AUGUST 13, 1978 - JOURNAL ENTRY - EAST VILLAGE

Last night while we lay naked in bed, Alice requested to have her hands to be bound behind her back. I found a ten-foot cord and forced her onto her belly. She stretched her arms back and I looped the rope around her wrists. I entered her with a steely hardness and we fucked for thirty minutes. Neither of us came and she asked, if she could masturbate.

"Yes, slave."

"But you can't watch."

"You want me to take off the rope?"

"No, I can reach me." Alice had been a gymnast in high school. She could tied her body in knots and always said that if she failed as an actress that she could make it in the carnival as a contortionist.

I believed her and went into the living room, listening as her whimpers became moans.

I sat on the sofa feeling like a Wehrmacht soldier trapped in Stalingrad; no more bullets and nowhere to run, but to death.

This morning I did a wash-dry at the local laudromat on 1st Avenue.

I can't believe I'm writing something so banal, but most of life is banal and in most cases that is a good thing. Mark Amitin's theater venture fell apart on the road. I still have no money, no job, and no future. rent is due in less than two weeks. TS Eliot wrote that 'April is the cruelest month of all'. The poet had never spent an August in New York. Everyone is going on vacation. Only the dead, dying, and desperate remain in the city

Highways carry metal semi-trailers, 1967 Buicks and 1970s GTOs. Hector hitches Indiana-bound The army private is AWOL from Fort Dix. The conscript buzz-cut betrays his rank. The grunt's ironed khakis are government issue. His tee-shirt pressed creaseless. "Damn, it's so strange in boot camp, But it's only another two hundred miles to home.

In the 1960s and early 1970s army deserters dotted the interstate's shoulders either heading to Canada or into hiding at a hippie commune.

"Ain't no way I'm going back to Vietnam. Let the general fight with the blacks."

Afro-Americans constituted a high percentage of combat troops and casualties through the Long War. My draft number was 91. I avoided service by attending college thanks to a $10,000 grant to avoid shooting at strangers and Viet Cong shooting at me in villages foreign to teenagers on the South Shore. I started as a Math major, failed two subjects, but remained at BC. I saw no jungles or rie paddies. I heard no bullets whizzing past me or thudding into fellow soldiers. I studied THE MYSTERIES OF THE HOLY EUCHARIST. A Boy Scout uniform was the only one I have worn other than an altar boy's cassock and surplice forever faithful to atheism.

Alice lies on the futon, complaining about being nothing. She is in a rush to be an actress and their clock ticks fast. Still being nothing is better than being a bullet-riddled corpses in Vietnam, although the only fighting in Indochina is between the Khmer Rouge and the PAVN (People's Army of Vietnam). I have guilt about not fighting for my country. Not much, but some.

Alice looks out the window of the back bedroom.

"It's raining."

"What else is new?" After a heat wave the city has been deluged by rain for the past eight days. My kitchen faucet also drips endlessly.

Rain - the life-giver of water The Johnstown Flood 1889 The Little Conemaugh River The South Branch dam failure The flood washed away the helpless Like the mighty Mississippi through a valley. Forty days and forty night. No, just one torrential night And the next day Johnstown was gone.

AUGUST 13, 2021 - JOURNAL ENTRY - CLINTON HILL

About fifteen years ago in Pattaya, Thailand I learned that I had somehow transitioned to 'Vanilla' status by a visit to an S&M parlor. Nik, an English friend wanted to pay me back for a favor and suggested we go the THE CASTLE. MY wife was curious about how the club's goings-on and gave me permission for bad boys night out. 'The Castle' sas right across the street from our regular THE BUFFALO BAR. We told the girls there about our intended destination and they joked how we were going to be whipped like 'Kwaii.' or a stupid buffalo. The bouncers yelled we were 'sadique' and Nik asked me at the door, "Are you top or bottom?"

I don't know. I guess top."

"Me too, but I might try some bottom as a test." I wouldn't have expected any else from an Englishman. "Remember this is all on me."

The black-clad mama-san gave us a list. Top and bottom fantasies.

"Yeah, I'll do that and that. What about you?"

"Nothing really strikes my fancy."

Nik and the old lady read through the menu.

"No, no, definitely no."

The dominatrix and slaves enacted rough sex routines. I shook my head in disappointment. "Mai mee faaen-dah-see."

"Good enough for me," said Nik and two slender sadistic witches dragged him into a back room. The lash of a whip. Scream. "More."

After an hour Nik emerged chastened by the experience and said, "Damn, that was something, but I don't think I'll go bottom again. Are you sure you want nothing?"

"Nope, I'm vanilla."

When I was in the hospital I didn't look at any porno online or have a asexual fantasy. My libido had to be damaged along with my body by my years of excessive drinking, but I thankfully don't have any DTs. My roommate at NYU was a black lineman. I had overheard him tell the doctor that he had fallen in the street. Both of us so strong and now invalid. The doctor says I'll get better, but it will be a fight.

And I didn't forty-two years ago.

PS THE CASTLE is still open 24/7. Muang Pattaya, Thailand Hours: Opens at 6PM - Closes at 3AM Phone: +66 91 052 2671

Hand Bondage Foto by Joana Kruse