One of the girls at the office today was talking about her husband. There was nothing suggestive in the conversation but for one reason or another I got the impression that the two of them, she and her husband, had recently had sex together. Last night or this morning before she left for the office. And I found myself imagining the two of them in bed together. I had them doing rather unusual things in my mind. Got very excited at the image. Not I-want-to-masturbate excited. Just I’ve-got-a-secret-thought excited.
I have been doing this sort of thing more and more lately. Walking down the street and noticing people. Looking at men, trying not to stare at their crotches, and wondering what their cocks are like. The shape of them, the size of them, whether they are circumcised.
Bill is circumcised. Gary was not.
Interesting block — I cannot remember what Gary’s cock looked like.
After we both came Monday night, Bill handled things very well. (As he had handled things well before, in all senses of the phrase.) Just slumped in his seat exhausted at first, but then sucked in a deep breath and got to his feet. Told me very convincingly that I was beautiful and desirable and exciting, and that I had brought him great pleasure, and that he wanted to take a quick shower and would be back in a moment. Gathered up his clothes and went into the bathroom.
Sat wondering what sort of cue this was for me. Thought at first I ought to have the consideration to be gone when he returned, and that this might be his intention, a way to give me a convenient exit. Decided no, something in his tone that suggested he expected me to be there when he emerged. But naked or with clothes on?
I got dressed. Smoked a cigarette and waited while he showered quickly. He emerged wearing his clothes, which made me glad I had put mine on.
He made drinks and we talked. Mostly he talked. Essence was that he had had a good time, that my unique qualities more than compensated for the fact that we did not touch each other, that he could use my body only from a distance.
He told me things about me. That I am a voyeur. A Peeping Jennifer. That I can fight it or indulge it, and that if I fight it it will always be there, but that if I indulge it it may lead somewhere, and even if it doesn’t I’ll have a good time on the way.
I admitted a few things. Desire to look at movies and pictures. Desire to watch people screw.
“I can help you, Jennifer.”
Afraid to believe it, but I think perhaps he can. Help or not, he can give me things I need now. Or things I think I need.
He has pictures. He has films and a projector. And he hinted at other things. Hard to be sure what he meant, but the impression was that I might actually be able to watch people together. That he could arrange it.
Just before leaving I turned to him, unguarded. (I do not have to guard myself with him. Of this I am quite certain. My pleasure is his. His hangup, his neurosis, he calls it, but I call it one healthier by far than my own.)
Turned to him. “But won’t you feel cheated? Wasting your time in kids’ games with me? When you could be having a fuller thing with some other girl?”
“Were you excited tonight, Jennifer? And fulfilled?” “Yes.”
“And was I?” Hesitation on my part.
“Jennifer, you saw my passion. And my culmination. I rarely get as much pleasure fucking.” Does this mean that he’s an exhibitionist? He must be, to an extent. My observation thrilled him. Not merely my passion, not merely my presence, but that he was doing this solitary thing for a receptive audience. I’m seeing him Saturday afternoon. Can’t wait.
12 March — Friday
Went to another of the Barrow Street concerts tonight. Thought the man with the beard might be there. I wonder if I did or didn’t hope he would try to pick me up.
Moot point. He wasn’t there.
An all-Chopin program tonight. A female pianist, very attractive.
Attractive to me?
Jennifer has always been bisexual, although sometimes she has to be forced into it. I know I get hot reading lesbian scenes in books, and would like to watch two of them together sometime.
I’ve often thought I could relax with a girl as I cannot with a man. Worried about being gay, a lesbian. I don’t honestly think I am. Or could be. I don’t honestly think I could shed with a girl any of the inhibitions and reserve I cannot shed with men.
I have no friends, male or female. And have never had a close friend of either sex. If my withdrawal was just from men I might believe it of myself, but it has been from men and women equally. I keep myself a secret from both, and feel as uncomfortable with either.
The bisexual voyeur. Attracted to both sexes, attracted to anything sexual, and desiring only to watch.
I would find myself less impossible to believe if I encountered myself in a psychiatrist’s casebook than I do facing myself in real life.
Real life?
Whatever the hell that means.
13 March — Saturday
I’ll have to write about Bill tomorrow because I haven’t seen him yet today. It was one-fifteen the last time I looked at a clock and I’m supposed to go over there about three or three-thirty. I just got back from shopping, picking up a few odds and ends, and there’s nothing I feel like reading so I thought I would do the day’s diary-keeping, get it out of the way now.
Oh, I am so full of shit.
Lying to a diary is contemptible. Why is it harder to put on paper the truths which one already recognizes? Because print has a more permanent quality than thought. Because it is somehow more concrete, less ephemeral.
I am typing because I do not want to type after I get back from Bill’s place. After having decided that it is important to lend immediacy to these entries by recording experiences as soon as possible, I am copping out by making today’s entry in advance. My own rules — one entry a day, no more and no less, will then make it impossible for me to type anything more later on.
But it is true that I do have the desire to write now, and maybe that’s a real part of it. I left something out last night. The reflections on lesbianism were prompted by more than the faint appeal of the girl who played Chopin.
I believe a lesbian tried to pick me up.
I am unsure of this, and prefer to believe that my own uncertainty about the precise circumstances of the perhaps-pickup played a part in my failing to mention it. I think that’s probably true.
Let it be said — one of the reasons for this diary, one of the very important reasons for making these entries, is because I occasionally fear madness. Fear a particular form of madness. Fear that I will reach a point where I will have trouble separating fact from fiction, fantasy from reality. I have had this thought before, and have possibly put it on paper before. I can’t remember. But it is a real fear, and thus to one person, to Smith-Corona Electra 110, I must be true.
Perhaps a conversation last night was only an attempted pickup in my mind. But it still belongs here, with the preface that it may have been innocent.
Woman about thirty-five, my height, a little heavier. Can’t remember what she was wearing. Dark hair in a pony tail. Strong features. Beak of a nose. Walked alongside me on the way from the hall.
Said I looked familiar. Had I gone to Barnard? No, I said. Brooklyn College, I said. Wondered, as she would have been at least eight years ahead of me in school, and did I look that old to her that I might have been her classmate? Answered my unvoiced question — she was an instructor at Barnard, thought I might have been in a class of hers. “But I knew the minute you spoke you weren’t the girl I remembered. You’re prettier, and you have a much better speaking voice. I suppose a lot of people comment on your voice.”