November 26th, 1977

My trip was delayed one day. Chris who was to watch Sadie was unaware of how stridently the no-pet rule in her building is enforced. This morning I left Sadie with Allan in a mad frenzy to get to the train station on time. Now, early morning hair, hot coffee and waiting to pull out for New York.

The day turned out beautifully, however.

Fate often provides me with an itinerary that is better than my own planning. I spent the day with Allan who has hepatitis. My sweet brother Allan. We have Thanksgiving Day dinner at the 7-11 around the corner from his apartment. He eats a frozen cheesecake and I eat a package of cheeseburgers heated in a microwave oven in the store and a bag of potato chips. Beautiful clear quiet day in the city. We go to an Oriental pottery shop in Georgetown. We walk down deserted Georgetown streets and fantasize about the little houses and the lives they contain. We climb the little hill behind his apartment building and I feel like a boy again playing outside with his brother. We watch I Love Lucy on television and later go to a soft-porno movie playing at a theater on Wisconsin Avenue. We buy film for his polaroid camera and get stoned and take artistic photos posed against a blurry street scene up Wisconsin. After the movie we wander through Georgetown and window shop and joke and observe the early evening Thanksgiving night crowd. We go to Mr. Henry’s for awful turkey sandwiches. I drink draft beer while he drinks Perrier and we imagine ourselves part of cafe society in Washington. We invent stories and pretend. We pretend to be jealous lovers having an argument.