IN HER YOUNGER DAYS: from my journals, 14 February 1975

“Things are never so bad they can’t be made worse.” Humphrey Bogart

HOT DOG

“At the Whitney today to see what the world is getting vomited on their heads in the name of art and also to see two films—one on Henry Miller (ah, idol of my younger days) and Charles Bukowski (idol of these days)—i remember going to the DeYoung Museum—a show of Peter LeBlanc and the Beat Generation poets and i can still be upset because the poetry readings were a week later—Anyway i was in absolute agony because the hot dog man outside the Whitney somehow came to mind and then i started thinking, man i had to have one of those Sabrettes and that’s suicidal because for some inexplicable reason i get real bad headaches not to mention sick to my stomach after one of those but when i actually submit to the thought of eating one there is no turning back so i was agonizing over the MAJOR decision and trying to laugh and react in the right places in the film on Bukowski, so of course, i should look like i have heard of the guy and i’m also getting some ideas and can’t write in the dark but the hot dog question is gnawing away at me and finally i decide yes, yes, yes,—you know those loud defiant yeses in my brain & figure well i haven’t missed too much of what Bukowski is saying anyway he would have understood and i fly past the shit that litters the museum—(i appear to have my mind on something else ((i do, the hot dog)) but i can also scowl knowingly at this crap—CRAP—as only an artist can scowl) tear ass into the street and the hot dog man who is ALWAYS—not sometime, but goddamn always there on his corner—even in the goddamn rain he’s there—and shit, he’s not there today and all the way back to the studio i kept thinking how awful and tragic it all was and how nobody (maybe X but I wouldn’t want to underestimate X) NOBODY could understand the defeat—this absolute crusher—it could have been worse, tho, i could have been stoned.”

UPDATE: I no longer eat meat.