s wife and that ruined all the hero worship Bewes had previously held for him. 

How I wish I had done something with Irina though! How I wish I had done something with Susi! If you don’t connect, you are always crucified by what might have been! Pink at the Cotton Club dancing to The Stripper theme, and Wicked Game, also remain perfect amber preserved memories, because I resisted getting involved with her upstairs, though opportunity was there. And how can I forget pink boa girl who danced mesmerisingly to Grace Jones at the Cotton Club in its Golden Age, and Black Feathers just in the Golden Age’s dying days, when the Roman Empire was about to be sacked by Barbarians and the light extinguished. Apart from Silver Dress Fat Bottomed Girl at the Carnival, that place has numerous very smutty performers whose memory I will always treasure. With such a rich store of treasured memories, how can I not keep going back to the Shining Road for Tallulah? For one thing the Carnival is long gone, and the Cotton Club means nothing to me anymore, spoiled by my clumsy attempts at involvement. The White Coffin has been completely ruined by the new management. The Goethe girls of Sexyland were always curiously bland compared to the White Coffin girls anyway. Tallulah in Brussels will always mean Clarisse and is otherwise dispiriting, and in Berlin there is no stripping to speak of at all. The one place I ever found, there was only two other men watching, the dancing was desultory, and I felt more looked at by the girls, than me looking at them, which is not the object of the exercise at all, and culminated with the girl offering me a private dance for 25 or sex for 80! 

That is the glory of Berlin, of course, everywhere is a brothel. The sex cinemas exist only to get you to fuck the girls in a room, the strip clubs exist only to get you to fuck the girls in a room. There are no sex cinemas for sex cinemas sake, and no strip clubs for strip clubs sake! Berlin. No wonder I keep going back to Berlin. Vienna does not even have sex kinos [HOW WRONG I WAS!]. You just walk into a bar full of ten or twenty girls all looking at you, and again you will sit there with a drink feeling so uncomfortable, and you have no chance to relax and feel sexy. Perhaps if I was very rich I would enjoy it, but in my financial straits Vienna is a very dangerous place. I will always look back at Maria as being without doubt the most beautiful girl I have ever f—d, however. And Harrieta was one of the loveliest and warmest whores I have ever shared a drink with. If only I was rich. Maybe I should move back home to my mother’s house, just so I can pay off my debts for a while, and travel again. But no. But how I want to be crossing Olivaer Platz and the Ku’damm on my way to Stuttgarter Platz again! How I want to be exploring the Gurtel again! How I want to be rounding the corner of Schillerstrasse again into the White Coffin!

For the true connoisseurs of smut (5th August 2006)

For the true connoisseurs of smut. I preferred Munich before it was overrun by Ukrainians, due to the visa scandal whereby the German Embassy in Kiev were giving passports out like smarties, as stunning as many of them undoubtedly are. I preferred it when there was more of a balance, between Brazilians, Slovakians, Romanians, Russians, Ukrainians. Now it is wall to wall Ukrainians. Similarly I preferred Moloch before it became overrun by Brazilians, again as stunning as many of them are. Sunset Strip certainly used to be better when there was a balance, and much more interesting variety of girls, when it was more like a burlesque show, and the Carnival I have never ceased to mourn. Where is silver dressed Fat Bottomed Girl now? It is amazing how often when you first go to a place, the first girl you see turns out to be the most legendary and stunning you will ever see. When I first walked into Carnival there was silver dress girl up there on stage, the most voluptuous stripper I have ever seen in my life. As good as all the Carnival girls were, no one surpassed silver dress girl. How the first time I stepped downstairs into Sunset Strip, the girl came on dancing to My Name Is Tallulah, Tallulah since becoming my word for that whole world. That whole way of life. That whole addiction. An addiction, I might add, that has suddenly becoming crashingly dull to me. 

The first time I ever set foot in Stutti Frutti in Berlin the first girl I saw was the extraordinary Yulia. A month later the first time I set foot in Mon Cheri I met the stunning Riccarda, and recorded in my journal at the time that I felt like I had just fucked Marilyn Monroe. A month later the first time I set foot in the Golden Gate, I met Iga. Three of the greatest women of my life and all were met the first time I set foot in their respective establishments, all of which have been desolate wastelands whenever I return to them now. The last time I went to  Berlin I made my first visits to the Mazurka and met the extraordinary sisters Alla & Olga and I have no doubt I will never see them again, and I carried on down the road to make my first visit to Ciro and met the mindblowing Erika, again who I am sure will have disappeared from the face of the earth if I ever go back & no one will even admit to having heard of her. When the Esmeraldas and Tallulahs I have met in my life have been so extraordinary and stimulating and life enhancing, how can I give them up? 

The closest I have come to a real relationship has been with the Esmeraldas I have met in Moloch, namely Lela from Romania, Ana Maria from Spain, Olga from Russia, and latterly Pamela from Sweden. I can only fall in love with Esmeraldas. I do not think I am capable of loving a normal girl, a respectable girl. There is so much of me that I have to hide from them, so much of the double life that I must keep secret from them, which is never necessary with Esmeraldas, because we know everything about each other from the beginning. What a relief to be able to talk so openly and honestly with an Esmeralda, when by necessity only one word out of every hundred I would like to say to a normal girl can be said out loud. Ninety-nine per cent of what is the most essential me must remain concealed from a normal girl, like a portrait in my attic, whereas with Esmeraldas I can be 100% open. That is why I love Esmeraldas so much. As much as for the sex, it is to just be able to be myself and speak freely. I have felt closer to true friendship with Esmeraldas than I ever have with a normal girl. 

The amazing hour I spent laying with the Turkish girl when I had no more money but she just let me lay there, as she lay in my arms, as she talked to me about her life as I stroked her hair, and her beautiful bottom. She told me how she loved reading, Guy de Maupassant her favourite, and how her father told her as long as you have books you are always rich. Ayeesha. I do not think I have ever had a happier hour than that one. In Munich, because of its strict conservatism, there basically are no Esmeraldas as such, accept for very huge sums of money. The roles of Esmeralda and Tallulah have become merged, and  the dancers will do a lot more than just dance, and the whores will stop short of going all the way, which is both more exciting and yet ultimately frustrating. The single greatest liberating moment of my life I regard as the time I took Patricia into one of the White Coffin separees in Munich. At that moment a Rubicon was crossed, and I have never looked back. Two weeks later, on The Night of the Snow, I took the Romanian Emily into one of the Three Cats separee and enjoyed the greatest sexual experience of my life, again without any actual sex taking place.