DELTA OF SMALL BEANS

Zulieka has gone away, and left in her stead is this uptight mousy thing with hag hair, hair and bones. It takes fish oil and Vitamin D supplements, and stashes fifty bucks into a mutual fund instead of getting a haircut. You think you want pictures of it, boys? You are warned, it's like an albino octopus from the deep, weird in an eww way and not something to stick in your mouth. Throw a blanket over it, quickly.

I wanted popcorn. He would stop the movie and pop the corn if licked his stick a minimum of three times with the promise to complete the task afterwards. The ritual of sex to me is become as boring and bland as dry turkey and cranberry. (Fucking turkey day again!)

He pinned my arms down to keep me from shielding my breasts. He has very long arms, and can reach just about everything else with his nose while holding my wrists up by my head. So this was a new thing, the mock-force, and there's no point in hiding the fact that I was turned on by it. He's so passive in daily life, so the hard-on (sanguine, virile, all pumped up and thrust out while the rest of him sleeps) and just the fact that he can overpower me in some way, if not in mental capacity, at least with strong arms, deserves respect.

He goes down on me and sucks at it hard so that it's a raw nerve being zapped. Excruciating. I lay there and try to distance myself from the pain and just observe, because this is funny shit. My muscles are spazzing involuntarily, and the lower half of me is twitching violently as if I'm being electrocuted. He does his pokes and prods and I am his Frau Frankenstein. But I will not come at his bequest.

You might wonder if it's such torture, why I fell for him. Because for the simple in and out, no frills, Freddy has everyone beat hands down. This is how Zeus would do a shepherdess. I hate him for it. I am a really sweet girl after he fucks me. It changes my personality. He thinks the sweet one is the authentic one, but we know better.

THUMBING

Call it self-indulgent (if it's interesting, if only it were!), onanistic, and a way to show some cleavage either metaphorically or with actual photos. What you are reading when you read a diary is the author's love letters to herself. Page after page, fifteen entries a day? That is some heavy wooing.

Who else would put so much time and thought (mostly time, seldom thought) into how to seduce me and win my love? When I write to myself, I am hoping to make my life permanent, and when I read myself, if I like what I read, it's a kiss to my own nose. How could I say no to hearing what it going on in there? My brain freaks me out (and yours should to.) Your brain is not you in entirety, but there is only so much sucking a thumb can take.

So on occasion, when it's too obvious what is going on, like now for instance, you and yourself excluding all others is unforgivably rude, so it's better, even though we know it's a ruse, to maintain that I do not know you are there too. I shouldn't ever acknowledge you, because then the voyeur's bubble is burst and it's all ugly selfishness what I'm doing.

Somehow we ended up in North Station right after a Celtics game at eleven at night. Did you see us there? I was wearing an orange beret. I was the only mother stupid enough to keep my four-year-old out that late. We'd missed an earlier train and had to wait two hours.

I have enochlophobia: fear of crowds. Crowds function differently from soloists, and crowds are capable of horrendous acts of violence. There are many instances of crowd violence, yet you would be hard-pressed to cite an example of a crowd of people actually doing something benevolent unless you count weeping and wailing at a rock concert. Let's say there is a crowd of four thousand people at a stadium watching a woman getting stoned for adultery. Let's assume that the majority of these people are shocked and their hearts go out to the woman being murdered. They could easily overtake the four mullahs on the field organizing the torture, but the thought of taking action doesn't occur to them because they are passive spectators. They have no ability to communicate to the strangers sitting right beside them. They relinquish their personal courage and remain seated because that is the personality of the crowd.

ELENA

Do you remember Elena? Well of course you do, because you spied us both peeing behind your car in the parking lot when you came out of Walgreens with your saline nose spray. You took pictures of her pretending to be dead in the swimming pool. She popped up to say that she hadn't drowned, someone had strangled her and then dumped her body. Buoyed by her enormous sun-burnt boobs. Elena my friend in darkness who could follow me down the hole, get it, and laugh. I was sure as hell glad to move away to where she couldn't reach me.

She changes her cell phone so often that I can't keep track of her number, and then when she calls there is no way for me to fence it. She is hysterical and drug-addled, and she wants me to reassure her by telling her that she is not hysterical, and not drug-addled. We toyed briefly with the idea that she would come visit and I would do a documentary on her. I could film her just walking down the street, though Boston's not as game for her kind as NY, so I'm not sure what kind of attention she'd garner. Oh my god, I love Elena.

Her sister called me this morning to tell me that Elena was found unconscious in a parking lot behind a bar. She was rushed to the hospital, and she is currently in the ICU. This is painful to hear, but you know, it is so very typical of Elena. I remember her saying "Nobody has the right to make you better if you don't want to be better."

You are not supposed to let love ruin your life; you are supposed to rewire your brain to understand that there are many fish in the sea, and one lover, boyfriend, or husband out the door frees you up to find someone else. But I believe that one person can haunt and ruin you for love for the rest of your life, partially because they want to do this to you, and mostly because you ask them to do this to you. It's completely mental; the one in question could be dead, which would make it even harder to get over them since dead people are always perfect. You could even be married for thirty years and still think "this one I'm with currently is nice and what a good time we've had, but he's not the one I really wanted". The one you want could be a horrible person, and never love you back, and your neglected spouse could be gentle and sweet and adoring. Happens all the time.

It happens because some of us crave tragedy. Ruled by our humours. From my vantage point as a woman, the object of desire is imagined to be better, either smarter IQ-wise or stronger, and the bearer of some secret mystery to the meaning of being alive. Unequal footing means that you are always slipping down into your obsession whether or not the other person returns the interest.

Leaves are perfect. Leaves when they turn brown and fall off trees are perfect. Leaves with little roads eaten out of them by worms are perfect. Worms are perfect. Twelve bored lions who kill an old elephant in the night for sport are perfect. But humans. I can say I am perfect nature too, but I don't believe it.