What a merry chase I lead people! [23rd Sept 2006]

What a merry chase I lead people! I exult in it now. How I torment them and torture them with what I get away with and STILL get away with. I used to feel chased and hunted and hounded. Now I delight in leading them on a chase after me. See if you can keep up!

Everybody was waiting for me when I first went to Europe. They already knew me and they already knew I was on my way, and they already knew the date and time of my arrival. I feel like Bourne. They know who I am and I don't. What was it I did? Who was I? Why was everyone trying to kill me? When I went to the top of the St Marks Belltower in Venice, the American kids knew me. 

Like you can tell the age of a tree by counting its rings, I can measure my life out in the number of Salomes I have seen at the opera. Just listening to songs on Berlin Energy reminds me of being in Berlin. I only asked -- and Pamela to come home with me because since then all I have done is get drunk and spend all my time in the Bell and Sunset Strip then go home and pass out.

Yes I am amused to feel like Bourne. But I also feel like Joe Orton--still getting away with it! Like Frank Wedekind, flaunting it in their faces! Pour épater le bourgeoisie. To do whatever it is I shouldn't do. I LIVE FOR THE WILD NIETZSCHEAN DIONYSIAN PLEASURE. I LIVE FOR STIRRING PEOPLE UP. I LIVE FOR DOING THINGS I SHOULDN'T. I LIVE FOR DOING DANGEROUS THINGS WHICH WILL PUT ME ON THE VERGE OF SELF-DESTRUCTION. I LIVE FOR THE SLEAZY THRILL.

Royksopp What Else Is There? Yes I owe a massive £6000. Yes my monthly interest is a massive £80. But think of those nights in Munich Atlantic City watching Susi, Irina, Patricia, Bella Rosa, Viktoriya, or in Femina with Emily. Going to Nuremberg and meeting Martina in the Pils Bar. Those nights in Berlin with Yulia, Riccarda, Iga, Diana or Arrica. Would I take any of it back? No!

I AM DEBAUCHED. Debauchery is the road to Taoist contentment. The pleasures are great. The rewards are great. 

The rewards for that £6,000 have been great.

Oh God I love to get drunk and lose it! And I always will. Whether in London or Berlin or Munich or Vienna or Brussels. I will always want to get drunk and lose it. That is the point of life. Live for the moment. Live every moment like its the last.

Why do I keep going back to the same places? For me, it is an attempt at time travel. I am trying to go back to the past & this time put right what I did wrong. I have left so much blood on the tracks, and I want to put it all right this time, with Susi, with Irina, with Viktoriya, and do the right thing  this time. Please let me have that chance. So of course all my visits become increasingly forlorn.

What a lovely 30? 45? minutes I had with Harrietta in Angelique in Vienna.

I am quietly obsessed with recording my own life.

Für Elise is nostalgia for all the beautiful Esmeraldas you have fallen in love with & who you have had to leave behind.

What the hell happened to Pink? What a loss. What a brief golden age. How can I not love all the Tallulahs and Esmeraldas I have met? What magical, never to be forgotten high, special moments they have given me.

Oh what a return it will be when it happens. October? November? How wonderful that memory is of seeing Michela dancing to Global DJs is, even though at the time it seemed so failed a visit. What happy memories those strip clubs around Europe (Munich) have given me. That is why I cannot regret the £6,000.

It's possible I could go to Berlin for one night only to see Dalayman in Salome isn’t it? Suddenly a visit to Munich (or Vienna) in December becomes possible. But I said Munich never again after January!??? It is all just memories now. That incredible Jay Z Threat night. Will life ever get any higher than that?

If I have learnt one thing in life it is that you have to take your chances--Susie, --, Irina, all of them. Clarissa. Martina. 

When you hear Afghan Whigs See About Me, how can you not want to go back to the strip clubs? Yes, but it is about going back when they are at their best---in winter, and on Saturdays, and in Berlin or Munich. The Whigs seem to exist in that same drunken world as the Libertines, and Faith Healers, and me.

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?

Yes I question if I want to go to Vienna wasting all that money after working so hard to save it [1st September 2006]

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.

I wake up midnight with an iron hard erection [30th August 2006]

I wake up midnight, with an iron hard erection. An incredible serendipity. I want European porn again. The Munich Intercity films, the Munich Atlantic City and Sexyland kabins. The Vienna Dorint films. I was dreaming of Kerry Marie a lot. I got the 12:10 bus to Calcutta after a lovely hamburger & fries, without any sleep. Sexy redhead at back in brown jacket & black glasses. Getting on at next stop beautiful black haired Greek looking girl, eyes met, little smile as she squeezed into corner. Pale blue jeans over meaty thighs & bum, pale blue coat, pale blue bandanna headband. White T-shirt. So pretty, got off Vauxhall. Coming into Calcutta just before I left, absolutely mindblowing thick light brown brunette, like Raquel Welch huge hair, red v-neck sweater over massive massive heavy breasts, grey skirt tight over her voluptuous hips & thighs, very self confident ordering her large white wine, sitting at round table behind me. What a sex bomb. I want Sunset again. Black dress Kay. All the money I have spent on strippers and drink this year, and such a small amount on porn cinema & whores. All these Bad Timing and Night Porter pictures form a triumphal way leading to the Ishtar Gate perhaps, of Maria's c*nt. It became clear to me after 1 pint how drink suddenly makes me want to throw my money away. It is such a disinhibitor.****“The paradigm of the romantic bohemian” sitting at the table in the Café am Zoo reading about The Libertines and Pete Doherty in the Observer newspaper, “the outsider painter who pursued his own vision amid a swirl of drugs, alcohol and dissolution”. Oh I cannot wait to get back to Berlin again! If I can achieve this saving, it will be like shaking hands with myself. Sylvia still shines on my horizon higher and brighter and bigger than any other woman. She is a Charlotte Rampling of a woman. In Berlin alone there has been Iga, Diana, Riccarda, Yulia.  “We learnt what our national Church was…a visible testimony of the collective experience of mystery, enshrined by generations in stone and glass. Imagine how we should feel if all the cathedrals were museums. What would be missing? Betjeman gives some hint of what the mysterious something was. It was a something in which, for all his doubts, he most passionately and sincerely believed”. The Arrest of Oscar Wilde in the Cadogan Hotel. “I think I’m excited by extremity. I don’t think of myself as sleazy—I like to think of myself as intrepid. Whether sex, food or going on holiday, whenever I’m confronted by a decision I always do the thing that’ll be the best anecdote.’ Pushing boundaries almost to the point of transgression is his stock in trade, and sex a major topic. ‘I’m just trying to bludgeon ennui,’ he says, ‘trying not to be bored'”. Wouldn’t it be great to always behave myself in London and save it all for Berlin, Vienna, Brussels? Every £50 I spend in London is 74 euros I could use to buy a night in a European hotel. But I have such great memories in London. Cotton and Demi and Pamela. “The smoky Tanz bars of Berlin, where the German public tried to put aside growing concerns about world politics and lose themselves in a seething pit of immorality, decadence and extravagance”.

For all that talk of big breasts I never really made the most of my opportunities [25th August 2006]

For all that talk of big breasts I never really made the most of my opportunities: Clarisse I never even had a 5 euro dance in my seat & refused to talk to her, Martina, I went with Diana instead, Andrea I just had the £20 option instead of half an hour. I can worry about the sadness and despair of my last trips to Berlin, Munich, Brussels, but I always feel this sadness and despair so it is normal & I should enjoy it! There is a kernel inside my brain that only wants to be stimulated by pornographic films and prostitutes, and will never be able to feel anything in real relationships, so I should just understand that and enjoy it. Isn't it great that I now feel so happy in myself and so self-confident, I am writing, I have my own place, I am enjoying the porn films and the prostitutes the same as ever, and no one can touch me. How beaten down I used to be. Not anymore. I am taunting them with what I enjoy that they cannot. I am flaunting it in their angry faces, more and more. I am provoking them more and more. I am Beethoven. I am genius. Alcazar Crying at the Discotheque. My God I cannot wait to get back to Vienna again! Back to the Ring! I cannot wait to see Jolanda again. And Melani. Then on to Demi or Pamela. Oh travel is so much the greatest thing. I try so hard to recreate the sensations I feel when I am on holiday. That feeling drinking beer from my minbar in my Munich hotel room before going to Atlantic City. Or drinking in my Vienna hotel room before going to ML Revue. Or in Berlin before going to BEC and Stuttgarter Platz.**********I lead a strange existence. I read and write for a couple of hours, then sleep for a couple of hours. Listen to some classical music for an hour, then read & write some more, then sleep some more. ********What a great life this is. Sleep for a few hours, get up to read and write for a few hours, listen to classical music for a while, sleep some more, for three or four days a week. Even my bad trips still produced interesting experiences. I need complete isolation. Complete peace. Complete solitude. I can only exist in solipsism, and its military wing, Priapism. I enjoyed living in the broken world of strippers and whores. But I fell in love with one of the strippers and started embarrassing myself. I want to write a magazine like Simplicissimus and Die Fackel. Or make my satiric interventions on, for example, BITE, or Openlegs4u. I would restart The Serpents Egg either on wildeboy.com or Yahoo360 but I would have to reveal too much about myself. My life revolves around strippers and whores and yet I cannot talk about that. 95% of my life would have to remain hidden under the surface leaving only the tip of the iceberg which is not worth talking about. 

At Christmas I really can treat myself to a couple of days in Brussels first [20th August 2006]

At Christmas, I really can treat myself to a couple of days in Brussels first. The longer I can resist travelling for, the more money I will have to spend when I get there, and so the happier I will feel. Especially if I know I can come back to London and pay it off quickly with my new continence. Going to Vienna in December will give me the chance to see the After Schiele exhibition at the Atelier Augarten.

Oh God I am so excited about going to Vienna in December! And I am so excited about all the weeks before then, just twelve, when I can not go out, and save money frenziedly. These will be rich weeks, rich in writing and classical music, and ferns. This week I want to go to the Rebels & Martyrs exhibition, and The Third Man at the NFT. Maybe even Miami Vice. "Boundless aestheticism and ambivalent premonitions of an imminent and inevitable decline brought about a unique atmosphere in turn-of-the-century imperial Vienna, and led to Early Austrian Expressionism." I am aware of the decline and decadence, the sensual decadence, the diving deeper into darkness, the romantic nihilism in myself, so that is why I am attracted to Vienna around 1900, to Weimar Berlin. If I am to dive deeper into darkness, then let me do it when it is dark, in December! I think a new mature phase of my life is about to begin, it is struggling through its metamorphosis and is just about to emerge from its chrysalis! A new mature diving deeper into darkness! A new mature sensual decadence!

****If I can achieve this it will be like shaking hands with myself. A dip in the grotesque. “Violetta, the courtesan. Always free and libertine, always playful, venerated and admired everywhere she goes. But slowly and imperceptibly, consumption spreads through her body. When she meets Alfredo, she finally discovers true love and denounces her dissolute life. Alfredo’s father begs her to leave his son to save their family’s honour. And so the Traviata, this depraved woman, sacrifices herself for the sake of love and breaks with Alfredo without telling him why. Passionate outbursts abound, and the border between love and hate proves slight – until the truth comes out and love triumphs. But happiness doesn’t last, as death will not be deferred. In spite of its scandalous premiere, La Traviata has easily won a place of honour in the hearts of music-lovers. ” How this reminds me of Riccarda. Lydia, too, a bit. How I saw Lela deteriorate, and Ana Maria, too. What pleasure I feel at night, just going to the Calcutta for a night cap. It will be great to see Vienna in The Third Man on a big screen again. Oh what a long way off December is! I must be able to enjoy Demi and Pamela before then. There is nothing specially to go for in December so I can go at any time, let’s say arriving Wed 6th Dec in Vienna for four nights, that would be £58 a night and £230 in total. That is hot deal no change. Not bad. I just feel relief and release. Storms, floods and record tides on way. “Storms and floods are forecast in the coming weeks as the hot summer comes to an end. Experts said last night that heavy rainfall was expected to affect many central and eastern regions during the next two days as areas of low pressure sweep in from the Atlantic. Further torrential downpours are forecast for Thursday and Friday.” How to enjoy this? Sitting by my open window in my flat, in the lamplight with the black skies thundering outside, spray splashing into my room, as I write on my laptop, and listen to Viennese music on my tape machine. This is always the greatest pleasure. The simple pleasures are the only realities. It is much more pleasurable to be sitting alone in my flat with the rain pouring down outside, drowning out the music from the tape player inside, than it is to be out with people around me. It is so pleasurable in fact. To think I can just run next door to get a hamburger & fries. I might actually stay in my flat all week this week. 

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.

I have got £13,500 credit and I owe £5,900. With this Vienna holiday that will increase temporarily but so what? [18th August 2006]

I have got £13,500 credit and I owe £5,900. With this Vienna holiday that will increase temporarily, but so what? It is just like taking out a loan. I have taken out a £5,900 loan which I will pay back when I come back from Vienna. And with this loan I am doing amazing, extraordinary things. Burning bright like a firefly. You have to push yourself to the edge. It is only there that you can observe things & record your observations. I am excited about going to work from now, because my journey to Vienna has already started. Remember how I always used to enjoy going to work because it was just getting me through the two or three weeks till I could get back to Munich again, or get back to Berlin again, or get back to Vienna again? Am I really spending hundreds of pounds going all the way to Vienna just to have sex? The sex with the Vienna and Berlin whores is more expensive but it is better. They will do anything. Remember how Yulia, Riccarda, Maria, Diana, did absolutely everything? You do not get that in Soho. Once you have paid your 100 euros you do get an absolutely mindblowing experience. Now watching the Alizee J'en ai Marre video I know why I travel. If I had never travelled I would never have seen that video. If I had not gone to Berlin and bought the Observer that Sunday in the Café am Zoo I would never have discovered the Libertines. If I had not gone back to Brussels I would never have discovered Elena Prokina. Travel enriches you so much. Just as the flat costs me a lot of money but it would be a false economy to give it up, so travelling costs me a lot of money but it too would be a false economy to give it up. That night coming away from Katarina & her Wild Stallions with such a huge erection in my trousers it still had not gone down by the time I crossed the leaf-carpeted Ku'damm. Meeting Clarisse in Brussels. On a wild goose chase to Nuremberg to look for Viktoriya I met the incredible Martina with the most enormous breasts I have ever seen in my life.

The pleasure of travelling around Europe by train is so great even if I'm lonely because when I am lonely I write the most [17th August 2006]

The pleasure of travelling around Europe by train is so great, even if I'm lonely, because when I am lonely I write the most. It is Nietzsche in cold stoveless rooms writing with blue hands, while weeping, writing in blood. That is what I like best. So what I owe £6,000. You cannot take it with you. I might as well live intensely for the next few years while the rausch is on me. I am inclined to go to Berlin in January for La Traviata and Carmina Burana. That will mean I should go to Munich and Vienna at the end of October, to pull into Munich Hauptbahnhof in the dark at 7 o'clock at night and walk into the Intercity, for a couple of beers from the minibar, shower, couple of beers down in the bar, before rounding the corner into Atlantic City. The next day I can enjoy the gorgeous Lamm's and that night maybe go to Nuremberg coming back for 6:30 breakfast. So Thursday get Eurostar to Brussels Radisson SAS, few drinks in bar, up to Empire and Gare du Nord. Next lunchtime to Munich. Saturday night in Nuremberg and Sunday lazing in Munich? or train to Vienna? Monday night arrive in Vienna for some drinks from minibar then Dorint bar, then Seilerstatte. Next night Pour Platin and ML Revue. Yes, Munich and Vienna in end of October, save Berlin for January. That will give me all of November and December, another 8 weeks, to save for Berlin. Munich more than anywhere is really the City in the Autumn Stars. It even has a Rosenstraße!!!! Maybe I could buy some new boots. I am really going to enjoy myself this autumn in Munich and Vienna. Still, before I go, I would like to return at least once to Sunset Cinema and then to see Demi and Pamela. This time I will take some pictures in Munich at night. I am going to really absorb myself in Munich and draw out of it as much as I can this time.

Oh God how could I ever have considered giving up my lovely little flat? (13th August 2006)

Oh God how could I ever have considered giving up my lovely little flat? It is so lovely to come back to at night. All afternoon, and tonight, travelling to Charing Cross I felt so nervous. It was good, it felt exciting, like being in Vienna or Berlin or Brussels at night. Everything was pitch back, windy and rainy and storm-tossed. It felt like winter. It felt like how nervous I felt going out in Vienna at night to look for the peep show place, or how nervous I felt going to look for Stuttgarter Platz in Berlin the first time, or going into Atlantic City every time. I love that nervousness! That excitement! Sitting with my first pint in the Calcutta I still felt it. I felt I was sitting in the Brussels Pullman bar prior to heading up to Empire and Gare du Nord. Or sitting in the Dorint preparing to go out to Pour Platin or Manhattan. It was so exciting. By the second pint the excitement had been replaced by deadness, and I could not recapture the nervousness. By the third pint it had started to turn to the nihilism which can be as exciting as the nervousness but I did not push it to a fourth pint. I think three will be my rule for these Calcutta nightcaps. Oh God I cannot wait to get back to Vienna and the Dorint, and I cannot wait to get back to Munich and Atlantic City. But first I think must come Berlin for Violeta Urmana and the Mort de Cleopatra. That would be special. Any money I save let me use it on Alla & Olga and Erica first. On the 87 bus home someone started playing the Hot Club de France at full blast! It was fantastic. Riding along listening to Stephane Grapelli and Django Reinhardt. Every bus should sound like this at 11 o'clock at night.

******Low rumble of thunder. To think I was thinking I could sit out on my balcony once summer comes, and now it is black & rainy & I am turning my heating back on, and it is only 13th August! John Dilys Cooper "turns everything into an epiphany". I had an epiphany last night. Getting the bus to Charing Cross feeling so nervous, and arriving there in the pitch black, and it was so windy & stormy, and I sat in the Calcutta with my first pint feeling so strongly what it would be like at this same 930PM at night to be sitting in the bar of the Brussels Radisson SAS, or the Ibis Cafe Belge, or the Dorint Wien, or the Berlin Plaza, nervously drinking enough so I was ready to go out looking for Tallulah or Esmeralda. Tingle-Tangle. That feeling in the knot of your stomach. Those butterflies. That excitement, that nervousness. On the bus, around Parliament Square, I was thinking this was how nervous I felt when I went to get that tram in Wien, or how nervous I feel when I leave the Intercity at night to cross Bayerstraße & round corner of Schiller, my heart suddenly starts beating so fast, my breathing comes so quick, my blood pumps around me so quick, as I am sure everybody knows what I am up to, but they cannot stop me, and I am going to do it anyway. A real epiphany last night, and again on Wednesday, when everything reminded me of Wien Westbhanhof. We grow beautiful out of our longing. The greatest highs of my life have been those midnight trams in Vienna around the Gurtel to get to ML Revue, or those walks from the Intercity to Atlantic City, or those walks from the Berlin Plaza to the Berlin Erotic Centre or Sarah Young, or that midnight tram from the Gare du Midi up to the Gare du Nord and trying again to find the right exit. Lust suddenly suffuses my whole body. I become so nervous and so excited. In Europe you have dirty experiences. The ONLY time I get close to that in London is when I go to Sunset Cinema, and some man comes in with a girl, and that is so exciting, and then when I am ready, I leave there with my swollen cock rolling in my trousers from side to side like a ship in a storm, just around the corner to Demi or to Pamela. That always feels so dirty. Once September comes I will allow myself this again. As the nights get dark so early. Save my money for October, once the clocks go back! That is why I call November 1st Volcanic Night! I do not think I find Simon Boccanegra interesting enough as an opera to go all the way to Hamburg to see Prokina in it. I'd rather spend all that money the train would cost on sex in Berlin. I would like to see Urmana in the Mort de Cleopatra though. What to do, Munich & Vienna first, or Brussels & Berlin? NOTHING THAT HAPPENS AT WORK CAN POSSIBLY AFFECT ME. I LIVE FOR WRITING AND FOR TRAVELLING. I AM LIKE A GHOST AT WORK. THUNDER! A dirty, black, thundery, raining evening.

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.

The sexiest encounters of my life were with girls at classical music concerts (4th August 2006)

The sexiest encounters of my life were with girls at classical music concerts, while I was sitting in the back row---the red scallop neck girl at the Barbican, little brown bob who sat opposite me in the Barbican lobby, black fur coat at the Wigmore, the grey skirt lush in the Wigmore lobby. The erections I have got in art galleries! Especially the Brussels Museum of Modern Art and the Wiertz Museum---I have got to go back to Brussels this autumn! To the Modern Art [gone, waiting for it to be put back in place], the Wiertz, the Cathedral, the Gare du Midi Pullman bar [gone], it is such a morbidly erotic place, even before I get up to Empire and the Gare du Nord. I got great erections in Antwerp, too. And Munich Neue Pinakothek. Oh how erotic it is to be there during the day, going to the New Pin and Lamm's [gone], knowing it is just preparation for what I am going to do later---cross Bayerstraße and round the corner of Schillerstraße and disappear into the White Coffin [Atlantic City]. My heroes are Walter Benjamin, Karl Kraus, Friedrich Nietzsche, Karl Marx. I live every day of my life now as if I am on holiday, just drinking and eating and w-----g. The gorgeous beer in the Calcutta, the gorgeous fish & chips in Dionysus [gone], the gorgeous KFC in Leicester Square. The gorgeous tuna & mayo rolls in Charing Cross Station. When in Berlin I live for the knesepfannes [gone] in my hotel bar and the ham & eggs rolls in Thobens at Berlin Zoo station. In Vienna it is the alt wiener rostbratens in my hotel bar; I no longer go to Wegenstein's after the staff attacked me. I went back once but it is always so empty there, in contrast to the warmth & conviviality of Lamm's in Munich. I think I almost go to Munich solely so I can eat in Lamm's & have a glass of their ice cold Augustiner beer. I go to Berlin solely so I can eat the knesepfannes in my hotel & the Zoo Thobens rolls. Oh I so much want to go back to Munich! But where to stay---the Regent which I love for its bar, or the Intercity for its ease? I go to Vienna solely for the cold Zipfers served by the white shirted girls in the Dorint bar before I commence my afternoon of sightseeing, which usually means St Stephen's Cathedral, the Pummerin bell made out of Turkish cannons left behind after the Siege of Vienna, the Butterfly House, the KHM, the Belvedere and the Leopold. Always the same places. Sometimes I will mix in a few Third Man sites, like the Am Hof, and the steps where Harry Lime stood when the cat gave him away and we see him for the first time. I will not go into the sewers again. 

After Lamm’s [gone] what else is there to do for me in Munich, apart from struggling to the New Pin & trying to make it back to the Intercity before I explode? Nothing. Really. Lamm’s is the be all and end all of my every day in Munich. At nights, the White Coffin [Atlantic City] becomes the be all and end all but I think even that has finished for me now, as it has become just full of memories which the here and now increasingly struggles to live up to. The more fantastic memories you have built up in a place, or exquisitely painful ones, the more blood you have left on the tracks, the harder it is to get the same thrill out of the place & the more disappointing it becomes. It becomes a law of diminishing returns. There is a rising arc of your first few visits when it gets better & better, then you reach the zenith, then level off, then the arc inexorably descends, and every trip becomes increasingly distressingly flat and uneventful. The whores get more flat-chested and unattractive every time you go. In Berlin, Yulia, Riccarda, Iga, Diana, gone forever. Maybe they were always poor but the excitement of going somewhere new made them seem more sexy and alluring than they really were. The more you return the more you tend to see the same women in the cold light of day, as it were, and you realise they weren’t all they were cracked up to be.

I went in Dionysus again on Wednesday (4th August 2006)

I went in Dionysus again on Wednesday. Absolutely lovely. How lovely it was to be in Charing Cross Station today. I really love Charing Cross. The way in Berlin I cling like a limpet to Berlin Zoo station, and in Munich I stay in the Intercity connected to the Hauptbahnhof, and in Vienna I stay in the Dorint opposite the Westbahnhof, and in Brussels I stay in the Ibis opposite the Gare du Midi, in London my whole life revolves around Charing Cross. I love the Upper Crust girls who get my tuna & mayo rolls ready for me, the Calcutta pub who get my cokes and beers ready for me. I took an incredible risk watching those porn movies in the hotel business centre the Christmas before last, before w--king in room 16. I have never been able to find out what that fantastic film was. I am sure it was a Christoph Clark but I have never tracked it down. Like that elusive E.E. Doc Smith Lensman book I read where the captain slides his hard hand down over F's breasts while they are watching a play together on board the spaceship. Before C goes to his room and disrobes. The best w--king of my life was the first nights I stayed in the Dorint Hotel in Vienna while I was en route to Oslo on my Munch pilgrimage, when I was in the blackest frame of mind of my life. The two things do go together. My greatest periods of unrestrained sexuality come at my times of greatest blackness & despair. I need to be low and black and destroyed. I feel like Munch in Christiana now. Too much drink and drugs and endless nights with scantily-clad women have overwhelmed my senses and driven me into a spiral of despair.

Viennese Eroticism and psychotherapy fit together very easily (28th July 2006)

Viennese Eroticism and psychotherapy fit together very easily. In fact you cannot have one without the other. Berlin Eroticism is different again, as is Munich Eroticism, and Brussels Eroticism. I will always remember Maria in Pour Platin. I will always remember arriving in Vienna at 11pm in the snow. Saybia, Mando Diao,The Libertines, Chemical Brothers, Soulwax. 

I am sure Lilith knows I am there from the moment I connect to her room. A look always comes over her face, and is it my imagination but does she always start readjusting her camera, just to give an excuse to look directly into the lens? The moment I logged in under ---- I am sure I saw her face freeze, as if suddenly desperate not to betray any emotion, but I am sure her heart started beating faster, because she started breathing deeper and faster.

Oh god I miss Munich so much! (23rd July 2006)

Oh god I miss Munich so much! "The area around the Intercity hotel is slightly seedy". Oh god I miss Schillerstraße and Goethestraße at nights! All those neon lights! I miss walking back into the Atlantic City, and Sexyland even! Lamm's! Oh god I miss Berlin Plaza so much! That Berliner Pils and knesepfanne! That nighttime walk to Sarah Young and Berlin Erotic Centre, and on to Mon Cheri and Golden Gate and Monte Carlo! Or to Ciro! Oh god I miss the Wien Dorint so much! That night time trawl of the Gurtel, Manhattan and Pour Platin! Those white-shirted Dorint girls! Seriously, where am I going to find my sugar daddy to make this possible? A better job---pah! If I moved to ----- for £19.000 I would be working hard all year just to reduce my credit card debt from £6,000 to £4,000, big deal! I need a sudden injection of cash! If Lydia lent me £5,000??? It would be a mad adventure. I dread doing it & getting trapped, but I would be inspired to do it because I know it would free me to get back to Munich & Berlin & Vienna. 

Oh how I miss sitting in the Café Belge of the Ibis Brussels! Always seemed to meet single women there, not only --! Watching the trams before heading up to Gare du Nord, or Empire. How I miss the Pullman! Those lovely large rooms, especially the corner one that bends right round, or the one with the window in the deep archway. Lydia is a crazy girl & she wants me to be crazier than her. She has nothing to lose; I everything. 

Oh god I cannot wait till I can get back to the Calcutta on Wednesday! And then back to the Scotsman! Two places where you can stay for hours on your own & feel completely comfortable. Unlike the Lemon Tree, unfortunately, where I never feel comfortable. I cannot wait to get back to the cinema again, then on to Demi or Pamela.

I now know I am saving money so I can go to Berlin in May (31st March 2006 Serpent's Egg Day)

I now know I am saving money so I can go to Berlin in May. So I can drink and eat in the Berlin Plaza, so I can go back to the Schloss Charlottenburg, the Gemaldegalerie and the Alte, so I can go back to the Oscar Wilde Pub, so I can go back to Ciro, the Berlin Erotic Centre, Sarah Young, Mon Cheri, Golden Gate and Monte Carlo. So I can see Caravaggio's Cupid, Viktor Muller's Salome, Franz von Stuck's Tilla Durieux, Nefertiti. 

The first ice cream van of summer starts playing The Third Man tune, making me long for Vienna, for Viennese Eroticism, for Berg, Schoenberg & Webern, for the Butterfly House, the Dorint, the white-shirted Dorint girls, for Manhattan & Pour Platin, for the Belvedere and the KHM. Of course I am going to push my credit card debt up to £6,400. Better to owe money & have a good time, than owe nothing and never have experience. The fees are high but it is a great teacher. Where do all the men go in Berlin? Where do all the men go in Vienna? I do not think I will ever solve these mysteries. JUST ONE MORE MONTH TO GET THROUGH, THEN MAY IS HERE & I CAN TRAVEL AGAIN! TO TREAT MYSELF, & ENCOURAGE MYSELF TO STAY ON THE PROHIBITION STRAIGHT & NARROW IN LONDON, I WILL BOOK THE BERLIN PLAZA TONIGHT, & BOOK THE FLIGHT TONIGHT, & BOOK THE OPERA TICKET TONIGHT. 

I am feeling Berlin particularly keenly today, as it's two years today that I met the incredible Riccarda. 

I now look forward to going to work, because I am saving money while I am there, and every pound I am earning is going towards my Berlin trip. 

When was the last time I had a good f--k? Not those drunken cuddles I have with Pamela & Renata. The last time I came was with Maya in Monte Carlo in October which was nice. Before that was Anna, Berta & Eva in Frankfurt which were cheap but perfunctory. The lovely Natasha in Brussels. Before that there were the Silvia's and Sara's, then Vanessa in Monte Carlo in June, back to Diana in Berlin in March. Before that was just Maria in Vienna. Diana was the last great sexual experience I had and I never even put my c--k in her! That is a long time waiting. I imagine this time in Berlin I will have a really good dirty sexual experience again. That is what I am saving for. I think I will meet a Yulia, an Iga or a Riccarda again. Maybe an Erika, an Olga or an Alla. Oh God--just six weeks to get through!

THOSE INCREDIBLE FELICIEN ROPS PICTURES I WAS LOOKING AT THIS MORNING SO MUCH MAKE ME WANT TO GO BACK TO BRUSSELS AGAIN (13th Feb 2006)

THOSE INCREDIBLE FELICIEN ROPS PICTURES I WAS LOOKING AT THIS MORNING SO MUCH MAKE ME WANT TO GO BACK TO BRUSSELS AGAIN. IT HAS BECOME AN INCREDIBLY EROTIC PLACE AGAIN—THE TOWN OF ROPS, OF WIERTZ, OF CLARISSE. JUST TWO MORE NIGHTS TO GET THROUGH THEN I CAN GET BACK TO THE CALCUTTA & THE FLYING SCOTSMAN, AND OSCARS & THE ABCAT—I AM ADDICTED. I AM AN OPIUM ADDICT. HERE IN LONDON, IN KING'S CROSS AND WHITECHAPEL; UNDER THE CHANNEL ON EUROSTAR TO BRUSSELS; IN BERLIN, AND IN VIENNA. MY THEME: “THE VISCERAL PLEASURE IN DETACHMENT OF AN AUTISTIC PERSON”. THOSE INCREDIBLE FELICIEN ROPS AND WIERTZ PICTURES MAKE ME WANT TO GO BACK TO BRUSSELS (AND NAMUR, AND THE EMPIRE AND THE GARE DU NORD). THOSE INCREDIBLE GEORGE GROSZ & OTTO DIX PICTURES, AND TILLA DURIEUX AS CIRCE AND VIKTOR MULLER’S SALOME HOLDING JOKANAAN’S HEAD MAKE ME WANT TO GO BACK TO BERLIN (AND MON CHERI & GOLDEN GATE & MONTE CARLO & CIRO). THOSE INCREDIBLE HANS MAKART PICTURES MAKE ME WANT TO GO BACK TO VIENNA (AND THE GURTEL). 

MY OPIUM ADDICTION HAS ALREADY CAUSED ME TO RUN UP A £5,060 DEBT ON MY CREDIT CARDS. “GET TO GRIPS WITH THE IDEA THAT IT IS EATING AWAY AT YOUR MONEY, YOUR LOVE AND YOUR LIFE.” NOW I WANT TO PLUNGE BACK TO BERLIN, & VIENNA, & BRUSSELS. DIVING DEEPER INTO DARKNESS! I AM COMPLETELY UNRESPONSIVE TO A WOMAN’S PROMPTINGS, LIKE AMANDA IN SUNSET, OR --- IN THE SCOTSMAN, OR THE BLONDE ON CHARING CROSS TUBE PLATFORM. I AM NARCISSUS, I AM DORIAN GRAY. I SEEM TO HAVE FORGOTTEN THE PASSION, AND LOST THE DESIRE. THE PRIVATE LIFE OF SHERLOCK HOLMES IS “REALLY A CHARACTER STUDY OF A MAN FOR WHOM LOVE SEEMS AN IMPOSSIBILITY, AND SO HAS THROWN HIMSELF INTO HIS WORK IN AN EFFORT TO ESCAPE HIS SAD PREDICAMENT.” 

SOLIPSISM: “YOUR WANTS & WISHES ARE ALL THAT COUNT, AND YOU MUSTN’T EVEN THINK OF GIVING WAY OR GIVING IN.” THE GREATEST THING THAT HAS HAPPENED THIS YEAR WAS SEEING M-- AGAIN. THERE HAVE BEEN NO REAL GREAT EVENTS THIS YEAR, INSTEAD JUST THE LOW LEVEL PLEASURE OF BEING IN MY OWN HOUSE, AND DRINKING IN THE CALCUTTA, AND MAKING SLOW PROGRESS ON AUTISMUS, AND LOTTA, AND THE COLD ICY AIR OF THE MOUNTAINS. THIS IS WHAT I AM PAYING £541 A MONTH FOR. IT IS AN INVESTMENT TO GIVE BIRTH TO MY FUTURE PERSON. I WILL WORK HARD TO GET ME THROUGH TO BERLIN IN MAY.

The Vienna visit feels like such a waste when I have nothing particularly to go for except that it will be Christmas (13th Sept 2006)

The Vienna visit feels like such a waste when I have nothing particularly to go for except that it will be Christmas. At least in Berlin I have got La Traviata and Carmina Burana to see in January, that is the hook I can hang the visit on, and in April I have got Katarina Dalayman’s Salome. But Vienna seems pointless and totally obscenely extravagant when I am already so much in debt and probably by then paying such huge interest on it. What other chute moments have I had? The American girl on the Eurostar to Brussels. That ruined my entire four day stay before I got there. I could not get over it. A crippling indecision what to say and inability to act meant I let her just walk away from me and killed myself. The pink top blonde on the plane to Munich. The crippling fear is that once I start talking to them they will realise I am not the man they thought I was from looking at my pretty eyes and sweetness. Once I try to get involved with a girl, my total inablilities in that area become exposed, as they did with Lotta and Chess Goddess, when normally I keep them so well covered up by my silence and my reticence, which attracts them and lures them in. Florence hushed me with a gesture when I arrived, that is her revenge for me turning away from her when she tried to say “It is nice to see you again” last time. And the last time she collected she didn’t just hold out her jug, she plumped both elbows on the bar and leaned there next to me as if this was an invitation for me to say something but again I just put the pound in without a word and she quickly turned and left. It is like it took her so many months to lure me out of my shell, and now I am never going to let her lure me out again. I have crept back under my stone and I am going to stay there. I had my chute moment with Chess Goddess too, that is why I left a trail of blood along the Exhibition Road. And of course with Pooky, that led to the psychological destruction during my trip to Oslo. When you are going through a psychological meltdown people seem to sense it and rush in to give you a kick while you are down. It is like a joyous, gleeful feeding frenzy. Indeed people are like wolves to me. As they were to Kaspar, to John Merrick, to Van Gogh, to Oscar Wilde after his imprisonment. All these beautiful, sensitive, gentle people were absolutely ripped to shreds by gleeful, vicious society.

I feel an almost physical revulsion at the thought of going back to Cotton Club and Demi and Pamela. But what else is there, so I will eventually. When I know the pleasures I have felt in those places felt so intense. I feel a physical revulsion for going back to those nighttime Vienna places and the nighttime Berlin places. I feel a physical revulsion for spending any money when I am in this saving mode. That is good. I have become allergic to spending money when before I seemed addicted to it. I feel an almost physical revulsion for women. I am a strange man. How can Florence or anyone have a relationship with a strange man like me. I am like Ralph Fiennes's Spider. I only learnt how to be alone when I was a baby, and I always will be. I love places where I can be alone surrounded by loud pounding music and naked girls, that is why I love the dream world of the Bell and the Cotton Club so much. It is the ultimate detachment. The ultimate transcendency. The ultimate lens. The ultimate gateway to the state of bliss that is the Kingdom of Death. Ultimate nothingness. Florence’s finger to the lips in a hushing gesture seems a very big moment. That nervousness so intense I cannot breathe as the train nears Nuremberg & as I got off and walk along the corridor to the entrance hall, and the nervousness I felt so intense I could not breathe as I went down the steps at the Astral, I now feel when I walk to the Scotsman from the north from the 91 stop. I feel it too when I enter Sunset Cinema, hoping to find a woman being monickered, and also when I go up the models’ steps. That is the high. That is the drug.

I love the scientific analysis of my life (10th Sept 2006)

I love the scientific analysis of my life, like Nietzsche. In Nietzschean numbered paragraphs. Like the Rhine Zeitung newspaper articles of Karl Marx. Like the Die Fackel magazine articles of Karl Kraus. Apocalyptic, messianic, satirical. All of them supposed to have some Jewish blood in them, as I have Irish blood in me. This is not possible when I have drink in my head all the time. It is also true that some of the high moments of my life have come in the Astral Cinema and the Boulevard Cinema and the Sunset Cinema. Remember that big mullet-haired guy who pulled his shorts down all the way to his ankles & sat there with a tube of soap or vaseline, regularly applying it to his cock in the Astral. Remember Red Riding Hood night when I sat for six hours in the front row of Soho Cinema till I was raw & practically passing out from the smoky, fuggy, sticky, lubricious atmosphere and when I finally left I crossed deserted Leicester Square in the lashing rain. Remember black dress Kay in the front row of Sunset sitting completely naked as black man put his huge dick in her mouth, businessman with trousers round ankles put condom on & fucked her, before “monica'ring” her over her breasts, all the time while she stroked my cock with her hand. Remember red bra girl in the Sunset. Not to mention the highs I have reached in Berlin Erotic Centre, or Sarah Young, or Atlantic City or Sexyland kabins, or ML Revue cabins, or the Brussels Gare du Nord cabins. Melani said she wanted to go with me to the opera & I stayed away from her. Pamela hinted she would like to go to the seaside with me & I stayed away from her. Florence said she wanted to go out with me & on that Madonna Hung Up and Beyonce Check On It night, when —– thanked me for the postcard, I let her go. I do not want to go out with girls. Going out with Chess Goddess and Lotta were horrible stressful experiences and like Jason Bourne I was checking sightlines and looking for exits the whole time. The happy, magical nights I have had in the crowded bearpits of Sunset Strip, Gold Dress Gold Shoes girl on The Beast December night, Jolanda Red Right Hand, or Flying Scotsman Sex on the Beach, Sylvia Walpurgis Night, Tais Lola, Janet Material Girl, or Atlantic City. And they are only any good when they are crowded bearpits. Remember how crowded the Atlantic City cinema used to get when the girl came on to strip just once an hour? They are only good when the men are screaming at the girl on stage as like beasts in the menagerie. Yes, it will be too soon to go back to Vienna but the thrill of being in Vienna in December…? Yes, I do not want to go back to the drunken, tiring Midnight Bell but it is very special to see Florence dancing to Shakira or Gnarls Barkley…? Afterwards I could come back to Charing Cross on the 91 and then get a 176 up to Tottenham Court Road tube to walk down to Sunset Cinema. I will start to allow myself every Saturday off as my Hogarthian night. My Rake’s Progress night. My Frank Wedekind night.

La Traviata, the opera of a consumptive whore, is coming to mean something special to me, since seeing Stefania Bonfadelli at the Deutsche Oper, and Christine Schafer at the Staatsoper. It does remind me so much of Riccarda, Diana, Iga, but also of Lela, Ana Maria, Olga, all of whom I have seen deteriorate before my eyes. It is back at ENO this month. There is also Anna Caterina Antonacci and Marina Domashenko as Carmen at Covent Garden.

I have to go out today to get my bus pass, so I will get the bus to Charing Cross & one in the Calcutta & then see what happens from there. I think it is better to go to Vienna in December and Berlin in April for Katerina Dalayman’s Salome. Vienna is a little bit more exotic & still unexplored compared to Berlin. I think if I stayed home in December & then got to Berlin in January I would feel bored there & feeling I had missed something special. Munich was poor in January because I travelled so hard up. Well, by the time of Vienna in December I will still be even more hard up! Go and spend so much money that Berlin in the New Year is out of the question and I can instead concentrate on saving up for April. Walpurgis Night arrival in Berlin. I will have a strictly clinical visit to the Bell tonight, if at all. You have to go out on a Saturday night. Otherwise there is no point being alive.

On the train into London last night in the pitch dark, I felt so much like I was on that train to Nuremberg. It crept and creaked along & I felt with every minute that passes I am getting nearer to Nuremberg and I remember that absolutely mind-blowing nervousness I used to feel on those three visits. By the time I got off & was walking along the station corridor from the platform I could hardly breathe. I was gasping and hyperventilating and shaking, knowing I would soon be in the Pils Bar and the Caribic. Also I felt like I was on the train into Vienna.

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.