“Don’t you like it?”
“Hate it. As long as I can remember I hated it. Not that Arnie is such a blessing. Arnold Karlman. Arnie Karlman. That’s some sensational name to hang on a kid.”
“What would you like it to be?”
“What would I like what to be?”
“Your name.”
“That’s a hell of a question. What am I, an actor with a stage name? I’m Arnie Karlman. I’ll tell you something, that’s a funny question. That’s really a hell of a question.”
“I didn’t mean—”
“No, no, no. You want to know why it’s a hell of a question? Listen, I’ll tell you something I never told anyone before in my life. Though come to think of it, I’m always telling you things I never told anyone before in my life, so what’s the big deal now?”
“You don’t have to tell me anything.”
“So what am I saving this bit of precious information for? No, I want to tell you. I used to think — Jesus, this is a thought I’m sure I haven’t had in ten years. Maybe twice that length of time, I don’t know. I used to think what I would change my name to.”
“Did you have a name picked out?”
“Yeah, but you’ll laugh. No, I know you won’t laugh, you wouldn’t laugh. You got to understand it wasn’t that I was planning to change my name. This is something that never occurred to me. But it was a case of picking a name that I would like my name to be if I changed it, which I didn’t intend to. Which is why your question knocks me out, what I would like my name to be.”
“Tell me.”
“Jesus, but I feel so silly. When was the last time I even remembered having this thought? Well, not to keep you in suspense. Jeff Stern.”
“Jeff?”
“Jeffrey Stern, but I would never use the full name. Just Jeff Stern. Jeff is sort of light and airy, not bulky and cramped like Arnold. And Stern, I figured I would want a name that was obviously Jewish but one that had strength to it, a shtarkeh name. In fact I even thought of Stark which is a sort of a Jewish name but one that Jews changed their names to from something else, so I didn’t want it for that reason. But Stern I like, Jeff Stern, and how come you’re not laughing your head off at that one?”
“Why would I laugh?”
“Who wouldn’t laugh when a man comes right out and tells you what a jackass he is deep down inside?”
“I don’t think you’re anything of the sort. I like the name.”
“You do?”
“Jeff Stern. Jeff. Jeff Stern. Yes, I think I like it very much.”
Jeff Stern.
Extraordinary, all of it. Jeff Stern and Jennifer Starr. Just beyond belief.
Ached to tell him my secret name. Really wanted to tell him. Not to tell him anything about Jennifer, just that it was my secret name for myself.
Couldn’t, though.
10 June — Thursday
Thought of this yesterday but didn’t even want to type it until I had a chance to check it out.
Checked it today. Went to the Marboro Book Shop on Eighth Street and thumbed through a German-English dictionary and confirmed by suspicion that Stern in German means star.
Jeff Stern and Jennifer Starr. Just a couple of falling stars, but falling where? Falling in what?
I don’t understand any of this. I can’t help thinking that I am attaching undue significance to stupid coincidence. For all either I or Arnold (dare I refer to him as Jeff?) know, virtually everyone has at one time or another selected a secret ideal name. But since he and I are each other’s sole confidant, how would we know the universality of the habit?
Sometimes I think I love him.
I know he loves me. I’m just glad, very glad, that he never says so.
Yet.
13 June — Sunday
Another anniversary.
Today I begin the fourth month of this diary, and of course the fourth month of life in this apartment. It’s odd that I tend to think more in terms of the diary when I measure time. As though it is more a yardstick of my new life than the apartment in which I live it.
Perhaps because none of the more obvious facets of that new life take place in this apartment.
Four months.
How greatly those months have changed me. They have even changed the apartment. The new chairs, the rug, the couch, the lamps. It would scare me to think of the money I have spent on this place in the last month, except that I can’t help feeling it was money I should have spent months ago. Twenty thousand dollars sitting in a savings and loan association and doing me no good at all, merely drawing interest which would amount to more money which would do me no good.
So now I have two thousand less dollars in the bank and an apartment a decorator would be proud of, except that I did it myself so that it is my apartment and not some decorator’s apartment. And if it does little good in one sense — since no one sees it but myself — it does more good than untouched money, which would be seen by no one at all, not even me.
Four months.
Glad I stopped making these entries a daily requirement The diary was becoming too much of an obligation and I began lying to it, not lies of commission but lies of omission. By trying to put down everything, by setting that standard for myself, I was creating little game situations in which I cheated by skipping important things and prattling on about trivia merely to fulfill self-imposed requirements.
At least now I can talk to the machine when I feel like it and keep my fingers shut when I don’t.
14 June — Monday
I stopped seeing Bill just about the same time that I began getting very close to Jeff.
(How I hesitated before typing his secret name! I do not really think of him as Jeff, have never called him that except jokingly. He is still Arnold to me. I guess he will always remain Arnold, as I sense that I cannot call him Jeff until he calls me Jennifer, and it is unlikely in the extreme that it will occur to him to do so, as I have not confessed about Jennifer and do not intend to.)
I stopped seeing Bill just about the same time that I began getting very close to Arnold. I suppose there must be a connection. I’m wondering what it might be.
It’s impossible to say which happened first, because both were gradual matters. I gradually came to the end of the road with Bill, and gradually the perfunctory dinners with Arnold turned into something else. I don’t think I mentioned much of this in the diary. The period while most of it was taking shape was also the period when I was avoiding writing in the diary, for one reason or another. There may be a cause-and-effect relationship there, too, for that matter, but I’m not going to examine it too closely.
Bill.
Funny how that wore itself out. In certain ways we got tired of each other like an old married couple gradually having less and less bedtime use for one another. He showed me things, took me on various sexual trips, and I went along with all of them, and bit by bit he tired of his role as I tired of mine.
What was my appeal for him? That of challenge, I guess. The Dark Lady of Shady Lane, coming to him each Wednesday, enjoying those evenings sexually but never delivering the proof of ultimate enjoyment that he could regard as evidence of conquest. My clitoris never became a scalp he could hang from his belt, and he constantly aspired to this conquest, and perversely enjoyed my remoteness, and as long as I remained the carrot just out of reach he would play the earnest plodding donkey.
But the donkey realized, somewhere along the way, that he would never get the carrot, and that it would not taste good if he did. And so he did as donkeys do when they come to this enormous realization. He stopped in his tracks.