So what I did was planned. I thought it over very carefully first. Unlike the time when I first took hold of his cock, when it just happened without thought or volition.
I put my hand on the front of his pants and touched him. He had a sort of half hard on. I gave it a brief squeeze, then opened his zipper and took his cock out. He drew in his breath sharply—I think I actually shocked him, and know for sure I surprised the hell out of him.
I played with him, and then with total abandon I put my head in his lap and sucked him off. Knowing that the men on either side could turn and watch us. Knowing, and actually hoping they would do it.
He came very quickly. I guess he was stimulated by the circumstances just as I was.
I came, too.
And swallowed, and licked my lips, and sat up straight again and looked at the screen. If anyone saw what I was doing, they stopped watching by the time I sat up.
I sat there looking at the screen and felt the most self- satisfied grin spread over my face. I felt like the cat who had swallowed—well, not exactly the canary.
After a few minutes I turned to Bill and suggested that we leave. He nodded and took my arm and led me out of there. Outside I asked him if he had gone to those movies with girls before. He said yes. I asked if any of them had ever done that to him before. He said no, and started to say something else, and then didn’t.
We didn’t go back to his place. We went to Howard Johnson’s for fried clams, established that the bit in the theater would be an impossible act to follow, and agreed to share a cab. He said he would drop me first. I said no, I would rather drop him first. Still not wanting him to know where I live. He looked at me and I thought he was going to be irritated, but instead his face showed mild amusement. What makes me so comfortable with him is that he treasures me for all the things that are so wrong with me. If I ever get rid of my hangups I suspect he’ll find me rather less fascinating.
I have tonight’s bedtime fantasy planned. Jennifer is an innocent girl from Iowa who goes out to Hollywood to become an actress, and without realizing it she gets into a porno film.
Now there’s one with possibilities.
As for today, nothing happened. Mr. Karlman didn’t even come into the office today.
Horrible idiot thought I’m almost scared to type. Suppose he didn’t come in because his wife actually did drop dead during the night?
I sincerely wish I hadn’t just thought of that.
2 April—Friday
Mr. K. was at the office today. And last night’s brilliant thought happily failed to come true. Mrs. Karlman is still among the living. At least she was when I left the office an hour ago.
I suppose it’s possible she died since then.
I must stop this morbid bullshit.
3 April—Saturday
I was walking around the neighborhood this morning and made the mistake of looking in a pet shop window. There was a cardboard box that had once held two dozen bottles of Heinz ketchup. It now held four Siamese kittens, and I fell in love with them.
As a result, I am now the owner of a forty-nine cent philodendron.
The whole thing is so ridiculous. I decided I would never get a plant. But as soon as I realized that what I wanted more than anything else in the world was a kitten, it somehow became all right for me to pass up the kittens and get a plant.
Like feeling justified in putting out your eyes as a reward for having staved off the impulse to commit suicide.
It’s a pretty little plant. It only has about three leaves.
Exactly three leaves. I just went and counted them.
It will get more, though. So said the florist. With the proper care it will grow like crazy. Just water it once a day and keep it where it gets daylight. Doesn’t need direct sunlight but ought to be near a window. So it’s on the sill now and I’m waiting for it to grow all those leaves the man promised me.
I already watered it once today. I don’t know whether or not I was supposed to. In that I don’t know whether or not he had already watered it, and somehow I couldn’t bring myself to call him up and find out.
It shouldn’t be that much trouble to water the thing once a day. I can do it every morning before I leave for work. That way I won’t be in the position ever of having to be home at a certain time to water my plant.
I think I’m taking this thing far too seriously. I really do.
Do your give plants names? I suppose it’s up to me, it being my plant. And no one would ever know that I was a lunatic who named her plant. I could even talk to it if I wanted to.
Anyone who talks to a typewriter is none the crazier for talking to a plant.
I wonder if it’s a male plant or a female plant, or if there’s no difference with philodendrons. I could give it a neutral name. Seems a cop-out, though. Maybe I ought to wait and see how I relate to it, whether I regard it as a boy or a girl.
I suppose I could always call it Mother.
I’m just in the silliest mood, rambling on and on like this. I feel kind of good in a weird way. I went downtown last night intending to go to the concert but decided I didn’t feel like it. Wound up going to a movie. Not like Wednesday’s movies. This was a Bogart revival on Eighth Street. Casablanca and The Petrified Forest. I wonder how many times I’ve seen both of them. Doesn’t matter—they get better each time.
Sort of looked for that coffee house where that boy propositioned me, but couldn’t find it.
4 April—Sunday
Bored to death.
Would call that bored housewife, speaking of bored, but not on Sunday when the source of her boredom is probably home. But I’m always working during weekday office hours. I suppose I could call her some lunch hour from a phone booth. If I really want to.
Feel almost like calling Wayne and Maureen. But I don’t think so. The one time was novel for the three of us but a second time would be a bore for all three of us.
Bore. Word keeps coming up today.
Just stopped and called the single guy who is so proud of his cock. The one I decided never to call. No one was there. Of course not. I was supposed to call him afternoons, so that must be his office, and this is Sunday.
I’ll have to write some more letters. I wish I felt like it but I don’t.
There ought to be something I feel like doing.
I already watered the plant. It still has the same three leaves. I suppose that’s something to be thankful for. It could have lost one of them.
What I should do is buy the kitten and let the kitten eat the plant and die of philodendron poisoning, and then I would be carefree again.
Ha ha ha, but actually I think it would probably bother me a great deal if the plant died. Which was one of the reasons and probably the main reason I was against getting it in the first place.
Something I read today. In the Times Book Review section, a review of …
No, forget it.
5 April—Monday
From yesterday’s Book Review section:
In his introduction, the editor of Vagabond’s Day-Book stresses that its author wrote it with the constant intention of its being published after his death … But are not all diaries undertaken with the conscious or unconscious anticipation of eventual publication? I would tend to think so. That they are an assist to memory, that they provide a medium for dialogues with the self, does not sufficiently explain the compulsion to record day by day the events of one’s life. Almost every long-term diarist is concerned with style. Matters are explained which he would not need to explain to himself; the explanation is surely for the eventual benefit of the assumed reader or readers. I am sure many diarists would shudder at the thought that their private confessions would ever pass before eyes other than their own, let alone see print, and am equally sure many such diaries are deliberately destroyed out of that very fear. But unconsciously it would seem that the diarist does crave an audience for his thoughts and observations, the public and private details of his experience. A dual drive, the
twin needs of secrecy and confession (and thus absolution?) would seem to motivate those diaries ostensibly “not for publication” to a greater or lesser degree ….
6 April—Tuesday
Typed the date and have been looking at an otherwise blank sheet of paper for half an hour. Things to write but that fucking review is more inhibiting than arthritic fingers. Wish I hadn’t read it.
Don’t know if I agree with it or not. I can argue it both ways and would do so now but I’m sick of the whole thing. What the screaming fuck does it matter why I’m writing this diary?
I was doing beautifully until I read that crap.
7 April—Wednesday
Shit. Called Bill last night and told him I couldn’t make it today. What a stupid fucking thing to do. I can’t understand why I did it.
I know why I did it. Generally depressed, reactions to that crap in the Times. Self-conscious about the diary and then self-conscious about everything, everything in the world, and convinced I wouldn’t want to see him tonight. But why in hell couldn’t I keep my options open? Could have waited until this afternoon to see if I still felt the same way.
And of course I didn’t. Woke up this morning regretting that phone call and wanted to call him this afternoon and tell him I didn’t have to go to a bridal shower after all, but how? Tell him the engaged couple broke up? So I didn’t call, and it’s now just about the time I would ordinarily be leaving for his place, and I’m sitting here calling myself bad names and meaning every word of it.
Shit!
8 April—Thursday
WILLOWY SEX POT wants to watch you do your own thing. Singles or couples or groups, gay or bi or straight, this gal of 25 wants to be your audience. Will occasionally participate if vibes are right. Photo helpful, phone essential. Occupant, Box 771, Madison Station, NYC.
I think I’ll run that in one issue of Screw and see what happens. Might add a sentence inviting them to describe what kind of a show they want to put on. I don’t know. Might look as though I’m just interested in getting filthy letters.
I am sort of interested in getting filthy letters, actually. But I’m also interested in getting filthy.
So frustrated. Really was dying to be with Bill last night. Sat around torturing myself trying to guess what he might have had planned. And I won’t get to see him now until next Wednesday. I could have tried to shift the date to another night, but of course the way I felt when I called him I didn’t think I would ever want to see him again.
The Sex Diary of a Crazy Lady.
I’m definitely going to run that ad. I won’t even bother getting a money order. It’s not worth the trouble. The rate is ten cents a word which comes to …
(Just a minute)
… which comes to $4.60, so I’ll put a five-dollar bill in the envelope and let them put the extra forty cents toward a Cadillac. It’s supposed to be unsafe to send cash through the mails but it strikes me as generally safer than, oh, for example, than sucking a man’s cock in a 42nd Street porno theater.
Just for instance. But not as much fun.
9 April—Friday
My plant is getting a new leaf!
I can’t believe it. I also can’t believe how excited I am about it.
I mailed the ad to Screw. It ought to be in not next week but the week after.
During my lunch hour I went over to the Post Office box on the off-chance that one of those people I never heard from might have finally gotten around to writing. No such luck. I didn’t really expect it.
Deposited my paycheck. It’s nice getting an extra ten dollars a week. And strangely enough Mr. Karlman has not changed towards me at all. He still acts the same as he did before.
I almost wore one of the new dresses to the office this morning.
Wonder why that is. Maybe I’m perversely upset not to have him falling in love with me. I honestly dreaded it, and now that it hasn’t happened I’m beginning to feel rejected, which is the sort of stupidity I should have learned to take for granted from me.
Jennifer Starr has a 1 p.m. appointment Monday with Dr. Carmine Pecora, practice limited to obstetrics and gynecology. To get on the pill. Picked him out of the Yellow Pages. Because his office is just a few blocks from mine, and also because I like his name. It has a nice ring to it. Carmine Pecora, M.D. I like it better than Ben Casey, even.
I’m going to the Village tonight. Maybe to the concert, maybe to the coffee house (if I can find it), maybe to neither of those places.
I am going to have sex tonight, though.
10 April—Saturday
My plant’s new leaf is the palest green. It emerges tightly rolled and pointed at the tip, phallic in my eyes, but phallicism like beauty is no doubt in the eyes of the beholder. It has grown noticeably since yesterday.
As far as I can tell, it will be larger than the three leaves already on the plant. I bought a little book on plants, a 950 paperback written in the general tone of one of those women’s magazines they sell in supermarket checkout lines. If each leaf my plant grows is bigger than the last, it is a sign that I am doing something right. If, on the other hand, the new leaves are progressively smaller, the plant, while still healthy, is not doing its best. Thus it would seem that I am doing something right, but I cannot imagine what it might be. All I do is water it once a day and look at it from time to time.
I also love it. I wonder if that makes a difference. Could my plant possibly know whether or not it is loved?
It rains today. Rained when I awoke this morning and hasn’t stopped yet. April showers to bring May flowers, and Mayflowers to bring Pilgrims. I shall dangle my roots out the window and drink the rainwater and sprout new leaves.
I shall have to buy some Vivaldi records. They had a woodwind quintet playing last night on Barrow Street, an all-Vivaldi program. The bassoon player had his hair very long in back and very short in front, so that he looked like a hippie from the back and a hardhat from the front. Tres disconcerting. (Disconcerting at a concert? The lady should choose her words more carefully.)
Making love with another woman is almost narcissistic. When there are just the two of you in the room. Very strange. Feelings of competition with self. Thought for a moment that I could get out of the prison of my self, that I felt less threatened, less intruded upon. But the pattern proved to be the same. Nice, though.
I seem to have reached the point where I can enjoy sex even if it doesn’t work.
11 April—Sunday
My phone started ringing today a little after noon.
Immediate reaction—fear. Intrusion. That Bill had followed me home and found me out. That the woman from last night had traced me. That someone from the office was calling me. Mr. Karlman, to tell me he loved me.
Anything.
Must have been a wrong number. Never know, though, because I didn’t answer it. It stopped after perhaps a dozen rings and whoever it was didn’t call back.
Must have been a wrong number, or some telephone pest calling numbers at random. Or a nuisance selling encyclopedias or magazine subscriptions or dance lessons.
Keep thinking I’m improving and then all this blind panic when my phone rings.
12 April—Monday
I now have this little folder three inches square with pills inside arranged in a series of concentric circles. Five days after my next period starts I am to begin taking them, taking one each morning until they rim out, then getting the prescription refilled.
Dr. Carmine Pecora is small and slender and looks sort of like a fag, but I don’t suppose many fags become gynecologists. I would suspect the reverse might be true, that many gynecologists might become fags, perhaps out of a growing disaffection for the female apparatus. It must do odd things to a man to look at cunts day in and day out, all of them cunts at which one looks in a purely professional capacity, and an unhealthy proportion of them diseased or otherwise imperfect cunts at that.
Kept worrying I’d get hot while he examined me, or embarrassed, or something.
Surprised myself. No reaction at all. He had his nurse stay in the room while he examined me. One of the homeliest young women I have ever met in my life. God dealt her bad cards to begin with, but she isn’t helping herself any by letting her moustache grow and by refusing to pluck the long black hairs from her two moles, one on her chin, one alongside her fat and large-pored nose. Some moles are called beauty marks. Hers will never be so described.
Also, she’s fat.
Probably about my age, but she looks years older than me. Easily.
I suppose it’s a character fault, but it’s one I can’t help: I never feel prettier than I do upon seeing a really ugly girl.
13 April—Tuesday
Got my period today.
I still can’t get used to buying Tampax. Never had to in the past. Would go downstairs and take a box from our stock. Mother sold it, sold almost everything in that little store. Wonder if she wrote numbers or took bets on horses. Seems out of character but who knows? From what I’ve read, little storekeepers in Brooklyn and the Bronx are the backbone of the business. If she did it, I never would have known about it. The woman never told me anything she did that was legal, let alone anything illegal she might have been up to.
Worked late tonight. Me and Mr. Karlman. Sent out for sandwiches, ate them at our desks. Made the now-standard pitch about staying with friends in Manhattan for the night.
He bought me a drink before taking me home. Two of us sat over drinks waiting for somebody to say something. Then he went into a speech about how he hoped he hadn’t embarrassed me or taken advantage of me by using me as a sounding board the other night. Said he guessed he was going through what every man his age goes through. As usual, I didn’t do much talking myself.
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