August 21st, 1967

Got letter from Joe McCrindle at the Transatlantic Review, telling me the printers refuse to set my short story in type because of British obscenity laws. Printers subject to prosecution, not publisher. Mentions commendation for me in front of the magazine.

Nathan back from Colorado. Dropped acid at 14,000 feet & played in the snow. Visiting blue-grass singers.

Mona, who’s just moved into Nathan’s, goes with me to North Beach & City Lights to find the magazine. We’re dazzled by City Lights, the photos of Ginsburg & Kerouac in the basement, the small literary magazines in the racks in the corner.

She's impressed that William Burroughs & Joyce Carol Oates are there along with the commendation wishing that they could publish my story for its “vitality of language.” But no short story. Makes me reconsider what I’m doing, but it doesn’t faze me.

I tell her how my family reacted to the story. Oldest brother thought they bought it to sell to pornographic magazine for more money. Dad said they bought it so they could blackmail me later in life when I wrote something decent. Then my sister begged me not to publish it because her kids might read it someday. They wouldn’t let my mother read it.

We go to Coffee Gallery.

She tells me English ghost stories & talks about her visits with seers who revealed her past lives. Believes in more than this life, at least that good & evil vibrations remain after we leave.

Talking about cats & dogs, she feels tuned into them. Those that attack other people are nice to her, suggesting she has this animal magnetism. Claims she's laid out a whole room of people on what they were thinking about each other.

"I make a lot of enemies that way," she says.

She likes the blues because they're so sensual, has taken 1 acid trip, has long curly red hair, strong facial bone structure, very expressive eyebrows & broad mouth. During pauses her eyes shift back & forth, waiting for me to respond.

She's rapping about Pittsburgh & smiles when she sees how intently I’m studying her face.

I break in & tell her how her strong facial bones & indelicate skin give her a very womanish quality, like Anouk Aimee.

"I love you for saying that," she says.

She appeals to me very much, nice legs—she's wearing cut-off jeans.

She starts rapping about her diabolical mother who has obsessive hatred of her. Accuses Mona of using her father against her all the time. When her parents found out she had lunch with NAACP official, there was a big blow-up, she left home next morning with no money & lived with a friend for last 2 years of school. Parents are members of John Birch Society, right-wingers.

Mona bought $3,600 Chevelle before she left Pittsburgh. Mother went to finance company, told them she was a whore, dope-addict, would give car away when she got to coast. They repossessed it, she has to file bankruptcy. Mona’s been disinherited.

"My mother is the only truly evil person I know," she says. "Everything must be a negation of something else to make her happy. It would take a great psychologist ten years to even begin figuring her out.”

Mother has detectives following her in San Francisco. Trying to have her committed.

Tells me about affair with Jim.

Because she had developed this thing with her family whereby she could never expect affection, she became unable to give or take affection from men. Somehow Jim represented her family & she resented it. Even though he fell madly in love with her, she shit on him during the whole relationship. Gradually she came around to appreciating Jim, but it was too late—he left, fed up.

But she was pregnant. She’d been taking ergot, didn't know how pregnant she was. Went into labor while driving home. Fetus came out, 6 months, dead. It came out feet first so she had to pull it out by herself in the car.

Tells me people with big money from New York are coming to town. She & Michelle have to help Nathan with a big dope deal going down.

» August 27th, 1967 : Chocolate George