The Princess Diarist(25)

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.