July 11th, 1982

□ Well… you’re at it again. Fucking up another possible relationship for me.

◨ Oh please, I’m doing this for your sake as well as mine. Someone needs to monitor the seizure of your girlish heart. How embarrassing you are. Flip back through these pages. Every other entry is another breathless account of how you’ve finally met HIM— the man bearing all your gifts, the one it has been worth a lifetime of waiting for. All these Mr. Rights have been a motley parade of strange characters who you’ve had no business being with— and with each, you’ve barely been able to silence the power of the words “I love you”

□ You’re never going to let me have a lover, are you?

◨ Not until you start coming up with something a little better than 36-year-old high school drop-outs who still live at home and who wash pots and pans in a hospital for a living.

□ It’s clear to me that you’re never going to approve of any of my boyfriends. They will never be quite good enough for you. Why don’t you go find a man?

◨ I probably would have by now if I hadn’t been burdened with the obstacles you’ve presented through the years. I couldn’t get you away from sucking on a six-pack for years. Now you’re chain-smoking, coffee-gulping flab— The men I’d like to date are not at all interested in you. And you’re living in this run-down teeny apartment with an asshole roommate— and there is no let-up in sight. You prevent me from dating the kind of successful intelligent men that could make us happy.

□ Sure, like your Westchester date, maybe? Rich, successful, exciting— gorgeous home… I hated him. He was a pretentious faggot. When I was with him I just wanted to put a needle in my arm. I want a man— a real man. Not some manicured French Poodle in Gucci sandals.

◨ Look, I know what you’re saying. Basically, we want the same thing, OK? All I’m saying is that Joe ain’t it, kid. How can you even consider someone who’s 36 and makes $10,000 a year as a hospital kitchen worker? He’s vacant inside. There’s nothing bright or quick or exciting about him.

□ Sounds like the indictment against my father. The truck driver. The rough, crude truck driver who killed himself making a living for his wife and faggot son who were embarrassed by his cowshit-smelling boots. They were busy with their scrubbed affluent versions of themselves— PTA meetings, subscriptions to the symphony, movies— and he was nothing but a wild man who would never fit into their life.

So this is really yet another re-run of a program taped in the fifties, Your Little Boy/Victimized Woman need to be loved by your father— the rough, brutal man— and my need for intelligence.

Feel it: I need to be loved by my father. I hate the son of a bitch.

OK kids, let’s connect the dots:

Ha Ha, you both lose. Now, let’s do a third step and get on with the business of the day. Lordy, I’ve got work to do.