The Princess Diarist

by Carrie Fisher

  Though there has been some speculation regarding my drug use during Star Wars, I used nothing other than Harrison’s pot on the weekends during that first film. After that, marijuana was no longer possible for me—it had such a powerful, all-consuming effect on me that I have never used that drug again.

  In effect, I can’t remember now what I was too uncomfortable to remember at the time. For three months. From celebration to intoxication to assignation to infatuation to imitation to indignation—this was my trimester of the affair that was Carrison.

  • • •

  harrison finished shooting first. My last scenes would be two weeks later, so I decided to go back to L.A. for a break and wound up flying there with Harrison. I wasn’t in charge of the movie’s travel arrangements, so I couldn’t have organized things so that he and I sat together, but sit together we did, for a full fourteen hours. In coach.

  I don’t know if he was pleased with these arrangements, because he didn’t exhibit emotions and I didn’t record it in the journals I kept, but we did wind up talking. Anyway, whatever I don’t remember of our conversation on the flight, I do remember that he was kind. Kind enough to enable me to close the door on our cinematic episode together, both on- and offscreen, without regret. Which was quite a turn of events when you consider all those silent weekends.

  “I’m a hick,” I recall saying to him.

  “No,” Harrison answered. “You think you’re less than you are. You’re a smart hick.” And then, “You have the eyes of a doe and the balls of a samurai.”

  It’s the only thing he ever said to me that acknowledged any intimacy between us, and it was enough. Not only because it had to be, but because of what I’m assuming it cost him to go that out of character in conversation. We never again acknowledged that anything of that nature had occurred.

  • • •

  anyway, I keep mentioning these diaries. The ones I kept during the filming of the first Star Wars, the diaries I had forgotten about but recently found. By now, you’re all ears. Or eyes. Time for the reveal.

  notes from his periphery, or the glib martyr

  One could never call me a quitter

  I take something right and see it

  Through till it’s wrong

  Auctioning myself off to the lowest bidder

  Going once, going twice

  Gone

  Sold to the man for the price of disdain

  Some are sold for a song

  I don’t rate a refrain.

  I guess it was all going just a little too well

  If I wasn’t careful I’d be happy pretty soon

  Heaven’s no place for one who thrives on hell,

  One who prefers the bit to the silver spoon.

  Then just when I’d almost resigned myself to winning

  When it seemed my bright future would never dim

  When my luck looked as though it was only beginning

  I met him.

  . . .

  Sullen and scornful; a real Marlboro man

  The type who pours out the beer and eats the can

  A tall guy with a cultivated leer

  One you can count on to disapprove or disappear

  I knew right away that he was a find

  He knew that you had to be cruel to be kind

  Given this, he was the kindest man I’d ever met

  Back came my sense of worthlessness

  And my long lost pangs of regret

  I was my old self again, lost and confused

  Reunited with that old feeling

  Of being misunderstood and misused.

  Sold to the man for the price of disdain

  All of this would be interesting

  If it weren’t so mundane.

  He is like a fantasy. The inevitability of his escape is most likely his most attractive feature. He submits to the silences without a struggle; I go under shrugging and sighing, finally overcome by the sheer weight of the pause-turned-lull-turned-way-of-life. Silence speaks louder than words—it screams, “BORING!” He’s boring and tries to make it look more like a decision than an accident. The silences make my composure decompose from the inside out.

  I wonder what he is like inside out. We often assume that when the surface offers so little the depth must be unfathomable. Whatever is inaccessible must be worthwhile. I hate him and all of his quiet. But I love the implied disapproval, the seniority, the sternness, the disdain, the “strong silent type.”

  Frightening awful silences. Hiding behind all those mannerisms and quiet, crouched down behind himself. Unfiltered cigarettes, beer, broads and lumberjack shirts. And all that quiet to read into. One not only has to read between the lines, one has to fill him in altogether. Because he’s not there. To make him important in one’s life requires an overactive imagination. Unfortunately, mine never knows when to quit.

  During the long stretches of silence one can study him, eventually filling him in to suit one’s likes or dislikes. (The satisfaction of one’s fantasy.) I have filled him in to be unobtainable, disinterested, attractive and bored with my company. My ideal mate. Someone to endure, never to enjoy. I am totally at his mercy. I suffer through the silence, imagining that he is suffering my company. That I am merely an alternative for nothing better to do. I’m frightened of the power I have given him over me and of how he will almost certainly abuse it, merely by not being fully aware he has it.

  So he assumes his apathetic poker face and I sit practicing wry knowing looks somewhere in his periphery. I don’t dare pick a topic for fear that it won’t be funny enough or interesting enough for his awe-inspiring judgment. With his silence he establishes himself as a sort of trapped audience and so you break your ass to meet the enormous challenge of entertaining him, frantic with worry that his teeth might suffocate. Oh, he’s very funny sometimes with his parched sense of humor. But he only plays himself part-time. I work myself around the clock—obviously I have not heard about the child labor laws. But then I have not totally accepted that I am no longer a child. Once I do that I will have to accept responsibility for everything I do.

  We have no feeling for one another. We lie buried together during the night and haunt each other by day. Acting out something that we don’t feel and seeing through something that doesn’t deserve any focus. I have never done anything quite like this.

  I sit patiently awaiting the consequences. I talk, walk, eat and sleep patiently awaiting the consequences. How can a thing that doesn’t seem to be happening come to an end? George says that if you look at the person someone chooses to have “a relationship” with, you’ll see what they think of themselves. So Harrison is what I think of myself. It’s hardly a relationship, but nevertheless he is a choice. I examined all the options and chose the most likely to leave. No emotional investments. Never love for me—only obsession. Someone has to stand still for you to love them—my choices are always on the run.

  I can’t think about it anymore. It makes my head hurt. My mind works overtime trying to rationalize it, categorize it, define it until it no longer means anything. Put it into words—you can’t feel words. I think that if I could give a name to what I feel it would go away. Find the word that describes the feeling and say it over and over until it’s merely a sound.

  That old familiar feeling of hopelessness. That vague sense of desperation; fighting not to lose something before you’ve decided what you’ve got. I must thank him someday for teaching me to be casual. I realize I’m not very adept at it yet, but given a certain amount of time I feel I could learn to act as though I wanted to be somewhere else, maybe even manage to look as though I was somewhere else. I can charm the birds out of everybody else’s trees but his. Vultures are difficult to charm unless you’re off somewhere rotting in the noonday sun. Casually rotting . . . a glib cadaver.

  I’m sorry it’s not Mark—it coul
d’ve been. It should’ve been. It might’ve meant something. Maybe not much, but certainly more.

  This is a totally unreal situation but it’s the only reality I’ve got. I call friends trying to recapture some of my old dime-store perspective, but no matter how long we talk or how deep we delve I can’t seem to make any of it stick. I don’t really know how any of this feels. It’s important to decide whether all this is right or wrong, but as I’ve always seemed to judge myself in terms of other people’s standards and opinions; I have no moral reserves of my own to tap. I’ve always relied on the kindness of strangers, acquaintances, friends, relatives and Tennessee Williams to see me through. I’m quite sure, though, that if I had any principles what I’m doing now would violate most all of them.

  I suspect that no matter what happens I will allow it to hurt me. Eat away at my insides, as it were—as it will be. As it always has been. Why am I so accessible? Why do I give myself to people who will always and should always remain strangers? I have always relied on the cruelty of strangers and I must stop it now. I am a fool. I need a vacation from myself. I’m not very good at it lately.

  Who do you want them to think you are? How do you think people see you? Or don’t you let them near enough to see. You make up their minds for them. Do you think that you succeed in convincing people that you are what you seem to be? You make people meet you on your own territory. You don’t help them. You let them verbally hang themselves and then feel better about yourself, your power, your own sense of worth. You have the power to alienate them and if they allow it, you might even manage to make them feel awkward and foolish—foolish for letting you affect them at all. Do you want them to like you? Or are you one of those people who “don’t care what people think.” You’re not living your life for them, so why should you give a fuck what people think? You make people come to you and, when they eventually do, you punish them with your smugness. Nothing ever out of character.

  I wish you would love me more so that I could love you less.

  —Not Me

  The man sitting alone so silent and strong

  So what if you’re attracted for all the wrong reasons

  So what if your reasoning’s wrong

  Call his indifference mystery

  Call his arrogance intellect

  All you’ve got to lose is your heart

  And a little self-respect.

  If you’ve got arrogance and indifference

  You can make them pay

  They’re the most commercial product

  On the romantic market today.

  What do you think I feel for you or think of you? How sophisticated do you think I am? That’s not a fair question because obviously I don’t even know how to answer it. I overestimated myself. I thought I could be with the big kids. The grown-ups. The ones who ask questions like they already know the answers. Who never give themselves away; no emotional souvenirs.

  What’s happening to me? Who the hell do I think I am? Why have I become casually involved with someone who, if I am totally honest with myself, I don’t care for and who doesn’t care for me? And is married?

  I must figure this thing out once and for all—this pattern of becoming obsessed with inaccessible men. I think I’ve just about covered the boards by now. I think I’ve bled it dry. First homosexual men, already established in their inaccessibility before I came along, so I couldn’t take it too personally—just personally enough to get the taste in my mouth. The taste of disinterest and abandonment, sort of like cottage cheese with an aftertaste similar to smoked haddock. From then on it seemed I couldn’t get enough. As it were—as it seems to be. I started with snacking on the inaccessibility of random silent jerks and seem to have arrived at making a full meal of it. Now I’ve had more than enough. I want the check. Waiter?

  Thanks for the good times. Thank you for being so generous with what you have withheld. Thank you for being the snake in my grass, the thorn in my side, the pain in my ass, the knife in my back, the wrench in my works, the fly in my ointment. My Achilles’ heart. Caught in a whirlpool without an anchor, relaxing into it, calmly going under for one of many last times.

  I’ve got to learn something from my mistakes instead of establishing a new record to break. Maybe stop fooling around with all these human beings and fall in love with a chair. It would have everything that the immediate situation has to offer, and less, which is obviously what I need. Less emotional and intellectual feedback, less warmth, less approval, less patience and less response. The less the merrier.

  Chairs. They’re always there when you need them and, while their staying implies total devotion, they still manage to remain aloof, noncommittal and insensitive. Immovable and loyal. Reliable and unconsoling. Chairs it is. I must furnish my heart with feelings for furniture.

  But with these human beings you never know. They might not want to hurt you. They might even like you, and that would be the worst possible thing that could happen. Because what can you do with people that like you, except, of course, inevitably disappoint them?

  It’s very dangerous to have someone like you, because one day he’ll find that you are not the person he thought you were. He’ll end up someday having only one thing in common with you and that’ll be a shared sense of contempt and disgust for you. Of course you knew all along how foolish and worthless you were, you just hoped that if you crouched down behind yourself enough he wouldn’t see it. But one day when your guard is off-duty you see him see. You both catch you at yourself. Catch you behaving. And then you’re lost. No. You were lost all along.

  Don’t offer me love

  I seek disinterest and denial

  Tenderness makes my skin crawl

  Understanding is vile

  When you offer me happiness

  You offer too much

  My ideal is a long-lasting longing

  For someone whom I cannot quite touch

  I am the only one who can come to my rescue. I am the only one who can help me now. But I don’t know how to help myself. It must follow then that I don’t want to help myself. That I want to completely drain myself of all hope, which will leave me safe and dry with nothing to lose. The point where it can only get better, if I allowed it to get better.

  I can’t focus on the good things. There are good things going on all around me, but I don’t trust them, I can’t make use of them, don’t have the time for them; I’m too preoccupied with my precious panic. It seems to be demanding almost all of my attention. My own personal private collection of panic.

  I need to write. It keeps me focused for long enough to complete thoughts. To let each train of thought run to its conclusion and let a new one begin. It keeps me thinking. I’m afraid that if I stop writing I’ll stop thinking and start feeling. I can’t concentrate when I’m feeling. I try to put the feelings into thoughts or words but it always seems to come out in disjointed sweeping statements. Adolescent jargon peppered with random selections from a fairly gaudy vocabulary. A Frederick’s of Hollywood vocabulary. I wish that I could leave myself alone. I wish that I could finally feel that I punished myself enough. That I deserved time off for all my bad behavior. Let myself off the hook, drag myself off the rack where I am both torturer and torturee.

  I confide in everyone. I have no restricted private self, reserved specifically for certain trusted special people. I trust and mistrust anyone. I have traveled a full circle. But this time, on returning to zero again, I am able to act out the mistake more adeptly. I am on my way to becoming a very skilled loser. A specialist, a loser to end all losers. A flair for failing. I do it with style and finesse.

  I’m on physical and mental reserves. Carefully selecting and gathering all the ingredients for my recipe for ruin. Homemade hysteria. Fresh from my mind and ready to serve. Torment to go. I must never again involve myself in a situation that makes me feel this s
ordid.

  Hand over hand on the way to the top

  So afraid to fall back to the beginning

  Wishing it were more of a drop

  Happiness beckons you

  In the guise of money and fame

  It can all be yours someday

  At the drop of a name

  To be one of the familiar faces

  Calling the shots on a first-name basis

  That’s your desire

  But you’ve got to get a lot higher

  On the ladder

  Then nothing will matter

  You’ll be all set

  On top of the world

  That’s where you want to get

  A household word

  Like Ajax or Abbe Lane

  A reputation to live up to

  An explosion to sustain

  Watch him! There he goes, folks, higher and higher

  Hoping to get out of the anonymous frying pan

  And into the Hollywood fire

  The compromise I made was not an easy thing to do

  It was either you or me and I chose you

  Although far from a joker you spoke in wry, wry riddles

  I could’ve given you so much but you wanted so little

  I thought you might supply some tenderness I lacked

  But out of all the things I offered you took my breath away

  And now I want it back

  I never had what I wanted because I would never want what I had

  I thought you were different, prettier than most and twice as bad

  Uncompromising and caustic, sort of short and sometimes sweet