In the Shadow of the American Dream

The Diaries of David Wojnarowicz

David Wojnarowicz, Amy Scholder

• Publisher: Open Road Media
• Year: 2014
• eBook ISBN: 9781480489608
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Social Science Biographies
• Index: Social Sciences

From life in the streets and love in the alleys to fame in the spotlight and an untimely death—raw, biting, and brilliant selections from the personal journals of one of the most uniquely creative artists of the late twentieth century
When his life ended at age thirty-seven—a casualty of the AIDS epidemic that took so many before their time—David Wojnarowicz had long since established himself as one of America's most vital artists and activists.  In the Shadow of the American Dream is a stunning collection of riveting and revealing chapters from Wojnarowicz's extensive personal diaries—thirty volumes' worth of memories and lucid observations, some bitter, some sweet—that the author began writing when he was seventeen and continued until his death two decades later. Here is a brilliant chronicle of an artist's emergence—a young man's still achingly fresh memories of his unhappy adolescence and his glorious discovery of self. Wojnarowicz recalls his life on Manhattan's Lower East Side with no shame or regret, and shares his hitchhiking journeys across the country. He talks of art and love and sex—embracing who he is fully and accepting his heartbreaking fate without pathos—while providing fascinating glimpses into the vibrant and colorful New York art scene and poignant views of life and death among the AIDS community.
At once frightening and courageous, joyous and disturbing, enlightening and honest,  In the Shadow of the American Dream is a treasured addition to the enduring literary legacy of David Wojnarowicz and a true testament to his unique brilliance.

March 18–June 1, 1979

New York or Ocean

Journal de L’Homme Ordinaire—

Journal of the Ordinary Man

April 11, 1979 (Wednesday)

Looking through this sparse journal dated from mars 18, I see so little in the way of internal mapping. Most is external as usual in all the journals, the internal is stuff that isn’t threatening/embarrassing. Well, have to stop this, the words cryptic and symbolist on page 16 of this journal were referring to my meeting a young Englishman my own age in the jardin des Tuileries. What was extremely funny (not in hilarious sense but in amusing coincidental realizations) was that this mirrored my last days in New York before arriving here. I brought the fellow home and we made love and afterwards talked about getting together again, he suggesting that I come for dinner on Tuesday the tenth. In lying together among the tangled sheets we talked while I smoked a cigarette and dreamed towards the white ceiling watching the smoke whirl through the sunlight. I felt somewhat relieved in going to bed with another person other than Jean-Pierre especially in light of the fact I am leaving, it was sort of a removal point, difficult to deal with my leaving him and also there was some sort of breakthrough in lying down with a boy of my own age. Most of my growing up since my first sexual experience with a man has been in the arms of older men, men in their thirties and forties, not so much that I desire older men for age but for their grasp on life, the settling down inside of themselves, some kind of calm and reassurance and proof of life; dunno how to make this clear as I’ve never pondered it much except in odd moments and now as I grow older I desire younger and younger men though I don’t usually sleep with anyone younger than me and rarely someone my own age or even close mostly because of their awkwardness and my desire to relate to someone who has a lot more thinking and reflecting behind him. It also occurred to me that possibly I have always slept with older men because of some kind of inherent security, that the age difference separates me from them to an extent, thereby giving me a sense that I can say what I want and if it’s not accepted by them I can always attribute this to their position in time and aging; this is not to be unfair to myself, it’s just a slight possibility and I don’t know if it is invented or real. There is something a bit frightening to me about relationships with someone my own age in way of lovemaking, etc., but now with this Englishman I felt relieved of any thoughts concerning the whole subject; it no longer exists with the intensity it once did. I even felt an infatuation with him after he left, similar to meeting Phillip while involved with Randy, with Phillip it drove me against the wall that I was leaving after meeting such a down-to-earth guy, him and his childhood Stetson camping out in the rolling hills of Montana … that kind of suburban innocence hmm … so the problem was in explaining to Jean-Pierre that I wanted to go to dinner and possibly we would have sex, me and this English guy (Alan). It took several days to work up to the subject; in the meantime I was alternating between feelings of possibly being very wrong considering that I was involved with J.P. for this long and that it might hurt him if I was to do so. Then came senses of myself as a human being who needed freedom to do exactly what he desired in way of contact, sexual or otherwise … I always am consumed in this sense that I should be able to move where and when I desire; I wouldn’t give up my relationship with J.P. for another person in the way of commitment, just need to explore things as they move my way … images of floating from room to room and bed to bed and country to country and time to time … just moving as chance brings me and at the same time being involved with one person who I feel comfortable with for a period of time, someone I can relax and be myself, allow any thoughts changes, etc., to come forth.

Okay I told Jean-Pierre and he said, You must feel free to do as you wish.

Fine, now days later last night I left for Alan’s house and stopped by J.P.’s job to give him the keys to the apartment and standing there I asked him if he truly understood, I was worried he might not, that I did love him and yet this was necessary. He said, This isn’t the time to talk about it. I left through the driving rain and caught a metro to St. Lazare station and found Alan’s house after much walking around and searching streets for the right avenue. He lives upstairs on the seventh floor of an old building with courtyard, student sorts of rooms, creaking staircases and dank hallways and dripping pipes, recalling the roach havens I lived in on the Lower East Side near Bowery mission—whines and howls of babies and dogs. Heard the sound of a radio program from the BBC down the dark hallways and followed it to his door, he was bent over with a pair of red rubber gloves on, cuttin’ up celery and apples for our meal. I went inside and he struggled with one glove, pulled it off and extended his hand for a shake. I sat down in the room at the table, a wobbly chair. It was a small room, very small with old crumb-littered rug disappearing beneath a tiny cot, the roof/ceiling sloped down at a sharp angle and a tiny skylight with one broken pane opened out so that if you stood up your head would go through and peer out over rainy gray Paris roofs. A nudie calendar with some Swedish blonde woman with taut nipples breasts and sitting against a cheesy backdrop was on one wall, chestnut branches in bloom pushing from an old juice bottle filled with scummy green water and a sink that didn’t work. We listened to the news for a half hour while he cut the vegetables and fruit and poured out nuts over them; vegetarian he is. Okay so during dinner we talked of mundane things, somehow just no click of personalities, I realized my infatuation and then the senses slid away. He’s an amiable guy, seems to know a lot more about American media culture than I do, which is okay granted I never watch the tube at home and don’t really care a bit for any of it. He told me of this girl he knew: She was born of a rich family who were all communists, her brothers became lawyers and defended many students during the May Day clash aftermath, she became a nun and after some time realized that wasn’t quite what she needed in her life, her parents died and left her a château in the south of France, she created a triangle between France America and some other country, riding about on jets and fucking everywhere, she liked to be tied into chairs and roughed up a bit not beaten badly but slight sadism, more the desire for the threat of it following with wild lovemaking than the actual beatings. She soon created the triangle involving Canada rather than the States as she had met an American who beat her quite badly, I asked her, Why Canada I mean I thought you went in for roughhousing. She replied, Those Americans are too bloody literal. Now she has retired to the chateau and raises a large garden. I went to her house; her family was always a bit eccentric and didn’t go in for furniture of any sort, so in going to her chateau one must sit on the floor, eat on the floor, and watch television on the floor, no rugs or such so that these enormous slugs would go trailing their slime all over the floors of the house, she would say, Oh my, look at that one, aren’t they marvelous creatures?

At one point I wanted to leave quite badly, the place was great but I was feeling slightly claustrophobic for as we got into bed it was so extremely small that I could not move an inch without falling out. Rain tapping on my head through the broken skylight and some alley or roof cat yowling away like a banshee out in the night … We made love and talked in the dark, I tried fucking him but he had difficulty in doing so, so we masturbated together. Of course in all this time I did not forget J.P. in fact I thought of him each hour, each hour wishing I hadn’t said I’d spend the night, wanting to rise up put on my jeans and split and head home through the dark streets and take a shower and climb into bed with Jean. He asked me if I liked threesomes and I said my two experiences with them were awfully awkward and therefore not enjoyable, no way to move naturally among two other bodies, always elbows in the face or knees in the balls, that sort of thing. He suggested possibly he call a friend some other time and all of us get it on. I murmured a noncommittal answer. It’s extremely easy to find the reasons for not wanting to be involved with a person; but that sort of thing isn’t necessary for me, if I feel uncomfortable by way of a relationship with a guy I simply don’t get into it further than it’s gone. I realized the extent of my infatuation and fluctuated between feelings of being a fool for not staying home that night, or at least not staying the night here at Alan’s. I still feel he’s a nice guy but I am leaving and I do want to spend my time with Jean-Pierre and Brian when he arrives. Besides, what I felt was possible between Alan and me was a good communication with humor and illumination—not so. We are too far apart culturally and in our vision/scope of life itself, he being content to talk about media scenes, me wanting to talk about life. More important, me wanting to learn about my senses more, feel more comfortable with my leanings and travel movements

Woke up at six o’clock and in the gray light got dressed and kissed him good-bye and descended the rattling stairs to the courtyard, through the heavy doors to the street, ogres of concierges leaning over ground-floor sills with puffed alcoholic faces leering toothless grins in my direction as I walked down the street, up in the sky huge black blankets of rolling clouds passing over roofs and in the far east a billowing line of gold breathing light, of sunrise spectacular and life-filled and I hurried home to St. Georges, stopping for a croissant for J.P. and thinking of him being up by now shaving with his customary sink of cold water and hard razor blade, the dog yapping for its breakfast and the look upon opening the door between our eyes, I passed loads of stupid cops as usual in the doorways and streets all peering about with dead glazed eyes for action, went upstairs opened the door, J.P. was nude in the bathroom before the mirror with shaving cream on his face and a line of blood trickling among the white, he’s cut himself again, I always tell him to use warm water but we exchanged ça va’s and I sat down at the kitchen table with a cup of steaming coffee and sighed. He came out a bit later and sat down acting as if there was nothing happening between us; me filled with all these wondering senses of what he thinks and feels about last night my not returning home. As for the north shore it seems he’s no longer going to go for three days but will make it the week and wants to be alone for a few days by himself up there, thus I would return myself by train with the dog. I realize now the change in plans and of course why; needless to reiterate here … So I guess I’ll stay here alone all week and he can spend all the time at the shore by himself, I resist senses of being made to split at some time for someone else’s solitude, though all this time his only vacation aside from August being next week, somehow I feel sensitive to his asking for the time alone meaning away from me. Again it’s understood but I would feel better not going at all than to have to pick up my things and take a train back alone … I guess it’s the move of having to leave, being the object of intrusion … Many things for me to do here, to complete or prepare for leaving, some writings I want to finish, also the call expected from Brian. Again today, all this morning I’ve thought about J.P. and Brian and past and present relationships and realize I have to stress to any and all persons I become involved with that I must be able to do what I wish, it is my life and my senses and it can be called selfishness, but I absolutely have never been able to put myself in a position where I deny chance and other ways of movement, whether over distances and landscapes or in lovemaking. It’s the settling down that is so difficult; choosing one form excludes all others, the only answer is not choosing at all but merely moving under one’s own will; this is something that angers many people, that many people find faulty and that many people say is an avoidance of responsibility; maybe so but then again I am alive and I am continually distracted by movements around me and alternative things, continually looking searching for traces of my life and others amongst the landscapes.

The difficulty I have at times is in wondering whether to trust my vision—my image and view of things and why they exist, rationalizations, you might say. I realize the ease with which anyone might find reasons to support whatever viewpoints they hold or to support whatever actions they may wish to make … How more or less true or real is this from any alternative way of seeing or believing?

… ain’t it always a silly mess of senses, really now, all this shoulda been spared from the typewriter … I wonder if I’m alive years from now will I appreciate this or scorn the very idea of it … this self-searching in the face of a world that kills people with bombs …

April 19, 1979

The gray sea dawn silvery like a television screen flickering through the windows at various times in the night and morning. Waking several times on my back and arms uplifting to ward off the night, the morning, the hopelessness of no sleep, the images of closed eyes still running as I return to them, turning over heavily in the sheets: I’m in some suburban town, a New Jersey sense in the air, old houses and colonial-style pillared boxes and most of them white with soft glow among the night trees and lanes, I’m moving through, soft whisper of shapes of people in cars and on foot moving in and out of darkness on their ways home or to bars or to other houses, looking for a bar that’s open, seeing the blush of red neon down some tree-swept street and figuring on buying a pack of cigarettes. Somewhere in these scenes, dogs bark and children move along and I meet Syd, the Jersey lawyer who was my second dad during Times Square street routines, met him hustling and we traded our minds bare from then on in various hotels, various states, states of mind, states of distance, he’s really grown so much older as I have too, he hands me a couple of letters that he’s written to me, I see staples in one, something affixed to the back of the letter, money I imagine … I stuff it into my pocket, too embarrassed to read it and look to see what’s affixed on its back in front of him. I’m alone and moving through the streets, wind tossing dark trees almost invisible in the perspective of night, in the foyer of some house, I meet Syd’s wife, we talk real friendly, though I’ve never met her before, she’s very nice and we talk loose and then I pull something, cigarettes maybe, out of my pocket and when I turn away for a moment and then turn back, she is standing there in the near darkness of the living room unfolding one of the letters Syd gave me, I can see his name and his handwriting and his law firm letterhead on the paper. She recognizes it immediately. I rush over and feel an acute pain in my senses and rip it out of her hands, she turns and looks at me sadly, a bit shocked, not knowing what the letter was, not having time to read it, but knowing it was from her husband to me, I feel terrible and try to explain to her, it’s something she wouldn’t understand, that it belongs to me, I’m sorry for having to take it away like that. She finds the second letter on the floor, I take that from her with equal force, feeling even worse, she knows something is wrong, still doesn’t quite know the exact truth, I feel it’s better she doesn’t. Syd is on the phone, she goes over wiping her hands on her dress or apron, speaks to Syd on the phone in the kitchen in the near dawn, I’m looking for an exit, wondering how Syd will handle this one, feeling terrible for all of us, wanting to leave and not be seen again … she comes off the phone unexpectedly fast, talks to me as if none of this has happened. I leave afterwards, somehow Syd’s wife becomes my stepmother and Syd becomes my father, I avoid him in this urban sort of town, citylike … I think he’s drunk but he really isn’t, I feel bad to talk to him, just want to go away from them all … I am too different from them, they could never understand my life. At the top of a large large hill, a little black kid is running around … I steal some things or find them or am given them, run down the hill fast, round the corner, my dad’s sitting there, almost leave again thinking he’ll be drunk and nasty, he isn’t, he looks at me with a calm sadness, we exchange soundless words …

(evening)

… in realizing how much I love him, the horrible sense in leaving …

All things passing, all things coming to ends, more things beginning, soon themselves to seek or grow towards some kind of end, as if all things are made up of some inner core, some seed as that which lies within the heart and ticks away more and more faintly towards its own discreet and particular end, as if the seed is made of stones like those shaped and worn smooth by the sea, by the shift and roll of sands, by the coarse air and the smooth heels of vagabonds, by the passing of so many feet, so many miles, so many days … Ah these sunsets and sunrises, dawns and dusks that pull so much from our eyes, from our foreheads and arms growing soft and furrowed beneath age. And tell me for what reason the animal body passes through these tall grasses, along the ledges and windows of day and night, why these leaning red flowers still opening and closing with the wind and the night, why these silver images flickering from far windows down through the alleyways, why this sense of solitude in rooms filled with people, why the sense of loneliness as arms stretch away from the body of a lover, why these quiet moments of desperation along the coast, the standing platform on the wall of the sea, the shift of sands and winds, the continual rippling of waters, the indigo that claims it all—water wind sea skies and the deepest corridors of the heart—just one reason I can claim for my own, one sound of syllables that will press like dampened cloth against sweating brows, why these battlefields of dreams, these wounding nights and sleeplessness, these steel carriages that carry us to and away from the sun, the howling dogs down by the dumps, the fagged ones limping through busy thoroughfares, why these senses of grayness that pierce arrow swift along so many visual regions, why these clocks on everyone’s arms, why these calendars along endless cheap room walls, why these philosophies emptying characters of armor and dreams, why these foolish characters along every age, why the thrust of senses, acceleration of the heart in so many cities, why the beginning and end of savage desires, why the light in the eyes that passes in time, why the sense of touch on one’s shoulder that eases into familiarity, why never the constant and furious sense of loving for all time in all places and endless, totally endless, why these nations and borders and coincidences, why these moments passing into hours and unfurling like flowers into hideous days of ending, why these ends, these passings, why.

May 7, 1979

Dreams in the last month have been like slides clacking into an old viewer snap snap snap—scenes characters associations life—rhythms reasons forms all change fast.

In this one I was in a shadow-filled house more than a two-story ramshackle suburban monolithic structure—wood walls floors doors—old but preserved enough to lend an old-styled grace and beauty. They have come to the house: Your son has arrived. I’m startled; didn’t know I had a son. It’s actually a whole glad rush of senses and I can’t wait to see him. Steve, my brother, is there; he tells me that my son is outside will come in shortly. I see this little kid about eleven years old maybe a lot younger maybe nine years old with slightly dirty blond hair. A kid, I suddenly feel grabbed in the heart happy as hell that he’s actually my son. Don’t remember having a son and with whom. Kid comes into house running around through rooms in particular kid play, attention’s diverted constantly by shape and movement of world. I avoid him for as long as possible because suddenly I realize I don’t know his name, don’t want to hurt him by asking him what his name is, after all, I’m his father!! I ask people, What is his name? No one answers and I get increasingly upset though I don’t show it outwardly. I go up to Steve, the kid has come in and is over against a far wall sitting on a ledge over a group of reaching people. I ask Steve again and he bends over to my right ear and whispers the boy’s name. I realize suddenly I am somewhat deaf in my right ear and I keep asking him to repeat the name. Finally I say, Tell me in my left ear, I can’t hear you in this one. He bends like a doctor and starts examining my bad ear. I’m getting frustrated as hell, I wanna talk to my son but have to know his name. Finally he tells me the kid’s name is Hun or Huné. Huné is name of bookshop in St.-Germain. Hun is the Attila I’...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Editor’s Note
• Introduction
• August-September 1971
• July 15–August 17, 1976
• July 26–September 4, 1977
• September 1977
• April 1978
• August–September 1978
• September 14–October 18, 1978
• October 17, 1978
• October 21–November 24, 1978
• November 25, 1978–March 17, 1979
• I GOT LIVIN’ ON MY SIDE
• March 18–June 1, 1979
• June 5–August 28, 1979
• New York City, October 1979
• February–April 1980
• May–June 1980
• August 1980–January 1981
• September 1, 1981
• 1984
• November 1987
• 1987 (or thereabouts)
• 1988
• February-November 1989
• 1989–90
• January 6, 1991
• 1991 (through August)
• August 1, 1991
• About the Author
• Copyright Page