I Am Curious (Thirty)

August 9

How frustrating! This fucking book (and looking through it, that’s exactly what it is, a fucking book, since that’s what most if not all of the entries seem to be about) is habit-forming. A week or two can go by without an entry, but when I want to write something and the book’s not around, that’s something else again. I go into insulin shock.

The abortion was a breeze. (I suddenly get the lovely image of a column of cold air tunneling up my cunt and aborting me, the abortion as breeze.) It was not nearly the horror I kept anticipating, and it was over and done with quickly, and then I napped for an hour and he examined me and sent me on my way, along with a couple of bottles of pills.

I stayed with Liz. Stayed there until today, as a matter of fact, which is why I’ve been having withdrawal symptoms over the damned diary, which I couldn’t get to.

There were all sorts of things I wanted to record, but that’s the thing about a diary, if you don’t put them down at the time the impulse gradually diminishes, and by the time you have a chance you wonder what it was about, the whole thing that was fresh in your mind.

Of course Liz went right on tricking during this time. Even the first day, when I had to stay in bed. The couch in the living room is a Castro, and she opened it up and turned a couple of tricks on it while I lay in bed in the bedroom and listened to the springs squeaking and wondered whether I was going to live or die. After the first day I wasn’t stuck in bed anymore and I would sit drinking coffee in the living room while she balled her tricks in the bedroom.

There was something interesting that happened that would have gone into the diary but it has become very vague in my mind since then, so the hell with it.

Liz paid my rent. She insisted, and I didn’t argue very hard. She says I can pay her back once I’m back on my feet. Once I’m back off my feet is more like it. I can’t earn any money on my feet.

Anyway, I’ve been on them since yesterday. I took far too long to go back and work the bars again. It didn’t have anything to do with the abortion, I don’t think. I don’t see how it could have. The doctor said four days before resuming relations, and I took twice that length of time, and there were no complications and no pain, so I obviously was stalling.

Yesterday I made eighty dollars. I took my tricks to Liz’s place. Her idea. You really have to have a place to take these men, and having a hotel you can get into easily the way I did is not the answer. A lot of men just don’t like the idea of going through the aggravation of checking into a hotel, and then they’re in some sterile hotel room and they don’t care for it. I can understand this.

Liz wants me to move in with her. I guess we’re pretty close, and there’s a sexual thing between us that seems fairly strong. Although except for that one phony baloney trick where we put on an act, we haven’t really done anything.

While I stayed there of course we slept together in her bed. And naturally we would cuddle and touch a little, and sometimes sleep in each other’s arms.

Hey! The first person, first and only person, that I have literally slept with since Howie!

As far as living with her goes, I am tempted. It would be nice to have someone around. And Liz is someone I could stand living with.

But I also like this place, damn it. It’s ridiculous for the amount of time I spend here to be paying almost four hundred dollars a month. I could move out. I’d lose the month’s security, but the hell with that. It wouldn’t matter.

Or I could keep this place and split the rent on Liz’s apartment so that I could spend the night there occasionally and use it as a place to take Johns. But if I did that I’d be spending a fortune on rent. It just seems ridiculous to spend that much money on rent.

Actually if there were a two-bedroom apartment in Liz’s building that we could both take, that would be perfect. Or, and this would be even better, now that I think about it, if there were a small apartment in her building that I could take by myself. Because her place isn’t really big enough for two girls to bring dates to at the same time, and also because I think I would like a certain amount of real privacy. A place to sit and write in this book, for example. And have whatever thoughts I want to keep to myself.

I just took a walk around the neighborhood and I felt like a complete stranger. Not just since the abortion, but when I was tricking uptown I found myself spending less and less time around here.

I guess there’s no real point in having an apartment down here anymore.

I wonder where Eric is. And Susan. People keep walking in and out of my life. He might be around — I haven’t been here to answer the phone.

I could go over to his apartment and ring the bell and see what happens. But I won’t do that because I’m afraid he might be there.

There’s an argument for moving. I would just as soon be unfindable by him.

Though I have this irrational feeling that if he really wanted to find me there’s no place on earth I could hide. Like he has this all-seeing eye. I know it’s nonsense but I can’t dismiss the feeling.