New York
Six people walked out of the show Friday night. They were all over the age of sixty, and noticing them in the lobby as they collected their tickets, I thought how nice it was to have such a wide range of ages in the audience. As they left, I heard one of them on the stairs, saying, “You’d have to be a moron.”
February 26, 1994
New York
I went to the corner to buy Helen some cigarettes and when I returned she sat me down to discuss the Winter Olympics. “Did you see it on the TV? That Tonya Harding? I never liked her. She’s a street fighter is what she is, a dirty snot. Nancy Kerrigan I like, but not that street fighter.”
Tonya Harding really is something else. I resisted the story until I saw a picture of her. With her fierce makeup, she looks like a child’s drawing of an angry babysitter. Whatever else, she’s succeeded in capturing my imagination. She doesn’t strike me as mean. Rather, she’s seems like the type to whom everything is unfair.
February 28, 1994
New York
Helen knocked this morning and asked me to mail some shit for her. Literally. “It’s a stool sample,” she said.
April 4, 1994
New York
On the radio today I heard a story about an American living in Singapore who was convicted of spraying graffiti on parked cars. As punishment, he’s been fined and sentenced to a caning. An official described the process: “A pad is placed over the kidney so as not to cause serious damage. We tell the men to aim for the buttocks.”
American diplomats are trying to appeal the punishment, but I think it’s reasonable enough. Spray-paint cars and the least they should be able to do is spank you.
April 19, 1994
New York
At the library I found Pimp: The Story of My Life by Iceberg Slim. It’s the kind of book you have to read from the beginning, otherwise you can’t understand the slang. One chapter is titled “To Gain a Stable,” and in it he teaches you how to turn out a whore by breaking her will. (He suggests beating her with a straightened-out coat hanger.)
April 22, 1994
New York
All Helen talks about is her pain. Every time I see her she goes on and on and I’m tired of it. Other people’s pain is uninteresting. My own, though, is spellbinding. I went to bed at midnight and didn’t fall asleep until seven a.m. My knee hurt so much I couldn’t do anything but moan. While awake I read an entire issue of the Source, which bills itself as “the Magazine of Hip-Hop Music, Culture, and Politics.”
My favorite bit was an interview with Warren G. “I was finished with almost the whole album, but I took everything back,” he said. “Now I can have DJ Pooh and QD3 and Bobcat and all of them see how it sounds compared to what I had. I ain’t with all that bullshit, you know the shit how motherfuckers be trying to punk motherfuckers and shit. I ain’t with that shit.”
May 5, 1994
New York
As part of the publicity I’m doing for the book (Barrel Fever), I was interviewed and photographed for Avenue magazine. The talking part I’m fine with, but I hate having my picture taken. First the photographer had me pose with Dennis (my cat) while wearing a cat mask. Then she had me pretend to hang from the antlers in the living room. Next I was told to close the louvered doors on my neck and then to hold my freeze-dried turkey head up to my nose. Just as she was running out of film, the photographer said, “Can we try something silly?”
May 10, 1994
New York
Walking down Broome Street I saw a couple massaging their Labrador retriever’s asshole. Then the man stuck his finger in and coaxed out a clot of shit. He wasn’t wearing gloves or anything. Dog people.
May 14, 1994
New York
I met with Dawn Erickson at a café tonight. Though we’ve written back and forth, we hadn’t seen each other since Kent State in 1976, and because she doesn’t smoke and has never had a drink or taken any drugs, she looks just the same. I learned that she still designs fabrics, that she travels a lot, mainly alone, and that her mother has cancer. Her father died fourteen years ago in a skydiving accident. She still doesn’t drink coffee, so she just had water.
Afterward I went to the Grand Union and was shopping for dinner when a young man touched my arm. “Hey, watch where you’re going. You almost hit my baby in the head with your basket.”
“I’m sorry.”
The guy had a shoulder-length mane of carefully styled hair and wore a pair of sweatpants with the back torn out. I thought I was seeing fur underwear until I realized it was his hairy ass showing. “You almost hit the baby,” he repeated.
I said, “Almost. But I didn’t, right?”
He was just looking for a fight. In fact, I’d been nowhere near the baby. I watched from behind as he got in line and then listened as he accused the cashier of overcharging him. The manager was called and I wondered how anyone could go out in public like that, with his ass hanging out. I should be OK with it, but it’s never the ass I want to see.
June 21, 1994
New York
They were boarding my flight to Indianapolis yesterday when a Russian man in a wheelchair rolled up, accompanied by his family. “Can’t he walk?” the gate attendant asked.
When she realized that none of them spoke English, she repeated herself, only louder. “Can’t he walk at all?”
As I passed the man, I noticed that his pant legs were empty, that he either was an amputee or had been born this way. “Well, could he walk if he tried?” the gate attendant, who was not nearly as observant as I am, asked.
July 1, 1994
New York
Today I cleaned for the Rs. They’re nice people but incredible slobs. Every week I find something new the son has decided to use as an ashtray. Today it was a paper cupcake jacket. I mean, really. What’s wrong with a saucer? Another thing they’re big on is dropped change. This afternoon I found pennies in one bathtub and dimes in another.
July 9, 1994
New York
It’s hot and icky here so Hugh and I went to the air-conditioned Museum of Television and Radio and watched TV all day. First came an hour-long tribute to women in comedy. During this we sat behind three elderly women, one of whom kept turning around and scolding me for resting my knees on the back of her chair. I did this once. That was it, I swear, yet she kept nagging me. A fly could have landed on this woman’s seat back and she would have felt it. The third time she turned around I told her to fuck off. I don’t think she heard me, but still I was ashamed for having said it.
July 11, 1994
New York