[To Jon and Louise Webb]

February 25, 1968

[* * *] don’t know if I told you but I have been twice interviewed by the big boys in the post office who don’t quite like the idea of me writing this column “Notes of a Dirty Old Man.” that column has cost me plenty of woe, as you might know. also somebody wrote in to them saying that I was not married to the mother of my child and that we lived separately. the same person also mailed them a batch of “Notes” with certain passages outlined in ink. they didn’t care too much for something I wrote about the post office, plus a thing on sodomy. I told them that I would have to continue writing “Notes,” no matter the result. “Are we to consider the postal officials as the new critics of literature?” I asked them. I also mentioned the ACLU. they said that they were not sure of what to do with me because they hadn’t had “a case like this in ten years.” ten years? I wonder who the other guy was? anyhow, I am told that the whole business must be taken up higher for review. I was sitting in a large dark room at the end of a long table with just this little lamp there and these 2 people looking at me. I’ll probably be machine-gunned someday as I walk out this door. joke, of course. or, is it? they asked me if I were going to write anything more about the post office. I told them, probably not. so it might be a truce or they might be waiting for me to really expose myself where they could more easily strap me to the cross.

“have you ever had any books published?” they asked me.

“yes.”

“how many?”

“I don’t know. 4, 5, 6, 7…I don’t know.”

“how much did you PAY these people to publish your work?”

ummm, ummm, umm.

[* * *] have really been in very strange mind state lately. seem to be frozen. can’t move or write. 25 or 30 unanswered letters in big coffee can on shelf. Harold Norse seems to be in this same deep freeze—the inability to do anything. shot to shit, sick, weak. it might only be a refueling period. or maybe we’re both finished. difficult to tell. strange that we should both be in the fix at the same time. I consider Hal a much better writer and person than I am, more human, and getting a letter from him is always a big event to me. I hear Anais Nin is trying to get him a grant so he can come here to Capistrano Beach, where he thinks there is a doctor who can cure him. that’s a place down about halfway to San Diego. it would be good to see him. no need to talk. we could just sit around the same room for a couple of days and look out the window, or walk along the beach, say about 6 p.m. among the insane and wild-eyed gulls, we walking along wondering wondering what went wrong with the machinery of everything. [* * *]