Thursday, October 31, 2013
Here's one from awhile ago that I've slightly reworked:
10 May
I’ve read the journal of every girl I’ve ever dated, provided they kept one. If she says she doesn’t keep a journal, then I look harder. I have made duplicate keys. I have broken into her apartment while she was at work. I have checked her room while she was in the shower. In most cases, I end up finding her journal. I don’t know what it is about their journals that makes these girls I date so ashamed. They have some lovely prose in there. Here’s one of my saddest favorites:
I never feel like myself when he’s inside me. I feel like I don’t exist.
I wish he’d stop the second he gets it inside,
but part of me never wants him to leave.
That really hurt when I read that. I stayed with her the longest, but ended it when I read about some guy named Ellmore. Besides, I told myself while sitting on the edge of her bed, you’re only doing this out of pity. I put the journal under her pillow, my easiest find because it’s always the first place I look, and waited for her to get out of the bathroom. It was especially difficult to end our relationship with her wearing that lingerie. Not because of how sexy she looked or anything, lingerie is ridiculous, but because she went through all the trouble. I did not buy her any lingerie and so told myself that it must have been a gift from Ellmore. I asked her, with my hand around the doorknob, do you feel like yourself when he’s inside you? She stood there speechless as I closed the door. I really hope she didn’t cry. I did not mean any harm.
If she really doesn’t keep a journal then I am forced to check her email. But I know as I click on her inbox that she will not last long. I will find reasons to get bored with her and end things, or I will let her know the things that will get her bored with me. My longest email relationship was 5 months and her name was Agatha. But she was alluring enough on her own to keep me around. She was the one who ended things. If she had not dumped me I may have never left. She was an exception and exceptions are always the hardest to lose because exceptions have indelibility and I have never forgotten her. The one secret I never got to know.
Other email relationships are bland because no journal means no secrets and no secrets means no personality. I know this is true. Up until my Aggie I never seriously considered an email relationship. But everything about her was intriguing. The way she would just up and leave for 15 minutes. Where did she go? Out for a walk, up on the roof, down in the basement - who knows? I wanted to ride on her back like a koala bear. I wanted to know everything about her because there was so much I knew she was not telling me. One day I woke up and she was not next to me. I found her in the living room dancing with headphones on. I wanted to bite her cheek off. But no journal. I looked everywhere.
You can tell a lot about a girl just by the type of journal she has and by where she keeps it. A regular five star notebook means she has been journaling for a long time and will continue to do so. The five star is a treasure chest and they are my favorite. But they never last long, so I don’t know why I say that. They are typically very introverted, which is cute for awhile. But it gets old. I like chatty ones with five stars, they are typically the most fun to have sex with because all that journal writing gets her in tune with her body. If it’s a five star under the pillow, then I know we will get along just fine. A five star in her top drawer is no good.
Then there is the hard leather bound. These girls still think journal writing is like keeping a diary. I’ve seen some with entries that begin with “Dear Diary”. I don’t even break up with these girls. I simply walk out and never talk to them again. I mean, it is not anything special to keep a journal. It is no momentous occasion. Every hard leather bound thinks writing in her journal is a visit to royalty. I might add, unless they keep the hard leather bound mixed among books. She lasted about three months.
A soft leather bound is the hardest to define. She may have journaled before or this may be her first journal. It’s so hard to say with the soft leather bound ones. Typically, these girls are inconsistent, only journaling when they feel like it. I don’t go for desultory journal keeping. These too, never last long. One kept her soft leather with her at all times. That was an adventure. I stuck around just for the espionage involved in trying to get my hands on that pearl.
The one’s that last the longest are always the most unique. One girl wrote in the margins of her bible.That was a hard find. Here’s a passage, written next to Psalm 105:4:
I like the way he walks into a room. He seems to be completely
at ease with himself and in control. I never see that side of him
outside of entering a room, which is most odd.
I disagreed with her, but I stuck it out, if only because her journal keeping was so interesting. There was another girl who kept a journal in a plain blue binder she restocked with looseleaf. Once it was filled she threw away the last page and so on. I found the papers in the garbage before I found the binder. Here’s a poem she threw out:
I test-drove this car once up a cliff and over a tree just
Because the dealer said I could take it off road. If only
He could see me now, that mustachioed harbinger.
She hid the binder on the top of a cabinet above her toilet. It was the necessity of and addiction to the journal that kept me around.
My favorite, and this one hurts more than dear Aggie, is the one who kept a journal with cutout pictures and drawings. I thought it was just a scrapbook at first until I found the connections to her daily life. On August 12th, the day we first made love, I found a picture of the Eiffel Tower, a field of sunflowers, and a black and white picture of her laughing. To make sure I checked the day her father died, and sure enough it was a waterpainting of her father holding a rake with leaves coming out of his pockets and dirt in his hair. There was so much beauty to her drawings, so much depth to her journal keeping, that I thought she was it. I planned to marry her and still do. But she found me reading her journal one day when I thought she was at work. I was stuck on the most recent page from the day prior. The page included a drawing of a dinosaur and a picture of me in the top right and a picture of my friend Greg in the left. I was supposed to hang out with Greg the day before but he canceled last minute. I was sure they had just hung out, so I wasn’t jealous or anything. I was hoping we could still be friends, but she will not see me. I miss you Sara, wherever you may be.
It’s an addiction, I know. I don’t smoke or drink and none of the hard stuff either, of course. This is the only pleasure I take out of life: discovery. And the funny thing is, I have never kept a journal. I was thinking the other day that maybe I would be able to hold down a relationship longer if I did. So hello, journal. Glad to meet you.
¶ 11:28 AM
