Sensuous

15 March — Monday

All day at the office I sat around wanting to be home so I could type this. And Mr. Karlman had to pick tonight to keep me late. I wanted to invent an excuse but couldn’t bring myself to do it. I can’t blame him. The work runs this way, with sudden peak times when everything had to go out at once. Sometimes during the day I sit around for hours with virtually nothing to do, and sometimes it’s necessary for me to work late. They’re very good about overtime pay, and he always pays for my dinner, too.

This time we worked right through instead of ordering sandwiches from Smiler’s. We finished at ten and he insisted on taking me out for dinner. I really didn’t want that. I tried to get out of it but there was no way. It would have been impossibly rude.

I may leave that job.

Isn’t that stupid? Because he was decent enough to take me out for a good dinner?

We went to an Italian place in the Village. The food was very good. I had...

Oh, Christ, the hell with what we had for dinner. I got the impression he wanted to go on the make but didn’t believe he had a chance. I tried to encourage him in this belief by being boring. Which comes naturally. He didn’t go on the make but evidently decided that boring girls make good listeners and talked endlessly about his problems. I was expecting intimate revelations, something tragic like Mrs. Karlman won’t blow him. But it was mostly crap about business and sometimes he wonders if it’s worth it all, because in a sense he’s successful and secure, but when he was in college he wanted to be a poet, and what happened to that poet’s soul that once beat in his breast?

Not that corny, the phrasing, but it might as well have been.

At least I had the presence to fake a phone call to my nonexistent girl friend, so I didn’t have to take a cab home this time. He dropped me around the corner, and I walked here after his car pulled away. Mood he was in, he’d have absolutely insisted on driving me clear to Brooklyn, and that would have been too much of a hassle altogether on a night like this.

Just don’t have the strength to type this. Quick summary of the afternoon with Bill — we looked at dirty pictures, he gave me a dildo for a present, and we watched each other masturbate.

Maybe I’ll feel like rendering the unabridged edition tomorrow night.