PFK1 (12 page)

called me and bugged me about it some more, I might have confessed

what was going on.

But after that last letter she never really pressed me and well, shit, I

just don’t know. I mean, what the hell do I know about anything?

Nothing.

Now at night I am sad and lonely, listening to the rain patter down

on the roof of this tiny cabin. Alone in the darkness I remember

beautiful Marie. She was so striking, so incredible. What a gorgeous

body. What a great laugh. Marie knew what to do with that lovely

body of hers, too. Dammit. Sure wish I had that fucking decision to

do over again.

Tonight I would have done it differently. Back then I recall making

a conscious decision to become miserably unhappy. In so doing, I

succeeded beyond my wildest dreams.

As much as anything else, I think what most embarrassed me about

getting involved with Marie was my extreme poverty. Experience has

always shown me that when one person has the upper hand in a

financial sense it always means trouble.

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If you have to depend on someone else for money, even for a short

time, they hold it over you. It doesn’t matter what you offer in other

respects. Money counts most of all. Oh, they can deny it all they

want, but the truth is the person who brings the most money to any

relationship calls the shots.

You know how it is with humans.

Tomorrow a long, busy day beckons. At least I get paid. That

helps a little.

* * * *

May 2, 1978

Sorry journal, but I gotta lay this exercise on you:

Synopsis for
The Dark City
:

1) The novel opens in the fall of 1969. From the beginning, the

story is cast in the form of a search. A self-absorbed and slightly

awkward young man named Dale Murphy collects his high school

diploma months after the ceremony and heads off to college. He is

looking for kicks, girls, fun, and knowledge, in about that order. Dale

considers himself a typical example of his generation, born in post

World War II baby boom. He is a child of suburbia, interested in

girls, TV, beer, sports, food, music, girls, comic books, humor in bad

taste, and girls.

Oh, and lately he has discovered pot.

2) Some silly adventures. Dale reveals things about himself

through introspection, flashbacks, and interior monologues. All the

stuff you’re not supposed to do in a novel.

3) His friend Toby Schwartznecker is introduced, a barbarian who

is even wilder than Dale. Toby, a true marijuana fiend, is beset with

bizarre delusions and is jealous of Dale over a girl.

4) They superficially discuss Vietnam, student protests, and

politics. But they really don’t care much about it. They are mainly

interested in having a good time.

5) Dale arrives at Oxygen State, meeting his new roommate Jethro,

another lunatic. Good for a few laughs. A former mental patient,

Jethro fits right in. Does Jethro have pot? Yes, he does. A major

point in Jethro’s favor.

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6) Dale has an older brother in the military – Rick, the poor bastard.

Will he be killed? Hard to say.

7) A cast of characters is quickly introduced. Most significant is

Maxwell, a crazy Jewish kid from California. Max is smart, funny,

and every bit as rebellious as Dale, but hides it better. They dislike

each other at first, then hit it off.

8) Drugs. The environment of 1969-70 is saturated with drugs and

drugs are utterly cool. Dale smokes too much hashish one day and

has a big freak out.

9) Food. Eating is described with relish and few aspects of the

human excretory process are left unexamined, especially by Maxwell,

who obsesses about such things. Scatology reigns supreme.

10) The past. Dale thinks about life constantly, goes back and forth

over it, in a search to discover what the fuck it means.

11) Toby Schwartznecker falls in love. Slightly nauseating is the

phrase that best describes The Schwartz in amour.

12) Sex and drugs, rock and roll, beer and politics. School takes a

back seat to all the things that are, like, happening. Everything is a

joke and everything is wrong. This is what it was actually like back

then.

I know, it seems like a dream now, but I remember.

Like Marcel Proust, I remember.

Getting a little drunk, I think.

Also right, now I am so very sick of writing. I’m so very sick of

everything. I hate my life. I hate it, hate it, hate it.

I make myself sick. I’m so goddamned fucking stupid, such an

idiot. Asshole motherfucker piece of shit.
The Dark City
– what a

pile of shit.

Shit shit shit.

Send it off to a publisher. Big fuckin’ deal. I hate my work. I

despise it. After reading it over for the ten zillionth time, I feel like

throwing up.

The typist is getting the sample chapters ready tonight. I’m sending

them off next week.

Why do I even bother?

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All I want is nothing. I want nothing at all. I have nothing and I

want less. No paradise within. No paradise without. No Eden in this

fucking Adam, that’s for sure. I’m a drunken fool. Like my old

Uncle Rick. A fucking boozehead. Slobbery sick drunk, stupid, and

crazy. I hate life and I just want to die.

I should have jumped off that fucking bridge when I had the

chance. I don’t believe in myself. I don’t believe in anything.

Polly Ellsworth. I loved you. Truly I did.

But you never loved me. You trashed me good. Thank you very

much, sweetheart.

You were brilliant and beautiful, but also fickle and faithless. That

was why I didn’t quite trust you, why I kept my options open,

apparently for good reason. You were a fucking phony. You never

had faith in me, never really believed in me. I gave you more on my

worst day than you ever gave me on your best. Your brand of

affection deserves a john, not a boyfriend.

So where does the living go, when it stops?

I want to die. I hate being alive.

I hate it, hate it, hate it.

I’m drunk. I want to talk to my brother, but he is 12,000 miles

away. And I’m lost in dreams of death.

Why must we live? What is the point?

I’m insane. I’m crazy. Cruzan Rum. It’s poison, man. I swear.

What the fucking hell. I’m draining the bottle, smacking my lips,

looking for more.

The novel:
The Dark City
.

It has taken so much out of me, so many long hours. I am ashamed

to show it to anyone. I don’t believe in it. Writing this book has

ruined me. I am destroyed. Let the motherfuckers tear it to pieces.

Of course they will. I don’t care. My mind is a total blank. I can’t

write anymore. I can’t even think anymore.

I must go to sleep.

77

May 7, 1978

Looks as if I’ll be writing a third draft after all. I’ve gone through

14 pages of manuscript since April 26, and the end is nowhere in

sight. Nevertheless, I will not let this annoying state of incompletion

prevent me from offering it for publication. I am splitting off Chap.

49 as a separate excerpt and intend to submit it along with a query

letter.

Katrine spent the weekend here.

Probably the less said about Katrine spending two nights here, the

better. But I will describe it anyway because I want to reduce the

chance of succumbing to temptation again.

Her father Roland dropped Katrine off over at the Whistler

Restaurant, saying it would be easier than them trying to find my

place in town. Then he drove to Charleston, where there was a group

of Russian scientists visiting the Marine Center. I put Katrine’s

overnight bag in my VW and brought her to the cabin. We spent a

long 48 hours together.

Two days later, at noon, I took her back to the Whistler and

consigned her to Roland, who said it was damn nice of me to look

after Katrine for a couple of days.

"It does wonders for her mother to have time to herself, for a

change," Roland said. "And you’re about the only person my wife

trusts with Katrine."

"Thank you," I said.

Roland talked like his daughter wasn’t there, standing next to him.

Apparently one of the stigmas that go along with being mentally ill is

that other people feel free to talk about you as though you are a fence

post or an idiot.

What I try to do with Katrine is to have fun, and go light with

things, even with sex. I don’t know what else to do with her.

Because Katrine is not the kind of woman I want to squire around

town, I made dinner here Friday night – spaghetti with meat balls,

78

greed salad, and sourdough bread with a cheese-garlic glaze. As

always when I make a meal for her, Katrine ate like she was fucking

starving.

She went through two major helping of my special spaghetti with

the roasted tomato sauce, as well as three servings of bread. I also had

to give her extra salad and the last meatball.

There we were, the lonely young writer and his mentally ill but

exquisitely beautiful young blond girlfriend, having dinner together at

the Cal style table in the living-room/dining room, with the big brass

clock on the counter, slowly ticking away the seconds.

To fortify myself for the night ahead, I drank three big glasses on

red wine. Of course, Katrine had none, on account of the medications

she takes. I gave her apple juice instead.

We talked about what had been going on in our lives. What that

meant was that Katrine described at length her more or less absurd

adventures, and I listened.

Katrine talked and I drank, admiring her lovely, voluptuous body,

filtering out the noise of her conversation. While Katrine is on her

meds, her conversation is laid back but continual, as opposed to the

unlaid back hypertalk that she spouts when not on them. I have

trouble deciding which is worse.

I kept comparing Katrine to Annie, who is less beautiful but

infinitely more fun to talk to at dinner and afterwards.

Sexually, our time together was less than scintillating as well,

although amusing enough because I know what Katrine really gets off

on and provided her with it.

Most of the time, we played the game I invented for us two years

ago, when I promised Katrine’s mother that I would not fuck her

diagnosed bipolar daughter.

I was washing the dishes after dinner when Katrine came to stand

beside me, (not helping, I might add) asking whether we were going

to play it or not.

"Are we going to?"

"Going to what?" I asked, teasing.

"You know, play it," Katrine said, moving closer to me.

79

"I forget," I answered. "What it is you want to play?"

"Milk The Cow," Katrine said, grinning. "MTC."

"Oh, I suppose," I said with feigned reluctance.

Milk The Cow is by far and away Katrine’s favorite sex act. I

invented it as a method to supply her with sexual satisfaction without

intercourse.

Because Katrine tells her mother absolutely everything she does,

she later informed me that her mom had no objection to these kinds of

"harmless experiments."

In other words, as long as what we did resulted in no chance of

Katrine becoming pregnant, it was all right and I was still a gentleman

in her mom’s view.

I learned of this in a long and excruciating three-way phone

conversation with Katrine and her mother almost two years ago, hence

the promise not to do anything that could impregnate Katrine.

"Believe me, that is the very last thing I want to do," I assured

Katrine’s mother.

The solution, as I have already stated, was Milk the Cow, or MTC,

as Katrine likes to call it.

MTC has singular advantages over regular intercourse, as far as I

am concerned. First, there is the fact that Katrine loves it, loves the

attention, and loves the feeling it gives her.

Another big advantage is the impossibility of an unplanned

pregnancy resulting from MTC.

To play Milk the Cow, Katrine doesn’t even need to be nude,

although she usually is and was on Friday when we played.

Before going in the bedroom, I made Katrine show me what stuff

she had with her.

Among the items included were a tube of clear lubricant jelly and a

box of large-sized condoms.

"We won’t need the rubbers, but we can use the lube gel. Did you