July 31st, 1980

Long distance to California. Allan mildly pissed off at me for the failure of my most recent hair-brained scheme to fly to the coast for the weekend. Of course I can’t. Allan was leaving with his boyfriend, Nigel, to see “Dressed to Kill”. It amuses me, this confluence of culture. What I was doing last weekend, Allan is doing tonight on the other side of the country. Charlie takes over the phone when Allan leaves. He’s considering some job offer now in North Carolina, which he heard of through his father, a very influential ad man in Texas. Four months without work in San Fransisco. Vickie is working as a waitress and planning to stat classes this fall at a free university studying broadcast and television. Allan is the only one of the exiled two who has found work in his field– photo retoucher for Macy’s. This says something to me about determination and sense of purpose. Allan burnt all bridges when he moved to the coast– and was determined to survive. Charlie and Vickie were just moving, fleeing to recapture a time in their lives– expecting to reenter a time and place that had existed for them. You can’t go home again, etc. I am beginning to believe less and less in my own theories of chance and circumstance. Perhaps we create all our own possibilities.