Volume 10, mostly tiny script, often difficult to decipher. This is the first volume to have an actual date inscribed (Sunday Jan. 15), though the practice is not yet the norm. Many of the entries are introduced, though, by the day of the week, which at least provides a sense of progression.
I am surprised to see how much opportunity – missed opportunity, in fact – was finally appearing in my social life, if I had only known how to “close the deal.” I was meeting young women, finding some fascination and crossing paths repeatedly but failing to consummate the action. We were even going to movies (on campus, I’m guessing) or to casual meals but never really “dating.” I just couldn’t get serious, not with Nicki weighing so heavily on my soul. Many of these I have no recollection of now (among them, Karen, “with the big breasts and small nipple,” as I recorded, who I kept running into; or Janet – and who was the nymphomaniac living in the apartment behind Polly and Molly? The same one who was getting into sadomasochism? Or who, for that matter, replaced Esperanza as the third roomie?). Judith kept returning to the scene, at one point hoping to move in with me, or even my [now] housemate Marj [after Len moved off with Esperanza] – I’m left wondering why I didn’t just settle for convenience there, as well as pleasure. Polly was more involved than I’d thought, while Molly was just plain scared of sex (like Kara, but much funnier and more insightful) but also a key figure.
I must confess how often the descriptions of the new women I met mentioned their breast size (usually small), relative height, and eye color. A real pig, then, or simply desperate. In a fuller view, I was unintentionally comparing them to my two previous loves, Fay and then Nikki – first real girlfriend, as I came to consider the former, and my first lover, or my college lover, for the latter. To some extent, I was looking for an accessory, to give me value I deeply sensed I was lacking. If I could only have seen myself as something other than a tall, skinny, crooked-toothed impoverished intellectual, my engagements would have been different. Maybe that self-perception is what generated the funky vibes D-Man and Thor picked up on.
These pages reek of deep loneliness and depression. I clearly wasn’t out for fun but something utterly serious.
For all of its dross, this volume (and others from this period) had flashes that might be revised into a Brautigan set of poems – an homage to Brautigan, possibly. The recent publication (2025) of my Antique Menu and Aquarian Leap poetry sets in this light are a revelation; many of the lines and stanzas originate here. .
Other pages became the Susquehanna chapbook or bits of Hitchhikers, Daffodil Uprising, and High Jinks.
The stabs at poetry arise largely in my rejection of general society – the superficial Christianity, pompous political motions, ongoing Vietnam war, and consumer-based capitalist economics. What I lacked was a definable, positive identity apart from that: an inner vacuum, back hole, was at my core.
~*~
This notebook picks up, apparently, right on Christmas Eve. Me in the third-person, with Esperanza. We went out to the fancy place just outside town; she had duckling, I had crab (surprising, considering how central it would become six years later, in the Northwest), “in the glow of intimate candlelight.” [On Christmas Day 1989, Yankees legend Billy Martin would die in a single-vehicle crash after leaving the establishment heavily intoxicated.]
Then the trip to NYC for New Year’s with Len and D-Man.
At the close, this fat volume also covers much that would prompt what sits as Big Inca, or originally, Inca Invasion … as well as a lot more, which is a good thing, considering that Inca still has a few memo entries that need filling.
WHAT WAS I EATING IN THIS PERIOD? BESIDES CANNED SOUP?
One note has me boiling many of my meals. Another mentions that Len has no idea about broiling anything, especially a steak.
And apple turnovers from the Italian bakery a few blocks over became a huge favorite, along with their napoleons.
~*~
Other gleanings:
Just read De Sade, Pinter, Bergman [movie scripts].
Lambert called me Hodson, just like Jennie in Love Story called him Barrett. Guess it’s an Ivy League thing.
I work best in extended spurts, unpredictable.
Judith spent the night. So nice to have soft-soft warm body to cling to. She said she slept so much better than she did in the dorm. She’s talking about moving in, but I don’t want that. Her uptightness repulses me, I like my solitude, too. Her voice can be like an upright out-of-tune piano wire.
Next entry regarding her: Went straight to campus after work [apparently, I had the early Saturday shift, which would later become the zombie-shift “presidential death watch”]. Saw Judith, we talked, she mostly about Howie and how she was going to let him down gently, how much he likes her, etc. [Who the hell was Howie?] I swam ½ mile in the women’s pool because of a swim meet in the men’s. Except for one girl and the lifeguard, I had the pool to myself. In the deep quiet, muffled and grumpy, sunlight angled in through the south windows so that as I swam into a patch of sunlight, my body transformed briefly into a gold, a fire-fish! And then turned off as rapidly. Swam twice my usual distance and felt I could have swum more. I love that feeling in my arms and chest and now understand Fay’s “torturing” her body in gymnastics.
Slept in Judith’s dorm room, went for coffee around 7:30, ran into Renee [first mention: who on earth was she] and went with her to see monster flicks. The first one was in color, right there I knew it wouldn’t be spooky. And then Moose Sinatra showed up as a convict, so I was so certain. It was very funny, unintentionally, a very formulaic. The other film, though, was excellent, based on Shirley Jackson’s Haunting of Hill House. … Very terrifying, half of the audience stoned, screaming, tense, laughing, Renee screamed and grabbed me and I was glad I could grab her, too …
With both Nikki and Fay, when the relationship started turning south, they were always late in meeting me. One night when I, too, was 45 minutes late to pick up Fay, she was an additional 45 minutes getting ready.
The week after Florida was the week Nikki and I had the flip-out at the Preservation Hall Band concert. [Why was I finally recording these bits of already ancient history? Here I was, a full year later and a world apart.]
~*~
From Spiralbound Hippies, with commentary from now.
Jnana's Red Barn 