January 22, 1986
11:29 amMonday Craig and I went drinking with Carol after work at the Peculiar Pub in the Village. After we stopped off at her apartments. Craig liked her paintings very much and cried over the fact that the Pieta had been smashed with a hammer. We then stopped at my place so I could take my contacts out and went to his place to have drunken sex until morning.
Home around noon and Jess was here, asleep. He'd waited up for me as long as he could and even called Meridian and worried them as well. My Jewish Mother.
Today he meets his new driver for his taxi and if all goes well he'll be off to Texas tomorrow. If not he can stay at his friend Nick's place on tenth.
I sensed that something had happened to him last night and I was right. He picked up someone at Tory's -- young, cute -- and in the car the guy drew a knife on him. He acted instinctively and took the knife away but I'm sure he was very upset when he got back and I wasn't here.
The night before little Jerry from work was standing in the Carlton Arms Hotel where he has a room when a man entered brandishing a machete. Someone distracted him and Jerry tackled. A four-foot hero.
2:30 pm
Called Tim to tell him about Jess. He said he was thinking of going to where I work and explaining to them "Rob Murphy Anonymous." It seems that Tim (and he says others) went through traumas about me for years at a time thinking that my center wasn't holding, that at some point it was going to fall apart for me. Of course it didn't, no way, not a chance of that happening. I always knew that. But I did go through some peculiar times.
Sleep, I have a strange fear of sleep. Jess sounded so weak when he woke up and told me he'd waited as long as he could for me to come home. He held to his story and it disseminated by the hour until there wasn't any passion in it. By the time he told it to me it was an anecdote. Passion becomes anecdotal very quickly in New York.
How to explain to some people that there are those who must live unconventionally. That analysis and the "urge for normalcy" would kill them. Jess is turning thirty and may come to a point in his life when he sees things more clearly. He already has to some extent -- particularly because of Craig. Now he doesn't have to desire me, because his desire was really to help me, because he loves me. Now that he can let me go he can work on his own life, get on with it. Live.
Craig and I talk about how to go about working together and having a relationship. We have to separate the two. I worry when I see him that he feels rejected.