First a few corrections. David Diamond is only 88 by my calculations. And he lived for 15 years in Italy after the Second World War. Paris was before the war.

I've been listening to his 3rd Symphony lately, and his Kaddish and Psalm. They're not easy. I'm finally beginning to get them. I particularly like the Kaddish. I want all of his works, just as I want all of Ned Rorem's symphonic music. Lately I've been quite taken with early 20th Century American music.

Here's a little something I came across in my Proust reading this week that made me laugh: "When you come to live with a woman you will soon cease to see anything of what made you love her; though it is true that the two sundered elements can be reunited by jealously."

Of all that is interesting about Ned Rorem's diary, perhaps the most surprising thing is how much anonymous sex he had in the early 60s, cruising in parks, etc. There seems to have been more sex happening then for gay men, or at least this gay man, than there is today. In 1962 (when he was 38 years old) he calculated that he had 205 orgasms during the year, 85 of them with people he knew. Of the balance (120), one fourth (30) was masturbation, and the rest (90!!!) was anonymous. Good lord. Clearly I'm undersexed (by that standard, at least). It's hard to believe he masturbated only 30 times during a year, but I guess if you were to have two new sex partners every week, one's appetite for masturbation would be pretty tepid.

I'm tired.