August 21st, 1980

The city has cooled. We have intermittently been turning off the air conditioner and opening windows. I am sitting on our patio drinking beer and enjoying the soporific noises of early twilight– crickets and dogs barking and muted traffic sounds. A neighbor hidden from view by the verdant overgrowth of our patio rustles bushes and whistles an old Beatles’ tune whose title escapes me. My dog Sadie clicks outside and stares at me and wiggles her tail. Wendy and I have been watching our dog with stealthy horror for days now as more and more reports of terrible deaths are passed around about parvo– the new pestilence spread here in the past few weeks from the West Coast– killing dogs within 48 hours of contact. It would be an understatement to say that Wendy’s and my attachment to our pets is greater than usual. For both of us, these dogs have been the one constant in an otherwise totally unplanned and unstable life. They have been our family– at times the only contact with life and love that we have. Perhaps it’s pitiable to think of tow bright, perceptive, compassionate human beings who only outlet for the kind of love and commitment that defines humanity has been a couple of dogs. We should be loving people, having families, making homes, rearing children. Wendy’s current relationship with John will not last a year. She is a dormant volcano now and John is perfect for her right now. They have settled into an almost reclusive domesticity. They are leading a kind, relaxed life together that essentially does not involve the world. For John, I think, this would be the substance of a lifetime. It is only a matter of time before Wendy erupts. She needs this time now, and I am glad that it is happening. But John is far too pacific a man to satisfy her for long. He lives on logic and Wendy needs passion to survive. She and I are wrought of the same delicate metal– forged by the same fires. A day will come when she will need some nocturnal poetry that John can never provide. Logic will never win out in either of our lives. I think I have realized and accepted that. Her love for John is very pure and very logical. And so it is I who am left holding the bag of our artistic misery as she and John drink root tea and eat vegetables for dinner. I am eating red meat and smoking cigarettes and sucking beers and longing for some good hearted redneck and a pornographic life ever after. Amen. This observation is not an unkindness nor is it an evil eye east on Wendy’s current relationship. It is merely a statement that Wendy is one of the only truly operable insane people I have ever known and I think her current experiment at a relationship with someone sane and normal is doomed to failure. I like to think that our particular brand of insanity will not finally end with our being bag people wandering city streets until we die in gutters with swollen purple legs wrapped in bandages. But we will die crazy– and, for my money, we’ll live crazy.

Wendy just came out on the patio and brought me a flannel shirt to put on because this thickening twilight is cold and unusual for August. My dog followed soon after hopping into my lap feeling warm and cuddly. This is all that I have. This is all that I love. I am still sitting on the patio waiting for a moment to lean over the fence and ask my neighbor, Ken, for some marijuana. He has a background full of it and is generous and ever proud to share it. It’s mild homegrown stuff but we’ve been out of it so long that any pot would be a treat.