February 19th, 1978
Here’s what happened:
Wendy called me Wednesday night. After nearly two weeks of running into brick walls in my search for an apartment, I was becoming openly hopeless. That night I was rummaging through my suitcase full of pictures– looking for that marvelous photo of my mother and I– which I have yet to find. In the process I encountered all the curled up Polaroids of my former selves and lovers and, drunk again, was sitting here crying when the phone rang. I guess I will never know for sure– but Wendy says that she and Chippy had discussed it and they wanted me to move in with them in their house in Rosslyn.
So that’s what will happen next. I should move in the next week or so. Waiting to sell my refrigerator. Gittel Moscowitz of Glover Park.
I realize with this move than an era– an awful, frightening era, is my life is coming to close. I’m not sure what the next scene will be. This particular movie starts with Larry leaving Richard in the middle of the night and running to Lynn’s and proceeds through the nightmare of my apartment at Lynn’s building, the strange year I spent dying in Mary’s apartment with Gregg and Jim as roommates, and the nervous tense months I have lived here by myself. Drowning all the while.
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If I were at least lucid through my misery, I might be able to transcend this wallowing into some form of art. Instead I blot the sun from my apartment with window shades that I have taped to the wall above the windows with masking tape (late one night I was drunk and dancing to blaring music with my neighbor, Judy, and for reasons that will never be revealed to me, I ripped the shades of the windows– some dumb act of vengeance against the apartment itself). The days drone by. I drink beer and refuse to bathe or wash clothes. I wallow fitfully on the sofa and watch moronic movies on television– waiting for the weekend to pass. For this entire period in my life to pass. Waiting for something new to begin.
Joe called me today. I may be misinterpreting this whole affair but it seems to me that we are playing the game of only one person being on top. It seems that when I show my feelings to him that he dismisses me and days go by when I do not hear from him. When I seem allusive and hard-to-get, he calls me often and I sense a genuine attraction on his part. I love him, but I am in no position to love or be loved by anyone now. I must vacate this apartment and start a new life.