Lipton’s Journal/February 21, 1955/636

Before I go to lunch, one further note. Handkerchiefs, snot, and semen. I realize that for years I have unconsciously identified the two. When I was an adolescent I used to masturbate into a handkerchief, a piece of toilet paper, or occasionally a Kleenex or a towel. Once or twice into the bathtub. And for years I carried around filthy snot rags—they were the years when I was always compromise-one-dressed. Baggy shapeless tweeds, loud clashing but dirty colors. Today I wear workmen’s clothes when I feel like it, or I get dressed up neat as hell because I feel that way. But I’m sick of walking around like a schlumper, an apologetic lump. Fuck it if people don’t like me, think I’m a dude. These days, more and more, I feel like I’m terrific, and about time.

Anyway, today when I didn’t want to spit in my handkerchief it’s because I realized I think that semen is not snot, and thinking phlegm as semen, feeling it as such, I wish to dignify it by casting it away into the air instead of burying it in my pocket. (This whole thing is weird. A pocket is a cunt—do I really think cunts are dirty smelly things. Gawd. Which reminds me that the pair of slacks I bought in the fag store have one pocket within the other, a practical arrangement, but I wondered why. Now I know. It’s like two balls side by side). Anyway, I feel that the desire to hold my semen was good. I meant to write phlegm. It’s true though. I do prefer to hold my semen which is why I make love for over an hour so often.