December 20th, 1972

The days are driving quickly to Christmas now. Tomorrow we close out the paper– our printers are not working Friday. Friday will probably be a half-day. I plan to go in early tomorrow.

Daily I am becoming more settled and content with this job. It is easy and nice working with Allen and Henry and Bob– Derek and Willie and Gary. I close my eyes and say a thousand silent prayers of thanks that I am pasting-up newspaper pages instead of typing in some office. I truly do not mind being a paste-up artist. It is okay for 21-22 years old. But I groan to think of aging. I suppose that’s my main fear. Loss of youth. Ah, but I have years. I could even survive thirty.

Actually, I’ve been experiencing a certain amount of relief recently. I have told myself that in January, Margie and I will move. That must happen. I can’t begin to describe the desperation living in this basement has produced. I despise this little hole. Moving could only throw my entire life into an upswing. With the first of the year, I can see light at the end of the tunnel. 

A new year. A new year. New beginnings– I have a new image of confidence developing about myself. The long dark night of my life that began last spring is slowly, slowly turning itself into a dream. I feel– I earnestly feel– as if this next year will be a period of really getting my shit together.

As I wrote last spring– the era I am just leaving has been a tedious prologue– the show, my dears, has not yet begun.

I see myself moving out of this apartment into a bright, clean (if bare) apartment– getting back into a health regimen. Oh, January is a bright morning. I sense that this next year will be a flowering of my identity. 

Last week, I told Gayle of my homosexuality– For all practical purposes she was my last closet. The last dark space. Now I have no deceptions to maneuver. All the people in roles in my life know and accept me as homosexual. 

And I remain a mute, sterile identity– locked off in my own boundaries. 

That is what I sense approaching– an expansion– breaking out of the shell of my aloneness. 

Everything that has ever happened to me has been a prologue– priming and readying me to love.

     I seek a personal, existential orgasm.

     1973– I salute thee.