Back to work, Monday Monday. Didn’t sleep so well. Waking up was difficult. Had to think for a moment about where I worked. No more Wanker Banker. That seems to be fading into the distance. Now at McMann and Tate, where no one knows my name. Well they do know my name. I started up the office and checked my office email, heartened to see the homework that I had done over the weekend was there on my computer. An Excel spreadsheet. Very happy to see it.

I shuffled along, turned on machines, made coffee. It was a quiet day. A lot of people out of the office, traveling around the world, making deals and whatnot. I sat at my desk, doing whatever is asked of me. Not quite drudgery, not quite paradise either. It’s a job. Bill is not covered by my insurance, which is a drag. The creative world doesn’t cover partners. Spouses, ok but not partners. In the financial world, sure, they’ll cover partners and spouses. I find it odd.

Luckily Bill had a procedure last week with a cool doctor who performed the removal of an infected cyst before the benefits ran out yesterday. The doctor also rang up a visit Bill had today. Another drawback to the insurance or lack thereof, was no more sessions with Phillip Beansprout. Bill phoned ahead with the news that tonight would be our last session.

When we met, Phillip wasn’t too happy about it, and asked if we explored the Cobra plan option. I told him we did and the Cobra plan would cost close to $1200.00 a month. We couldn’t afford to keep going to sessions. Most of tonight’s session concerned insurance talk. Phillip seems to really like us and we definitely like him. He offered to bend the rules and see us privately sans insurance.

His usual fee for couples counseling is $200 an hour. He said he’d charge us $75.00. So the plan is now to see Phillip Beansprout on Friday evenings, around 6:30. I will have to go to work tomorrow and tell them that on Friday’s I will definitely need to be out of the office by 5:30. I hope they understand. It’s next Friday, not this coming Friday. And no insurance involved.

During the interviews I had I was told my hours would be 8:30 to 5:30 with an hour for lunch. My first day, when I started to leave at 5:30 I got a weird vibe from the powers that be. So I’ve been leaving between 6 and 6:30, which seems to placate them. I am now giving them more than enough notice that I need to be out by 5:30 one friggin day a week. I suggested 6:00 but Bill reminded me that I do have to travel and why should I hustle? Good point.

I am so glad that Bill and I like Phillip and we’re both glad that Phillip likes us, enough to bend the rules.

So officially our case is closed in the eyes of the Greenwich Village Mental Health and Chess Club. Unofficially, we continue.

Julio is telling me not to put the pressure of writing 500 words on myself. He thinks it’s painful, and it isn’t. He was trying to be supportive by telling me that if I only write 486 words that should be sufficient. I explained that it was a discipline of a minimum of 500 words. Not the kind of support that I was looking for. It was because I groaned after starting this entry at 11:00PM.

It was a lazy Sunday again. A beautiful day. I walked and got the papers and bagels, had another nice breakfast, did some laundry, did some homework for work too, believe it or not. I have difficulty believing it myself. It was an excel work page for supplies that I created on Bill’s Mac and sent as an email. I can now use a Mac without much trepidation.

I watched two DVD’s from Netflix also. I watched ‘Pie in the Sky’ a documentary about a Warhol girl, Bridget Berlin which was interesting. Lot’s of phone conversations taped between Andy and Bridget. He was a funny guy, that Andy. I met Andy Warhol at two book signings a year or so before he died. The first time was at B.Dalton on 8th Street and 6th Avenue.

Andy was signing copies of his ‘America’ book. I bought one and had it signed of course, I noticed there were a lot of people with soup cans and postcards and having their picture taken by Andy. I should have thought of that I thought to myself.

A few weeks later Andy was signing copies again at Rizzoli on West Broadway. I came prepared this time. I had newspaper clippings, soup cans, Brillo boxes, postcards and photographs, all filling a paper shopping bag. I was with Martha Keavney. She accompanied me to the B. Dalton signing but didn’t bring anything with her.

We followed the signs to the book signing upstairs at Rizzoli. It was oddly quiet and empty really. One sales person standing around and Andy sitting at a card table with a hood from his jacket on his head. I asked the sales person what was going on and hey told me they ran out of books.

I went up to Andy and said I really liked his stuff and would he mind signing a few things since there were no books left. He said he wouldn’t mind and signed everything I had in the bag. It was very nice of him to do that. A few days later I read in Liz Smith’s column that someone had pulled the wig off Andy’s head and threw it over the balcony to a waiting accomplice downstairs, who ran out the store and into the street.

It’s all on page 689 in the Andy Warhol Diaries, or at least in the hardcover edition I have. I’m not in it though, merely the incident. I wound up on the editing floor probably. Underneath the White Out.

That year, I gave soup cans and Brillo boxes away as gifts. I was short of money and figured a thirty-nine cent can of Campbell’s Soup autographed by Andy Warhol would be priceless.

Andy died a year or so after that. The thirty-nine cent Campbell’s Soup can was selling for 500.00.

I still dig Andy Warhol.

The other movie was ‘I Don’t Know Jack’ a documentary about Jack Nance who was in a few David Lynch movies, and died a mysterious death. It was ok.