I got some more beer and we stopped off at J.’s, and here more trouble. I went into J.’s can and when I flushed the thing it ran over and out into the hall. He’s been having trouble with the thing and his landlady can’t seem to get it fixed and this set J. off. He has the true writer’s temperament and he ran down the stairs to fix his teeth in the landlady. I guess he was embarrassed about the toilet (I was too), and maybe the only way sensitive people can override embarrassment is to howl. I do not. When something bad happens I say nothing. What’s wrong with me there, I do not know. Anyhow, J. got his teeth in the landlady and a scene spouted up. She came up the stairs crying and had this mop and mopped the floor, and it was funny in a tragic way: here she was with the mop, weeping, poet J. standing over her saying, “Now, Mrs. M., I think you get simply too emotional over these things!” Anyhow, she went weeping down the steps, and J. came in and paced up and down cursing the toilet. He said he liked the view. You can see the whole horrible city of Los Angeles. J. likes to look at it. But he’s new in town. I’ve seen the welts of L.A. too long. I never go to the window. Not to look out at the city. To look at a bird maybe, all right. Anyhow, I guess you can’t blame him on the can: when a man wants to piss (or worse) you can’t piss in a view. Anyhow, we had another beer and left. I drove Stevens and his friend back to Pasadena, a city I am not too familiar with. My night was not over. When I left them out they said, “You see that blue light down there?” I told them I saw that blue light down there. They said, friend, when you get there, turn right. You’ll hit the freeway in about 2 or 3 miles. Well, I never did find the freeway. Maybe it was because I was too busy looking for a liquor store. It was about one thirty a.m. and they close at 2. But in Pasadena they close about 10 p.m. My old man said 30 years ago, “Pasadena is a one-horse town.” It was one of the few times he was on beam. And it still goes today.