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pictures. She was the official photographer. Nick plans to put one of

her photos in the Siuslaw News. No doubt they will be razor sharp

and artfully composed, as usual. Megan is a whiz with that black-

bodied camera. She has a way of making even me look like a

goddamn magazine model.

Tough yet vulnerable is what she says I look like. She teased me a

couple times into giving her what she calls my "Beautiful Bad Boy"

look. That’s where I stare directly into the lens and tilt my head to the

right, with sullen expression.

Later: I just finished sucking on a reefer and now am going to finish

this entry. Then I am going to read Armageddon #2, my favorite

underground comic book.

Kim Stafford was wonderful but the biggest hit of the night by far

was Nick himself. Late in the evening, when everybody was well

wined and dined, Nick read (I should say performed) his latest poem,

"A Prayer of Morning Gratitude." It was an absolute smash.

The end goes like this:

If I could have but one wish granted

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it would be

to live in a universe like this one

in a time like the present

with friends like the ones I have now

and be myself

with the empty, original mind

I have always had

using time

to keep it all

from happening at once

Nick spoke each line slowly, like he was making it up as he went

along. The crowd went wild at the end, clapping and cheering. It will

probably take weeks of sarcastic comments to deflate his ego back to

a normal level. All in all, the poetry fest, like Nick’s poem, was a

huge success.

Of course, it was not without its negative side. Mary Wong left me

a note afterwards permanently terminating our friendship. She is

angry because I took Megan to the poetry fest instead of her. Mary

seems to believe (wrongly, I might add) that Megan and I slept

together afterwards.

Goddamn. These women are so possessive, so jealous. It gets to

be pretty old. I know Mary has other boyfriends. She has told me as

much. So why does she give me shit about Megan?

I don’t get it.

Up to page 62 on
The Dark City
. It has taken me a whole month to

complete a five page chapter, Chap. 11. I wrote it twice, as a matter

of fact, just to make sure I had it right.

When I was up in Portland, I showed parts of the manuscript to

Lloyd and Randy. They thought it was absolutely nuts. Lloyd said

the sex and violence read like a pulp fiction story.

That is exactly the effect I want to achieve. Lloyd is actually pretty

literate. It was he who first introduced me to Bukowski. However, I

don’t know who I am writing
The Dark City
for exactly. Myself, I

guess. Basically, I would classify myself as a kind of comic novelist,

still trying to refine my jokes.

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Only comedy and exaggeration work for me at this point. If I were

a musician I would be a punk rocker. Call me the poet of punk lit.

Teach me three chords and let me annoy people. The hell with

technique, revision, craft, all that bullshit. I prefer cut and paste.

I like typos. I like to see grimy, dirty, ripped, torn, ratty, beer-

stained pages. Gimme blood, guts, kinky sex, violence, murder, flesh-

eating plants, cannibal aliens, zombies, murder, horror, sadism,

perversion, and madness. Let it all hang out. Barf it all up. Be lurid

as hell.

A comic book using words alone.

Don’t they get the point? I want it grotesque.

Everything we’ve been fed is a lie. Who killed the Kennedys? The

criminals are on top. They rule the world. Fuck the System.

Freedom is Slavery. War is Peace. Life is Death. Love is Hate.

The Dark City
comes straight from my subconscious mind, a

message from the id. I am not quite sure what impels this work, but it

arrives.

Slowly, but it arrives.

In the future, I feel like writing some more poetry. Once
The Dark

City
is complete, I will write scads of poems. This constant prose

writing is like a turd blocking the pipes. I need the poem like a

plumber’s helper to send things down.

Got a nasty letter from Katrine last week. She demands to know

why I never return her calls. The next letter I get from her I will

return unopened. I have no energy for her anymore. I’m sorry that I

ever tried to have a relationship with her.

It simply didn’t work.

She is exquisitely beautiful but her personality makes for tiresome

company. Too many demands. Too needy. I want a woman with

fewer problems than I have, not more.

I’ve told the receptionist never to put Katrine through to me. I

can’t talk to her. I don’t want to talk to her. I refuse to talk to her. I

just want her to leave me alone.

* * * *

March 8, 1979

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Work. I drive to my job every day and work. Megan has left

again, ostensibly to make arrangements for her divorce. Meanwhile

the job has been a total bitch because she and Josie are both gone

now. I have to do all three caseloads by myself. A total of 459 cases

– mine, all mine. I blame the idiot managers for running Josie off the

farm. The fucking clients have me coming and going.

It’s a goddamned zoo.

Got a letter yesterday regarding my ten year high school class

reunion. Has that much time passed already? I have no enthusiasm

whatsoever for this affair. Can’t we just let the past die? It all seems

so pointless. I have no desire to see the "winners" or listen to their

success stories.

Of course, it’s probably because I have no success stories of my

own to relate, although I do have some darned riveting failure stories.

They could make interesting conversation whilst I hold beer in hand...

My goals have eluded me thus far and it looks like I will die on the

vine, a wasted talent.

Talked to Chesley about the reunion on the phone yesterday. He

said I should go. He says both Randy and Lloyd plan to attend. But I

wonder: Will Andrew Cogswell be there? How about Meredith?

They are the only two people I really care to see and Andrew is dead,

a suicide in 1972. Meredith is married now to that guy she took up

with after I dumped her.

The rest mean nothing to me.

More problems with
The Dark City
. It goes so slowly. Can I

actually write it? Will I ever finish? Is it the right thing for me to

write, right now?

Who the fuck knows?

* * * *

March 13, 1979

In Eugene at the Black Angus. Food stamp training. They are

changing the whole goddamned program around once again and we

must be ready for the resulting chaos. What a bore. I can barely

maintain my interest in this stupid shit.

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We are spending eight hours on something that is worth maybe

twenty minutes tops. I’ve already got it all figured out and know what

to do. Bring it on and let me get the fuck out of here. My mind is on

other things.

Megan is coming to the next session tomorrow. She is back from

her confab with Mark. We haven’t spoken much since her arrival on

Sunday. I wonder what goes.

Stayed with Charles last night in Eugene at 312 East 16th Street. I

really love that old house. Also enjoyed an excellent dinner with him

and afterwards smoked dope with Ed, his neighbor. Ed’s brother

Frank is fifteen now and goes to high school in Metairie, Louisiana.

While talking to Charles last night I realized I am pissed off at

Chesley for skipping our poetry fest. As soon as he got into this scene

with Shirley he immediately blew off his friends. It’s like something

a guy in high school would do.

Oh, and here’s a real nugget: When Chesley tried having sex with

Nurse Shirley for the first time, he couldn’t get a hard on, he told me.

No stiffy. Limp as a noodle.

Oooooh. A bad sign. A very bad sign, I said. But Chesley has

apparently overcome this problem by seeing a shrink.

Apparently the shrink convinced him that it was perfectly okay to

have sex with a woman who looks, behaves, sounds, and thinks

exactly like your horrible mother.

Now Chesley says it is plenty good and hard when he sinks it in

good old Shirley. I think about them doing it and I cringe. That really

must make for great sex, fucking a carbon copy of your mom. Goo-

goo. Remind me never to see a shrink. What a bunch of fucking

quacks.

I’m afraid Chesley is ignoring a red flag warning here.

Beep! Beep! Warning! Warning, Will Robinson Harlan!

Chesley’s penis realizes that Shirley is a scrag and responds

accordingly. The horrid slut shrivels his dick.

Can’t he see what’s wrong?

One of the things Chesley and I have always had in common was

our grossly repellent mothers. Fortunately, I failed in my efforts to

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marry a carbon copy of Lois by resisting the other one’s corrupt,

controlling behaviors.

Unfortunately, Chesley may succeed where I failed.

Exactly the opposite problem with Megan and me. She turns me on

more than words can say but I won’t be played for a sucker. It has

happened in the past but I refuse to let it happen again.

I would venture to say that Chesley is even more self-destructive

than I am. Nurse Shirley is a witch and her ankles are fatter than

fence posts. He is insane.

Of course I am also a mess. I think about suicide on a daily basis

and wonder if that is normal. Even if I am a "success" someday, who

gives a shit? Years from now no one will know or care if I ever lived

or died. No one will know what I thought or what I did. No one.

Poor Charles is likewise suffering from love. Dumped by Arianna,

he spends his days doing his artwork and laying plans to move to New

York.

Perhaps somebody should have told him years ago that the

beautiful and gracious Lori Sanchez was desperately in love with him.

In my opinion, Charles would have done a lot better taking up with

lovely Ms. Lori rather than conniving Arianna.

* * * *

March 15, 1979

Had a huge fight with Megan yesterday after we went to Yachats

for a home visit. We were at this park south of town. A beautiful

seaside setting for our worst quarrel ever. A lot of harsh words got

passed between us.

No progress yet on the divorce. She denies sleeping with Mark

again but I really wonder.

I had to expand on what I told her earlier:

Until she’s divorced – no dice. I distrust her emotionally and I’m

not convinced that she isn’t still trying to use me as a club to beat him

into line. She said that she was lying in January when she said she

was going back to him.

Oh? I told her that such deceptions only made things worse as far

as I am concerned. I’m sick of feminine manipulations.

260

She’s still married. That is the bottom line. She has not hired a

lawyer or filed for divorce. They are doing their taxes together, all

that stuff. I suspect she wants to have it both ways, like Dona Flor

and her two husbands. I may be stupid, but I’m not that stupid.

The tricks and charades she is pulling to convince me only make

me more certain that I would be better off without her. I told her that

as long as she is still married, I am going to go right on sleeping with

other women.

I said that I probably wouldn’t be taking this approach except that

her going back to Mark when she did ruined everything. I said that if

she can do what she fucking well pleases, then so can I.

Megan grew very angry about that. She cried and slammed the

door of the state car before she got in and drove off. Every scene she

throws just drives another nail in the coffin as far as I am concerned.

Megan is really beginning to remind me of the other one, who saw

her old boyfriend behind my back while she continually pestered me

to declare my love for her alone. It was ridiculous how she acted,

given the way things turned out.

I think about it now and I seethe. How fucked up can you get?

Women like the other one are allowed to have it both ways, but not

men. They want to pick and choose to their heart’s content but woe

unto you if you claim the same right.

* * * *