Later they made love to me a little. Couldn’t get into fantasy and stopped trying. Went through the motions anyway. Did a variety of things with both of them at once. He wanted to fuck me but wouldn’t let him. He didn’t insist.
I guess I enjoyed that part of it, too. Never got at all hot. Found it exciting in a way. Mentally but not physically. The newness of it, the idea that I was extending myself, extending experience.
Also because of watching them beforehand and getting excited then, I seemed unbothered by not being excited when we all made love together. (Bad use of the term — whatever we may have made, love wasn’t part of it.)
I think this means something. I don’t really think there’s anything I couldn’t do now. Had no inhibitions about Maureen’s being a woman, about having sex with a woman. Would have let Wayne screw me except for fear of getting pregnant. Maybe I’d better go to a doctor and go on the pill again. Or else I’ll never know for sure if I have a hangup about it or not, and I feel I ought to know
I’ll tell the doctor my name is Jennifer Starr.
Reminds me: Wayne and Maureen are not their real names. Told me as much the minute I walked in the door. Real names are Warren and Marsha. I never stopped thinking of them as Wayne and Maureen and referred to them that way all through this entry. I think in other entries as well. Of course I went on being Jennifer Starr for them.
30 March — Tuesday
Drunk and depressed.
31 March — Wednesday
I don’t know exactly what went wrong yesterday. Nothing actually happened. I was evidently reacting to what Mr. K. told me. Both yesterday and today he acted as if nothing whatsoever had happened. I felt that he was uncomfortable around me but had no evidence for the feeling.
Projection — because I was uncomfortable in his presence, and assumed it worked both ways.
Not afraid he’ll fire me. Not even afraid he’ll want to fire me.
I guess I’m afraid he’ll want me to go on being his shoulder to cry on.
Would that be so bad? In a way, yes, it would. I don’t want other people and their problems. I really don’t want all of this, and yet already I feel an obligation to listen to him if he wants to talk. He was so appreciative Monday night, kept telling me over and over again how much help I was to him by just being there.
And all I did was be there. Hardly said a word, just nodded in the right places.
I might as well put down what scares me.
I am afraid he is going to decide that he is in love with me.
He’s looking for something and I have the feeling he’ll make the mistake of thinking I’m what he’s looking for. And if that happened I don’t know what I would do. The one thing I’m positive of is that I would be very unhappy about it, and very upset.
I don’t know what he should do. Go to a psychiatrist? That keeps occurring to me. Would it do him any good? I don’t know. I’m no one to talk — I probably ought to go to a psychiatrist myself. Probably? Definitely. But I don’t want to go and I won’t.
I don’t want to be a psychiatrist, either.
Drinking was a mistake last night. Made things worse and kept me from getting any of it out at the typewriter. Today was better. I was more relaxed at the office and feel now that the situation with Mr. K. won’t be as much of a problem as I thought last night. I can probably handle him if he decides he loves me. And if I can’t, it will be easy enough to find some place else to work.
Oh, hell. I should have left for Bill’s five minutes ago and I want to change my clothes.
I’ll wear the hot pants.
1 April — Thursday
Last night while I was over at Bill’s, Mr. Karlman’s wife died. This morning he came into the office and sold the business lock stock and barrel by making just one phone call. He sent all the other girls home and told me to stay.
When we were alone he looked deeply into my eyes and something clicked for us. I realized I was in love as never before in all my life. He took me in his arms and kissed me, and it happened just as it happens in trashy novels. Bells rang — I swear they did.
“Let me make one more phone call,” he said, and I stood impatiently at his side while he called his girl friend and told her he never wanted to see her again. I could hear her pleading with him over the phone, and he held the receiver to me so that I could listen while she wept. But I felt no sympathy for her. She had not fulfilled him and never would. Nor were those tears genuine, because I knew that no one had ever loved this dear kind man as I did.
I took the receiver from him and replaced it in its cradle.
“And now we’re really alone,” I said. “Just the two of us, now and forever.”
“My darling Arlene,” he said.
We kissed.
“I can’t leave you,” he said. “How can I possibly leave you, even for a moment?”
“But you must.”
“I must,” he agreed, hanging his head. “I have to be with my children now, at least for tonight. And tomorrow I absolutely must put in an appearance at the funeral. I know it’s foolish to let society dictate these things, but it’s better in the long run to be there.”
“Shall I go with you?”
“It wouldn’t look right, Arlene. I’ll go now. Tomorrow night I’ll be with you, and I’ll spend every moment with you for as many years as the good Lord gives me. We’ll travel all over. We’ll do everything together.”
“Will your children be with us?”
“Screw the little leeches,” he snapped. “Let them fend for themselves. If you want children, we’ll have some of our own.”
He turned to go. I caught his arm. “You’re not going anywhere until you fuck me,” I purred. And fuck we did, right there on the office floor beside the filing cabinets, fucking like crazy children, and I came again and again and again until I passed out exhausted.
When we were dressed, as he prepared to leave, I took his arm again. And put my lips close to his ear, and said, in the softest of whispers,
APRIL FOOL!!!!
1 April — Thursday
Well, let’s try it again.
I must really be flipping out completely. I got the basic idea for that last entry this afternoon in the office and went into a giggling fit right there at my desk. I sat down and wrote that the minute I got back here, and it kept getting more elaborate as it went along. I kept breaking myself up as I wrote, and when I was finished I read the whole thing through from beginning to end and kept giggling like an idiot.
Then I went over and lifted the radiator cover and added the pages to the stack. A rather thick stack it is, too. And I closed the radiator cover and sat around and laughed some more.
But what kind of a lunatic plays elaborate practical jokes on a typewriter?
I went out and had dinner and came back here, and realized I wanted very much to write about last night with Bill. But I had made a rule — no days without some sort of entry, and no more than one entry a day.
I can’t honestly believe I went through such a mental tug-of-war with myself over this point. I had to convince myself that the first entry, being a gag, was in a sense not a real entry at all, and that it was thus fitting and proper for me to continue writing. Then other questions came up. Should I throw out the gag entry? Should I begin the real entry on the same sheet of paper that I ended the gag entry on? Finally I realized that I was playing idiotic mind games about nothing at all, so I made a cup of coffee and had a cigarette and let my head knit itself back together again, or as close to together as it ever is.