Chicago
After looking at sixteen apartments, some so small I could heat them with a candle and a few that were roommate situations, I came back to 820 West Cuyler. George, the super, told me I can take up the linoleum if I want and remove the flimsy wall that divides the main room in half. The closet’s big, and he will replaster the ceiling.
While cleaning it, I found lots of matches, a cap, and a rattrap. The last tenants left behind a sofa I’ll be getting rid of and a framed picture of Jesus spreading his arms as wide as they will go. There are roach eggs everywhere, and the place stinks of pesticide.
January 17, 1984
Chicago
Because I’m basically starting from scratch, I have to take a number of core classes. These are 2-D (basic drawing), 3-D (basic sculpture), and 4-D, which can be video or performance or whatever the teacher, whose name is Ken Shorr, wants. Our first assignment from him is to collect overheard sentences and shape them into a dialogue. Then we’re to find a scrap of something measuring four by five feet and slap a word or image on it. This is right up my alley, and I’ve already started on it. My scrap will be some of the linoleum I’ve ripped off my living-room floor.
Ken said that school is one of the few places—perhaps the only place—where we’ll find people who are interested in what we have to say. He’s sort of a pessimist that way. Before class, I looked him up and learned he was in the Whitney Biennial. I wanted to ask what he’d done to get there, but I had already talked too much in 2-D and 3-D and didn’t want to exhaust everybody.
January 22, 1984
Chicago
I pulled up all the linoleum, got rid of the extra wall in the living room, and have started painting the kitchen. Last night, after finishing the cabinets, I went to the little market around the corner for beer and found $45 on the floor in front of the checkout counter. I thought I’d dropped it, and by the time I discovered it wasn’t mine, I was back home. First thing today I went out and blew it. I bought:
1. two pounds of goat meat
2. more beer
3. Fires by Raymond Carver
4. the New York Review of Books
5. hardware
6. groceries
7. a magazine called Straight to Hell in which gay men recount true sexual experiences, many of them outdoors and in cars or under bridges
February 13, 1984
Chicago
I sanded the living-room floor and put the first coat of polyurethane on it before leaving for school this morning. At five I returned to find a group of kids playing in the hall. When I unlocked my door they rushed in behind me and ran all over the place. None of them speak English, so I had to scold them in Spanish, which made them laugh.
I can’t believe how good my apartment looks now. I’ve been sleeping in the big closet and will probably continue to do so. That way I can keep the living room completely empty, not a thing in it.
February 20, 1984
Chicago
There’s a radio show I’ve started listening to that’s hosted by a woman named Phyllis Levy. People phone in and discuss their sexual experiences—it’s fantastic. Last night Debbie called saying that she and her boyfriend spent the weekend experimenting with a vibrator. She came four times—a first. “It was wild!” she said.
Phyllis seemed genuinely happy for both Debbie and her boyfriend. Then Jill called to discuss a fantasy situation, and Frank reminisced about a recent three-way with his ex-girlfriend and the guy she’s now seeing. Next came Sue. Her parents are divorced, and during a visit with her dad last week, he came to her bed in the middle of the night and the two of them made love. That was the term she used, made love.
Phyllis explained that this is what we call an “incest situation.” She was clearly disturbed and suggested that Sue might want to date men who were not related to her. Then Laurie called to say she’d just done the dinner dishes dressed in a negligee. She stopped to answer the phone and returned to find her husband, completely naked, scrubbing the bottoms of the pans. It was, she said, “a real turn-on.”
Phyllis was happy for her and spoke briefly about the element of surprise. The program airs on Sunday nights and reminds me every week that I’m not in North Carolina anymore.
February 27, 1984
Chicago
Again last night I listened to Let’s Get Personal on Q101. The first hour is hosted by a woman who’s interested in general problems and miserabilia. She has numbers for various suicide-prevention hotlines and places where people can report child abuse, etc. The next hour, and my favorite, is hosted by Phyllis Levy, who started off by speaking to a man who was born in India. He said that small insects were thriving in his girlfriend’s pubic forest—that’s how he described it. He was worried that she’d been unfaithful and that these creatures were a sign of that.
Irene called, upset that her brother had started wearing women’s clothing. Phyllis calmly explained that this is what we call cross-dressing. It doesn’t mean Irene’s brother is gay, she said. Plenty of cross-dressers marry and have children. “Is that what’s bothering you?” she asked.
Irene said no, the trouble is that her brother is taking all her and her mother’s clothes and that they haven’t got a single bra or pair of panties left.
The solution, Phyllis said, was to put a lock on her bedroom door and offer to take her brother out shopping.
When Brian, the premature ejaculator, phoned in, Phyllis suggested he try an exercise called “the quiet vagina.” Another solution was to masturbate before sex so as to calm his penis down a little. She really has all the answers, Phyllis does.
March 16, 1984
Chicago
There’s a big argument going on next door in Spanish. I can make out two words: whore and shoe. Two men are yelling at the woman. Someone has been slapped. On the ground in front of the building are a number of broken things that seem to have been thrown out the window. Clothes and hangers, a cabbage, mayonnaise.
March 24, 1984
Chicago
Last night I saw a woman drag a teenage boy out of the Sheridan “L” Lounge. She was maybe in her forties and kept slapping the kid across the face. “How many times do I got to tell you to stay out of there?” she asked. “It’s trouble.” Every so often she’d pause from smacking him and sign something with her hands. He responded with a noise rather than words. That’s when I realized he was deaf.
When the slapping stopped, she grabbed the kid’s ear and twisted it. Like a dog being beaten by his master, he did not fight back but just took it. A couple of people watching heckled the woman. “Leave him alone!” they shouted.
She shouted back that they should mind their own business. She called them trash, and in response they laughed at her.
March 26, 1984