JANUARY 28, 1982
Got out my book and looked at all I have written. I feel now too paralyzed by the idea that I have to write a whole coherent novel. Who am I writing it for? For History? Who am I trying to please? I’m thinking now of doing a series of autobiographic fragments. Psychoanalytic fragments. Where I take the writings that I like and just print them up? Perhaps use “Sex and Death” as a structure. I’m all mixed up but I think it’s good.
JANUARY 29, 1982
Renée and I got into a big heavy discussion about us breaking up because we have been fighting so much. She said I was CONFESSIONAL but not HONEST.
FEBRUARY 8, 1982
I met Renée in Phoebe’s [a bar in the East Village] and she said she had to talk about moving into the loft, I said, please another time so she went ahead and she has really gotten what I call pushy—PUSH PUSH. She says she won’t move in without a plumber and bathroom and she has found a plumber. She wants the space absolutely separate or she won’t move in. [Gray and LeCompte, after dividing the loft, continued to share a bathroom.] I could not believe her brass. She said goodbye Spalding. It’s been nice knowing you.
FEBRUARY 9, 1982
I know that I am not facing head on that Renée and I may have in real fact, broken up. Made a simple vegetable soup and settled in for what I thought would be a very depressing evening because I knew I could not stop thinking about Renée and what to do. Well, it was up and down. I was reading the authority book and got the impulse to write—to do the work—to go over what had been written and work on that. I worked until ten o’clock and then went out to buy three beers. Took a bath and got a little drunk on ice and whisky. Laid on the couch and regressed with the Walkman. CRIED AND CRIED ABOUT WHAT?
FEBRUARY 15, 1982
A combination of feeling very depressed and very hopeful at the same time. Everyday seems like a new beginning. Renée and I went for a slow walk together. It was like a spring day. We talked for a long time and I can’t remember specifics but that these conditions in which, in the face of I feel paralyzed all foggy and ready to say—anything you want dear—or—if you say so. It feels like I have no mind of my own. It is like a muscle that has atrophied and she keeps telling me that I might rather be with a passive woman. We went back to her place and after much discussion we ended up going to bed together which felt real good for both of us.
FEBRUARY 16, 1982
Renée called all positive because she had a good session with Frank [Shafransky’s therapist] and he said that he would see us together but that I should speak to Pavel first. Renée and I went out for drink. I could feel the flu coming on. A hyper tenderness in my skin. I walked Renée most of the way to her place and then went home alone. It was a nice date. She looked beautiful.
MARCH 30, 1982
Around 5, I heard Liz and Willem come in from Amsterdam and I got very excited. In fact I had not been able to rest after I found out they were coming back. I got right up to go in and welcome them back and Liz looked and said that Willem told her not to let me or invite me in. Liz came into the center alcove to talk with me and then Willem and Kate came in and he was obviously upset. I went off feeling like a rejected child started to cry and then decided not to indulge myself or let Renée know (save it for therapy). Pavel thinks I had to leave Liz because I had to find out about being a “grown up.” He says that I am in a constant conflict between being a child and an adult. This both wears me down and gives me fuel for my work. When Liz could keep that conflict in “the work” it worked but not when it got outside, it overturned the balance. Stayed at Renée’s and had a good night. Talked some things out.
APRIL 1, 1982
We got on the road early. It was a good bright sunny trip up but the car began to stall out again. We were at the house a little after noon. I liked the people we were renting from and I loved the house that was for rent. [Gray and Shafransky rented a cabin in Krumville, New York, from the novelist Francine Prose and her husband, the artist Howie Michels, who lived in the main house on the same property.] My fantasy of a summer house. The old original house on the property built in the 1700’s. Renée got them down to $300.00 a month and I was happy.
APRIL 5, 1982
I cleaned up a bit and got a laundry done. Set up for copying my tapes and then had the last of the whiskey and headed out for the decadent uptown George Plimpton party where I didn’t care to speak to anyone there. It looked like a giant Updike book. Knew if I stayed I’d just get smacked so I put down my scotch and headed out. And like when I stole all those glasses from my one debutante ball, I took a whole pile of wooden hangers on the way out. Took a cab over to the anti-nuclear rally at Symphony Space but the place was mobbed and I had given up all chance of getting in when I saw Renée up by the door and she said they had my name on a list so I was let in and also let in about six groupies with me. It was long and strange. A lot of flashing egos. I didn’t get up to do a testimony because I felt I was too locked into my ego and was doing it to be seen. It felt like a big end of the world scene. I had such perverse mixed feelings about it all. My old stubbornness of resisting all movements coupled with a solid distrust of the performers ego. Back to Renée’s at 2:30. She says I’ve gotten more negative over the past months. She wants to get married. She doesn’t want to make love. I get angry and withholding. Help!
MAY 4, 1982
Ken and I took a long walk over to the river to watch the sun go down. Talk about Liz and how Ken sees her baby as a group baby and she is having it for the group. Also about how he can’t stand the thought of how a woman’s body is torn apart by having a child and how it never comes back to shape again. Talked about the fantasy around the woman and boy I saw on Sunday (at Pavel’s)—how I had masturbated in the mirror after that. We talked it through for a bit and he sees it this way: Mom was openly seductive with me (in the tub and elsewhere). I could not deal with it so I turned it all back on my own body and there it got stuck. And I now make some area of womans bodies taboo (Liz = BREASTS, Renée = thighs). I accused Pavel of trying to make me into a family man and said he thought I was longing for that and that if I had a child I could manage some out of transference because it’s the child I long to be.
MAY 20, 1982
We slept so late and then I had to work on “47 Beds.” I find I don’t enjoy working over the monologues in print because they are not writing but rather a reproduction of speech. I look forward to getting back to my book and feel very frustrated about being cut off from it. Spent the whole day in and was happy to have the Garage to go to at night. It is a wonderful physical outlet. Nayatt went well for me even though there were a number of technical slip ups but it was a full house, the audience seemed to eat it up. [Gray reprised Nayatt School at the Performing Garage from May 6 through 23.] We got two solid curtain calls. After the show Ken, Renée, Stokes [Howell, writer and longtime friend of Gray’s] and I came across to my place and drank beer together. Got exhausted from the beer, the show and the hot weather and the fact that Dusty Hoffman is getting 4.5 million for his next movie.
MAY 31, 1982
I secretly see myself as a novelist but Liz is right when she says that I am missing the empathy to develop characters outside of myself. I think she’s right. The characters come out as symbols—flat and intellectual. I am better at researching the actual details of what happened.
JUNE 9, 1982
Heard that Liz had gone into the hospital. No one called me about Liz so I called Jeff and he gave me the report. “A boy.” 8 pounds. Red hair. At first I thought I should rush up there. Then I felt like crying but I didn’t. Sick of feeling sorry for myself. Decided to wait until next day. Didn’t want to be with the adoring group.
JUNE 10, 1982
At Renée’s and off to a busy day of visit to the hospital to see Liz, Willem and the new baby. The baby looked good and healthy. The doctor even said it was a beautiful child. Liz was in a lot of pain because she was having contractions during the breastfeeding and this ga
ve her pain because of the stitches. Then off to Pavel where we had our last session before September. He said I understood all that had to be done but that I just needed to develop the faith that I could do it. He thought it would take about another year.
SEPTEMBER 4, 1982
Willem invited Renée and I to dinner. I saw it as a great excuse to escape. I rushed out and bought wine and vodka. Maybe I should try to live as though the world was going to go on forever. Renée and I went to see [Richard Pearce’s] “Heartland” but they would not cash my traveler’s check and the line was so long I didn’t want to go. I hate all those people except when they come to see me. We came back to my loft and I drank three beers. I was so keyed up from strong coffee that I could not sleep. There was no toilet paper so I could not plug my ears. I woke up at night to the sound of someone throwing up. I thought I was at Renée’s. It made me think of those fat pigs I saw on the street. The fat man and woman and how she threw up right in front of us. The world is horrid, barren and full of pigs. Hardly any people left. Our neighborhood is turning into a ZOO. The PUNKS are taking over and DEATH is coming again into power. All people witness as much of death as they do of life before they die. I think life is just a big party and nothing more.
SEPTEMBER 8, 1982
Bottled up and could not speak. I stood there like a statue in the rain. I had the feeling that if she moved in we would soon have a child and I would be stuck in a reality I had no control over. I told her that I needed time to think. She told me that if she lived with me she would not have to take a job she did not want. The thought of opening up my private space was a sad thought. The rain came down and she yelled and cried. At last we went into Spring Street Natural to get free food from Halle [a friend of Shafransky’s]. All the beautiful waitresses existed like eternal responsibilities. We got soaked going back to my place. What a downpour. I took a bath. I got angry with her. I know I love her. I know I am not in doubt about that. At last she began to cry like a little ten-year-old. She said, “I want to go home” and then I felt deeply for her and held her in a loving way. It was that phrase—“I want to go home.” I felt it too. I want a home. We both want a home. I can’t deny it. Such a longing for that HOME. A place that was not a work factory but a home. It was a very sad, sad moment. I think it was very real.
SEPTEMBER 12, 1982
[Staying at Edward F. Albee Foundation—a residency for writers, visual artists, and composers—in Montauk, Long Island]
Renée and I woke at the Albee foundation. Not a very sexy place. We had a nice breakfast with some of the people here and then headed off to the beach. It was very hazy and warm. I went for a walk and stood on a cliff to wave back at Renée. As I raised my arms a big fog rolled in and covered it all up. The houses and Renée. It felt like a great magic act. We went for a walk along the beach and when we came back I went in and rode the waves and also taught a boy (about 15) how to ride them. I felt good when he was able to catch a few. When I told Renée about it she lightly accused me of lust and I got upset and told her that on one level it was always there but that it was coming from a different source this time = father and teacher who also had some attraction to the boy. We drove to look at the fishing boats. We had a fish sandwich lunch which I paid for and then looked for Tony’s two tone blue boat.
SEPTEMBER 16, 1982
Up with no hangover. Guess I’m drinking just the right amount. A good work day. Did about 18 handwritten pages until the pen felt like it was pressing on bone and a big water blister grew. Worked on the Masturbation scene fast and furious then just put it away. [Gray was still working on The Father of Myself at this point.] I have no idea what it reads like. Went to the beach and took a long walk. Saw all women I had known and loved come at me in my imagination along the sand at the water edge where the big waves left foamy fans and just before getting the car I decided to go in for a swim. With some fat guy rode the waves and they pounded me down and spun me around and rolled me like a ball and like a kid again in the ocean. I was out of control. They say the waves are caused by a Hurricane off Bermuda. Went for a long run after getting back to the house and then a phone call from Renée telling me how much she missed me. Made me feel a little guilty.
OCTOBER 14, 1982
[Back in New York]
Woke up and made love and by the time we got it all together it was almost time for me to rush out and up to meet [the film director] Milos Forman who I liked a lot. I think because he reminded me a lot of Pavel and I didn’t realize that Milos was also from Prague but I felt like I hit it off with him. I may be mistaken but once I got my elbows on his desk I felt like I had hit it and arrived. He smiled and I smiled back but on my way to the park to eat my lunch in the beautiful sun I thought I must be careful not to be taken in. Came back to the Garage and went for dinner at Eva’s. I ran into Renée and we went together and I was surprised to find that I enjoyed the whole brief evening but it did kind of twist my head around in a delightful way.
OCTOBER 25, 1982
Woke to shocking reality and made love again and then had to face the reality of day and how Renée has planned for me to go to Frank with her and as I look around me and feel reality of being back rush in on me I panic and try to hold it back as it comes in on me like an ocean wave. I don’t know how I can cope. It’s an effort for me just to clean up or to put one dish away. A part of me wants to let it all go and just dive deep into the whirlpool of escapism. Had a long visit with Liz and Jack [Dafoe and LeCompte’s four-month-old baby] who is getting real cute. I met Renée later to go to Frank’s. He’s an interesting old man and I did take to him. He pointed out that I don’t tend to build boundaries or to make judgments on myself and others and that maybe I wanted to keep it that way and I said something about if only I was aware of choice. Perhaps I do those things and I’m not aware of it. I’m not sure what we came to except perhaps I would come back again but felt I had to discuss it with Pavel.
OCTOBER 27, 1982
Went off to Pavel to present my case and basically it’s the old story about boundaries and how I’m afraid to be devoured because I want to be devoured. He called me an excitement junkie and said that I’d be over that in five years or so and would be left with a nice vitality.
OCTOBER 28, 1982
[From October 28 to December 19, Gray performed A Spalding Gray Retrospective at the Performing Garage, which included eight of his monologues previously produced by the Wooster Group: Sex and Death to the Age 14; Booze, Cars, and College Girls; India and After (America); A Personal History of the American Theater; Nobody Wanted to Sit Behind a Desk; 47 Beds; In Search of the Monkey Girl—a piece he’d written about carnival freak shows in collaboration with the photographer Randal Levenson—and Interviewing the Audience. He performed a different monologue each night.]
Another hangover and just plain nerves about opening “Sex and Death.” Worked on it in the morning and talked some with Liz who was cleaning up the bathroom in preparation for a visit from Willem’s parents and then went over to the Garage to check on all that seems to cry out to be taken care of. Tried to rest in the afternoon but could not really unwind. Listened to S & D [Sex and Death] tape, took more notes and then ate dinner alone. There was a good turn out for my performance and I was surprised and happy and a little thrown off. I went through it all very fast.
NOVEMBER 4, 1982
Booze Cars went all right. An audience of about 65 or 70. The weather is still very warm and humid. “Booze Cars” is still a little too linear for me in structure and I think I like the College Girls section the best. No one stuck around except that ex-student of Morgan’s who I had interviewed last year. I sat around and talked with our new technician Hank Stevens and then Renée showed up and we went off to share a plate at the Bamboo Corner. We had a pleasant dinner and then came back and talked. I drank some beer while Renée fell asleep on the couch all exhausted from having taught all day at CW Post [Shafransky taught a film history course at the C. W. Post Campus of Long Island
University in Brookville, New York]. We went to bed about 12:15. We’re getting along better I’m sure because I’ve said that she could move in with me.
NOVEMBER 10, 1982
Renée, Arthur and I went up to see the Milton Avery show at the Whitney and I got let in for free because I was RECOGNIZED. Little things like that still make my day. Renée and I walked through the Park. A Silver Winter light. I went home alone to rest and on the way stopped at New Morning just to check and was surprised to find a short but good review by Robert Massa. Suddenly my depression and melancholy hangover was gone and I went and sat in a hot bath and read over it all a few times, “Gray gives almost no self analysis or self justification” and it occurred to me, while at Pavel’s, that this could be developed as a style even though I was working on self-analysis with Pavel, I could keep that out of my work and develop a conscious style of writing or talking. Pavel was on to the old castration theme again. I told him I had nothing to say and then ended up talking about all these morbid images like the suicide and Gram Horton’s body and the dreams of how my body was all bandaged and how I peeled them off and found my body had rotted away and I went to Dad to show him how my thigh was hollow. Pavel saw it as a castration dream and the bandages as protection.
NOVEMBER 16, 1982
Is my work no different than the New York Post?
NOVEMBER 28, 1982
Got up late alone and spent the morning listening to [the WBAI talk show host] Larry Josephson talk about me on the radio. Said that I was close to the edge of insanity when I performed. Plugged me a lot and then played about one half hour worth of “A Personal History” and ended his show with the short excerpt from “Booze Cars” which all excited me and put me way up. Went shopping and then to boring rehearsal of “Crucible.” [Gray rehearsed the role of Reverend Parris in the Wooster Group’s experimental interpretation of Arthur Miller’s Crucible; he left the play before it premiered. Miller himself came to see the play at the Performing Garage and, not happy with the production, denied the Wooster Group the right to perform it. Ultimately, the play was rewritten and renamed L.S.D. (… Just the High Points …).] Then back to rest and last performance of “Personal History.” A good house but very sober. After everyone left I stood in the theatre and just felt all the HISTORY of that place came down around me. But I thought how lucky we have all been to have had the Garage and how I have so often just taken it for granted.
The Journals of Spalding Gray Page 13