Lately I've been unusually motivated to write, all the more unusual because I've not been motivated for anything else. This blog being a sort of diary, and me reading Rorem's diary, together make me wish I could write as engagingly as Rorem. I'd allow him his charmed and famous life, brimming as it is with the artistic elite of the times, if only I could write as well.

I spent the early afternoon sitting out at a table at Cibon reading the Rorem diaries. Lately I've been spending more time there, especially during the day. I've noticed that nearly every day in the afternoon I see the same guy take a table. He's always dressed for work, a dress shirt, tie, nice pants, brown shoes, and a book bag hung over his shoulder. He might be attractive except that he has a disconcerting skunk-like white streak in his hair at the center of his forehead, this on a guy in his twenties. I like him, though, simply from what I observe. (I sense he's entirely straight, to eliminate that dimension straightway...) He'll sit down, order a coffee or some other drink, and read the paper, or occasionally play chess or just talk with a friend. Today I saw him arrive with a bakery bag. From the bag he pulled out a wonderful little loaf of bread and a carton of soup and then began dipping the bread into the soup as he read the NY Times. I left to do some things at 4 PM. Hours later, at about 7:30, I happened to pass by Cibon and looked at the crowd sitting outside. He was still there, leaning against the wall at a corner table, reading! Freshly baked goods and soup, coffee at a café, idle chat with friends, and hours of reading alone in between... what could be finer?

Lately I've had the unsupportable urge to paint—canvases and oils. I have no talent, and seldom even care much about the visual arts. It's a passing fancy, one I won’t indulge. But I would like to work on something.

Rorem is constantly complaining about writing or text being too "arch" or having too much "arch." I have no idea what he means.

Rorem: "To be continually obsessed with sex, except during the act, when the mind wanders." So true, at least with the more casual sex I've had with men. For days I'm focused upon it, until I'm in the midst of it. Then it's an internal dialog with myself substituting for the necessary familiarity that makes for good sex.

In the later diaries Rorem repeatedly riles against the hysteria surrounding child molestation, recalling fondly that at the age of 14 he was *arranging* to be molested. I have mixed feelings about it.

Days later...

I must write more things about Rorem’s diaries, even though I think no one who might read this is interested in Rorem or his diaries. Nevertheless, I am, so ...

I'm enjoying them more than I have any book I've read in quite a while. And I think I was too hasty to complain of his dour tone in the last diary. It IS dour, but he retains a sense of humor, and I so enjoy reading his opinions and unrelated thoughts. I think I love this Rorem, the older Rorem.

A fan in 1994 sent him a picture of a moment in Madonna’s book "Truth or Dare" in which Madonna is flipping through his Rorem’s Paris Diary. To this he says, "It's downhill all the way for me now." I think he was not entirely joking here, which I love. He loves his notoriety, his fame, accepted gladly from all quarters.

Rorem occasionally remarks about great persons or art that he doesn't much care for. Beethoven, for example. On Frank Lloyd Wright: "His architecture has always struck me as frigid, un-homey, pretentious, simple, dangerously jagged." Amen to this. Wright's a sacred cow I could do without. More than the sacred cows, though, I enjoy his so very regular jabs and strikes against Elliot Carter. I'm utterly sympathetic, of course. He regularly strikes out at Boulez too, but without the good-natured eye-rolling that he gives Carter. He respects Boulez too much for that; with Carter the sarcasm is thick, and funny. He chides a NY Times columnist for regularly working Carter's name into every column, as if Carter were the standard for all things. Rorem suggests that the columnist should rename his column "On Elliot Carter and Other Matters." Lol I love that sort of jealously.

In 1991 he wrote that he had been 8 years without sex with another person, though he masturbated regularly as per his doctor's instructions (no doubt to help his ailing prostate—it's best to keep the prostate empty of seminal fluid). His enduring fantasy whilst masturbating? "A person kneels (is it me? Yet I'm also always observing) before the crotch of a very male unshaven but otherwise shadowy form wearing what the French call salopettes. Pungent aroma, sweat, smegma, locker room. One-sided blow job.... As a youth, I'd be getting fucked, and am forever a 'bottom.' But the image blurs with the years into something impersonal yet awfully erotic..." I have NO fantasy upon which to draw. I have no fantasy life at all, none. But for the abundance of porn on the web (and on my hard drive... for my hard-on), where would my masturbation practices be? What if I became blind? How to lust when one is blind?

Rorem didn't see "Planet of the Apes" until 1989. Having finally seen it, he says, aptly, that it is "unwatchable with Heston's tomcat smirk robbed from Gable, and the sophomoric script." Is it perhaps Heston that is unwatchable?

At least three times Rorem mentions the type of gay male that repels him. It's not the "madly effeminate nor the comically macho;" It's the "tight-lipped, smart, bossy, humorless, teacherly brand—'One of those mean ones,' as Ben Weber used to say." God, yes. I've just begun the fourth volume of Proust—"Sodom and Gomorrah." It begins with the narrator's realization that a mean old man is gay. He's not quite the sort that Rorem describes, but what can be meaner than a mean gay? Rorem claims the same breed can be found also among fringe heterosexuals such as married parsons, congressmen, and even William Buckley.

Here's one for Ann. On a visit to Virgil Thomson, Rorem presented Thomson with a cucumber soap, to which Thomson responded, "Just imagine, someone recently gave me some tangerine soap, which I never use." It was Rorem who had given him the tangerine soap. Haha I think I'd enjoy both soaps.

Rorem is not a shopper, apparently. "The horror of buying clothes.... After procrastinating for a year I'll enter the store, buy anything expensive, then leave in three minutes."

For all the gay men who've wasted countless hours looking for sex (and who among us does not do that ... repeatedly?): "No outsider knows the unthinkably time-consuming rigors of cruising." Yes, rigors!

Tonight I watched a special 1.5 hour show on the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra playing the Tchaikovsky Fourth Symphony, Michael Tilson Thomas (aka MTT) conducting (and hosting). MTT is in his mid 50s by now, no longer the young Wunder Kind that he once was. He's even reached the level of one of America's great conductors, and to be sure, he's at his peak, and he gets a great sound from the orchestra. But he seems small and imitative compared to the greats of the past. To me he suggests the smallness of the era. Or am I just revering previous generations and inflating their stature at the expense of today's?

Should I make my A&F pants into shorts?

Every morning I wake up and can scarcely get out of bed. Only breakfast motivates me. After a brief nap, I cast about for a plan for the day. I form one but don't follow it. I reach a low by late morning, depressed, unhappy, but mostly devoid of care. I want nothing to obligate me. I want no chores, no duties, no job. I don't even want communication with people. I want to be left alone. I want to read and nap all day. One might think I'm depressed because I'm unemployed, and yes, that must be it. But my worst fear is that a job will come along and interrupt my pleasant summer day. (Mostly I fear a dull job, a more-of-the-same-sort-of-crap job.) By mid-afternoon I'm full of motivation, mostly for creative things. Evenings are fine. My days already feel full, no room for a job.

Authors to read: Jean Genet, Jean Cocteau, Andre Gide, the novels of Sartre, check out Paul Goodman.

Music to examine or re-examine: The Rake's Progress, the Bartok string quartets, the music of Bill Flanagan, Marc Blitzstein, and Paul Bowles. More Milhaud and Les Six.

Rorem cites "profound embarrassment (guilt) at the profound enjoyment of sugar, Ravel, and of being 'bottom man.'" He alludes at other places to being a pushy bottom—I insist you rape me now. Yet if there’s a dominant complaint about his health throughout his diaries, it's his hemorrhoids. Even throughout his early diaries (late 20s and his 30s) he's constantly complaining about piles. In the later diaries they get mentioned, but are overshadowed by his flaming urethra, herpes, eye troubles, etc. How does a bottom negotiate sex with hemorrhoids?

Rorem is unrepentant about speaking with a Leonard Bernstein biographer about Bernstein’s sex life. He reports that he and Bernstein, in 1943, had sex; Bernstein was 24 and Rorem 19. "We did what young people do," he said, and "Had I been a girl would anyone think twice?" Apparently David Diamond also spoke of Bernstein's sex life to the same biographer; both were chastised by friends.

A preponderance of America's great composers are or were gay: Aaron Copland, Leonard Bernstein, David Diamond, Ned Rorem, Virgil Thomson, Samuel Barber, Gian Carlo Menotti, John Cage, Lou Harrison, David Del Tredici, John Corigliano, Henry Cowell, Harry Partch, Marc Blitzstein. None of the major minimalist composers, though.

Gay volleyball tonight—the first of the season. It was fun, though a bit swampy.

I'm now reading the later diaries of Rorem, 1986-1999. He's in his sixties and seventies. His writing is more prosaic. There's more recollection and less reflection. He's become more stridently political, which I don't like—I liked the Rorem who proclaimed how he cared not at all for politics. He's also lost his endearing self-doubt. There's much discussion of physical ailments. In short, he's become a cranky old man. In some ways he reminds me of Diamond in some of the taped interviews I have of him. But I'm enjoying this volume even more than the others. I actually enjoy reading about the details of his life, the daily events AND the ailments. As reading, it's quite interesting. But as for Rorem the person, the older man, he's less likeable (though perhaps I've caught him at a bad time—the mid-80s). His life seems far more settled. Where is the vulnerability, the admiration of others?

Well, I read the diaries out of order, going from the Paris and New York Diaries directly to the later diaries. Where once he wrote of encounters with Les Six (lunches with Poulenc and Milhaud), now he writes of television shows, Reagan policies, and pets. The AIDS epidemic has politicized him, I think, which one can hardly find fault with.

It's funny to look back on the time period from a perspective just slightly removed in time. I don’t like the tone of the 80s, on either side of the political spectrum. AIDS politicized the gay population, for better and for worse. In some way it was the impetus which has advanced gays socially, even politically. But it also became the face of gay culture. I don't mean to suggest that we should marginalize the still grave AIDS epidemic, or that we should be glad that the disease has spread to other populations, but I'm glad it is no longer synonymous with gay culture.

More striking than anything, really, when comparing the early diaries and the later diaries is just how crass modern life seems to have become, striking even in the life of a great artist like Rorem. Television intrudes, and pop culture. Perhaps it's more a factor of what was NOT included in the earlier diaries rather than what is in the later ones.

Before I leave the early diaries behind, a few last notes. Rorem writes a little paragraph about some drag queens, remarking that the dream of one of them is to be fucked by the unknown soldier. Funny.

He notes in June of 1959 that he missed part of the rehearsal with Leonard Bernstein and the New York Philharmonic of the world premier of his Third Symphony because he had an interview for his unemployment insurance renewal. He speaks fondly of his weekly check of $45.

He writes a couple of engaging pages on the bathhouse experience. I must come back to this sometime. It's rich stuff.

About diary writing: "Anecdotes are a diary's heart's blood. Yet their annotation requires more skill and patience than philosophic musings." He’s so right.

On sexual intercourse: "Think of it, obsessing the heart, dominating logic, teasing nights, wasting whole days! Isn't it really—well—rather silly, or at least senseless: two clumsy positions rubbing like washboards with ugly grunts and an ultimate thump that rhymes with nothing, except maybe 'Go away'—when two minutes earlier, for some wild reason, it was almost 'I love you'? For that we walk the streets fifty-two weeks a year!"

A few nights ago I met a young guy for coffee, having chatted with him earlier online. He approached me online, not I him, so I thought I was in the driver's seat. I guess I was in some respects, but not entirely. We chatted for a little while about our daily pursuits, the sort of breezy chatter that one forgets immediately, as I have by now, and then he suggested we meet later for coffee. As we were exchanging parting words he asked for my cell phone number because, as he proceeded to explain, when he arrives at the coffee shop, he will park the car and then phone me as to my location in the shop. He didn't seem to like the uncertainty of looking for a stranger. I gave him my number—he was cute enough for that. Then he continued with the following: "When we meet don't say 'Nice to meet you,' 'You look different than your pic,' or 'What was your sc? [screen name, for the uninitiated]'" He didn't want anyone to get the impression that we had met online, which of course we had. Funny that he was concerned about this. Aren't we all, especially the young, as he was (oh, soooo young), comfortably settled into the online world? Why the bashfulness? I replied with something like, "So many rules. I'm stymied by all these rules." I mentioned something about the tests he was putting me through. He said that I had passed them comfortably, though more were to follow. And then something was said about other examinations he’d like to give me. I said there’d be opportunity for those later. Well, we chatted over coffee (or tea for me, and a creamy cold coffee drink for him), and we sat and sat until I (yes, I!) got tired of sitting and suggested we leave. We walked to our cars, having parked on the same side street. I walked him to his, and then, standing by his car, we began the awkward talk that covers the nervousness of two minds wondering whether something is going to happen next. This talk continued endlessly. Ultimately I moved closer to him and kissed him. He kissed me back, and we kissed for a moment or two. We then moved back into more nervous, silly talk. I asked him home, and he coyly said it was not a good idea on a first meeting. He's right, of course. More chatter. I kissed him again, and we kissed a while longer until I told him to go home and do the work that he had earlier mentioned awaited him. It was nice. He was cute. And I liked kissing him on the street. Of course it was dark, but we turned at least a few heads. The only reason I mention it now, for it wasn't my intention to write about it tonight, here at the very same coffee shop... the reason is that as I entered the shop just 45 minutes ago, there he was sitting outside with some other guy. We exchanged some words, and I left him to his friend. I'm not sure if I feel guilty for not having called him, or jealous that he's with his friend. It's silly either way. He was just a fun encounter, perhaps one I'll renew sometime. Enough about that.

I intended to write about my unemployment situation. Yes, I'm unemployed. It's so dull to write about such things. In fact, on second thought, I won't. I’m bored with it before I begin. More Rorem. In 1958 he wrote this: "Often composers compose like what they think they are not. Look at the uncomplicatedly sensitive but basically joyous work of David Diamond during his flagrantly disordered war years, and now that he’s stabilized in a Florentine villa his music's grown knotty, complex, and sad." He's right about the change in Diamond's music from the 1940s to the 1950s, though I'm not sure it's for the reason Rorem cites. It may be nothing but the inevitable change of any good composer. You can't go on composing the same thing. Diamond himself explained that his music grew more chromatic because he felt he had said all that he could in the modal music of the 1940s.

Here’s Rorem on casual sex: "No sex.... I grow confounded by the intimacy of such acts where two bodies strive so tragically to be one, and the empty-stranger post-orgasm abyss. It happened last night: the frenzied pathetic joy of a child before his birthday cake, followed by the tears of abandonment when the last guest is gone. I'm ready for the calm assurance of a single person, the thatched hut, a cabbage batch." I recognize these things. I feel them myself, but the tears of abandonment aren't so bad. I think of Ann, and of our thatched hut. Is that wrong? There IS something to my friend's claim that bisexuals are selfish. Well, I AM selfish, but it seems to be working.

Rorem on getting older: "Yes, now I can see the years and how the past drags like a peacock's tail ever longer which yet erects a luminous fan blowing and hiding and sweeping the traces and helping what might come."

I've been bogged down all evening in Rorem's agonizingly long (40 pages!), self-indulgent woe-is-me letter to his lover, who, it seems, broke up with him unexpectedly and left him in considerable pain. But the moaning of the recently dumped, though inspiring sometimes poetic fulminations, quickly grows tiresome. Christ, Ned, pull it together and move on. Rorem's a first-rate writer, even a great writer, but in this case he could have used an editor.

I had a few things to write about tonight, but that was before I picked through much of the contents of my bedroom closet, which hasn't been touched in the nine years since I moved in. It's like opening Tutankhamen's tomb, breaking the seal that holds back a thousand years—well, in Tut's case, much more even than that. I haven't gone through some of this stuff in decades. I brought some of it from my mother’s attic, a few years ago, when by chance I was visiting her and happened to be in the attic where I stumbled upon familiar boxes. Before it was lost forever, I quickly grabbed some of it and put it into my car. But I never really went through it.

Well, first, I found many of my old undergraduate papers! Very exciting. I wrote some interesting things, I think—philosophy papers for Paul Guyer, who's become one of the world's top Kantian scholars (check out the section on Kant in the philosophy section of any good bookstore and you'll find his books), papers for Deidre Bair, who wrote biographies of Samuel Beckett, Anais Nin, and Simone de Beauvoir, and some decent papers on Shakespeare, Nietzsche, and others. Well, I won't really go back and read them, except for the comments. It's quite an impressive stack. Here's a sampling:

About my paper on King Lear, the professor wrote, "Interesting reading of the play's 'philosophy.' It reveals original thinking. At times your writing is 'unfocused' but your points are always [??? can't read her writing here] well." Yes, I was always unfocused in my writing because I was reasoning it out as I wrote. It's the only way I can think even now. In the same class, on a different paper on Coriolanus, the teaching assistant wrote this: "Although the points you make in this paper are very intelligent and perceptive, your writing continually obtrudes and gets in the way of your argument." In a paper on Wittgenstein the professor writes, "Very interesting piece of work. Your conclusion is highly suggestive. Understanding your argumentation is rather rough going." Hehe

In the course I took with Guyer on Kant's "Critique of Pure Reason," we were assigned to read Guyer's own book on the Kant classic— Guyer was in the final stages of writing the book, so we were reading a version before it was printed, which was cool. I read almost none of it, however. Very lazy as an undergrad. His comment on my paper is funny: "It is certainly bold to depart from the dogma I've been asserting [I didn't know his dogma because I hadn't read it nor listened in class! hahah], and I have no objection to that, but you don't provide textual evidence of the key to your argument??? [can’t read his writing].... You are clearly itching for originality, which is laudable, but also need to constrain your imagination more ??? by the text. Nevertheless, as the most ambition undergraduate paper: A-." This was a graduate-level course. The most interesting part about the comment is that in pencil, which he erased, though not completely, he gave me an A—"A ...as the most ambitious undergraduate paper." I guess upon second thought, it was less than an A.

Deidre Bair wrote of my paper on Forster's "Howard's End:" "A very thorough treatment of a difficult topic. You are right to acknowledge a certain audience and proceed with your analysis from that angle. You are also right to not try to cover up the polemical nature of the argument in the book. Nice job. A" Of my paper on Graham Greene's "The Heart of the Matter" she agrees with the teaching assistant's comment that it was an ambitious paper but looks like a first draft to get ideas sorted out. [No doubt it was.] She says, "Too bad you were not able to give it the extra attention this good paper deserves. B." She scratched out the minus from the B- that the teaching assistant had given me.

I also found a cigar box with treasures from my very early years. There are a few cool match box cars, ones that I especially valued. There is a bag of arrow heads, none too exciting. There is a bracelet with my name on it which I made in metal shop. It's tiny. There are also some cheap necklace chains, a few cassette tapes, lots of Planet of the Apes trading cards, and a few stacks of Pittsburgh Pirates baseball cards (notable among them are a Roberto Clemente card, Willie Stargell, a Bill Mazeroski, and a few others). Tucked away at the bottom of the box was a carefully folded piece of paper with some writing on it, not in my hand. I couldn't figure out whose handwriting it was until I read the contents. It was folded several times, and on the top was written "Mom, Read this I wanted to tell you this in a letter."

The contents read: "Dear mom, I wasn't going to tell you this but I think I should. Ok, when you're working on Tues. & Thurs Ed [our stepfather at the time] comes home at about 4:00. The reason why I'm always saying I don't want him around is because when nobody is around he feels me out. He gets in my pants and inside my shirt. And I say don't he says come here. Even when he's tickling me on your bed on Saturdays like we did sometimes when you leave the room he starts. I just wanted to tell you I didn't want it to be a secret to you. Love, Bub [my sister's nickname at the time] Please don't tell Ed I said this to you. Don't say anything to the boys so they will think Ed’s ??? [can't read her writing here] I thought the best time to tell you is when Ed's not around."

I remember the event vividly. My mother came home, read this, and became hysterical. I couldn't imagine what had happened. Somehow I finally got the letter and read it. The actual artifact of the letter became incidental in the ensuing chaos of the household. Everyone forgot about it. Something possessed me to keep it, though. I remember this now, though I’d forgotten about keeping it until finding it tonight. Yikes. It hits you like a bolt of lightning, still.

I've been cleaning out my apartment in anticipation of moving at the end of the month. In the sifting through of junk I've found a few interesting things which I'll share here in lieu of actually writing something. (I'm tired... and lazy.)

First, here are a few personal ads which I put in the local City paper years ago. I met many people through these.

Reticent, jeans-and-t-shirt SWM, 32, seeks mature SF, 25-35, post-punkster, neo-60’s flower child, Eurotrash, groovy professional, or just the slightly freaky. Must have a wickedly sharp mind and the energy to drag me places. Aimless drifters welcome. Into writing fiction a plus.

SWPM, 33, 5’6”, 140lbs, into fitness, dancing, biking, writing, music, email, cultural things, and new things ISO SF for aforesaid. Should be bright, open-minded, fun, headstrong, hopefully creative, maybe eccentric.

And here’s a little note I got from one of my authors when I was an editor and had decided to take a new job. It was a nice note, one which you rarely get during a career.

Dear Dan — It was with a heavy heart that I read your letter of 12/11/98 that you would be changing jobs. You have been the finest person and editor I've had in about 30 years of dealing with the publishers. You were always there when I needed your advice, judgment and common sense. You supported me in all my ideas except when there were good reasons not to, which you explained in detail. I sincerely hope that your job change is a promotion to the top as you are needed there! If I can support you in any way, I'd be thrilled to do so. I hate to lose you as a sounding board for my thoughts and hope we can continue to work together! I fee like I've lost a good friend and I will miss you! Best Regards.

That's all for tonight.