Grey triangle

A brief resumé of my movements to date; I haven’t slept in my bed for two nights and I’m still at Lee’s. I spend the nights on his floor which is a little hard but not too bad. This is how much 44A Jervis Terrace has affected me. . . .

Yesterday, at about seven, Lee and I went to Mo’s birthday party at Livingstone’s. We didn’t feel like going at all but turned up for Mo’s sake. John and Del were in an exuberant, amusing mood, John even more so as he said he’d scored the previous evening with Liddy, which surprised me as I didn’t think her susceptible to the Turney blitzkrieg tactics. “I’m a man, you’re a woman; let’s go to bed” was how he won her over, or at least that’s what he told me.

Del tried it on with Lindsey but got nowhere and told me that they’d instead spent two hours talking about me. “I did a good job for you. . . .” Of John and Liddy, Lindsey said, “her side of the story is not the same as his,” but I was drunk by this time and can’t remember what else we talked about, though it wasn’t for long. I didn’t say much all evening and spent the longest time talking with Inga’s friend Ebbe about her impressions of England and the English.

Ian was there, and Mick too, but we didn’t talk much. Ian exudes a superficial air of mystery and the bizarre that’s dispelled the more you get to know him. He said that when Barry, Lee and I interrupted he and Mick the other night they were on their way to set fires in the crypt, dressing this act of destruction in ritualistic talk.

The latter half of the evening turned into a fragmented whirl of half-remembered impressions; trying to stand and having the world spin crazily around me, retching among the bins and rubbish outside a club, Del and Lee pouring cold water over my head to sober me up . . . With drunkenness came silence, and I was quiet for the cab journey back to Lee’s Residence Halls.

I slept until three today, so ate breakfast as the sun was setting, although only the pink tinge of the clouds betrayed this fact. Lee has gone out on his bike for some more food. It’s nearly midnight; a German film plays to itself on the TV, the sound turned down so the images flicker silently across the grey screen.

Lee and I have come up with a symbol for our film project, a grey triangle, the mark given by the Nazis to ‘anti-social’ elements who were interned at Dachau—tramps, vagrants and the like. Lee even intends sewing the grey triangle on all his clothes to reinforce his stance of ‘new Puritanism’ that he plans on unleashing in all its ascetic glory at the new year . . . A thread of continuity uniting so many (possible) things, a banner under which to rally and to leave people guessing.

I’ll be tolerably pleased if I even manage to commit one idea to celluloid, for I’m very lazy and let myself down so often . . . It’s important I get a really fine place to live.