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OCTOBER
- University of Minnesota Press
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OCTOBER Thursday 1 The legal and police professions are crowned with dishonour today - Eric Bentley is to be pardoned, the death rot creeps through the dying hulk. I have a friend who joined the Freemasons, he was caught speeding. The lodge assured him the policeman would not appear at the court case dismissed in Kent. Eric Bentley was not so lucky. Anyone who plans to commit a murder should become a Freemason first. HB says the police have no reputation after a whole succession of miscarriages of justice, class resentment and the British disinterest in any form of service. The boys in blue probably fought in the playground with their neighbours, now they can arrest them and if they wish, frame them. They only behave if they are told to do so. The Independent rang me to warn me that the tabloids - this time the Express - were reviving the lamentable and untruthful Dispatches programme on Gen P. Orridge. The police, according to my informant, were thinking of prosecuting Genesis and Paula for their body piercings and tattoos. Really! What is this world coming to? The programme might have successfully investigated child abuse, but instead encouraged a malicious tabloid trial of Gen, who has had to leave the country to protect his daughters. The police have impounded his papers and work, and Gen has lost house and home. I spoke to both Jon Savage and David Lewis. We are quite powerless in all this as no one has the resources or the time to sue, though I believe Amnesty might take on his case. I can't think of a more responsible father than Gen, his children are the happiest. The authors of this programme should be brought to book. For a moment I appeared as a Psychik TV spokesperson in this drivel, a telephone call to C4 brought the response: 'You were so small and there for only a moment.' Long enough for the Mirror to register it and send two journalistsdown to Dungeness late on a winter's evening. Met Carol Myers in the Algerian Coffee store. Edward II won the film prize at Dinard. Bought Boston ground for filter, papers, and took a taxi up to Bandung. 229 Another quiet, sunlit morning. October 1, in shirt-sleeves. When the sun shines it makes me dizzy, aggravates this blind eye. Some part of me dares this blindness to progress, it says I've seen enough. I left HB happy on the way to work. My cheap trousers had dyed the wash, my yellow T-shirt has gone green. His college gang is causing mayhem: 'You be the red group, you be the blue group, you be the green group and we'll be the . . . alpha group.' The dykes and fluffers have banded together, they tell off the tutors when they say anything remotely sexist or anti-gay, then shout 'You stupid poof, 'dizzy dyke', 'fat queen' at each other, then turn back to the tutors and say 'It's the new queer polities' as way of explanation. This terrorises the confused straights, one of whom confided that she'd 'dipped her toe in the waters of lesbianism'. They grabbed her and said: 'You're coming for a swim.' We write a synopsis of Narrow Rooms, all murder mayhem, which we fax to Christine in New York. Ken and I walked to a photographic shop and looked at a new camera I 'm set to have one to look for stills and locations; then we looked at a rainbow of silk shirts on a stall by the station. I came home with an armful of Wittgenstein books and my musical instrument. Ken talked of my dislike of the theatre. He wound me up, as the Theed Street studio is next to the National: 'Should we eat with your friends?' 'What friends?' The grubby little culture of the theatre, a queue for privilege outside a pawnbroker's shop. The gay press congratulating it on a betrayal, the gay press: Tory bodies and Labour heads. Testa di sinistra stomacho di destra. I feel so alienated by this society I could rejoice in setting a touch-paper alight and watch the whole lot flame. Friday 2 Early breakfast at Bar Italia. Ken and I walked to the studios for our rehearsal. Ken: 'I hope I'm in the diaries, write something complimentary.' Why do I feel so alienated? I made my own space outside the institutions. Am I glad I did it? Yes...