I Am Curious (Thirty)

January 5

Yes, you’ve come a long long way, all right.

All the way to the end.

When I found this and opened it and started to read I didn’t remember exactly when I had given up writing in it. There was no sudden decision to stop making entries.

It was more like an unanswered letter. At first you just put off answering it, and then you try to avoid thinking about it and file it in out-of-the-way places because you’re embarrassed and angry at yourself for not having answered it yet, and in the long run it never does get answered. I don’t know what it was in particular that made me stop writing in this diary after the Columbus Day entry.

Actually there’s nothing surprising about it. What’s surprising is that I kept the diary going as long as I did. Talking to myself through this book.

Much good it did me.

I can hardly recognize the woman who wrote those early entries. She expressed herself differently, she saw the world and herself differently.

She was so afraid of growing up.

Or growing old.

Or something.

Thirty. Magic number. Well, today’s the day, and I don’t feel any different. And if the mirror thinks I look any different than a day ago, well, it keeps the secret nicely.

Thirty.

What an odd document this is, what a record of what a fractured life. Howie has his divorce now and I have my money in the bank. In the bank? In the hands of experts who will turn money into more money.

Wonderful.

But what’s the money for?

I know why girls have pimps. To keep themselves broke. Because if they aren’t broke they won’t go out and hustle, and if they don’t go out and hustle they take too-long looks in their mirrors, and they see too much, and they have nothing to do but brood about it.

I guess I don’t like being thirty.

I guess I don’t like being me, at any age.

Oh Jesus fucking Christ, why was this book there today, why did I have to pick it up and read it? Howard and Edgar and the kid with the snow shovel and Eric and Susan and David and Arnold and everyone else, the ones I wrote about and the ones I didn’t, the ones I remember and the ones I’ve forgotten. And that last entry, You’ve come a long, long way. I really needed that shit today.

It’s all downhill from here. It has to be, where the hell else can it go? What do I look forward to now? Grandchildren? A trailer camp in Florida?

Not bloody likely.

Be a good time to end it. Get off the stage while they’re still applauding.

Why not?

No guts.

Guts? It doesn’t take guts. First you dope yourself up a little with a couple of Dilaudids and then you have a few drinks of wine and then you swallow the sleeping pills. Once you’re drunk enough to be brave there’s nothing much to it, and you don’t hate yourself in the morning because there’s nobody around to hate.

But who’d take care of Herringbone? And it wouldn’t be fair to involve him in a suicide pact. He should have some choice in the matter.

I don’t think I’ll do it. The hell, I’ll wait until next year.