JUNE 20, 1983
Woke in a little panic. Renée’s last day here. I’m so glad she’s traveling with Cherie. I was off at 5 for a photo call and they were due to leave at 5:30 in David Puttnam’s [producer on The Killing Fields] car. We had a nice photo call with everyone laughing and cheering then I went to sit on the porch with Tom and this incredible fatigue came over me. I was so tired that I felt dizzy and I had to lie down on the floor. Shortly after I got up David Puttnam came over and told me that I was very good in my last scene and I thanked him and credited Roland and said he was a good director.
JUNE 23, 1983
I slept well and late. Got up to do all my healthy stuff and then met with [the publicist] Minty Clinch who gave me an hour autobiographic interview to which my only regret was that I told her I was in a porn film. Then I had a wonderful meal with the Cambodians at a beautiful teak summer house on the beach. Julian, Nell and I were walking along talking about suicide and guilt and all of a sudden we looked over at this house and like a dream the woman was waving to us by a table that was covered with a wonderful food repast and we all walked in, sat down and ate. A wonderful relaxed meal. Some talk about Buddhism and heaven and hell then down to the sea to watch a man cast his net. Walked back to say goodbye to Nell and David Henry whom I felt I hardly knew. “Goodbye mate” was his last line. Had a swim and a walk down the beach at “magic hour” ran into Ron [Cogan] the hairdresser who was coming back from a long walk. Had some drinks and went out for dinner with Tom, John, Penny, Ivan and Judy Freeman and got to hear Roland run down for the first/last time. They talked about him in a way I never could have. Talked about his glories. Everybody was kind of letting out their frustrations. Had a swim alone at the hotel and went to bed early in nervous preparation for the long trip.
JUNE 25, 1983
Went to the set location to try to catch Tom’s scene but they had big battle scene instead. In the middle of all that black smoke I suddenly saw the sun and left for the hotel to try and find Billy and H. for the beach. Big party: Athol [Fugard, the South African playwright and actor; he played Dr. Sundesval in The Killing Fields], Rose, Patrick, Bill and H. Karon beach. We swam then went for a big feed. Lots of beer and at last talk about salary. Billy makes $3,000 a week. I felt lied to and lost my faith. I figured it was going on anyway. Why am I always the one that is underpaid? Must get an agent. Swim after lunch and walk on the beach. Kept thinking of getting back and getting an agent. Perhaps more envious of Jon Swain [a British journalist portrayed by Julian Sands in The Killing Fields] than anyone else here…. Sat next to [the producer] David P. He talks, you listen. Hard to get a word in…. David does not like process of film because prefers the original perfect vision. Penny [Eyles, who worked on continuity in the film] tried to talk with him about this. David said it was between Roland and Louie Malle. Fun ride back. Made people laugh under full moon. As I began to distrust David’s perceptions I got paranoid about his praise. After all—66 TAKES? NO WONDER THE CREW CLAPPED.
JUNE 26, 1983
Wonderful day! Blew it all out on the beach. Ivan, who is courting me, invited me to the beach with a group and so much happened, or seemed to happen. I thought Ivan had drowned in the rough surf and called everyone from lunch (Ivan wanted to know if Judy Freeman came). After a nice lunch and a talk with the half Scot half Thai woman who was fasting for thirty days in one of those lovely cabins, Ivan got me to swim far out and I was not terrified and I think it was the first time I’ve ever done it and enjoyed it. I was just in the arms of an overwhelming sea. Then I began to hear Jon Swain and get him to swim out and all this time I was worried about my money which was hidden in the truck and I kept having to check in on it. Everyone wants me to let it all go. At last Penny got me to leave it on the beach and take a walk with her. She told me that I was a strange one and could not believe it. I told her I was stoned. We saw water Buffalo and I walked with the herd boys. I ran from group to group. I cried in front of Penny when she asked me about Liz. Penny told me that I said things that people thought but didn’t say.
JUNE 28, 1983
It was not easy to say goodbye to everyone. I went over to the location and gave it a try. Athol was very supportive and said: “Carry on from here man. Go back to Renée.” I was able to make my exit with Tom.
JUNE 29, 1983
Tom and I sat up in the upstairs of the plane and had a good time popping Valiums, eating, sleeping a lot. In fact, we slept most of the trip away. Landed and took off in Karachi without even knowing it. Flying up top you don’t even hear the engines. We went right on through $3 cup of coffee in Frankfurt Airport then short stop in Heathrow and then across the Atlantic in no time. Sleeping, eating good food. Fresh Salmon. I got Tom to tell me some war stories about following VC blood and shooting a man in half. On we went in a kind of travel coma. Tom giving me this rap bout how he now wished he’d not hurried back. It was all a fast long blurry trip. Clouds, sun, drink, sleep. Watch stupid movie of missing child with happy ending. Last words of child blurred by Thai airplane captain overhead to say we were to land in Frankfurt and we landed in bright clear day. We took the bus in. I called Renée from the airport. She was surprised to hear that I was home so early. Go to it, Athol said. Carry on from here and don’t look back.
Immediately following his time on The Killing Fields, Gray went back to his novel. Shortly thereafter, he began writing the story of his almost three-month stay in Thailand, what would eventually become Swimming to Cambodia. Gray premiered the play, originally presented in two parts, at the Performing Garage. He debuted Part One in December 1983 and Part Two in February 1984. Later, he combined the two pieces, edited it down, and delivered it as a single monologue from October 27, 1984, to January 5, 1985. Gray won an Obie Award for this show. He then wrote and rewrote as he traveled around the country, performing Swimming to Cambodia more than two hundred times over the course of two years. The monologue “was constructed by recalling the first image in my memory of each previous performance, so it evolved almost like a children’s ‘Round Robin’ game in which a phrase is whispered around and around a circle until the new phrase is stated aloud and compared with the original,” Gray wrote in the author’s note to the published version of the monologue. “The finished product is a result of a series of organic, creative mistakes—perception itself becoming the editor of the final report.”
AUGUST 5, 1983
[Back in New York]
Oh hellish hot city! Made love and went to the bank. Went over to the Garage to sort things out. Ron came in and we had a short visit. He said he spent the thousand he owed me on vacation in Europe. Ron called Liz in L.A. and I listened in. She seems to be having a nice vacation and likes it out there because it’s DRY and Jack is all of a sudden walking and plays with the neighbor kids. She made “loving” fun of Willem and the movie. Said it was like college stuff and that she was absolutely unthreatened. A little strong competition there? I did some more busy work … Obsessed on Thailand … Still feel I have at least two novels in me. India and early R.I. My autobiography up to College? Don’t write to be published but keep on writing everyday! The only way to maintain mental health.
AUGUST 11, 1983
A long interview with Maggie the Harvard student in which I thought I made the discovery that the reason I didn’t “act out” in my work was that I had decided to reverse the theatre with life. That I would begin to test my reality in the world and then use the theatre as the place in which I told about it.
AUGUST 15, 1983
I was in a dance class and came on to a black woman. We made out in class. We took all parts of each other’s bodies as a promise or recognition that we would make love at some point. I went to Pavel and looking away from him I told him that I felt my problems to be insignificant compared to his heart attack. He said something to the effect of “That’s what they all say.” I then told him about the black woman and then started in on what I felt to be the most important story. SOME OF THE STORY WAS TOL
D IN THE JUNGLE. Ivan and Phuket and he got up in the middle of it to go feed his cat. I waited on the couch and began to get angry. Renée’s voice came to me and said now you are angry with him. Express it. I started yelling at him from the couch and he came back into the room as two people. One Pavel was like a fiendish bag lady or Froggy the Gremlin who kept interrupting my story and make fun of it. Whenever I expressed my anger it sounded like distinct performed rage. The other Pavel was the new thinner man who had shaved and was sitting across from the bag lady Pavel and he watched it all. Before I finished my story he said my time was up and this was a surprise to me because he had never done that before.
AUGUST 25, 1983
I wrote close to three and a half hours just grinding it out and trying to get through the whole story. Also making up new names for people and starting to fictionalize. Liz has become Cal and Sarah, Leslie but I don’t know about these name changes and wonder if I shouldn’t go autobiographic. I find that all the sex scenes are exciting for me to write and I get into the most vivid detail with them only to finish and read an interview with Iris Murdoch about how she hates pornography and then pass heavy judgment on myself. We had a late lunch and got over to the river about three. It was cloudy. I almost fell asleep except for the flies, had a half waking vision of my loss of innocence and fears that I was hopelessly sexually obsessed and that that was how I first looked at people now—to see first if they were sexually attractive to me.
SEPTEMBER 17, 1983
I fell into reading from my 1977 diary. A lot of it was sad and hard to take but I was amazed to see how my handwriting had changed since then. In fact you can watch the evolution of it. Liz and Jack come over for a visit. It rained and I went down to Renée’s for a late steak dinner and then we watched TV. “How Green Was My Valley” while Renée typed. She’s all excited about this possible producing job. Then I drank some dark beers and started to read Francine [Prose]’s story but no sooner did I get into it that I got the idea to write up the Hassid story [later included in his 1993 monologue, Gray’s Anatomy] and started in on that before bed. I was so influenced by Francine that I could feel her voice in it. I think we went to bed late about 1:30. Well, it’s the weekend and I’m trying to relax but there feels like so much to be done.
SEPTEMBER 26, 1983
Up at my place and Renée got off to an early start to drive Mr. Birdseye around. [Shafransky’s first paid film job was as a production assistant in charge of minding actor Stacy Keach Sr., who played Clarence Birdseye in the commercials for Birdseye frozen foods.] I spent most of the day over at The Garage writing letters and making real estate calls and finding out that there is no property I can afford in Conn. and from all reports—none along the Hudson. Some co-op in Pleasantville for $33,000 and even then I would have to pay over two hundred maintenance. So, I guess I’ll have to give in to my claustrophobia and try to deal with it. It was a nice day but I felt hungover so did not really go out. Renée came over after her exhausting day and told me how she had to stand around while 30 people worked very seriously making the frozen Broccoli look perfect. She was not in a very good mood. We drove to her place and I called Roland who just got in. Same old Roland. He gave me his talk about morality not being a “moving feast” and then I asked—or Renée slipped me a note about having a drink with him and he said to call him at eight tomorrow. We went to bed while watching “All About Eve.”
JANUARY 2, 1984
Renée said that I never mooned over her and looked deep into her eyes. I thought about it and realized that I only did that with people I was obsessed with. All those secret illicit loves I’ve had and suffered through. That will never lead to having children of my own.
APRIL 1985
HISTORY IS THE ELONGATION OF MEMORY IS THE
ELONGATION OF HISTORY
The monologue [Swimming to Cambodia] has grown and changed as I’ve toured it throughout the United States. In the course of performing it I’ve had a great variance of responses: applause, laughter, hissing, booing and one balled up program hurled at me. Things could be worse I knew. In El Salvador I’d be shot before I even started talking just for the length of my cock.
One of the events I have held on to is that such surrealist stories have emerged but how depressing it is for me to think that a positive story can only emerge from shock, a vast negative ground.
In Part Two, I make a joke that all actors are no one and I later call them saints. I see myself as a conduit to those stories.
This was the first monologue in which I spoke of events not directly experienced in my own life. Some of it was made up from stories and reports from other lives and therefore open to vast opinion and interpretation.
The thing that frightens me most comes from my own internal landscape and that fear is that I tend to reinforce my basic cynical fatalistic and pessimistic stance toward the world. BY SEEKING OUT ITS DARK SPOTS. The one thing that prevails is mankind’s inhumanity to mankind. As I believe STILL, as long as there is individuation there will be conflict and as long as there is conflict there will be war but individuation seems to be a necessary ground for being.
Freudian speaks in me that there is always a constant precarious balance between dark and light. The yin and yang. Civilization and its discontents.
Looking back on it after the fact, I realize that Swimming to Cambodia is an attempt to balance those poles. Like any work of art it is an attempt to become God out of a loss of contact.
An attempt to create a tiny, balanced universe. An attempt to play at being God out of a lack of contact with the real or imagined source.
And like life it is a fixed and imperfect text.
In hindsight, the only sight that I’m aware of, I realized part of why I called the piece Swimming to Cambodia is because to realize the Cambodia Genocide would be like swimming there for a person like me.
After having searched on and off for two years, in 1985, Gray bought a second home in Phoenicia, New York, in the Catskills. He described first encountering the house in Terrors of Pleasure: “I noticed this little red Adirondack-style cabin up the hill. It had rough-cut siding, a nice porch with screens that were rusted and ripped, and a pine tree nearby. It was up on a small embankment and looked over a pretty rolling mountain.” The following winter, Gray bought the house for thirty-one thousand dollars (with four thousand dollars in escrow until the owner fixed the foundation)—with both money he’d saved and an inheritance from his grandmother—imagining it would be “a cozy place to write the Great American Novel.” The entries that follow were written while he was first living in his new house. Almost immediately after he bought the house, it became a ceaseless and demanding money pit.
JULY 5, 1985
Just before returning to the house, I have a dream that someone has torn it down without my permission and left a perfect grass plot. A new beginning. Like a graveyard. Like a putting green.
As we drive up to the House I say “Oh damn it hasn’t burned down yet.”
ONE POSITIVE THING = The house this time took me away from the FEAR OF AIDS.
Alright! Alright My biggest fear is that when I at last get to the Hamptons.
WHEN I
AT LAST GET TO
THE HAMPTONS
I will find that the ocean is just the Ocean.
JULY 6, 1985
THE HOUSE
I remember that the real big shock after I bought the house and moved in was that I didn’t feel anything special about ownership. I mean I realized that it didn’t make me any more secure. It just made me realize that I was passing through. It would have to be left to someone.
JULY 9, 1985
When I took Renée over to the bus we had to wait for a half hour so we listened to this rabble rousing ______ religious show and they were praying for all homosexuals to stop their filthy habits before the AIDS spreads. Then there was a man talking about the new Homosexual Blood terrorism salad dressing sperm terrorism about how they were consciously polluting the blo
od and also sending AIDS victims to prostitutes to help spread it into the straight population.
And all the time, there’s this crazy guy out in the parking lot, walking around talking to himself, adjusting No Parking signs, then going into the door marked “no admittance.”
Renée said, “The world out there has gone mad.”
JULY 9, 1985
Was getting ready to go over for the cleansing on the land and I found the well open and I thought Oh my God why didn’t I look sooner. Indeed some animal has fallen in and rotted of rabies and now I’m going to catch it. So I freaked and drove as fast as I could to the water plant and the only point that kept me calm was to think of telling this all to an audience I alone have escaped to tell you. [In fact, Gray did include this detail in his monologue Terrors of Pleasure, as he did several of the quotes from visitors and workmen in the following entries.]
JULY 10, 1985
First visitors. Jehovah’s Witness
“Isn’t that a lovely thought that we are going to live forever? And it’s just around the corner. Adam and Eve didn’t have children before they sinned. Until you understand this all your prayers will be like putting paint on a house that is falling down.”
Oh when they jack up that house the windows are going to pop and the doors are going to blow. You’ll never get nothing closed or open again. Hey, you didn’t just buy this house did you?
The Journals of Spalding Gray Page 16