Thing that occurred to me. Happened a couple of days ago in some context I no longer recall. Was musing on the nuisance of making it impossible for Jennifer’s friends to get quickly in touch with her. Even the people that I see have to write to me at the Post Office box, can’t call me on the phone, can’t come to my apartment. Am still unwilling to change this, but thought came to me suddenly that I could move to another apartment which I would take in the name of Jennifer Starr. And have telephone installed in the name of Jennifer Starr. And quit my job and get another job somewhere in the name of Jennifer Starr. And then all of Jennifer’s life could be lived quite openly.
Astonishing that the thought could even occur, as the whole thing is completely irrational. Makes not the slightest bit of sense when considered for a couple of seconds.
Because what would I be accomplishing? Just a name change, really.
What I have now is two separate lives, the life of Arlene and the life of Jennifer. I am not even sure that it is schizophrenic, although I often regard it as such. In one real sense, however, I am always Arlene. Jennifer is the psychic makeup I wear when I let my life touch the lives of other men and women.
If I changed Arlene Krause’s name to Jennifer Starr, I would be changing only a name. And if I were open to people, whatever name I chose to wear, it would be the same as if I gave out my phone number now, and had people to my apartment. If I were ever able to do that, I might as well do it as Arlene as go through the mechanics of a change of identity.
The only thing that fundamentally keeps me from sleeping with Mr. Karlman is that he knows me. My life touches his, and that is what will always stop me.
Why do I write sleeping with?
I have slept with no one since Gary and I separated. It is not that I am an habitual user of euphemisms in this compulsive exercise in meaningless automatic writing. It seems to me sometimes that no day goes by without the word fuck appearing in these pages.
Why the evident implication that I fuck these other people, these people who know me as Jennifer, but that I would be sleeping with Mr. Karlman? Obviously I would also fuck him, or be fucked by him, or both.
Make sense of this, child.
Guess: There is a special intimacy in the phrase sleep with, just as there is an intimacy in the literal realization thereof. I.e., I could not possibly sleep with any of the people I have been fucking. Could not close my eyes and drift off to unconsciousness in their various beds. Could not permit myself to do this.
But Mr. K., who knows me as Arlene, who knows one version of the Real Me (albeit not the other), unconsciously suggests a deeper level of intimacy to me.
All of this must mean something.
I think I have an idea what it means but I cannot fit words to my idea. This may be because I am unwilling to type it all out but it seems to go deeper than that. I think I am unwilling even to arrange the thought intelligibly in my head.
At this point, quitting my job and finding another would be either the best or worst thing I could possibly do. One or the other, certainly. But there is no way for me to be sure which, and I would rather put off doing the best thing than risk doing the worst thing. Postponement is easier to remedy than action.
I wonder what will happen.
27 April — Tuesday
I was thinking about Mr. K. all day today.
Nothing happened. He talked to me and had something going on in his voice, but no reference to dinner last night and no personal touch in anything.
It came to me that it would be interesting if I could merely push a button and the act of pushing it would have Mr. Karlman knowing all there is to know about me. The knowledge would merely leap into his brain. Telepathy, and in a total way; he would not find out about me as much as he would suddenly possess knowledge of me.
Why does this fantasy appeal?
I remember the old ethical question — suppose you were confronted with a similar button, and if you pushed it fifty thousand strangers in China would die painlessly, whereupon you would get a million dollars. Would you push it?
I wouldn’t. Because I don’t want a million dollars and wouldn’t know what to do with it if I had it. But editing the question and designing it for me, it becomes trickier.
Push the button and the Chinese strangers die and you, the button pusher, get whatever it is that you want.
Let’s put it that way. And let’s leave out the corollary question of What do you want, bitch?
Would I push the button?
I don’t know. Nobody can answer the question because nobody knows, do they? I am reminded now of two curses, and I think they are Chinese curses but I’m not sure.
(1) May you live in interesting times.
(2) May you get what you want.
I live in interesting times. Lord, do I ever live in interesting times.
I don’t know, though, if I’m getting what I want.
Why did I get into this? To get away from Mr. K. and that other hypothetical button. I guess if he knew everything about me then I could have an affair with him, if he wanted one. But there is no such button, which saves me just as the other non-button saves the fifty thousand Chinese. And I could no more tell Mr. K. about the real me than I could go over to China and slit fifty thousand throats with a pen knife.
I must call Bill and confirm our usual date for tomorrow night.
28 April — Wednesday
No time. Just a compulsive note to say I’m on my way to Bill’s and the philodendron is growing beautifully and I bought a new chair for the apartment during my lunch hour and now I won’t have to write anything when I come home later tonight and that’s just as well.
29 April — Thursday
I think Bill and I are beginning to bore each other.
I guess I’m still a challenge to him, but not a challenge that engages all that much of his interest any more.
I don’t know what he is to me.
I think, though, that what he is becoming is an old friend. I had an urge last night to tell him any number of things I have never told him.
But didn’t.
30 April — Friday
Dinner tonight with Mr. K.
I keep staring at that sentence. Wanting to amplify on it and not amplifying on it. Fuck it.
1 May — Saturday
Another month.
Started this in mid-February, day before Valentine’s Day I think it was. Pissing and moaning that nobody sent me a valentine.
Next Valentine’s Day I can send cards to all of Jennifer’s playmates. I wonder if any enterprising manufacturer has developed a line of pornographic valentines. A lovely idea, that.
Could make my own. Get a Polaroid camera with a timer and take color close-ups of my cunt.
“Happy Valentine’s Day. Wish you were here.”
2 May — Sunday
The hell with it.
3 May — Monday
I suppose I’m going to fuck Mr. Karlman sooner or later but I don’t know which it ought to be. Sooner or later. I guess I ought to do it because the sooner it’s done the sooner I can stop thinking about it.
On the other hand, the longer I put it off, the more chance it’ll never happen.