For the rest of the afternoon, Dag was very quiet. I told her I had to write, which is why I am sitting here at my desk in the dinette area of the apartment while she rambles around the place fiddling with her cosmetics. There’s really no way to escape each other.

I made some coffee and smoked half a joint and got some writing done. My mom called (Dad on the extension). She said, “Are you all right?” I wanted to say, “I’m stoned, I’m in New York and I just got a blow job from a beautiful woman.”

At the same time, I’m not all right because I’m never all right. Underneath it all, there is a sense of wrongness. Like I did something wrong. What did I do wrong?

LATER, SAME DAY:

I’m back. I realized that Haim would be coming home soon. Dag likes to make dinner for him like they’re a married couple. The weird thing is, we didn’t even fuck and she was being all weird. I did get her shirt off though and she has a pair of very excellent breasts. She’s very proud of them, as she should be.

I refuse to worry about whether this is going to be a great love affair or not. I’ve only been in New York City for a month! Let’s put it this way, I read some of her poetry and she’s going to have a great job at Hallmark Cards someday.

So I split. The city had been scrubbed clean by the hard rain. Not many people out. But the amazing thing about New York is that it never really stops—it’s always going, one way or the other.

First I visited my old neighborhood, Times Square. Hit the porn shops. Some amazing stuff in there. There’s a “straight” section and a “gay” section in each shop. Piles of glossy magazines with titles like Shaved Splits and Open Clits (whatever that could mean)! And then there’s these things called “live peep shows.” You enter a little dark booth that stinks of Clorox and drop a quarter into a slot and there’s a whirring sound and then a little metal shutter rises and you’re looking through a small square window into this circular space about twelve feet wide. And right there, on a platform are two live people, naked and fucking. They look really tired, probably junkies. It’s like a mini-arena so across the way are all the other little peep windows and the feverish eyes of the other men observing in the darkness. Perverts watching hookers fucking. Nice.