April 24, 1978

I woke this morning with nothing in my stomach and a foul taste in my mouth. Ann lay asleep, warm and naked. I was in no condition to attempt sex. I showered quickly and left for work. Damn, why don't our times coincide. "Liberty without justice is shit,"Said Faro, the head waiter at the executive dining room, as we set up the tables for lunch. The Hudson lays 26th stories beneath us, a dirty blue stream beyond the urban tumble. Across the river lays New Jersey. I never go there and reply to Faro, "There is no justice in this world.

"Or the next."

"You have that right."

I hear from none of my uptown friends and if it weren't for the photo-serial I started with Anthony, I wouldn't speak with him either for having suggested that I robbed them and saying, "You better not come around here no more.

Fuck those assholes."

LATER

The spring atmosphere on Rector Street clears my head; the hedges are budding, which is the only green within blocks. I look at the other men in their suits. I could have been one of them by deciding to stay with the North Shore job at Ventron Corporation; business suit, sharp haircuts, fading tans from winter vacations, instead I wanted to become an underground star, except Warhol and Lou Reed transformed the revolution of the 60s into a mass appeal to the masses. Warhol's last piece was a pickle jar filled with $1 million of gems. When asked why by a reporter, he cleverly answered, "Because they wouldn't fit in a ketchup bottle."

I get the feeling that this art jester doesn't perform for himself, but the amusement of the elite, especially after the shooting in the 60s. I remember the headlines WARHOL SHOT.

The six-shooter mentality of America has interrupted the flow of time, "JFK, RFK, Martin Luther Ling, Malcolm X. George Lincoln Rockwell, Larry Flynnt and the students at Kent State and Jackson State accompanied by failed assassination attempts on Fred Hampton, Gerald Ford, and Lenny Bruce. Each of these violent acts has taught Americans the philosophy of the gun determining how the future will be shaped by bullets.

"Gun don't kill people. Bullets kill people," said one gun proponent.

Bullshit.

Bullets is how LBJ became president

Nixon benefited from RFK's death in 1968.

Slags of lead sculpting this country from the New Frontier into the Great Society to the Silent Majority scared on crime and its own shadow. It's easier to kill your rival than run against him. An entire generation has been crushed by the Vietnam War and drugs. They changed history.

I still smoke pot and drink.

I forget the woes of this world.

Sleep the sleep of the dead.

My writing is threatened by my drinking. I am my main problem. What am I waiting for? Inspiration? These journals are only an insurance policy for the future. Fifty years from now I will re-read them and say the same thing as now. I suck.

LATER

This windowless building on Church street belongs to AT&T. Its center is hollow to protect it from the devastation of an atomic bomb. The corporations are ready for anything. Their consumers none. We might get wiped out by the nuclear exhnage, but for the corporations there will always be trade with the aliens.