I Am Curious (Thirty)

May 19

Saw Howard this afternoon.

He didn’t see me. I went uptown to look at some slacks but didn’t find anything I liked. Walking up Fifth Avenue I saw him about half a block ahead just getting ready to cross the street. He was holding a girl’s arm, a secretary type with one of those elaborate plastic hairdos and tits like missile nose cones. Those huge plastic tits that either don’t entirely belong to the girl or when you take her bra off they hang to her knees, or they will by the time she’s thirty.

Christ, listen to me, putting down a girl I never did more than look at. And why? Because she’s helping to clean up the food I left on my plate? If they enjoy each other, more power to them.

Why should I be jealous?

I seem to be. But I think it’s just a reflex, a knee jerking when the hammer hits it. I watched them a little. They must have been going to or from lunch. (Or to and from bed.)

He looks fat and stupid. I wonder what I ever saw in him. Really. That’s a cliché, I know, but what on earth did I see in him?

Or he in me, for that matter?

Does he miss me? There’s a question for the ages. Again, why should I care?

Funny. I remember one time when we saw on the street the car we had traded in on our station wagon. A fine car, but we had wanted the wagon. Because it went with the house, of course.

Anyway, we were driving along in the wagon, and there was our car. Unmistakably ours. There was a little dent the size of a teacup that I had put in the bumper once, and that of course no one had been able to do anything about, and that made the identification absolute.

And Howie and I began to hate the man who was driving the car. Typical dog-in-the-manger crap, but people are like that. Once something has belonged to you and you are done with it you automatically want it to cease to exist, or at the very least to have no life separate from you.

Oh, Eric’s back. From robbing banks or subverting the government of Australia or whatever he does. He called a few minutes ago.

I’m seeing him tonight.

Will Susan be there? And what scene will we play now?

Funny. Having seen Howard fires me up for this evening. I want wild things to happen. I don’t care if he strips us both bare-ass naked and takes after us with a leather whip.

One doesn’t entirely get over people in a hurry. Even shallow people that you would think wouldn’t take a lot of getting over. Howard, let us face it, didn’t have all that much to say. And it was I who left him, and good riddance. And all that happened today was that I saw the dumb son of a bitch crossing Fifth Avenue, which is probably something he does at least a couple of times a day, and the fact that he was walking with a girl with big tits suggested to me that maybe he hasn’t been faithful to our marriage vows since I ran out on him months ago. (Months! My sense of time is completely fucked up. It seems like years, and other times it seems like a matter of days.)

If Howie wasn’t getting laid, that might be something to worry about.

But the hell with being rational. I’m really anxious to do some wild screwing tonight. Which is the attitude every properly brought up young lady should have, I guess, when she’s on her way to do precisely that.