During my lunch hour I went over to the Post Office box on the off-chance that one of those people I never heard from might have finally gotten around to writing. No such luck. I didn’t really expect it.
Deposited my paycheck. It’s nice getting an extra ten dollars a week. And strangely enough Mr. Karlman has not changed towards me at all. He still acts the same as he did before.
I almost wore one of the new dresses to the office this morning.
Wonder why that is. Maybe I’m perversely upset not to have him falling in love with me. I honestly dreaded it, and now that it hasn’t happened I’m beginning to feel rejected, which is the sort of stupidity I should have learned to take for granted from me.
Jennifer Starr has a 1 p.m. appointment Monday with Dr. Carmine Pecora, practice limited to obstetrics and gynecology. To get on the pill. Picked him out of the Yellow Pages. Because his office is just a few blocks from mine, and also because I like his name. It has a nice ring to it. Carmine Pecora, M.D. I like it better than Ben Casey, even.
I’m going to the Village tonight. Maybe to the concert, maybe to the coffee house (if I can find it), maybe to neither of those places.
I am going to have sex tonight, though.
10 April — Saturday
My plant’s new leaf is the palest green. It emerges tightly rolled and pointed at the tip, phallic in my eyes, but phallicism like beauty is no doubt in the eyes of the beholder. It has grown noticeably since yesterday.
As far as I can tell, it will be larger than the three leaves already on the plant. I bought a little book on plants, a 950 paperback written in the general tone of one of those women’s magazines they sell in supermarket checkout lines. If each leaf my plant grows is bigger than the last, it is a sign that I am doing something right. If, on the other hand, the new leaves are progressively smaller, the plant, while still healthy, is not doing its best. Thus it would seem that I am doing something right, but I cannot imagine what it might be. All I do is water it once a day and look at it from time to time.
I also love it. I wonder if that makes a difference. Could my plant possibly know whether or not it is loved?
It rains today. Rained when I awoke this morning and hasn’t stopped yet. April showers to bring May flowers, and Mayflowers to bring Pilgrims. I shall dangle my roots out the window and drink the rainwater and sprout new leaves.
I shall have to buy some Vivaldi records. They had a woodwind quintet playing last night on Barrow Street, an all-Vivaldi program. The bassoon player had his hair very long in back and very short in front, so that he looked like a hippie from the back and a hardhat from the front. Tres disconcerting. (Disconcerting at a concert? The lady should choose her words more carefully.)
Making love with another woman is almost narcissistic. When there are just the two of you in the room. Very strange. Feelings of competition with self. Thought for a moment that I could get out of the prison of my self, that I felt less threatened, less intruded upon. But the pattern proved to be the same. Nice, though.
I seem to have reached the point where I can enjoy sex even if it doesn’t work.
11 April — Sunday
My phone started ringing today a little after noon.
Immediate reaction — fear. Intrusion. That Bill had followed me home and found me out. That the woman from last night had traced me. That someone from the office was calling me. Mr. Karlman, to tell me he loved me.
Anything.
Must have been a wrong number. Never know, though, because I didn’t answer it. It stopped after perhaps a dozen rings and whoever it was didn’t call back.
Must have been a wrong number, or some telephone pest calling numbers at random. Or a nuisance selling encyclopedias or magazine subscriptions or dance lessons.
Keep thinking I’m improving and then all this blind panic when my phone rings.
12 April — Monday
I now have this little folder three inches square with pills inside arranged in a series of concentric circles. Five days after my next period starts I am to begin taking them, taking one each morning until they rim out, then getting the prescription refilled.
Dr. Carmine Pecora is small and slender and looks sort of like a fag, but I don’t suppose many fags become gynecologists. I would suspect the reverse might be true, that many gynecologists might become fags, perhaps out of a growing disaffection for the female apparatus. It must do odd things to a man to look at cunts day in and day out, all of them cunts at which one looks in a purely professional capacity, and an unhealthy proportion of them diseased or otherwise imperfect cunts at that.
Kept worrying I’d get hot while he examined me, or embarrassed, or something. Surprised myself. No reaction at all. He had his nurse stay in the room while he examined me. One of the homeliest young women I have ever met in my life. God dealt her bad cards to begin with, but she isn’t helping herself any by letting her moustache grow and by refusing to pluck the long black hairs from her two moles, one on her chin, one alongside her fat and large-pored nose. Some moles are called beauty marks. Hers will never be so described.
Also, she’s fat.
Probably about my age, but she looks years older than me. Easily.
I suppose it’s a character fault, but it’s one I can’t help: I never feel prettier than I do upon seeing a really ugly girl.
13 April — Tuesday
Got my period today.
I still can’t get used to buying Tampax. Never had to in the past. Would go downstairs and take a box from our stock. Mother sold it, sold almost everything in that little store. Wonder if she wrote numbers or took bets on horses. Seems out of character but who knows? From what I’ve read, little storekeepers in Brooklyn and the Bronx are the backbone of the business. If she did it, I never would have known about it. The woman never told me anything she did that was legal, let alone anything illegal she might have been up to.
Worked late tonight. Me and Mr. Karlman. Sent out for sandwiches, ate them at our desks. Made the now-standard pitch about staying with friends in Manhattan for the night.
He bought me a drink before taking me home. Two of us sat over drinks waiting for somebody to say something. Then he went into a speech about how he hoped he hadn’t embarrassed me or taken advantage of me by using me as a sounding board the other night. Said he guessed he was going through what every man his age goes through. As usual, I didn’t do much talking myself.
Drove me home, or to the place around the corner where my alleged friends live. When he stopped the car he looked at me as though he wanted to kiss me.
But didn’t.
I almost wish he had, and yet am glad he didn’t. Very strange.
14 April — Wednesday
A line or two before I go see Bill.
Sunday I take my first pill. Wish I didn’t have the curse now because I think I’d let him fuck me. Or do something, anyway.
Nice thing about our ridiculous relationship is that menstruation doesn’t interfere with the normal course of things.
My ad was in Screw. Embarrassed me to look at it. Felt naked, exposed to the public eye. Jennifer Starr now a matter of public record. Thought it wouldn’t be in until next week, but I guess the mails were faster than usual and that they have a late closing on the classified pages.
I don’t expect much. If I get two or three replies I’ll be happy.
I wonder what I expect to get out of all this.
That’s easy.
Fucked.