Calbraith Hunter's Journal, edited by the Third Person and Eve
Editor's note: it seems the appointment book was insufficient and Hunter took to journaling. The document contains a jumble of entries, some exceedingly mundane. The treasures in the mud are telling. He doesn't make a scholar's work easy.
Sunday, July 3, 1977
Heidi came by for breakfast this am. Pancakes, tea. She’s gotten to a fairly low energy level working all but two days of the week at Pine and Print in the Prudential Center. Muzak blues have got her down. Well sir, we frisbeed not far from where I burnt to a crisp writing (last entry), reading (“Dune”) and sunning (plus trop!) in the fen-park across from the Museum of Fine Arts. She initiated me into the charming, delightful, etc., Rose Garden, and we kept up a marvelous rapport all morning. I did a lot of inspired babbling, anyway. Returned to 60 Fenway, blew some dope, lapsed into finger twining, stroking. Like bringing a cat out of a hiding place – (brute force only turns it into a spastic fur ball) – Heidi reacted favorably to gentle patient stroking etc., [note: the writer is only able to try one technique per sitting]. Invested so much energy, (I) slept ‘til Laird and Jimmie woke me at 4:30…
July 4
Black men walking on ball bearings own this jungle street.
Wanna love my white skin and the green American blood
Money right out of my
Allotted six cubic feet of body space.
Pimps, harlots, junkies
Of assorted national origins
Have their fingers in the great cheesecake
And I have the cakewalk blues…
July 8
Last night Kaji Aso told us that Pragmatism was nonsense. What this means is uncertain, and most likely it means nothing. He asked if all men are different and I tossed out the remark that we’ll never know. (Solipsism.) It didn’t bring down the house, but it felt good to say.
The music. Good experience.
We read “Eine Kleine Nachtmusik” and the Vivaldi d minor concerto – which I know as Bach’s a minor transcription for four harpsichords. (“A fresh batch of Vivaldi manuscripts roasting in the fireplace.”) Pretty piss-poor music making, but nevertheless rewarding. Some progress was being made. In any case, I discovered that I can sight read well enough to enjoy myself. Why haven’t I been involved in this sort of thing from the beginning? I’ll go back next week, or before. Two pianos at the studio and much valuable experience to be gained.
July 15
NYC
stoned stoned stoned
and staring at the guitar
the accompaniment is the muted mechanism
of vehicles and tools
men at work
New York City cranking itself up again
For another grizzly day
The guitar is troubling me
The lady is asleep
Yet it bears mute testimony
To the spirit of song’s antidote
The space shot clock
Lies and so does the genie on the roof
But I taught the one facing her
To sing the correct hour.
July 20
Penn Station, NYC
Waiting for the train to Boston, about to resume my trip north for the last time in awhile. These are the as advertised final days in old Beantown. They will center, if plans hold up, around nostalgic re-visits of old haunts, plus a few new things. (Azu?)
The moon boils my blood and I'm horny as hell. It took some doing to control my desire for Jimmy France and Xenia. But they are weird sisters and I a weird brother.
I dream of Heidi. Oh, if only she would suddenly give up on clinging to a misunderstood mish-mash of Yoga and Zen, her fear of ruining it for a non-exisitant Mr. Right, or even a ‘right moment!’ I’ve known her to turn down many a ‘right moment.’ Not ‘right’ enough, I guess. Only twenty-two days to go, and not enough time to start from scratch. I’ll have to be clever and charming, forget about it, and jerk off. (Azu? A more sophisticated form of jerking off? Mutual masturbation?)
July 23
(Working at the Westland Avenue Parking Garage.)
This is it, the famous as advertised last night of “Pops” (Boston Pops, the popular music summer program given by the BSO under Arthur Fiedler.) – no more concert business beyond this point. No more 8:30-10:00 PM breaks for Brigham’s (ice cream) and homework and bullshit. Just six hours every night of pure low energy garage sitting. Maybe I’ll get to work the car wash some, what an eye-rolling thrill. Slept really late today – ‘till 3:00 PM, productive trance state working mentally over the ballet scenes. Went to visit the dykes at 5P, smoked a joint and a half mostly by myself. How my cells thanked me for satisfying their desire for dope! Well. Not quite that dramatic.
Zandra told me all about her troubles at the Westland Food Shop, says she can’t hack getting more than one set of orders. I tried to be supportive. Perhaps she can turn this situation to her advantage, I opined. Lord knows, though, Lamont Dixon (the garage foreman with the John Wayne swagger) has got me hoppin’ mad from time to time. Azu came home from work at 5:10 or so, talked about her hot day of frame and mounting peddling at the art supply shop (Open Door on Boylston). Smoked dope pretty heavily.
I came into work pretty buzzed, grabbed the broom and took a seat over by the car wash. Soon Lamont noticed me and cracked up. I stood and solemnly named myself King Make-a-buck-or-two of the car wash, sweeping my arms dramatically to indicate the extent of my domain. Soon Steve came over and leaned on the control box. Then Alpo sat down in front on the floor, with Lamont moving in closer, but still standing off to the side.
I commenced a big speech (seeing as how I now had an audience) about the psychological and genital goo binding Z and A together. I didn’t expect that it would last more than a few more years. Lamont’s bass voice interjected, “’till they get out of school!” This brought down the house and ended my public speaking engagement. All of this is a deflection, a way of letting the air out of the balloon slowly, lest it pop. I feel very guilty about that particular 'affair.' I wish Zandra no ill. Plus, if she catches me out, she'll likely tear my eyes out. Azu is, it seems to me, very careful about her revelations, about her presentations, and about her public affect. It may have been a fluke, that evening of steamy lust overcoming her (not coming over her)! It also deflects the facts of the matter from the prying interest of Stevedore, whose interest in Azu is also manifest. But that dude is married! (Does that ever seem to really matter much? It's a sexual zoo out there!)
July 25
A busy few days. Kicked off the doldrums season at the garage by working well and easily on the first forty-five bars of music for the new ballet. Ripped off an eight pack of Pepsi from the back room of the inner sanctum.
Went out to Molly’s Irish Pub with Harrison Saturday night.
Sunday, I survived another chapter in the Flighty Heidi tale – another bemused failure. I’m looking in the wrong basket for my eggs in this case. Two meals, some ball throwing, Aso scene back biting, sex talk, dope, and she danced and lecture/demo’d about energy levels. I really wanted to make passionate love to her, at last, after all this time, once and for all. But she climbed into an upside-down asana, her breasts flowing against her arms, her head serene and well-placed, her buttocks skyward, her perfect callipygian beauty making me tremble like a leaf, unable to move or even breathe. No ping, no ida, just frozen solid with the ache of desire. She has so much on display, whether she likes it or not, knows it or not. Does she know? If she does, she’s deliberately killing me with torturous teasing. If she doesn’t, I’m at some weird museum, looking at a glass case marked ‘do not touch.’ The ache of my desire spreads out, makes my abdomen ache, makes my legs ache, makes my head ache. It is all I can do to speak. I can’t speak. Speech is way up there, up in the upper air, above the water line. I have drowned. Did she say good-bye? When I came to my senses, it was to the sound of water dripping in the kitchen. Heidi was long gone. I realize that I can never spend another minute alone with this woman again. I don’t have the courage.
Spent this day hanging out with Azu. We went square dancing in Copley square in the evening. In the afternoon, we had chess. I blew another one, due to very poor concentration. I lost my position and my queen. Studied Ninkovich to dig myself out of this chess morass. I’m hooked now, I may as well try to win a game. Azu's big brown eyes have met my blue gaze back. Neither of us can look away. She takes my hand. She leads me to her bedroom. I follow, follow, follow. She, the zipless fuck, is out of her jeans and reclining in bra and panties. I keep my clothes on, my arousal straining at the fabric. I lay down beside her, and those long fingers of mine find the wellspring of her desire. After a time, she arches her back. We are together in silence in the twilight. The twilight moves on to gloom. Her chest rises and falls. At length, she reaches for my buckle. I help her out with this. I ask,
"are you sure?"
She nods.
She guides my hips and helps me find the way. I am still, just being.
In a moment she gasps.
Come again?
She pushes me away, and turns to the wall.
I need to be assured that she's ok, not weeping.
She's asleep.
I pad out, grabbing my pants.
In the other room, I pause in the dark with a sock.
This is the way out. The only way.
The second time is a repeat of the first, and not a charm.
July 27
Played some Frisbee w/Justin in the fen park today. Flighty Heidi ran by, and waved her fingers. On the second time by, she asked us to join her. When we refused she acted disgusted. Justin is, as usual, poker-faced.
July 28
Does Heidi (Flighty Heidi) realize how chaste we really are? How basically and beautifully faithful and monogamous and even traditional we all are? Maybe it’s just me! I am guilty about every impulse. I'm determined to record here, accurately, just how lost I am. If she’s a Flighty Heidi, I’m in fucking fear of flying. I stroke and pet until the woman arches her back and gasps, or grant her every wish as zipless guiltless fuck, and then I slink off into the other room, wait for sleep's signal to float in on snores from the bedroom I’ve abandoned. When the woman is asleep, I beat off into a sock. Within our agreed upon understandings and expanded notions of the ethics of attraction, we are faithful to ourselves - however we line up (or don't line up) with the morality of our parents. William Burroughs this just ain’t.
Heidi runs by again. We’re knee deep in Frisbee tossing. I think of another day, earlier in the Spring. I saw Heidi out on her run. Why she’s still even speaking to me, I’ll never know. The Walden Pond thing would’ve been it for me. Instead, though, she comes running up smelling all blonde and clean, and says “boy, running sure loosens my bowels. It’s better than coffee!” In some part of my head, where the bell is not keening, I think that the correct response to this is to offer to let her use our toilet. But Heidi is already running off, grinning, yelling, “gotta run!” I’m sure, now, that she means that literally. I’m once again speechless. I’m staggering on shaking knees back to my little shit hole basement apartment.
How did this whole thing, that had such promise in the beginning, go so badly off the rails?
July 29
Kaji Aso’s was particularly rewarding, the Flighty Heidi aside. (She was in a bad mood, announced that she was tired, and said she wanted to play the Gershwin.) I played the ‘cello part. I have already forgotten the name of the piece, actually. It is an ‘easy’ composition, rhythmically vital, part of the posthumous catalog, a compositional experiment.
At break, I made several comments relating to what was said, but my remarks did nothing to tie loose ends together. One woman, in particular, was very tired of the endless “pragmatism, morality, goals, ethics” discussion. It has, in fact, gone on the entire time I’ve been hanging out at Kaji Aso’s. Well, no big deal. I’m going to NYC next week, and so will have to say goodbye to all of this.
[Ed. Note. This entry is almost, but not quite the last mention of Heidi Walker in the journals. She called Hunter in Sioux City, Iowa in late January of 1978. (Vii. P47.) She proposed coming out to Sioux City and doing a life-sized sculpture of Xenia. He sarcastically remarks that she was likely to “prick-tease” the rest of the 'nestlings,' but that she was always welcome, if only for a few days. It apparently never happened. Did he hear from her again for the many years betweeen this journal entry and the later "blog?" There is no evidence that he did. ]
August 1
After all, what was I doing here but showing her the marks in my hands and the wound in my side, that she might marvel at my half erection? It is another pitiable attempt to soothe a very sore spot, to confront the most confusing and vital aspect of the other world. I pass an afternoon of almost tangible torpor. She has something to say, but no. It slips back, unsaid. Grant me the composure to at least contain the unspeakable. No, nothing unspeakable here, simply nothing to say. She is no great prize by the world’s yardstick. She is thick at the waist, hair in sweat-soaked ringlets, eyes staring out of a small, angular face, measuring my strength and bearing with unblinking gaze. A rivulet inches spasmodically down my back, bespeaking my ache, the dull heat and the longing that brings no peace. Let the axe of lust fall where it must.
A splash of fiction, aimed at parsing the episodes with Azu.
August 2
Westland Garage, evening.
The moon on the wane, the past twenty-four hours have been a smoking piece of time. Carl Jung kept me up until 4:30 AM the morning of the first, doughnuts and milk until 5:30. A sleepless night. Combination of factors: humid, hot weather, insomnia, pure fascination with the book itself: “Memories, Dreams, and Reflections.” Of particular fascination is the chapter on Jung’s meeting, friendship (or, more accurately affinity) and ultimate disillusionment with Freud…
To crank myself up for work on the car wash from 8 AM to 6 PM, I did an orange speed (amphetamine). The day crew and I held down the Lamontless (and at times overly Winstonful) fort. I began blowing coke bottles and tuned up a diatonic (seven-tone) scale with old Mr. Chen’s help as bottle washer and audience. Then I went straight back to the Jung.
Thunderstorm in the late afternoon. It shut down the car wash just in time for the speed to wind down, enough that I could appreciate nature's outburst, and the respite from nothingness that it offered. Bill and I smoked a joint right out in front, digging the sounds of rain and ‘grokking the scene in fullness.’ As soon as the roach was subdued, Steve arrived, and then Azu came by on her way home from work. At 6:10, I punched out, promised Steve I’d be back, and went up to the dykes’ for manic babble. Also on offer up at Z and A’s was more marijuana, and homemade Jewish good for cuts and bruises - and cases of the munchies – Chicken Soup, lesbian-style. Azu then prodded me into a game of chess. I was still smarting from the fifteen game beating I took opposite Steve Harrison. This time, facing the less experienced Azu Raveh, I won. It was a weird game, though. I saved myself from a nearly fatal attack on my king with a sudden back rank mate. Very dramatic, a blessing, a relief to stop thinking for a moment and just look at A’s big brown eyes as a friend and sometime lover, not another chess fiend, but the whole game was miserably inefficient.
