September 5th, 1978
It’s only my long-standing rule forbidding me to edit my journal that keeps me from tearing out the last page.
I choose not to acknowledge the desperation that I’ve felt this summer. I prefer to ignore the loneliness and craziness that I’ve dealt with for months now. My inability to fall in love– my exasperation and frustration with my daily life. The emptiness I’ve struggled with. I want to throw my head back and take a slug of whiskey and laugh through the bad times. I simply cannot give credence to fear.
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Sunday I met John. If every bleak moment I have spent lonely has been a prelude to that meeting– then, every second was worth it.
Late afternoon at Mr. P.’s guzzling gin and tonic and bullshitting with some guy from Yukon, Oklahoma. John swaggered into the bar knocking me dead at first sight and stood at the bar next to me. I continued to talk to the guy from Oklahoma. Suddenly he was touching me– at first gently, then definitely. My back was to him. Finally, in no uncertain terms, we were subbing ourselves against each other to the music from the jukebox. I turned to see what he looked like in the mirror over the bar. I was flabbergasted. He was beautiful. Hunky devil in a t-shirt with a small Clark Gable mustache. As I stared at his reflection in the mirror he looked up and saw me watching him. He gave me a big wink and we both smiled. Then we were talking.
He came back home with me to Allan’s apartment and we drank bourbon and water and later when to Cafe de Paris and had dinner. Home to a wonderful night of lovemaking. Perfect man. Perfect body. Perfect sex.
He spent the night with me and last night (Monday) I went to his apartment and he took me to dinner at a restaurant in his neighborhood.
Let me say this bluntly. He has brought me back to life. I have fallen completely and hopelessly in love with him. He is the most wonderful man I have ever met.
I am most vulnerable right now. The feeling is both delicious and frightening.
So, here I am tonight. He had plans. I sit at the dining room table and start into my second six pack and blast Shirley Bassey and bury my head in my hands and cry into my typewriter. The thought occurs to me whether I could electrocute myself that way. What a dramatic ending…
Oh, please don’t let me fall in love. It only hurts. It never works out. It’s useless. It’s a mythology with no roots in the real world. It exists in Hollywood and Old Montgomery Clift movies. He’s not going to love me back the way I love him. No one ever can.
Oh please let this work out. Oh, God, I want this so badly.
—-
He has beautiful black hair. He’s Irish/Italian. He’s Catholic.
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