7/2/11
The same five fights 1988-1999:
You don’t love me enough. Prove it. Prove it some more. You’re not proving it very convincingly. In fact, you sound a little sarcastic. No, now nothing you do will ever prove to me that you love me, but that’s fine. No, it’s fine. No, it’s fine, you know — it is what it is. No. It’s fine.
Why didn’t you do what you said you were going to do? What about that thing you were going to do, did you do that? You should do the thing, and you should do it now. It’s very important to me that you do it immediately. You are choosing to punish me by not doing it, and you know it. Why do you hate me so much?
You hate me! You hate me, and you want to break up with me! Why don’t you just do it, why don’t you just leave? Leave, if that’s what you’re so desperate to do, since you can’t stand me anymore, just leave! Get out! GET OUT!
I’m not angry. Why are you asking? Your voice sounds funny, too. You’re the one bringing it up, obviously you’re the one with the problem.* I’m fine. Well, I was fine, until you decided to pick a fight with me. No, we are not in a fight! I am NOT FUCKING YELLING.
Oh, hey, apropos of nothing, other people want to have sex with me.
7/5/11
One day when I was twelve I was walking up Park Avenue South from my babysitting job JESUS CHRIST, I just remembered what a ghost town Park Avenue South used to be, the one store that sold men’s leisure suits closed behind metal gates on weekends. I was walking uptown, which is also uphill once you get into the 30s, and I passed the east entrance to B. Altman, which was ALL THIS EXPLAINING UGH. I was walking and it started to rain and I ducked into B. Altman because I knew it was a full avenue wide with doors that led out to Madison, and I I’VE ALREADY WRITTEN THIS FUCKING STORY, HAVEN’T I.
(snip)
I would give the Bible a lot more credibility as being the word of God if it were written in first person. “Hi, I’m God. You probably have some questions for me, and I hope by the end of this book, you’ll have some answers. So in the beginning, there was light. I actually created it — let me tell you how.”
7/7/11
The shabby, bear-like, muttering guy who used to work at the Press selling classified ads, never made eye contact, seemed more shy than anything. When he got on the phone, his voice dropped to a smooth baritone, and he always spelled his last name for people, though it was something like “Brown.” He liked me and Morgan, he bought us bags of circus peanuts from Natty Ho** and placed them on our chairs anonymously. One day when I was going home I ran into him on the platform at Broadway and Lafayette, I saw him and he didn’t see me, but I went up and talked to him anyway, which may be the first time I ever did something out of kindness. He was on his way to some church where he and his mother went daily, I was so curious what the deal was. A few months later he got fired. They said it was cutbacks but he’d started to leave piles of salt on people’s desks as some kind of blessing or curse and it freaked people out.
7/8/11
… and I wanted to say, are you fucking brain damaged? Were you bitten by a tsetse fly? Did viral encephalitis wipe out your capacity to retain information?
7/9/11, 2:35, 4 train to Atlantic Ave.
Trying to maintain a Gurdjieffian awareness, it’s too much, the kinetic energy is overpowering. I said to myself as I was going down the stairs downtown, downtown, to remind myself not to go to the “usual” track, and then I wound up on the uptown track. But I corrected myself. Everything is so wavy and poorly wrought. Baby in the aisle making human noises. It is an affront to display your helplessness. Now I’m just showing of for company. I’m lucky, I don’t know what that word means, or why I wrote work instead of word. I mean my scores were good. A 12-sided die gave me charisma, dexterity, determined my chaotic good nature. Go figure. Go fish.
7/10/11
I know I love you when I start picturing you dead.
(* With fights, as with farts, it is often the case that he who smelt it, dealt it.)
(** National Wholesale Liquidators, formerly on Broadway between Bleecker and Houston; one of the most beloved odd lot stores of its day)