[start of journal, age 36 and several months]

Lunch with Helen at the cafe. Her boyfriend Paul revealed to her yesterday that he has an ex-girlfriend, who lives in a small city about an hour's drive away. He had gotten this woman pregnant and planned to marry her this June. She wasn't able to move to the city to live with him for some reason, then had a miscarriage (Helen thinks it might have been an abortion), and then, for these and perhaps other reasons, the wedding was called off. Helen says Paul seems much sexier and more virile to her now that she knows about his womanizing past. He is no longer just a dull nerd who never had any dates. She is feeling insecure, since the ex and Paul are planning to meet today to discuss their breakup (and possibly have sex together, Helen suspects). Her other boyfriend wants to visit her tonight, but she doesn't want to have sex with him because she feels sick and has to work tomorrow.

We lay on her bed and hugged for several hours, then shared a pint of chocolate ice cream mixed with fresh strawberries. As I was about to go, we hugged tightly and I felt an erection.

"You see, you still turn me on. You haven't lost any sex appeal. And in case you forgot what I looked like..." Saying this, I pulled out my cock and balls. Helen sucked me lightly for a minute or so, then we kissed and I rubbed her crotch, which she lifted upwards against the downward pressure of the back of my hand.

"You're going to get me hot and horny and then my other boyfriend is going to polish me off. Oh, I don't want to have sex with him! Do you think he'll be able to smell you on me?"

"I doubt it." Nevertheless, she went to brush her teeth.

"That was very romantic, and erotic even, the way we were cuddling on the bed. If you had done that more with me when we were together, instead of being so mean to me, then you might have gotten more nookie. Men should do that more instead of always wanting to poke me."

I left then before her other boyfriend arrived. It would have been very awkward if he were to slip in the building, and be walking down the hall towards her apartment, only to find me leaving it.

My lawyer notified me that the trial date has been postponed for a month. I continue to be annoyed at how slow he is to return my calls. He seems distracted and bored by his work. I know the feeling, since I feel this way myself about my software business. He likes the idea of being a lawyer, but doesn't want to bother with the nitty-gritty details of the work.

I lay in bed all morning, masturbating and daydreaming about sex with some woman I had danced with at the disco this weekend, then finally rolled out of bed at noon, just long enough to do my calisthenics, then lay down again. I did manage to process most of the day's orders, though the backlog of email technical support questions continues to grow. There were no hardcopy shipments today, so I didn't even bother to visit the post office.

Helen dropped by in the afternoon. She asked if she could come up and I agreed, though I really didn't relish seeing her. I'm also sorry we played around yesterday, since now she is in love with me again. She was in a giddy mood and expounded, in a pompous way, her plans to break up with her new boyfriend. I was enjoying her company after my day of complete idleness, and so rashly suggested we eat out together. She accepted this invitation, but wanted to stop by her apartment first. There she changed clothes, then responded to a phone message left by her parents. Her giddiness seemed on the increase, so that I began to tire of her. But I thought it rude to leave after having made the dinner invitation. She insisted we eat at the Thai restaurant, though I would have preferred to eat somewhere else. She was adamant: "I'm sick. I need Thai food when I'm sick."

It was a dismal meal. Helen went into a manic phase and became anxious because my seat was next to that of a striking looking woman who was dining alone. I had wanted us to sit at a different table, precisely to avoid being so close to this woman—both out of consideration for her and to give us some privacy—but Helen chose the table. Helen began speaking loudly, as if she wanted this woman to overhear us. I was embarrassed and asked her to speak more quietly.

"No. I can speak as loud as I want. Those people at the other table are talking LOUDLY!"

"Just stifle yourself, okay. You're really being annoying."

"You're annoying. I'll smash this on your head." Saying which, she put her hand around a vase that was on the table.

"Just lower your voice, okay?"

"Ah, the male power is threatened. The male ego threatened by the female voice. I think I'm going to go to that feminist lecture tonight after all." This last she said in a particularly loud voice. We went on in this manner for several minutes. Then came time to order. I knew the best items on the menu, but Helen scorned my advice and insisted on chicken wings as an appetizer instead of soup. I told her this was a bad choice. Sure enough, when the chicken wings came, she didn't like them, and asked for soup in addition. I was angry that she was wasting my money this way.

"Why don't you shut your fucking mouth and listen to what I say? I told you wouldn't like the chicken wings." She had also ordered a main dish that I thought a dubious choice. When it came, she complained it was too hot and so didn't eat much of it. I tasted a bit myself and found it disgusting. The woman sitting next to us had left by this time. Helen had quieted down, and I was in a sour mood.

"You ordered chicken wings, which I knew you wouldn't like, and you didn't like them. Then you order soup, like I suggested. Moral: I know what I am talking about, you don't. So shut up and listen to me in the future. Okay?"

"Why don't you just let it go? Just forget about it."

"I have to pay for your mistakes. You come to a restaurant, order things I know you won't like, I suggest you order something else, you ignore my advice, then you don't eat what you ordered, as I predicted, but I still have to pay for it."

"I'll pay for the soup. Anyway, this will be the last time we ever eat out together, so you don't have to worry about this happening again in the future."

"You were the one who called me tonight. You always call me. I never call you. Why do you always call me?"

"This is all because of that blow job last night, isn't it?"

Once outside the restaurant, we yelled at one another and separated. I felt stuffed from eating the chicken wings Helen had ordered, in addition to half the soup plus all of my main dish. After I arrived back at my apartment, Helen called me on the telephone.

"What do you want?" I asked, in a hostile tone of voice.

"I'm sorry for the way I acted in the restaurant," she mumbled.

"Well, you ought to be sorry."

"Umm. I want to know what I can do to make it up to you."

"Well, you can pay for the soup you ordered, that's what. Now you better get to bed, you have to go to work tomorrow."

"Okay."

The tone of her voice made me think she was masturbating with one hand and holding the telephone with the other, pretending to be a slave with me as her master. I suppose she wanted me to order her to suck my cock or something or the sort. But I was still annoyed with her and didn't feel like playing this game.

I continue to be very lazy with respect to my software business. Instead of working, I lie in bed—daydreaming, masturbating, looking out the window, reading. Today, for example, I did nothing in the way of work besides checking up on five overdue invoices. Everyone I called was either available or called back, and they all had excuses, and they all promised to pay. And the reality is that they are probably telling the truth. So why didn't I check up on these invoices several weeks ago?

A meeting with a woman who answered my ad. Age thirty-six, auburn hair, foreigner. She visited the city ten years ago and then decided to stay: "I simply had to move here, I would have died if I hadn't." She took menial jobs—making sandwiches, telemarketing—but didn't mind as long as she had enough money to pay her bills. Currently, she works a variety of temporary jobs. She has no savings, no insurance, no steady job, but insists she is happy, and says she would never have spent twelve years working in a dead end job like I did, saving for eventual retirement.

I complained I was bored with my work. What else is there to say? Then we talked about the weather. Not much sexual energy between us. I followed her to the bus stop, and there asked if she wanted to meet again. She said I should call. This was the first time she had ever answered a personals ad, she said. What is her love life like? She didn't ask about mine or volunteer information about hers, and I didn't want to inquire about hers or discuss my own. I come across as boring in these conversations because I never say what I really think. I'm afraid if I do, I'll seem odd, weird, a little crazy in the head. Better to be boring than crazy. She wasn't bad looking, but I didn't find her attractive either. I suppose I could learn to want her.

I gave my business card to a young woman with whom I had been dancing at the disco, and then felt foolish. First, I wasn't really interested in her, other than as a dance partner. So why pursue her? Second, I'm disgusted with and wanting to shut down my business, and thus it seems inappropriate to be passing around a business card which oozes pride in that business (the card has a photo of me and lists me as president of the corporation). In any case, she refused to give me her number when I asked for it: "I don't know, maybe we'll meet again sometime."

A big order of music disks arrived. I always feel depressed after these shopping sprees. Of course, what I spent on these music disks is dwarfed by what I pay in rent each month. The woman I met yesterday asked me what my rent was, and gasped when I told her. She shares an apartment that rents for less than what I pay, so her rent is effectively half mine. Part of the reason I've always felt uncomfortable living in my current apartment (which Helen picked out) is that I'm afraid people who visit me will think I'm rich (I am, after all, in comparison to most young people) and ask me for money. I would never consider asking for money from someone I visited, whose standard of living was higher than my own, but Helen does it all the time: "If you would just give me half a million dollars, I would be so happy, I would never have to work at a job I hate again!" I suppose I expect everyone else to act like her. If I am going to tell people I'm financially independent—and I suppose I'll have to tell them that once I shut down my business, unless I want to get into the business of fabricating some life and then getting caught in my own lies—at least I don't have to rub my prosperity in their faces by living in such an expensive apartment. In a smaller and cheaper place, I could take the following line: "Yes, I don't work, I live on my savings. But they aren't much, as you can see from the size of this apartment. There is just enough money to support one person. So don't bother asking me for a handout."

It was drizzling and overcast all day, so I decided to skip disco dancing. Then around midnight, I changed my mind and decided I wanted to go out after all, but not do any dancing. So I walked to a single's bar. I had a creepy feeling all the way there, as if I were entering hostile territory. There was a surplus of women, and surprisingly pretty ones too. The men and women dancing were humping each other's legs, and performing mock dog-style sex, and otherwise carrying on in what I consider a disgustingly vulgar manner, considering that they were in public. But to each his own. I felt uncomfortable standing around and left after about twenty minutes.

I passed several sports bars on the way back and had little inclination to enter any of them. They reminded me of the sorts of bars I used to go to with friends when I was young. I hated them then, I hate them now. I can't imagine why women find these sorts of places attractive. Maybe these are the sorts of women I want to avoid, so that it's just as well they go somewhere I wouldn't go. Altogether an unpleasant and wasted evening.

I piddled around in my apartment most of the day—listening to music, masturbating and exercising—then walked to the bookstore, where I read a book of oral histories of the homeless and another about the sex industry (go-go dancers and prostitutes). After reading about the miserable lives some people lead, I'm embarrassed to write anything but expressions of gratitude for my own existence. But who wants to read that? On the other hand, who wants to read books about the homeless, other than me? I have one such book, an autobiography of a homeless man, which I've tried to sell to two used booksellers—and they know better than anyone what books will sell—but neither wanted it. Meanwhile, they snapped up tedious novels that I thought I'd never get rid of.

On the way back from a disco, where I had danced until about two in the morning, I stopped off for tea and pastries at the all night donut shop. While I was sitting there, a street person came in and began talking aloud to no one in particular. He struck me as handsome and seemingly intelligent. Not at all like the typical bum. I stared at him, he said something, I nodded to him in reply and then looked away. He was sitting behind several women, who giggled at his monologue. When they left, they forgot to take along their umbrella.

"Hey, you forgot your umbrella!" said the street person, but not very loudly. Then he resumed his mumbling. "I tell them they forgot their umbrella, they don't listen. Okay, so the umbrella sits there on the floor. You think it's normal to leave an umbrella sitting on the floor like that? They want to get wet or what? Good, leave it and come back later. I wouldn't do that, but what do I know? What about that umbrella?"

"Shut up!" yelled the donut shop employee. He picked up the umbrella and went outside to give it to the group that had left.

"Tell me to shut up. I told them about the umbrella first, but no they don't listen to me. Nobody listens to me. Shut up, just shut up, that's all he has to say to me. He's gonna bring them the umbrella but when I try to tell them about the umbrella, they don't listen and he says shut up. What you mean shut up? Tell somebody they left their umbrella lying on the floor and then tell me to shut up. Just shut up. Okay, I shut up. Now you leave your umbrella and I'll shut up. Let it just sit there. Shut up, he says to me. What the hell did I do but try to do somebody a favor?"

The employee is often harsh like this, then sits down with the very people he has rebuked and plays cards with them.

I called the woman from last week and left a message with her roommate. I don't really want to talk to her and I don't think she wants to talk to me, but I'm determined to do so. Do I perhaps enjoy wallowing in pathetic situations? Imaginary conversation:

"Did you get any more responses to your ad?"

"No, you're the only one."

"Ah, that sounds so sad. But I'm not really interested in you."

"Oh, well, I figured as much. But I had to try. You're the only woman who has shown any interest whatsoever in me."

"How pitiful!"

While dancing at the disco, a pretty blonde, with no sense of rhythm, smiled a goofy smile and then approached and kissed me. A strange situation, since her boyfriend was also dancing with her. Maybe she was on drugs. Later, I noticed a line of couples going into the bathroom together. Do they fuck in there? One of the women wiped her mouth on the way out, so maybe she had just given the man a blowjob. I reflected that I can't seem to even get an erection after heavy dancing and sweating, much less come, so if I ever get someone to have sex with me in the restroom, she is likely to be completely disappointed in my performance.

I updated my web site with a repudiation of a misleading quotation that was published in a trade journal last week, which makes me sound like a complete fool. Several of my customers last week called me asking for clarification, since I am regarded as something of an authority on the subject and the information given in the quote is completely wrong. In fact, the quote is almost the exact opposite of what I told the reporter. I now realize how dangerous it is to talk to these people on the phone. What I should have done is insisted on answering his questions by email, so that he could cut and paste into his article. For a while, I contemplated writing something scathing about this reporter in my repudiation, but then had the sense to realize that this would just make me look even more foolish, and so the final version was mild and inoffensive.

I'm starting to think that the business may not last to the end of this year, at the rate my interest in it is declining. Once I had the market all to myself, but now competitors are starting to crop up. Instead of enhancing my program and hiring employees and otherwise trying to make the business grow and succeed, I lie around in bed all day with a pillow over my eyes. People in the industry are probably beginning to think I'm some kind of pitiful flake, who hasn't done anything in years except utter wild and inaccurate remarks to little respected journalists from the trade press.

I danced with a young woman at a disco, then talked to her briefly outside, before she had to leave with a friend. They were driving a luxury sports car. Where do these young people get their money? Their parents? Do they really earn enough to pay for this sort of car? Is she in debt up to her ears?

A client called who had paid me for consulting work last year and who wanted me to do some more work. We talked for about forty minutes, and then I told him I didn't know the proper way to do what he wanted, but that I'd make a few minor modifications to the program I wrote last year at no charge. I don't want to take anyone's money anymore because I feel that doing so obligates me to work and I don't want to work. I didn't tell him this, of course, but just said I felt he had paid enough originally to include continuing technical support.

Today I fretted about buying a book for $13 because doing so caused me to exceed my budget of $25 a day on discretionary spending (everything except rent and utilities). Why do I impose such limits on myself, when I'm earning almost $200,000 a year from my business and have over a million dollars in the bank? Even without the income from the business, I could easily spend $50 a day for the rest of my life and never run out of money. For some reason, I enjoy being on a limited budget. Another example of my irrationality about money: I worry about spending a dollar on the bus, but I don't follow up on a potential order that would be worth at least $199, since that would require waking up an hour earlier. And why do I have trouble waking up an hour earlier? Because I won't pay for a bus, and so have to walk home instead, which takes longer and thus causes me to go to bed late.

Another of these purchase orders without a phone number in case I have questions. In fact, there weren't even instructions for invoicing! What if they don't pay? Do I have to waste time and money pursuing them via directory assistance? I normally accept these orders because experience has shown that I usually do get paid, especially if the customer is a large corporation, as was the case with today's order. Since my costs for shipping the order are small, the reward to risk ratio is quite good. Also, I have found that if I refuse an order like this, there is a good possibility the customer will never send another. That is what happened with a recent order which indicated a license costing $700. There is no such license. I asked them to clarify whether they wanted the $495 or $995 license. They never responded. I should have just sent the $495 license and billed them for that, or else sent the $995 license and billed them $700. Likewise, when I refuse payments of $99, because the price was raised to $199 two years ago, almost without exception, the customer just gives up and so I get neither $99 nor $199, but rather nothing (or less than nothing if I have to pay postage or make a telephone call to send my refusal notice).

Helen dropped by to pick up an astrology book. At first she pretended to be angry from the fight last week, though soon enough we were hugging and lying on the mattress, her shirt undone so I could play with her breasts. She had sex her new boyfriend Paul the other night. So this makes two men she has had sex with since she started dating again. The first one she admits she doesn't really love (and she is tired of sex with him as well) and I suspect things won't last with this new guy either.

I managed to get some work done today for a change. The email backlog is now down to twenty-seven, and many of the remaining items are no longer worth responding to, given how long I've delayed already. For example, I have messages from a month ago that I have yet to respond to. Meanwhile, the backlog of faxes and hardcopy mail is almost completely gone. Finally, I once again have a reasonably clear desk! As usual, I put off processing the large orders for last. It bothers me when someone sends me a large amount of money, since I feel obligated to them somehow, as if the software I'm giving them isn't worth the large amount of money they're giving me. Conversely, it doesn't bother me when someone steals from me, or underpays me. They have wronged me, so I owe them nothing. I want freedom more than I want money.

Which reminds me. I've been taking the phone off the hook this week when I go to bed, so as not to be woken up early in the morning by customers in Europe. So I no longer have the feeling of being on call twenty-four hours a day, which has been a big help in reducing my feeling of being harried by the business.

Helen came by to "use the toilet". She had sex again with Paul, who came three times, despite his age of forty-five. I reflected ruefully that I have never been able to come like that with a woman, and indeed have never come more than twice in a night with a woman, that I can recall. He used withdrawal as the contraceptive method, instead of a condom. I told Helen to prepare for an abortion. Or perhaps she wants to get pregnant. At some point in the conversation, she asked me a computer question, which, as usual, led to an argument.

"You are such a child. Paul is so different. He's a real man."

"Is his cock bigger than mine?"

"I knew you'd ask that. Anyway, I've pissed in your toilet and now that it's full of piss I have to go."

I don't feel the least tinge of jealousy. Am I homosexual? Or just indifferent to Helen? Does she really respect him more than me? If so, is it because he apparently wants to get her pregnant, or just because he's having sex with her? It's true that I sometimes act like an undisciplined child with her, whereas I act maturely with other women, but this is because she seems to want and encourage childish behavior from me. Perhaps she wants me to act childish because then her own childish behavior will be more acceptable. She acts like she's in love with me, but then she doesn't want to have normal sex with me, and anyway all we ever do is fight with one another.

I've been thinking that I resemble a dazed heroin addict in many respects. I live more or less contentedly in solitude. I'm sunk into apathy. I have a hard time getting aroused by sex. It is as though my body is manufacturing its own opiates. Perhaps masturbation is how I give myself a fix.

I called the foreign woman again. She said she was busy and would call me back but never did. I think she wants to get rid of me, but it won't be so easy. Maybe I'll call her tomorrow: "I thought perhaps you might have forgotten my phone number, since I never heard back from you." How will she respond? And what am I trying to accomplish, anyway? Maybe I'm toying with her in some perverse way, hoping that she'll start screaming that she doesn't like me and please stop calling her and can't I take a hint. "Well, actually, I can take a hint, but hints are so hard to interpret. I'm especially bad. I tend to misinterpret so many things. So I try to get a direct statement instead of a hint, if possible." The more she runs, the more I want to pursue.

I was in the mood for dancing tonight, and so went to a nearby club which I had never been to before, and which was listed under the disco/dancing category in the newspaper. In fact, the club wasn't a disco, but just a regular neighborhood bar. But since I was there, I decided to stick around and people watch. I was appalled at the quantity of booze being downed. These weren't college students, either, but young professionals with jobs to go to tomorrow. I drank nothing alcoholic myself. The women were attractive, which caused me to reflect that every time I see a young man my age accompanied by an attractive young woman, I think of myself and Helen, and don't envy him or her in the least.

While sitting in a booth at the disco, a woman asked if I had some marijuana for sale. (The answer was no, of course, since I haven't used drugs for almost twenty years.) As she leaned over to speak, her mouth touched my ear, and I became instantly aroused. I have so little sex these days, that the slightest contact with a woman becomes significant. She had fleshy upper arms. I don't know why Helen is so adamant in thinking such arms are unattractive in women. It made me want to grab hold of her and squeeze the soft flesh. Huge arms are another story, but certainly fleshy is better than muscular or bony.

A street person in his late forties accosted me as I was walking home from a nightclub. He pointed to a scar on his stomach, which he said was a bayonet wound. "Listen. I fought for this country and what do I get? Nothing. Oh, I know you can help me! All day I've been walking. All the way down the avenue from the park. I'm tired. All I need is eight dollars for a room. You went to college, right? I got my high school diploma and next week my draft notice. I saw things in that war, in the jungle, terrible things...They sent me to jump school, combat school. I killed some enemy soldiers, you know. I was just eighteen. And when I got out, nothing. The government used to give me eighteen hundred dollars a month, but I stopped taking my medicine. Were you raised a Christian? I can tell. Proverbs says, verse [here he quoted some scripture, I never can remember this sort of gibberish]. This is a discriminatory country, but it's the only country I've got. I'll fight to help you. I'll help you if these hoodlums jump you. You know why? Because we are all of us equal inside. If you were in the position I'm in, I'd take you in, let you sleep under my roof, feed you, help you out. I need someone to help me. All I need is eight dollars and I can sleep inside. I'm no crack head. I try to work, but there's no jobs. I went knocking on doors looking for work, and the police come and threw me on the ground."

I gave him $8.75. The above is just a small sample of his spiel. He walked with me for several blocks, then he entered a cheap hotel, presumably the one that costs $8 per night.

A few blocks further along, someone in a crowd of young hoodlums threw a lemon which hit me on the back of the arm. They had disappeared around the corner before I could even figure out what had happened. When I got back to the corner myself, they were walking down the sidewalk with their backs to me. There were at least six of them and I had no idea who had thrown the lemon, so I let the incident pass. I can see where this could become a problem in the future. I either put up with abuse, or waste my time calling the police, or risk injury by fighting back, or take a detour. The most sensible option is the last, of course.

Helen called and proposed we have dinner together at a restaurant, but I declined the offer. She called again while I was napping, but I had the phone ringer turned off, and so she left a message, to which I didn't respond.

Yesterday, for the first time in months, I was motivated to do some programming for my business. For several hours, I thrashed about doing design work. But then today, my interest was gone completely. And to think that two years ago, I couldn't get enough of programming and this business!

Helen called and said she wanted me to give her some of the blue binders which I use to hold pages I've printed out. I would have granted such a request to any friend, but Helen seems to think it is her right to just demand these sorts of favors. She didn't ring at the front door of the apartment building and then wait for me to buzz her in, but instead somehow got inside the building, either with the key she still has or by tailgating someone else, and knocked directly on my apartment door. I never slip in like this when I visit her building, nor would I dare do such a thing to anyone else.

When I handed in the rent this month, I included with it a statement signed by Helen stating that she had officially vacated the apartment. I had asked Helen to sign this statement last month, in exchange for the final $2500 installment of the $10,000 I agreed to give her when she moved out. My reason for wanting this statement was my concern that she might someday think to demand that the landlord let her back in to what is now my apartment. As co-signer of the lease, she still had the right to be let back in. I didn't reveal this concern, however. Instead, I said the landlord needed the statement before they would take her name off the listing at the front door. I explained that having both her and my name on this listing might cause questions when women came by the apartment. "Have you brought any women here?" she asked. "No, but I might in the future," I replied.

I felt bad about submitting this statement to the landlord. To some extent, I would like for Helen to someday come back here to live. For example, suppose I died in the near future. Being on the lease would make it simple for her to move back in. But why should I be so worried about what happens to her if I die? Why do I feel so responsible? On the other hand, I'm annoyed at the way she seems to think this is still her apartment, and that she has the right to visit here whenever she chooses. I have a tremendous need to have my own space. This, more than anything else, is what has driven us apart in the past. For whatever reason, she could never bear the thought that at times I wanted to get away from her.

When she came by today, I was happy as ever to see her, and reached out to give her a hug. At first she resisted, but eventually let me hold her closely. Then I showed her how I had bound pages into the blue folders. As it happens, these were pages from this journal. I warned her that she might not like what I had written, but she nevertheless took the folder into the bathroom. When she came out, she seemed hurt. She hurried out of the apartment, refusing to let me touch her anymore, allegedly because she had to go to work. Why did I let her read this journal?

I felt annoyed after she had gone, as if my privacy had been violated. She can't resist coming here. I can't resist showing her things I've written which I know it will hurt her to read. She can't resist reading them. It really is a sick relationship. It has been months since I called her. Always, it's her calling me. This is because I have self-discipline and she doesn't, and not because I don't want to see her.

She has "bladder infections" from sex with her new boyfriend Paul. I used to think these illnesses of hers were at least partly psychosomatic, but with all the hip and knee and eye and upper back and sleep schedule problems I'm having, I'm not too sure anymore. I've always enjoyed perfect health in the past and now I have all these minor problems, which I don't think are psychosomatic. Or are they? Why did I get a muscle strain in my upper back yesterday, for example? Perhaps for both of us the problems are real, or perhaps in both cases psychosomatic.

Business was very slow—two phone calls and two emails. One email requested that I give a presentation to an area user's group. I'll have to think of some excuse to avoid this. This is the sort of opportunity I should be jumping at with enthusiasm. Instead, I just want to duck out.

While eating a bran muffin in the all night donut shop, I listened to a homeless man, about forty, talking to himself, telling his tale of woe: "Many people are ruthless. They just step on other people to get ahead. I can't do that and maybe that's why I'm where I am today. Ten years on the street. And some people have relatives they can call on. I wish I had someone who would give me a couple of hundred dollars now and then. Here's three hundred dollars so you can get your head together for a while. But no, I don't have anyone like that. I mean I'd like to work. But it's hard to get a job. It takes some real get up and go to get a job. I don't have that. I guess everyone has their secret path in life and I just haven't found mine yet. It's so hard sometimes. But you have to maintain your zest for life. It's really hard on the street. Never anywhere to go for even one night. I can't manage money even when I've got it. I think that's my biggest problem. I get my check and then it's all gone. I try to manage but I just don't seem to be able to. Oh, well." There were three of them sitting at a table: the speaker, a store employee, and another homeless man. The speaker and the employee were playing cards. The other homeless man just sat silently watching, as if in a stupor.

Helen wanted to come by and use my printer. I was annoyed by this request, since we had a fight when she came by yesterday. She begged and pleaded and finally I acquiesced. After hanging up, I felt resentful at having caved in. So I determined to be unpleasant when she came by, and was. We had a fight and she left in a huff, slamming the door on the way out, then she returned a minute later to check about a paper she thought she had left behind, and then she left in a huff again.

The business received some valuable press coverage, in which a well-known consultant recommended several of my products. I had previously talked with the author of this press coverage on the phone and also corresponded with him by email. He sent me an email last week notifying me of the article, which I haven't responded to. I suppose I should thank him. Press coverage like this could easily be worth $100,000 in additional business.

The email backlog has increased and I've made no progress with programming. All I think about is netting $200,000 for the year and then shutting down this business for good. The secret to wealth, I'm realizing, is to continue at a job or business at which you're successful, long past the time when you're bored by and hate it. Rewards for good work tend to come slowly, generally some significant interval of time after the important work is completed. To reap these rewards requires a fundamentally dull, plodding nature, with just enough talent to have done the good work in the first place. What you definitely don't want is too much imagination, because that implies you'll get bored easily and move on to something new long before your accomplishments are properly recognized and rewarded.

Two skinheads jumped me in the commercial district. It was about three in the morning. I was on my way home from a disco. One flicked a cigarette butt in my face and said something about "faggot". I turned and said "what's your problem" but before the words were even out of my mouth, he rushed me and yelled: "You don't like it, you don't like it, maybe I'll show you fucking faggot to like it!" I was surprised and he managed to slug me in the jaw with his fist, though not too hard, since I was stepping backwards at the time. I dodged the rest of the blows and backed off further when the other punk approached. The one who had hit me then pulled something out of his pocket. It was too dark to see, but I would imagine it was some sort of weapon. The skinheads rushed me again and so I ran to the end of the block, where I asked a cab driver to call the police. By this time the skinheads had disappeared around the corner, but then a few minutes later they reappeared, this time in a group of four. I ran a few more blocks and called the police from a pay phone. A cruiser drove up about ten minutes later. They recorded the incident as simple assault and battery. Nothing will come of it. I should have mentioned the "faggot" epithet, because then it might qualify as a hate crime. Why did they think I was gay? Or did they? Maybe they just call everyone faggot.

I overslept and consequently missed the morning package delivery. So now I have to worry about that when I turn the phones off. I did absolutely nothing in the way of business besides taking two phone calls.

Conversation with my lawyer. No progress, he says. But that is the same story he told me last month! What is the delay? He says he will talk to the other lawyer and give me a status update later this week. My sister is now being sued by someone else, which probably means that the land, once it reverts to my father, will be encumbered by liens. The old house is apparently being cared for: the grass is being cut, and so on.

I've been disco dancing after midnight for two out of three nights so far this month. Tonight was typical of what happens at these discos. I exchange glances with a woman, who then turns around and backs as close to me as possible, so that I start to get aroused. But I don't do anything. After about five minutes, she moves away, about half-way across the floor, as if miffed by my unresponsiveness. Later, I see her talking with some guy, who appeared to be someone she already knew, her boyfriend maybe. Was I really interested in her? Was she interested in me? Was she only interested in me if I was interested in her? Was I only interested in her if she was interested in me? Do we want sex, or do we simply want to feed our vanity by seeing how many attractive men or women we can attract?

More eye contact with other women, who I see shortly thereafter talking to other men, but who later I see alone again. One stands by me for a while, then moves away after a few minutes. Of course, if I had said something to her, she would have detected that I wasn't really interested in talking. I was just in a dreamy mood with nothing to say. She was very attractive and well-dressed. But attractive to look at doesn't mean I want to talk to her or even have sex with her. Do I want to talk to or have sex with anyone?

According to one user, my business received press coverage in one of the trade magazines to which I don't have a subscription. I'll have to check this out. Not much correspondence these days, but orders are still coming in at $5,000 a week. I'm moving to a new web hosting service, which will provide all necessary services. So I'll be able to turn off my personal computer for the first time in over three years. What a lifting of a burden that will be! One less thing to worry about if I ever have to travel (for the lawsuit with my sister, for example). I also decided to let my certification lapse. Primarily because it is a hassle to maintain and offers no obvious financial benefit to me or the business, but also because losing it feels like a step towards getting away from programming altogether.

Phone conversation with a woman who answered my ad. Age forty-three, lives in a house in the outer suburbs with five dogs, three cats, tropical fish and various other pets. I told her I spend much of free time in nightclubs, and she gasped. So I backpedaled: "Not for drinking, just dancing." She drinks maybe twice a year, but, in any case, doesn't like bars: "Too many games in bars, and I don't play games." She has that low-self-esteem-loser tone of voice. Desperation. Hostility as a defense against insults. Two grown children. She divorced when they were three. The ad read "sexy, good-looking, tall, fit, warm, friendly, educated. Single white male seeks independent woman for relationship". She commented on the word sexy: "Has anyone told you you're sexy?" I mumbled some answer. What did I mean by that word, anyway? Then a pause in the flow of conversation and she becomes impatient: "Is that it? Are you always this quiet? I'm the exact opposite." I always try to make the best of these situations and continue in the hope that I might learn something. But she's already decided "it wouldn't work", and I have to agree and so we hang up.

I lay on the sofa the whole day, listening to music, staring out the window, and now and then reading from my current book. One of my resellers wants a larger discount. Not really caring about the business makes these decisions so much easier. I just say yes.

Disco dancing tonight was a complete disaster. It was suffocatingly hot inside due to the warm weather and lack of air conditioning, and there was much less of a crowd than usual, and I couldn't find any women to dance with and really didn't want to dance anyway due to the heat. So I sat on a sofa or leaned against the bar or wandered from room to room seeking out the air vents, feeling and looking bored and depressed.

I arrived home about two in the morning and entered the building together with the woman on the floor below. She's in her late thirties or early forties and lives alone with her ten year old son. "What a beautiful night!" she exclaims. I reply that it is too hot for me. A few more words exchanged about the weather. There is a physical attraction between us, but nothing will come of it. My fantasy is for her to call me late at night when she's lonely and wants sex, and we fuck and then sleep together in each other's arms. But no, things never work so smoothly in the real world. Instead, we have to go through this idiotic charade of pretending to be a couple, where I act as if I might someday marry her, because otherwise I would be just "using" her for sex (but how can I be using her when the assumption is that she calls me when she wants sex, and not vice-versa?), until I begin to dread the very sight of her, which she misinterprets as disgust at her body, which makes her resent me, and eventually our glances when we pass in the hall are full of hostility and contempt.

Helen called and we talked. She is going swimming with her boyfriend Paul and wanted to come by and look for her bathing cap and goggles. Then she decided not to come after all.

I felt depressed all day, and sat around listlessly. In the late afternoon, I took a walk to the park and sat there in the sun. A young man, a foreigner of some sort, was sitting and talking nearby with an older couple. Apparently, he is their house guest. Sometimes I wish I had friends here who I enjoyed spending time with.

In the evening, I read a pop psychology book which made me more depressed. Some sort of psychobabble about "fears of intimacy". The sort of pap that just pollutes my thinking and makes me feel the most atrocious self-pity. For the sake of my mental health, I should probably throw this book away right now, and never read another like it again in the future. Unfortunately, I can't do this, because I continue to be fascinated by pop psychology, though much less so now than in the past.

Then it was another lousy night at the disco. There was a small crowd and the music was boring. I didn't dance and had a headache and so left after only about an hour there, then didn't have the energy to go anywhere else afterwards, and so came straight home. This is my second bad night at the discos in a row. It was a string of bad nights like this earlier this year that soured me on dancing for almost two months.

Another response to my ad. A legal secretary from the suburbs, age thirty-six, divorced. That is all I found out, because she wanted to end the conversation almost immediately. I had said very little other than briefly describing my work and the fact that I lived in the city. She said this was the first ad she had answered. When she told a friend what she had done, the friend told her about some bad experiences she had had with men she met through personal ads and now she was terrified. I was tempted to say something to make her even more terrified, but managed to restrain myself.

I masturbated once before going to bed last night, and thrice this morning. I have no idea what is provoking this rush of desire. I haven't even brushed up against a woman in weeks, and I haven't recently visited porn shops, nor have I been abstaining from masturbation. What's more, I've been feeling depressed these past few days, which I would normally expect to put a damper on my sex drive.

In the evening, I went up to the roof, where I had a conversation with a couple from another unit in the building, who were sanding a metal coffee table together in preparation for later painting it. There was something about the dynamic between them—a tense discussion over how much to sand, whether to go all the way to the metal or leave some of the existing paint—that reminded me of living with Helen, and how I felt at peace inside then, as if I had finally found what I always wanted, and yet at the same time wanted desperately to get away from her. Another couple was busy with their barbecue. Theirs is another relationship I don't envy. I once heard the woman screaming at the man for a full hour, and only shutting up when he at last shouted something back and then slammed the door and walked off. I shared a joint with this man today, but didn't have much to say to him.

I felt stupid and hungry from the dope for several hours, and so ate a pizza at the cafe, then two baklavas from the deli on the way home. By then the dope had worn off, leaving me feeling depressed and wanting to get high again. So I cracked open the vodka and tonic I keep stored away for emergencies like this, and had my first drink in months.

In the afternoon, Helen dropped by. I was very happy to see her. We had takeout food for dinner at her apartment, then spent several hours talking and lying together in bed. I felt much less depressed after having visited her than before. She and her boyfriend Paul have been spending all of their weekends together. For the most part, she enjoys his company, though doesn't feel entirely at ease with him. One weekend recently, they went to the mountains, where they stayed in a luxurious hotel.

I wasn't sure about going out this evening, but after a shower, I felt refreshed and decided to at least stop in at the disco and see what was happening there. It took me a while to get back into the mood for dancing. I saw the woman I had danced and talked with a few weeks back, but she was occupied with some other men, and I didn't want to butt in.

I've been depressed lately, so that I wasn't at all receptive to being approached. Several women seemed to be attracted to me, but I didn't do anything about it. I have this problem with going after young women just for sex, as though it were "morally wrong". And yet since when did I care about morality? There is much less of a problem with older women, since it is obvious that with them marriage and children are pretty much out of the question, as is the likelihood that they would want me to support them. So the only thing they could possibly want from me is sex, which is all I want from them. A certain honesty is thus implied in a relationship with an older woman. Or is honesty really the issue? Surely there are younger women who just want sex? Actually, I know there are, and indeed I'm meeting such women constantly in these discos, and many of these women show an interest in me, and yet my response is to turn around and walk off.

Most of the day I lay on the sofa, listening to music and feeling sorry for myself because I can't find a woman to have sex with me. The email backlog is growing again. A pile of fax orders is sitting on my desk because I have some mental block about processing them. I turned the phone off before going to sleep last night, so that there were four messages on my machine by the time I finally rolled out of bed this morning. When I returned these calls, I got voice mail. Eventually, of course, customers tire of this game of phone tag and so I end up losing orders. And yet I don't seem to care. Part of the problem is that I'm not working hard enough. The harder I work, the more enthusiasm and interest I have, or such has been my experience in the past. But why work hard when I already have my million dollars? I don't want more money, I want a sex partner. I thought today of my old officemate at the corporation. She was very intelligent, but also incompetent due to lack of interest in her work. Back then, when I was working with her, I only dimly comprehended the boredom and lethargy she was experiencing, but now I understand her state of mind completely. In general, I'm much more sympathetic and forgiving of people in business these days. In fact, I'm sometimes amazed the whole world doesn't collapse due to people losing interest in doing their work properly. Of course, not everyone has a million dollars in the bank like me.

I took a nap in the afternoon. When I woke, I thought of killing myself. I wanted to put a gun in my mouth and blow my brains out. Then the thought occurred to me that all women are infantile, undersexed nincompoops and thus I might as well chop my cock off since they don't want it and even seem offended by its existence. And then I had this crazy dream that I had taken a knife and stabbed a woman who was in bed with me, for no good reason, just stabbed her without thinking, and so then had to devise some way to dispose of the body. Perhaps drag it to the bathtub and cut off the flesh piece by piece and shove these pieces down the garbage disposal and smash the bones to pieces with a hammer and thus gradually dispose of it. Really sick. I don't know where these crazy ideas come from. Too much time alone, perhaps. Or maybe I should masturbate more to take my mind off sex. Or possibly masturbate less. Or maybe do some work for a change.

Helen called in the evening but I told her I was feeling ill and wouldn't be able to go out. Immediately after hanging up, I went out and had a pizza for dinner at the cafe. It's nice to feel wanted, but her childishness annoys me.

Mark called and left a message, but asked me not to call back. He said that he would call me again this weekend. He worries so much about not wanting me to feel like I'm subsidizing him by always being the one who calls. Though perhaps I should be grateful that he shows such scruples about money. The amount of money in question is trivial, of course. Maybe he just feels uncomfortable with me. But then why does he call me?

Helen called several times and left messages. I was here when she called, but didn't answer the phone, nor did I call her back. Speaking of resenting someone, I feel that she is behind this whole nightmare idea of cutting off my cock and giving it to a woman. "See I've cut this nasty thing off and now I won't bother you any more, I'll just go in the corner and be a good boy and do my work." She is afraid of sex and hence afraid of real men. The only time she is comfortable with me is when we are acting like little children with one another.

I'm reading a book about "picking up women". The author writes that women hate being lied to, but his various suggestions imply the opposite. How can I feel desire for women who want to be lied to or who are so stupid as to swallow my lies? The author also writes that it is every man's true desire to wine, dine and maneuver one woman after another into bed, the way he supposedly does. Is that really what I want? Is that really what the author wants? If not, then why do we think this is what we want?

I spent several hours thinking about picking up a prostitute. I took out $300 at the bank and stored it away in my file cabinet, in case I ever bring one home and need money to pay her. If I went with a prostitute once a week, at $200 per session, that would amount to about $10,000 a year, which I can easily afford. This isn't the first time I've considered prostitutes. For whatever reason, I've never followed through with the idea. I always imagine that I'll be treated abusively. "Come on, give me the money, get undressed, hurry up and come, I ain't got all day. Oh yeah, you're the greatest lover I've ever known! Ain't you finished yet? Oh, I'm just loving this! Man, you gotta hurry up." Is this really how prostitutes act? Is this how I want them to act?

I had dinner alone again at the cafe, and ate too much so I felt stuffed afterwards. Last night, I ordered tea and they filled the glass with ice so there was almost no tea, just ice. I didn't feel like paying again for a glass of ice, and so tonight I ordered water (free) instead. I still got mostly ice, but at least I wasn't paying for it.

I visited a new disco tonight. A packed dance floor. I finally found a place to stand and watch. My hips were hurting so that I had no desire to dance. Lots of mock fucking and mock oral sex by those who were dancing. Maybe I just don't have a strong enough sex drive, but this sort of animalism disgusts me. I prefer to look a women in the eyes and just barely hint at the act of sex, as opposed to grabbing her by the hips and grinding my pelvis against her. But such delicacy at this club would probably just make the women despise me.

I woke up feeling impotent, but when I pulled on my cock to test it, lo and behold it stiffened right away and I was able to masturbate twice. The second time I imagined myself as the women. Female me said I didn't want to be licked, so Male me turned me over and beat me with a belt until my butt was black and blue with bruises, then turned Female me over, yanked my head back by the hair, and said:

"Now, if you complain to anyone that I beat you, I'll say it was you who suggested cunnilingus, which is a felony in this state, and so I beat you for being a whore, understand?"

"Yes."

"Say 'Yes, Master.'"

"Yes, Master."

"Good. Now we're going to start everything over again."

"But my behind hurts."

"Well, you'll just have to live with that. Understand?" Another yank on the hair.

"Yes, Master."

Cunnilingus, fucking her mouth, her cunt, her ass, she moans, her body quivers like jelly. I felt disgusted by the whole lurid fantasy afterwards. It left the same bad aftertaste as pornography. A feeling of having been jerked and forced to orgasm, instead of arriving there voluntarily.

I'm working off the orders for my software business one by one. I've probably said this times before, but let it be repeated. There is something about someone offering me large amounts of money that profoundly depresses me. My current theory is that I don't want to be obligated by accepting money, but I don't know for sure. In any case, it was a monumental struggle to force myself to process one particular order, which was a lucrative site license. A total of ten minutes work: type in some information, print out the invoice, fold the paper and insert into the envelope, lick and apply the stamp, drop the envelope into the mailbox at the end of the day. For that I earn about $4900 less $2 in costs (for paper, ink, stamp, envelope and floppy disk). How many other people can earn this much money this easily? Why did this order upset me so much, and why did I delay processing it for three days?

Only a few phone calls, but a number of fax and email orders today. The email backlog remains as large as ever. Users are no doubt wondering why I don't respond to their email. And then there was that invitation to speak at an area users group meeting, to which I still haven't responded. And then various anxious sounding inquiries about orders, which I just ignore.

Most of the day I spent lying on the sofa, reading and being annoyed by the non-stop hammering on the floor upstairs. This seems to have been going on for some time, though I haven't been keeping records. I remember this happening previously about a month ago. What the hell is going on up there? Is that old man just so bored with retirement so that he spends all day hammering?

In the evening, while waiting for the elevator of my apartment building, I noticed a young woman standing outside the front door. Delaying apparently, as if she didn't want to ride with me or to have to thank me for waiting. So I went on ahead. Then I heard her yelling up the elevator shaft. "Hey! Thanks a lot, asshole!" Other people's anger can be so very funny. But all I was doing was treating her the way I would want to be treated if I were in her shoes. I hate to have people hold the elevator for me, to have to say thank you to them, to feel indebted to them in any way. If she had been an older woman or a woman with a baby carriage or anyone with a disability, then of course I would have held the elevator. But not someone young and able-bodied, and pretty besides.

Phone conversation with a woman who answered my ad. Married once, works as a mortgage banker in the suburbs, but lives in the city. She didn't give her age and I didn't ask. Probably mid-forties. We talked for about an hour, then she accepted my invitation to meet later this week at a cafe. We sound fairly compatible. I asked if she had ever placed an ad herself. She answered that she had, and received over a hundred responses and felt overwhelmed, and so now prefers to answer men's ads. This is encouraging news, since it explains why women never call me when I respond to their ads. Even though they have to give me their phone number when they respond to my ad, some women apparently feel safer than when they have their own ad running. I suppose they figure they can screen out the potential stalkers and nuts by the wording of the ad or by the sound of the voice greeting. In any case, my ad is doing very well. Seven responses already in less than a month. This is the best result I've ever gotten from an ad. Typically, I get about one response a week.

I processed orders for several hours and dispatched the most urgent emails. At least the backlog didn't grow today. And to think this backlog was down to just fifteen a month or so ago and is now up to almost sixty! One email order was from a week ago. Another email was from over a week ago inquiring about ordering, with a follow-up email about four days ago because I hadn't answered the first email. This sort of sloppy response is so embarrassing. I used to jump on these sorts of inquiries.

Two hours with the woman I spoke to on the phone yesterday. A pleasant conversation about work, her commute, the clubs I dance at, earthquakes, other small talk. Zero sexual energy between us, even though she's good-looking. She gave me a ride home in her car. For some reason, she seemed to get the impression that I was leaning over to kiss her goodnight, and so flinched and leaned away to avoid this. In reality, I was just twisting my body so as to be able to shake her hand. After such an utterly unromantic evening, I had no more desire to kiss than she.

I finally cleaned out the urgent emails and uploaded a new beta version of one of my programs. Due to carelessness and inadequate testing, I had introduced a bug in a previous beta. I was alerted to this problem almost a week ago, but did nothing about it until today. In the past, I would have fixed the problem immediately. Furthermore, in the past I would never have introduced a bug like this into one of my programs in the first place. So now I'm screwing up on the technical as well as the administrative and marketing aspects of the business.

Helen called to see how I was doing. Paul came in her recently without a condom, so now she is worried about getting pregnant. She is also getting bladder infections after each episode of sex—the same problem that caused her to stop having sex with me. Why isn't he using protection? Why doesn't she demand that he use protection? She became hysterical when I once came in her without protection (I didn't have a condom at the time or something of the sort). Do they both want her to get pregnant? Paul supposedly wants to have children. In fact, he supposedly broke up with his previous fiancée because she miscarried a baby of which he was the father, and he concluded that he would never be able to have children with this woman. On the subject of marriage, Helen said: "It seems awful to have to spend your whole life with the same person." "Yes, very dreary," I agreed. One of her friends from work is currently having a variety of affairs due to sexual boredom with her husband, but doesn't want a divorce because she has children. Perhaps Helen is worried that she might end up in the same situation—bored with Paul but tied to him by a child. She says they aren't very close, that he seems moody and quiet, so she never knows what he is thinking, and that he's so much older (ten years) that he seems from a completely different generation. I invited her play pool with me this weekend.

Tonight's disco was a latin club. At last a club where the men are well-dressed! For once, I felt somewhat shabby-looking by comparison. And the club itself was elegant—carpeted floors, handsome light fixtures, gleaming marble and mirrors everywhere. For whatever reason, I didn't feel like dancing, so just stood or sat and watched instead. A funny-looking man in his forties was asking all the young women to dance with him. Those who accepted, he twirled about and humped and molested in various other ways. He was wearing a garish multi-colored shirt like that of a medieval court jester. During breaks, he would mop his face with an orange rag, then cool himself with an absurd-looking battery-operated fan contraption, and then loudly yell "Arriba! Arriba!" at the other dancers,

A book about homosexuality, which I finished reading today, has really made me wonder that I might be swish myself. Being gay would certainly explain why I'm so shy about women, for example. I never fantasize about having sex with men, and this is why I've always thought I am heterosexual. But some things in this book made me reconsider. Perhaps if I had had some pleasant homosexual experiences as a boy or young man, I might have developed a taste for sex with men. In fact, it might be possible to change my tastes even at this late stage of my life. The thought of doing so leaves me cold, however—even colder than the idea of visiting prostitutes. Perhaps a platonic love affair with a man, and sex with an attractive woman while he watches. Or we could both fuck the woman at the same time. I just can't imagine sex without women somewhere in the picture.

I played an hour of pool with Helen. Both of us are lousy players. Afterwards, we had a snack at a cafe, then lay about in her apartment, then had dinner at a restaurant. At one point she complained about my "nickel and diming it through life". We spent a total of about eight hours together, and at the end of this time were thoroughly sick of one another's company, though we managed to part on good terms. I felt tired afterwards, and so didn't go out dancing as I had originally planned.

Phone conversations with four women who recently answered my ad. The first of these women boasted, in a sultry voice, that she was "a woman of class, elegance and breeding, in appearance like a young movie star, who knows how to keep that passionate, eternal youthful flame alive and create that delicious chemistry". On the phone she told me that she wanted to get married and live in a "house in the country behind gates". She is a widow, whose former husband dropped dead while dancing, and thus is almost certainly older than me, but she didn't specify her age nor did I ask. She works part-time as a singer on cruise ships and in ritzy hotels. She complained of spending thousands of dollars trying to meet men, but without success. Either the men are not up to her high standards or else there is no "chemistry". After I told her what I do with my life—read, listen to music, and hang out at nightclubs—she concluded that we were worlds apart and wished to end the conversation, though I found her fascinating and would have liked to meet her or at least continue talking. Why did she answer an ad that so clearly indicated my age was thirty-six, since she is obviously looking for a wealthy older man?

The second woman is age thirty-four and lives in the suburbs, which she says she prefers to the city because of the lack of congestion and because she can see the city silhouetted against the setting sun from the balcony of her efficiency apartment. I have some difficulty believing that a beautiful view of the sunset is by itself sufficient reason for choosing to live in the suburbs. Probably she simply couldn't find a decent and low-cost apartment in the city and now is trying to justify a situation that isn't her first choice. She moved to the area a few months ago, is currently between jobs, and spends her time painting and drawing and playing tennis. Her voice was sweet-sounding and quiet. I told her I spent most of my time reading and listening to music, which didn't seem to impress her. She took my number and said she might call me after her visiting sister leaves in a week or so.

The third woman is thirty-six years old, calls herself attractive and cute, lives in the city and works in the suburbs, has two dogs, loves the outdoors and sports. Her message included the statement, "I've had many long term relationships in the past, which proves there is nothing wrong with me". We talked for about two minutes on the phone. When I told her I didn't play sports, she immediately decided things wouldn't work out and became anxious to end the conversation and get off the phone.

The fourth woman is also thirty-six years old, and has a young son by a marriage that ended more or less amicably. Supposedly her husband was controlling whereas she is independent by nature, and so she chafed under his control. She seems easy-going and flexible about what she expects from a relationship. She complained that men today seemed "weak". As an example, she cited a former boyfriend who didn't even have opinions about what sort of pictures he wanted on the wall. We had a long conversation and agreed to meet tomorrow.

Upon reflection, Helen and I did not part on good terms yesterday. In fact, the reason I was too tired to go out was because she left me emotionally drained, as she always does. Why do we keep seeing one another? I always act immaturely with her and then feel like a sexually neutered little boy afterwards. It is my own fault that we got together, since I issued the invitation to play pool. But then it was she who had initially called me. I managed to masturbate today, but it was lousy, because I was still suffering the emasculating aftermath of the day with Helen. I don't hate her and I wish her the best luck and happiness in life, but away from me please.

I spent most of my two hours at the disco tonight sitting and watching instead of dancing. A buxom and stupid-looking woman was grinding pelvises with her partner in a most obscene manner. When he left her temporarily, to get a drink, she ground her crotch against a post, like a dancer in a strip joint. "Disgusting, isn't it?" my waitress commented in passing. Many of the other couples were dry humping dog-style: the women on all fours, the men humping them from the rear. I never can feel comfortable with this sort of lewd behavior, at least not in public.

On the way home, I stopped at the porno shop to buy a candy bar and thumb through the magazines. A beautiful strawberry blonde in her thirties in one of these, who reminded me of Karen. These delicate skinned women often look better when fully mature than in their twenties. A bum entered the store while I was reading and began pestering a woman customer, who was talking to the cashier.

"Git the fuck away from me, man!"

"Hey, don't bother the customers!"

"I ain't doing nuthin. Say, what's your name foxy lady? Gimme some a dat pussy."

"Get the fuck out of here before I knock all your teeth out!"

"He ain't got but two left."

"Yeah, but I got a dick."

"Stick it up your ass then. Stick it in your mouth, maybe it'll shut you up! Ha, ha, ha!"

"I stick in your mouth."

"Get the fuck out of here!"

"Yo' momma!"

According to my lawyer, the trial date is now set for four months from now. And yet nothing much has changed since two months ago, at which time I was told the trial would occur at the beginning of this current month. He told me I might have to make a trip between now and the trial to give a deposition.

I spent the evening with the single mother who I had spoken to on the phone yesterday. She was full of feminist, liberal, progressive, environmentalist and other political notions. I tried not to be confrontational, but it gets tedious to just sit and listen to a fanatic drone on. At one point she declared that everyone is beautiful and we shouldn't be judged based on appearance. I don't know why she is sensitive about this issue, since she isn't particularly bad looking, especially if she would relax, instead of tensing her face so that it looks shriveled and puckered. I told her she was "very attractive", since a compliment seemed to be called for, though in truth I found her unattractive, both physically and as a person.

On and on she ranted and raved. Why can't the government spend more money on children, and give them decent classrooms instead of spending so much on the military and the space program? Why don't the rich spend some of their billions on charitable non-profit organizations that can help make the earth a better place? Mexico is a beautiful place but the Mexicans do nothing but make babies. People who object to the death penalty for mass murderers who kill children—and as a mother she understands children in a way someone without children, like me, never can—should be put to death themselves. Not that she is in favor of the death penalty necessarily. The impoverished sections of the city should be bulldozed and the residents of those areas sent back to Mexico where they came from. People should be severely punished for littering and spitting and urinating in public. Did I do something to provoke this torrent of opinions? Perhaps it was the fact that I am clean cut and once worked for a large corporation. Or was it my lack of resistance? She said she wanted a man with backbone, who would tell her to shut up whenever she started going off on a tirade. I don't like people telling me to shut up and I won't tell someone else to shut up. She can rant all she wants, and if and when I get sick of listening, I'll just leave.

For some reason, I discussed situation with my family and the lawsuit. Probably she was appalled by my discussing such personal matters because for once she had little to say. She did comment that my father was probably being punished for once owning low-income rental property. I stupidly pointed out that if there were no slum landlords, the poor would have no housing at all. I should have said nothing. Why waste time and energy holding an opinion on the subject?

In parting, I told her I'd call, and even put some sincerity into my tone of voice, though in reality, the last thing I want is to spend more time with this termagant. I suppose I lied to avoid a nasty scene, in which she demanded to know why I didn't find her attractive and then shrieked something like "You're one of those assholes who judges people on their looks!" before trying to run me over in her car. Or is my imagination running wild again?

I did nothing in the way of business besides answering the phone a few times. My desk is once again covered with unopened mail. Instead of attending to business, I spent the day reworking the story of my life prior to this journal. What exhausting and depressing work writing can be! The more I write, the less I seem to have to say. I trim and trim, my story grows shorter and shorter. I was born. Thirty six years later, after much expenditure of effort and much pain endured due to my own stupidity, I am healthy and wealthy, but not yet wise. What else is there to say?

Helen stopped by "for a glass of water". Paul has ejaculated inside her several more times. She says she doesn't want to get pregnant, but yet doesn't seem to have the willpower to insist that Paul wear a condom. Paul complains that condoms reduce his pleasure. He also insists that Helen pay half when they go out to eat, and chides her for not cleaning up the dishes at his apartment properly, and accused her of being untrustworthy when she cancelled out of a tennis game they had planned on the grounds that she was feeling tired. These sorts of petty grievances can be interpreted in many ways: him being a clod, her being oversensitive, the typical conflicts of two people learning to live with one another. She feels affection for him after sex, but otherwise finds him repressive and boring, and can't imagine living with or being married to him without feeling depressed. Also, he has a spotty work record and is behaving in a way that might lead to his getting fired. For example, he leaves work for the day at noon on the grounds that there is nothing for him to do and it is humiliating to just sit around and pretend to be busy. So she can't be certain of financial support, in the event that she gets pregnant by him.

It later occurred to me that if Helen gets pregnant and decides to keep the baby, and Paul doesn't marry her or pay adequate child support, then she might expect me to help pay for raising her child, as if I were her husband or father. The fact that she is having sex without birth control, despite not wanting to get pregnant (or so she says), proves to me that she is completely irresponsible, incapable of clear thinking, and not in control of her own emotions.

I spent two hours in a coffee shop talking with a woman who answered my ad. She is age thirty-four, attractive, slightly shorter than me, buxom, with long dirty blonde hair, bright green eyes, and bad teeth. She works as some of policewoman for the federal government, and likes to travel and eat out. We had an innocuous conversation, including a long discussion of the weather. It was difficult to determine how she feels about me. I am supposed to call her later this week. I didn't ask her any personal questions. However, she volunteered that her father has been pestering her and her sisters because he wants grandchildren. She replied to her father that he should pretend some of his numerous grandnephews and grandnieces were actually his grandchildren. Thus she apparently isn't too keen on having kids herself. On the other hand, she did say she wanted to live in a house with a garden. Does she want a man to help her buy this house? She says she is a "big city girl". I sense that I would have absolutely no problems getting aroused for sex with her. What a pleasant contrast with the termagant from yesterday!

On my way back from the disco, I stopped in at the all night restaurant for a banana split. While I was eating this, a couple entered. The man was rough-looking and in his thirties, with two days growth of beard and a white tee-shirt covering a bulging stomach. His companion was slender and blonde, and wearing high heels, white stockings, and a flimsy pink dress, so that she looked like a hooker. The next thing I knew the man was yelling at the waiter, who had asked, "What can I get you guys?" The man was offended because his companion was a transvestite, who he expected to be treated as a woman. The waiter apologized and then explained that, by "guys", he actually meant persons of both sexes, but this failed to placate the man, who threatened to punch the waiter in the face and then yelled that he was a lawyer and planned to sue the restaurant owners for everything they were worth. "I sue people for a living, you fucking asshole!" The waiter hurried to the back of the restaurant to consult with the manager, who was sitting calmly in a booth, munching on a hamburger. The man followed, continuing to yell threats. The manager told the waiter to call the police. The man yelled some more, something about wanting the police to come because he was in the right, and then he walked back to the front of the restaurant, and shortly thereafter he and his companion left.

My first experience salsa dancing this evening. I was absolutely incompetent. The woman moves forward and I move forward also, when I should have moved backwards, and so we collide. I left feeling thoroughly frustrated, but not defeated or discouraged. I have a list of clubs that offer salsa lessons and plan to attend them all, and also to practice at home, until I'm able to at least do a passable job on the dance floor. The club was full of attractive women. But as is typical, there were still twice as many men as women.

The termagant who I had the date with two days ago wrote me an email (titled "weirdoes") complaining about some man whose ad she answered, who said he was thirty-eight when he was really fifty-four. I think her real complaint is that she finds the man unattractive, but she can't admit this to herself because she has already taken the feminist position that looks shouldn't matter. So she justifies herself by pretending to be offended by his lying. "He seemed to be a nice person. But, since I'm a realist and can't stand lying, I'm not even going to bother with him. The nerve of some people. I thought I'd share this with you because I was already complaining about that other liar. Why don't men like women their own age? If it's some weird sex thing then they should go to the alternatives section of the personals. I feel like reporting them. I wonder if the paper would ban them from placing ads. Probably not. They don't care where their money comes from."

For the first time in months, I followed up on accounts receivables, which is a task I've always detested performing. A reseller called and asked for terms, just as I completed sending a fax to someone who had provided an invalid voice telephone number and whose invoice is ninety days overdue. I felt like telling him that I only accept credit cards, and if he can't pay that way, then we can't do business. Why do I need these damned resellers anyway?

Salsa lessons and dancing in the evening. I had a vodka tonic beforehand to help me relax. Perhaps this did the trick or (more likely) it was the practicing I did today at home. Regardless, I've improved greatly over my horrible performance of last night. I danced with three women. The first, who was quite pretty, I danced with for almost an hour during the lesson with the instructor. Then I danced with two other woman after the lessons stopped, but didn't seem nearly as compatible in my movements with them. Nevertheless, the improvement in just one day is very encouraging. Persistence can conquer almost any obstacle.

The policewoman called and won't be able to make the date we arranged for tonight. She is at the county jail processing someone she arrested, or so she says.

Salsa dancing in the evening, where I just watched without joining in, other than one instance where a woman insisted on dancing with me, despite my warning that I don't know how. I was annoyed by her and so acted more clumsy than I really am. An enjoyable evening otherwise.

Karen called and said she is horny but can't find any men to have sex with, and she doesn't want to get picked up the way she used to do when she was younger. I asked if she tried the personals ads. She has, but the one man she met was a jerk and now she's reluctant to try again. I told her to expect to strike out ninety-five percent of the time, which means she needs to talk to at least twenty men to find one who satisfies her. She said she doesn't have time for this. I agreed to visit her this coming July fourth weekend. For whatever reason, I got to gossiping about Helen and then felt disgusted by myself afterwards. Gossiping like this makes it seem as though I'm obsessed with Helen, and that I can't keep my mouth shut.

While sitting in the nightclub waiting for salsa lessons to begin, a woman asked if she could join me at my table. We had a brief conversation and then danced together during the lessons as well as afterwards. I did poorly, unfortunately, which put something of a damper on my ability to become aroused by her. It appears my practicing at home has induced some bad habits in my dancing. She moved here about seven months ago, currently works in sales for a corporation in the suburbs, appears to be in her thirties (I didn't ask), has an attractive body and face and beautiful red hair, dresses very nicely. We had a lively conversation.

A woman who answered my ad several weeks ago called back and we arranged a meeting at a coffee shop here in the city. She spends her days doing volunteer work at an art gallery. So where does her money come from? I didn't ask and she didn't say. A pleasant enough conversation, though I had this desire to argue with her the whole time—about no particular topic, I just wanted to argue—which I managed to restrain, though she probably sensed it. I walked her to the bus stop and asked if she wanted to meet again. She said to call her sometime. I've already decided I probably won't call, however.

More salsa lessons. I'm finally starting to pick up on the rhythm of the music. It exasperates me that the instructors teach the most intricate dance maneuvers, even though most of the students can't even do the basics. All I want for now is to feel comfortable asking a woman to dance with me. The fancy stuff can come later. There were enough women to go around this time (and even one extra) and so I was able to get some good practice. Also, for once some of the other male dancers were less competent than me—a most refreshing change from the usual situation.

I spent the afternoon with Lisa, another woman who answered my ad. Age thirty-eight, black haired, not bad looking, much more intelligent and educated than she seemed on the phone. For some reason, her voice message sounded extraordinarily husky. I had this image of an unattractive, overweight woman with a self-esteem problem. But she is actually slender and pleasant to be around. She lives in the city and works as some sort of telephone technician. She complains of being in debt because her tastes exceed her income. We talked for an hour in the coffee shop, then had dinner together. She tentatively accepted my invitation for salsa dancing this weekend, though may have to cancel later because of work. She gave me her home phone number (previously I just had her pager number) and then drove me home. I didn't kiss her, though I think she wanted me to. Instead, we shook hands. She gave my hand a meaningful squeeze. I told her I looked forward to seeing her again. Though I wondered later, am I really interested in her?

Another tango lesson. Last week I thought tango was easier than salsa, now it seems more difficult. One thing is certain, and that is that I have much to learn. There weren't enough women to go around, and so I didn't get much practice. I tried to make conversation with some of the people from last week, but then felt bored by them, and I'm sure they were equally bored by me.

Conversation with my lawyer. My sister has written numerous checks for substantial amounts of money, and did so after the judge issued the injunction against writing more checks. So now my lawyer is filing a motion to have her held in contempt of court.

Dinner with Lisa. Conversation was strained, with neither of us having much to say. I haven't made any pass at her because I don't think this relationship will last. What do we have in common besides both of wanting to find a sex partner? Do I even find her sexually attractive?

Lunch with Helen, during which she discussed her relationship with Paul. One night he made her clean his bathroom, then he made her wash his dishes, then he scolded her for not washing them properly, for leaving spots on the dishes or whatever. Another night she told him she didn't want to have sex, and he replied that they needed to have another "talk". These talks consist of their sitting in the living room while Paul lectures. The lecture this time concerned his inability to relax when she is around, unless he is allowed to have sex with her more often. He is forty-five years old but needs sex twice a day to feel comfortable, he says. His previous wife was "all woman" whereas Helen is too rebellious. She noticed that he put her suitcase by the door when she refused to have sex, then moved it back to the closet when she later consented to his overtures. He also never wants to go out, to concerts and whatnot, though he had earlier told her that he loved to go out. I reminded her: "I told you before that all men lie about wanting to go out. Once they find an attractive woman, they just want to stay home and have sex." Once again, Paul has ejaculated inside her without wearing a condom. Helen asked him, "Do you plan to marry me if I get pregnant?" Paul jumped back in surprise and replied, "Certainly not now, it's much too soon for a proposal." Paul is a decent lover, Helen says. Not as good as me, but more sure of himself, whatever that means. She complains of feeling sick constantly and of wanting to quit her job.

Another conversation with my lawyer. Depositions are going as we had expected. One of the medical doctors, who we are using as an expert witness, discussed with my lawyer the tests he had run and the conversations he had with my father:

"What day is it?" asked the doctor.

"Five," replied my father.

"What day of the week is it?"

"Who?"

"What day of the week is it?"

"Five."

"What day of the week is it? Is it Monday, Tuesday, ..."

"Wednesday." In fact, it was Thursday.

"How much money do you have?"

"Plenty of money."

"Would you write down how much you have?"

My father wrote down $2500. At one point he had $1,500,000 of net worth and is certainly worth at least $1,000,000 now. The doctor asked him to try again. He wrote down $4000. The doctor then asked my father to subtract $2500 from $4000 and my father was completely befuddled. And on and on in this manner. It is almost certain the judge will find my father incompetent to manage his financial affairs, given this sort of testimony. It is conceivable that the judge has been bought or is a total fool, but the local lawyer, who knows the judge, doesn't think so. Regarding me, my father told the doctor, "He's greedy, greedy, greedy. Wants all my money." So evidently my sister has poisoned my father against me. Of course, I had expected this would happen.

Helen came by to pick up the spare keys she left with me (she had locked herself out of her own apartment). While here, she mentioned that she and Paul are going to a baseball game together. So apparently they have made up again after their latest spat. I laughed and told her she had no willpower to resist him. She replied that it was just for the baseball game and she couldn't turn the invitation down because he had already bought the tickets.

One of my cousins called. I had left a message for her last month regarding being named alternate trustee in my will, for the trust I wanted set up for my nieces. "I did get your message, and I haven't been able to respond to it because I've been so busy with work these past few weeks. As I understand, you're wanting to set up a trust. I'm not that familiar with trusts myself, since that isn't my area of legal expertise. However, I do know of someone who is very good at this sort of thing. I think you should get her to look over what you want. As you know, I am a lawyer and while there are times when I might not want to be a lawyer, nevertheless I must assume the responsibility of a lawyer at all times. The fact that I don't really feel up to working with trusts doesn't mean that I'm not very good at my work. I always do an excellent job at the things I specialize in. But as far as something like a trust, I think that's something a bank might be able to help you with." She said all this in an impersonal sing-song voice that left me absolutely disgusted. When she offered me the name and phone number of another lawyer to talk to about the issue, I replied: "No, just forget about it. I'll take care of it myself. I don't want that other lawyer's name." Naturally, she was miffed by this reply: "Well, it sounds like you've got all the bases covered."

She was adopted as a baby by some relatives of mine and perhaps doesn't feel like a real relative. I didn't call her a relative or cousin during the conversation. Rather I mentioned that she had grown up with me and my sister (we even played "doctor" together once) and I thought she might have some warm feelings towards us. Last year I tried to contact and visit her, but nothing came of it. I don't think she wants to be reminded of her family background. I felt depressed by her attitude. What a cold world this can be at times! I thought of all sorts of nasty things to tell her, after hanging up, but what is the point? She doesn't want to have anything to do with me. And to be honest, I don't see any reason to pursue a friendship with her. Also, her advice might well be valid. Perhaps I'm blind to the untrustworthiness of the average person. Maybe I shouldn't be relying on these other trustees I have named in my will, especially not without bond. Maybe everyone in our extended family has the same thieving instinct as my sister. Maybe I should use a bank after all, and damn the expense.

Helen called and wanted to eat dinner with me, but I had already planned to attend swing dancing lessons. However, I stopped by her apartment for a short visit beforehand. She claimed that she has to resort to fantasies to have an orgasm when Paul is licking her. Then she mentioned that she had recently downloaded some lesbian smut from the internet, which gave her an immediate orgasm while masturbating. I suggested she should try sex with a woman. She is afraid and wants me to accompany her to the lesbian bar, which I told her was absurd.

I bought a cheap electronic keyboard, with which I plan to learn the basics of music. My thinking is that knowing more about music might help with my dancing. Swing dancing in the evening, but I left early because I found the dance steps awkward. If what we were doing was swing, then I have no desire to learn swing. My practice partner was visibly annoyed at my lack of skill and enthusiasm during the lesson, for which I can hardly blame her.

I called Lisa and left a message. She called back while I was out, so I called again and left another message. I don't really want to see her, but then I don't have anyone else to date, and so what the hell? Maybe she is the cause of my sexual apathy, maybe she will be the solution.

Helen called and invited me to have a snack with her at a coffee shop after work. We talked there pleasantly for a while. I told her about my feelings of sexual apathy these days. Paul, who is ten years older than me, was able to have sex with her Friday night, Saturday morning, Saturday at noon and would probably have wanted it again Saturday night if she hadn't left to go visit her sister. Something is wrong with me. Maybe depression, maybe delayed aftereffects of my recent back problems. I'm able to get hard and masturbate, but I just don't have any desire for women anymore. And yet I have the trip with Karen approaching.

After coffee, Helen came up to my apartment. We ate a light meal, then lay about listening to music, with each of complaining about our problems. Helen whined about her job and Paul and her bladder infections, I whined about my sexual apathy and feelings of restlessness and difficulties dancing salsa. Helen wants to stay at my apartment while I am visiting Karen. I don't feel like granting this request, because I don't want her snooping in my files.

I'm considering an advertisement in a catalog, at $3800 for a single insertion. The catalog seems like an ideal place to be advertising my product, even at the above price. They also want a much larger reseller discount than I'm used to giving. But how can I be contemplating more advertising while simultaneously thinking about shutting the business down entirely? I sometimes think the main reason I continue with this business is to avoid looking like a fool for not continuing, and because I feel guilty about disappointing my resellers and customers and anyone else who knows about me. Where does this sense of guilt come from?

Lunch with Helen, who says she wants to be a lesbian, and is starting to notice attractive young women, and wants to have a pretty young blonde thing as her sex slave, and wants me to take her to an exotic dance bar to watch the strippers and maybe pay one for a lap dance. I suggested we go to the peep show instead, but she thinks peep shows are disgusting, based on how I've described them. She has never been to a peep show, so how can she be sure she wouldn't like it? I have some reservations about taking her to an exotic dance bar. I somehow suspect we will start fighting and leave on bad terms. The only reason I'm even toying with the idea of taking her, is so that I can later tell people—what people?—how I once knew this wild chick who begged me to take her to the strip joints so she could explore her lesbian urges.

I saw that red-haired woman at salsa lessons and talked and danced with her again. She is even prettier than I remembered, and also very intelligent. But I can't imagine us making it together in bed. She constantly orders me about on the dance floor—tells me this is wrong, that is wrong. In fact, she knows as little about what we are doing as me. I can just imagine her bossing me about in bed the same way as on the dance floor. She was with a male friend, who danced very well. I don't know what their relationship is.

Dinner with Lisa at a restaurant. (She had called me yesterday to arrange this date). We had a long conversation, in which I talked about my years in working for the large corporation, and how I spent my nights drinking and watching horror movies and get-rich-quick and religious television shows, and how I wished I had recorded my life then in a journal. She mentioned that she is fond of theatre of the absurd. I replied that street people put on theatre of the absurd performances all the time. Just hang out at all night donut shops and soon enough someone will come in and put on a show. I then discussed my lawsuit. She inquired as to what had caused my sister to turn out like she did. (What is the cause, anyway?) I guess she wanted me to confess that I come from a "dysfunctional" family. She then informed me that she had a brother and was similar to him, except that she has "much sleazier sex partners." What does that mean? A hint that she wouldn't mind having sex with someone as sleazy as me? She drove me back to my apartment building, where she again squeezed my hand, and seemed to be waiting for me to lean over and kiss her. But this I didn't do, which caused an obvious awkwardness in our parting. I suppose she is telling her friends how peculiar I am—four dates and still no kiss—whereas most men want sex as soon as possible. "And what in the world did he mean by calling himself sexy in his ad, when he doesn't even want to kiss?" The problem is that I still don't feel any sexual magnetism towards her. I promised to call her next week.

Breakfast with Helen. She and Paul are back together again, after having temporarily broken up. They have long discussions in which he analyzes her: "But it seems to me that you are not enjoying being here" or "I sometimes feel that we're not really connecting". Paul still isn't wearing a condom. I had previously asked Helen to find out the name of Paul's cologne before breaking up with him. (She had told me that she finds his cologne much more appealing than the cheap-smelling stuff which Karen recommended.) As it turns out, they went perfume shopping just this last week. But none of the stores they visited had his perfume in stock.

Apropos the topic of smells, Helen complains that Paul has taken to cutting silent but deadly smelling farts in her apartment. "I don't know why he decided we were so intimate to be doing something like that," she said with a frown. She continues to have pains in the vaginal area—bladder infections, she call these pains—after each episode of sex. One work day she went to his apartment for lunch, and started playing with him, but wanted to limit the sex to giving him a blowjob. But then he was impotent until she agreed to let him fuck her. Supposedly, he is in danger of losing his job. She believes he has between $20,000 and $100,000 of net worth, but doesn't know for sure. Based on her description, I wouldn't be surprised if he had negative net worth, with a mountain of credit card and tax debts. She took him to an expensive restaurant recently and paid the bill, because he had been complaining that she was a freeloader, and the next night he took her to an even more expensive restaurant.

Helen called again in the evening, and said she was feeling sick and lonely. I agreed to visit her and brought with me some takeout food. After eating, we lay together on the bed. She lifted up her shirt and asked me to massage her stomach and then her pubic region. I did so but didn't get aroused. I suppose I could have gotten aroused if I had wanted to, but why bother when she'll just refuse once again to have sex. Was she trying to turn me on? Does she return to Paul because he is sexually attracted to her whereas I don't show any sex drive whatsoever?

I woke up feeling very lazy. But then I received almost $6000 in orders today. Also, checks for many overdue invoices are finally arriving. I decided not to advertise in the catalog I discussed last week. This is stupid from a business point of view, since the probable increase in sales is many times the cost of the ad. But I want the business to end. The more money that comes in, the more depressed I feel. One of my resellers sent $15 extra with his wire payment, probably because he knew I would be charged about that much by my bank (in fact, I was only charged $10) and he doesn't want to offend me. Everyone is trying to help me grow and I just want to shrink. I feel bad at disappointing people, like this reseller, who seem to be depending on me, but something deep inside me says it's time to move on with my life.

Meanwhile, I'm feeling very enthusiastic about learning music. I'm starting to get the hang of rhythm, and am learning to move my fingers to the beat on the keyboard. Also, I just finished the teach-yourself-Portuguese course. As I had anticipated, that language is very similar to Spanish. So now I can both sort of pronounce Portuguese and sort of read it, which is all I really wanted.

Lisa called and left a message. I was out and then didn't feel like calling her back. It's nice to be wanted but I'm feeling bored with women. My sex drive is returned, but I'd just as soon go dancing as spend time with a woman. Only Karen interests me. The phrase "I'm sick of amateurs, when I fuck, I want a professional" keeps coming to mind.

My lawyer cousin called to announce that my sister's deposition has been taken. He will be sending me a copy of this deposition, and also the report of the psychiatrist who examined my father. When asked what was the reason for all the checks, my sister replied, "Daddy wanted it this way." The situation looks very bad for her. She is being sued right and left. The gross income so far from the farm is $200, from selling firewood from some trees they chopped down.

Dinner with Helen at the cafe. She complains of feeling like a failure because she doesn't have a husband, a marriage, a house, kids, and so forth, like other women she sees at work. She doesn't want to marry Paul, though. She plans to tell him no more sex for three weeks, until she is on the pill.

I took a red-eye flight for the visit to Karen, arriving this morning. My idea was that I would sleep on the plane. However, I forgot to take into account that the plane made a stop midway, during which we were awakened in order to prepare for landing. The result was that I only got about two hours sleep. I took the bus from the airport into the city, then spent the afternoon sitting in the park. I felt my sex drive slowly returning. I tried to accelerate the process by imagining sex with various women I saw passing by. Karen picked me up in the evening after she got off work.

She is happy with her new job, but hates her apartment ("It's a hellhole! An absolute hellhole!"), though at one time she considered buying it. The apartment is a one-bedroom unit in a thirty year old building, renting for $950, and selling for $69,000, and in need of considerable renovation, including removal of asbestos insulation and lead paint. Her idea was to buy now for no money down (her only option really, since, as is typical with her, she has no money saved for a down payment) then sell in two years and move somewhere else. For someone unstable like her, I can just see everything going wrong with this idea, though the numbers aren't that bad. There is nothing wrong with the apartment as a place to live, but why buy it? I listened patiently as she railed on about the property manager, but couldn't see much validity to her complaints. She seems to think that only in a luxury condominium can she feel completely free of her wretched childhood: her father breaking her mother's nose and ribs and smashing all the furniture and calling her and her sister worthless whores and so on.

At last the tirade was over, and we proceeded to the real purpose of my visit. The usual routine. We hugged, I kissed her neck, we lay down, I licked her cunt for ten minutes or so, she came several times, I put on a condom and fucked her for twenty minutes, she came several more times, and finally I came. The sex seemed better than ever, slower and more passionate. As usual, she didn't want to kiss on the mouth.

"I want you to tell the truth. Do you notice anything different about my breasts?" she asked later, while we were lying in bed.

"No, not really," I replied. This was a lie. It was obvious they were smaller, softer, and sagging, and that the left breast was hanging lower than the right. My impression was that she had removed her implants. The truth is that I never did like these implants. I thought they made her breasts hard, like overinflated tires.

"Tell the truth. Do you see anything different?"

"Maybe the left is lower than the right."

"They're smaller. My implants are leaking."

"You look fine."

"Well, I don't like the way I look."

"Who cares? I can assure you, slightly smaller breasts or a left breast hanging slightly lower than the right or whatever, would have made absolutely no difference to me when we first met."

"I've noticed you aren't big on tits. But it matters to me."

"I don't trust plastic surgeons. Did I ever tell you about the plastic surgeon I read about, who worked on a woman's nose, and cut a little off one side, then a little off the other, then a little more off the first side and so on until he had cut almost the whole nose off. She looked like a pig. Two holes on the front of her face with no nose, like staring down the barrel of a shotgun."

"They couldn't do that!"

"I read about it in a magazine somewhere. You can't trust these plastic surgeons."

"I need money. I don't know how I'll pay for these implants. Maybe I can sell my pearls. I have some genuine, very valuable pearls that I bought while I was in Hawaii. Maybe I can get enough from them to get my breasts replaced."

"Why bother? It's what you have between you legs that men want."

"I know. I did it for myself and I want it fixed for myself. I don't like the way I look. By the way, did you know I had implants?"

"Sure, from early on, either the first date or the first time we had sex."

"It was that obvious?"

"Yes."

"Do you know how old I really am?"

"I would guess young forties, forty-three or forty-four." Actually, I knew her true age was forty-four, but I didn't dare tell her I had learned this from peaking at her driver's license while she was in the shower at my apartment.

"I'm forty-four. I told you I was..."

"Thirty-six."

"Do I really look that much older?"

"I'm a very good judge of age, at least for Caucasians like yourself. Maybe not for Asians and other races."

There is some truth in this last statement. Also, depending on the light, she could easily pass for fifty and I could easily pass for thirty. It amuses me to think that people, especially other women her age, are surprised, or maybe even scandalized, to see us hugging in public like the lovers we are.

The pathetic talk of selling her prized pearls sounded like a hint for me to help her out financially. But maybe not. I'm just very sensitive about women using me for money. As usual, she is overspending her budget—living from hand to mouth, spending every penny she makes, probably running her credit cards up to the limit—and planning various expenses which she can't afford, including plastic surgery (laser skin peels, a face lift, and varicose vein removal in addition to the implant replacement) and a move to the city. "I hate these fucking suburbs," she complained, about ten minutes after talking about buying this apartment in the suburbs.

The next morning, I noticed the taste of blood on my tongue while I was licking Karen's cunt. At first I thought I had bumped my nose, but then we discovered that she was bleeding because of the fucking from the night before. It was her first vigorous sex in several months and apparently there was some break in the lining of her vagina. I came by fucking her in spoon position to avoid penetrating so deep. Then we drove into the city and wandered around, and talked about sex and homosexuality and how to meet lovers through the personal ads. I told her she should get a shy man in his twenties, since older men wouldn't be able to satisfy her sexually. We had sushi for lunch, then ice cream for afternoon snack, then dinner at an expensive italian restaurant, where she picked up the tab using her company credit card, despite my offer to pay. We sat at an outdoor table at this restaurant for a long time, commenting on the people passing by. Sex again in the evening.

More sex the next morning, then we watched a movie together. Afterwards, we drove around looking for a place to eat, and finally settled on a seafood restaurant. Sex again when we returned to her apartment. I cooked up a batch of lentils for dinner. Karen asked if I would still be her friend if she became an alcoholic again. I told her yes. She said she might use her frequent flyer coupons to come visit me.

We rose late the next day and had sex at noon. Afterwards, I read an article about some man who had been engaged and then broken up with a half-dozen women, and commented that any man could trick a woman into having sex with him by dazzling her with a display of infatuation, promises to marry her, and so on. Karen became angry at this. I told her that she had post-coital tristesse and this was why she was angry.

We didn't leave her apartment until the middle of the afternoon, due to having had sex so late. Our plan had been to visit the botanical gardens, but it was too hot for this and so instead we drove into the city again, where we had omelets for lunch. Karen exclaimed that she loved the neighborhood and wanted to move there. Later, while walking through one of the more upscale neighborhoods, I noticed a woman in her late forties or early fifties, nicely dressed, sitting at a cafe and staring in disapproval at myself and Karen. Perhaps she thought I was her gigolo.

We had planned on ballroom dancing but the club was rented out for a private function. Karen became furious and left a nasty message on their answering machine. "Why don't you think before advertising in the paper that you're having dancing when you're not? You ruined our plans for the evening. Assholes!" Instead, we decided to go to a Latin disco for "Brazilian dancing". We drove around for about an hour looking for the club before finally finding it. Karen was cursing the whole time because the streets were poorly marked. We sat in the disco for about two hours watching the other dancers but not dancing ourselves. Karen noticed a woman and man who had been apart earlier, but were now dancing closely and kissing.

"She just got picked up," she commented.

"I don't about that. They might have known each other from before. Normally, when I go to discos, I tend to notice who is alone and getting picked up, since I'm on the prowl myself."

"Surely you must get lucky sometimes."

"I'm not sure I want to get lucky. I think I deliberately try not to meet anyone. I don't know why. I want to and I don't want to. I don't understand myself and never have."

"Well, tonight you'll get lucky."

But, in fact, we got home late and too tired to have sex.

Sex for the last time in the morning. I felt aroused and made Karen kiss my cock and balls and then fucked her harder and came faster than usual. Afterwards she dropped me off at the airport.

Helen called. She and Paul have broken up. He asked for the keys to his apartment back, and said he was starting to prefer being alone to being with her, and that he couldn't stand having her come over and not have sex with him, but that they could continue to be tennis partners. She got lonely at the thought of a three day weekend by herself, so called him up and asked if she could go to a party he had earlier invited her to. They went to the party, then had sex afterwards. She got the bladder infection and left the next day. Then he called and talked about marriage and children and living together. They went to the beach and he asked if she would suck him off. She did so and he licked her. She asked how my vacation went. I replied that it went wonderfully and that Karen was great in bed. Helen seemed disappointed to hear this.

Lisa sent me a card: "I'm sorry for any sarcastic or unsupportive remarks I made concerning your family. I realize you are in a difficult situation. I hope that everything can be peacefully resolved and that you can try to forgive my unkindness. Please call me when you get a chance." Especially after having spent the weekend with Karen, I just can't imagine getting into bed with this Lisa. As far as being offended, the only thing about her that really offends me is her abjectness. What unkindness is she talking about? I dread the idea of meeting her again.

Phone conversations with two women who answered my ad, neither of whom seems a good prospect. The first (asian, age thirty-seven) appears to be a workaholic. She leaves home at seven, arrives at work at eight, leaves work at seven-thirty in the evening, arrives home about eight-thirty, eats and does some chores, and by then it's time to go to bed. An insane life, in other words. She works for some sort of high-tech employment agency, specializing in computer programmers. I'm just grateful we didn't talk about work. Mine is allegedly the first ad she's ever answered. She is currently taking up the sport of golfing, so she can "network" for more business. Our conversation ended when she was interrupted by another call (work related, naturally). She might call me next week to meet for coffee.

The other woman (Eurasian, age thirty-nine) works as a dentist and lives just a few blocks from me. She was somewhat giddy sounding, and full of probing questions, which I enjoyed answering: "What was I looking for in a woman?" "Why wasn't I married?" She had placed her own ad last year and received seventy responses. Of these, she met about twelve. One of the twelve men she met was a protestant minister who had been married three times. He was shocked that she had never been married. She was shocked that he had been divorced three times. They are still close friends, but not lovers. I tried to get her to talk some more about her experiences meeting men, but she kept steering the conversation to other topics. She boasted of having many single women friends to whom she would introduce me if things didn't work out between us. Then she wanted to know how I rated myself on looks, on a scale of zero to ten. I thought this an absurd question and gave a vague reply, upon hearing which she seemed to cool, probably assuming that I was reluctant to answer because I was unattractive. My own experience has been that women who are the most anxious about men's appearances are usually physically unattractive themselves. She had seen my ad running for several weeks and found it intriguing and so finally decided to answer. She said she was busy this week, but, if she ever gets some free time, will call me to arrange a meeting. Based on what I've already glimpsed of her personality, I can't imagine wanting to be her lover. But I would like to meet her.

Some company in England is using my program to extract data which they then put into a database. They want to buy either a license to ship my program with theirs, or else buy my source code. I quoted them a price of from $10,000 to $50,000, depending on what they want. They said prepayment might be difficult, due to "cash flow" problems. They have at least three employees, currently drawing salaries of at least $30,000, I would imagine, so I can't imagine how $10,000 could be a problem. They are essentially a competitor of mine. However, I intend to help them since, if I don't, they'll just duplicate my program themselves or pay someone else to duplicate it, and, in either of these cases, I get no money. The only advantage to not helping them is to slow them down, and I don't see how that benefits me since I want to go out of business anyway. Best to grab what I can now. I plan to quote them a price significantly less than what I would estimate it would cost them to duplicate the program, so they'll have an incentive to accept the offer. I'll probably refuse to give up source code until they pay me in full, since I really don't want to get into an accounts receivable dispute with someone in England, owing me upwards of $10,000, based on some flimsy contract I drew up myself and where there is the possibility of a dispute about the quality of the work. Maybe I'll get lucky and their product will be so good (due to my help) that it will put me out of business.

I sat for several hours in the public library, reading a collection of supposedly humorous newspapers columns about being single in the 1990's. What I found most fascinating was the underlying premise. Namely, that the man writing it doesn't really want to be single. And, of course, that no woman ever wants to be single. This is so completely different from my own attitude. He dreads Sundays, because a single man in his thirties supposedly feels out of place on Sunday. For example, he can't take the kids to church because he doesn't have kids. He can't go with the family to the beach, because he doesn't have a family. All he can do is sit tight and wait until Monday comes around. I am simply amazed that there are single people out there who really find it difficult to enjoy a Sunday alone. Sunday is just another day to me, like all the others except the phone won't be ringing. The book made me realize how very far removed I am from the average person in our society.

Breakfast with Helen. She got back together with Paul after their most recent break up, but now is thinking of breaking up again. Paul objects to washing his cock before sex. "But then I wash both before and after we have sex. That's too much washing," he says. He also lectured her about using profanity in her speech, because she said "shit" several times. This last complaint occurred while they were at her house. Helen replied, "Well, if you don't like it, you can leave." Paul got up and left. Helen then called him later to apologize. Then she begged for him to come back to her apartment, but he refused to do so. She is hesitating about whether to go on the birth control pill. Today is the day she must start. If they are going to break up, she doesn't want to go on the pill because of concerns about what it might do to her hormones. But if they aren't going to break up, she wants to go on it because Paul refuses to wear a condom. Recently, they visited Paul's sister, who is taking care of someone's sumptuous apartment. This sister is in her mid-fifties, and ekes out a living doing odd jobs, with no idea as to what she'll do in the future, though she talks vaguely about marrying a rich husband, if she can find one who wants a woman her age and who she finds acceptable. She is in good condition and constantly makes lewd comments about "delicious looking young men." After finishing breakfast, Helen and I went shopping for a stereo system at the electronics store. I bought her one as a present, then helped her carry it back to her apartment and set it up.

The workaholic woman who answered my ad last week called and left a message canceling our tentatively scheduled date for tomorrow. I'm not sure if I will call back. I have no real desire to meet her. The reason for canceling is that she has to work late (surprise, surprise).

My favorite Sunday night disco is now charging a $15 cover charge, which includes two free drinks. The cover was previously $7. I decided not to go in, but instead sat for an hour in the all night donut store, reading and sipping herb tea. This high cover is not a very smart move on their part, in my opinion, especially for Sunday night and especially since the usual crowd there appears to be of modest means. I recall that they used to charge low prices for drinks and food ($1 for soft drinks, $2 for mixed drinks). They should raise these prices if they aren't getting enough income, instead of more than doubling the cover. The offer of two free drinks wasn't a consideration for me, since I hadn't planned on drinking any alcohol, nor of staying long enough to want two drinks of any type.

Helen called. She is breaking up with Paul after another quarrel. She went on the pill again. When she told Paul about this, he became very affectionate. So she let him "have his way" with her, despite feeling very sick. Today she stopped by to see him, but said she didn't want to have sex again because she was still feeling bad. He said this was okay, then gave her some liquor to drink and otherwise tried to seduce her. When it became apparent she wasn't going to give in, he said "this isn't working", meaning he wasn't enjoying her company and wanted her to leave. They had a fight. She packed up her clothes and asked him to drive her home, which he did. She says his behavior is caddish. I replied that it sounded like a typical lover's quarrel, that nothing he had done struck me as evil, and that I couldn't recommend whether or not to break up based on this petty dispute, but it certainly didn't sound like they would be sticking together permanently.

In the evening, I went to her apartment to "comfort" her, meaning to spend time with her, hug her, listen to her complaints. We listened to music on the new stereo. She talked about wanting a child, and about possibly adopting one if she is sterile. Then she asked what a child with my genes would be like.

When returning from disco dancing, I had to wait almost an hour for a bus. A fat slob of man who had also been waiting stormed up the steps of the bus when it finally arrived, and muttered something at the driver, who demanded to see his pass. The man got off a few blocks later and cursed at the driver on the way out.

"What did you say, fatso?" demanded the driver, who was somewhat overweight himself.

"I said you fucking people can't even run a bus system on schedule!" the fat man screamed in a high-pitched voice.

"I am on schedule! Look at the time." True, since this was the two o'clock bus, and not the one-thirty.

"I waited almost an hour for this bus! You fucking people don't deserve to have jobs! I'm going to report you and get you fired! You're going to lose your job!"

"You do what you want, I ain't afraid of you."

"Why don't you come out here and say that?"

"You come back in here...big sissy."

"Oh, so you don't like gay people. Well, you shouldn't be in America then. I'm going to file a report!"

"Go ahead and file whatever you want, fat sissy."

"Fuck you! Fuck you!"

As I told Lisa, you don't have to go to the theatre to see theatre of the absurd.

Another lazy, do nothing day. Customers are sending increasingly anxious email messages asking for technical support, which I'm ignoring. If I can just hold on for another few months, I'll have $200,000 profit for the year and then can let the whole business go to hell. (Why can't I let it go to hell with less then $200,000 profit?)

I have completely changed my diet, to correspond with the "Zone" recommendations. I seem to be feeling stronger and more energetic on this new diet (though I still lack energy for anything having to do with my business). I also bought a hair dryer to use with styling gel, so as keep my thinning hair from blowing out of place. But then the styling gel smelled, and the whole business of blow drying seems more trouble than it is worth. I ended up washing my hair a second time to get the gel out and restore things to how they were before. There is still some smell on my hair, however. It's probably simpler to just get a shorter haircut. Or maybe I should just leave my hair looking sloppy. Or maybe even go for the Bozo the Clown look, with a bald spot on top and long hair at the sides. From the way women give me come-hither looks at nightclubs, it's obvious that it isn't my appearance that keeps me single, so why bother with how my hair looks?

I was reading today about the impoverished peasants of Brazil. Why do they want children so badly? Is it because their own lives are so miserable that their only hope for happiness is vicariously, through a child or grandchild? Or is it just some aspect of the cult of machismo? Do they really want children? Why don't I have any strong desire for children?

I called Mark, who seemed depressed. After we last talked, I sent him the recording of the two alcoholics who spend all day cursing at one another. I wasn't trying to be malicious, but I realize now that there are too many similarities for comfort between the life led by Mark and his current roommate Tony, and the life of the two alcoholics in the recording. There is also the ranting homophobia of one of these alcoholics, which Mark might have interpreted as being intended for him.

Helen and I shared a piece of cheesecake at a cafe in the nightclub district in the evening. There she reminded me of a proposal I had floated a year or so ago, and which I have also been remembering recently. Namely, that I would pay her to raise a child—$20,000 a year for six years, then $10,000 a year for another fifteen years—without us marrying or living together. She thinks this amount of money is much too low, however. I am not sure why I would even consider this arrangement. I can't have sex with her due to her various ailments, I don't really enjoy her company for more than a few hours a week, I don't really have a strong desire for children, and I distrust her maturity. She says I am being selfish for not offering more money. I pointed out that the selfish thing would be for me to offer nothing. If she were artificially impregnated, she would have to bear the entire expense of raising the child. Another alternative for her is to find an old man, age sixty-five say, who doesn't have much sex drive but who wants children and who would enjoy her company.

I called Mark again to continue our conversation. He seemed much less despondent than yesterday. We discussed my lawsuit and the possibility of him relocating and taking on the job of caring for my father. Though in fact, I am starting to think I will just let my sister continue to care for my father, if she is willing to do so and if that is what my father wants. She might try to kill my father in order to get her inheritance sooner, which I will warn my father about before he makes his decision. My father is unlikely to be afraid of murder, however. Mark asked about a porno tape he had mailed me a few weeks back with a note saying "you and Helen can watch it together". It was the worst sort of porn. Designed for "female sensibilities", so that it fails to get me aroused, but is still utterly plotless. I didn't even get hard watching it. I told him that sex between me and Helen was out of the question at this point and so I hadn't even considered showing her the tape. He mentioned that one of my favorite street people—"Stripper Jim"—died recently of heart attack.

Helen called and invited me to dinner. She was about to drive to visit her sister for a day at the beach. I rudely told her I couldn't make plans because I didn't know what I would be doing this evening. She seemed hurt by my abruptness, which is certainly understandable given that just the day before we were discussing having a child together. The whole idea of children with her is making me feel more and more anxious. What is the point? I have never felt that it was my destiny to have children. To speak plainly, I don't think I want them. I'm selfish, I'm a loner, I want to live and die in solitude.

Lisa called. I brought up the topic of the letter she sent me earlier this month and told her I wasn't offended by anything she had done. She then invited me out to dinner. I countered by inviting her to go to a nightclub, which I suspected wouldn't interest her. My suspicion was correct. Altogether, I was non-communicative and unfriendly, though not hostile. At times, I find Lisa enjoyable company. I just don't want to have sex with her. It seems insulting to suggest we be "just friends", so instead I plan to let this relationship die of neglect. She suggested I call her sometime. I promised to do so, though I almost certainly won't.

While walking home from the cafe down a dark street, I passed a spooky looking bum pissing against a wall. He looked up from pissing and seemed to approach me in a menacing way. I turned and took on a defensive stance. I wasn't worried about him hitting me, but rather of being pissed on and then being unable to strike back for fear he might have AIDS, so that if I punched him and broke his and my skin, I might get infected. He backed off with gestures of apology. Perhaps he had been begging for money and I had misinterpreted his movements as an attack.

The disco is still charging $15 cover, which I think excessive for Sunday night. I had with me tonight a coupon clipped from the newspaper, which promised "free" admission, though I was still forced to pay $5 for a "one-drink minimum." If they want to play games, fine. The bottom line is that I spent $6 in the club tonight, including a $1 tip to the waitress for bringing me my "one-drink minimum". Previously, when they were charging a flat $7 cover, I would have spent at least $9 ($7 for cover plus $2 for a non-alcoholic drink and tip). So the result of their gimmicks is that they get less money from me than before. Maybe they get more from other customers.

Another response to my ad. A very uncommunicative women, from whom I finally coaxed the following information: she is age thirty-eight, works as a pharmacist, has more books than room to store them, and likes ballroom dancing. A shy, overly sensitive bookworm, it would seem. We discussed dancing for a while, then the conversation collapsed into long awkward silences. I gave her my number out of politeness, though I really have no desire to speak to her again. Perhaps I appear to other people the way she appeared to me: lifeless.

These diet books are absolutely correct about hypoglycemia. Now that I understand something about metabolism, I've been noticing how eating carbohydrates unaccompanied by protein makes me tired. This is what happened today. I felt exhausted after eating some carrot cake, since I had neglected to eat protein beforehand. The only type of restaurant protein I felt any desire for was an omelet, which the cafe unfortunately doesn't serve. I probably should have eaten somewhere else. I ordered hot tea for a change instead of cold, since I had also read recently that cold drinks upset the stomach. I didn't much care for the hot tea, however, due to the warm weather.

I was clumsy during salsa dancing tonight, but at least it wasn't a complete fiasco like last week, when I invited a woman to dance and then didn't know what to do with her. I'm slowly progressing, in other words. I asked one of my partners for advice but she was silent, which is just as well. I probably would have resented her if she had given me the advice I solicited, no matter how helpful it might have been.

Dinner with Helen at a restaurant. She is pining for Paul, and wants to have him come beg for forgiveness, after which they'll have passionate sex. We both decided to nix the idea of me paying her to have a child. She discussed it with her sister, who thought it an insane arrangement. Helen's bladder infections disappeared for awhile after she broke up with Paul, but a strenuous workout at the gym today brought the symptoms back.

I spent the day in the usual lazy way—masturbating, listening to music while lying on the sofa, practicing music on my keyboard, processing a few orders for the business. Then I left the apartment in the middle of the afternoon to go the cafe. What an oasis that cafe is! No telephone, no fax machine, no email, no one I know, desserts and other tasty things to eat, comfortable chairs, good music, reading material, a lively street scene outside the picture windows.

Helen stopped by and invited me to eat lunch with her (at my expense, of course) at a cafe in the nightclub district. We talked about the sandwiches (not as good as either of us had expected), the bad ice tea (she sent it back and asked for cappuccino instead), the cappuccino she spilled on herself (her grandfather from the spirit world was punishing her for someone she had done—the coffee cup just leaped out of her hand, she said), the small amount of water in my cup of hot tea (I only drink hot tea now to avoid chilling my insides), the smallish slice of cheesecake (did the waitress deliberately make the cake and hot tea small because Helen had sent back her ice tea?), how much to tip (we left 20%, since the waitress didn't charge for the ice tea), who would pay the tip (Helen said she would, but then didn't), how Helen had to hurry because she had to get her car battery fixed (it had mysteriously gone dead). Afterwards, we sat together for a while in the park, where a jazz band was playing. Helen said she wanted her next boyfriend to be someone "easy-going" who enjoyed sitting on the grass. I dislike sitting on the grass in this park because dogs piss and shit there constantly.

I bought another pair of dress shoes at the discount shoe store, which makes a total of three pairs of these shoes that I now have. All things considered, these are the best shoes I've ever owned, since they are both very comfortable and also stylish, so it makes sense to stock up. The shoes cost $65, marked down from $150.

Lisa called and invited me to spend day with her. I took the bus out to her house, then we walked together to a nearby restaurant, where I treated. She discussed her uncle, who made a small fortune on some investment scheme. Now he lives alone in a studio apartment, surrounded by unpacked boxes, depressed, and complaining that no woman will ever want him. He spends his days watching television or reading the newspaper. When Lisa visited him recently, he began spouting conspiracy theories and other kooky political notions. She thinks money has ruined his life. Of course, his life is similar to mine, though neither of us mentioned this.

After lunch, we drove to the park and sat in the shade under some trees. She said she sensed that I liked her, but, for whatever reason, didn't want to have sex with her. I indicated that this was correct. This led into a long discussion about sex and our previous relationships. I talked at length about Karen, and briefly mentioned my impotence with one of my previous lovers. I didn't mention that woman's grotesque fatness as a possible reason for my impotence, since that would raise the question "why in the world did I ever try to have sex with a woman who I found physically unattractive?" and I wasn't in the mood to try answering this question.

Many of her girlfriends are lesbians, and though she has tried it, Lisa doesn't really enjoy or want lesbian sex, especially not with these girlfriends. "They aren't gorgeous, they aren't young, and they're neurotic." She particularly hates the idea of giving head to women, especially for long periods of time (fifteen minutes or more). She is also somewhat self-conscious about receiving it. I didn't mention that I often enjoy giving it for long periods of time.

She has sex off and on with a number of lovers, but they don't seem to give her the sort of deep emotional relationship she wants. She isn't meeting the number or quality of men she would like to meet. Many of the men she meets are impotent. Either they can't get an erection or else can't keep it up long enough to get the condom on, so that she has to stuff their cock inside her and then it softens again. She wonders why they try to have sex with her if they aren't aroused enough to have an erection. She is inclined now to have sex soon with a man, to determine whether he will be a good lover or not (in particular, to see if he can get an erection), before she expends too much energy developing an emotional attachment. In addition to wanting a good lover, she wants more friends. She didn't seem upset that I am only interested in being her friend.

One man she met was a forty-five year old virgin. He was in psychotherapy for four years, then went to sex surrogate for two years, but was never able to "consummate" the act.

Her ex-lover was very emotionally dependent. He wanted to be around her constantly and didn't want to go anywhere unless she went with him. She grew disgusted at having to live his life for him and left. He then found another woman who is as dependent on him as he was on Lisa. "She is always around me, she doesn't want to go anywhere unless I take her," he complains. Lisa finds this reversal of roles amusing. Now and then he visits Lisa for sex. When she told a girlfriend that she was having occasional sex with men who didn't want deep emotional relationships ("commitment"), including this ex-lover, the girlfriend exclaimed: "That's disgusting, you should ditch them." But she doesn't because she is having a hard time finding men to have sex with her. "A lover is harder to find than a friend."

She lay down and stretched herself out, as if inviting me to reach over and touch her. I got aroused at times by our conversation, but I'm hesitant to go any further with her. Perhaps because of her desire for commitment. I told her of my fears of marriage, children, a house in the suburbs.

We returned to her house and talked there for a short while. She began discussing the forty-five year old virgin again and his seeming unconcern with his condition. As she talked, her voice grew louder and louder, until suddenly, it began cracking with emotion, as if she were about to burst into tears. She clenched her fists, and with her mouth wide open, yelled out hysterically: "He acts like it doesn't matter, and meanwhile, I can't find anybody to have sex with me!" There was an uneasy silence for a few moments, then she resumed speaking in a calm voice: "I'll drive you home when you're ready."

After she dropped me off, I masturbated, very much aroused, and with an explosive orgasm. I have a good sense of what she wants in bed. It is complementary to what I want, so we could be a good sexual match. But I dread the idea of a deep emotional relationship with her. Now that she knows I'm just a friend, perhaps she'll be willing to have occasional sex with me, as she does now with her ex-lover and other men who don't want to be committed to her, without imposing on me the burden of being her "official" lover.

I accomplished nothing in the way of work today. Instead, I just lay on the sofa, alternating between masturbating, and listening to music, and napping. I didn't even have much desire to read. I seem to have become accustomed to this decadent lifestyle, and have little guilt about passing the time thus. After all, what is life for but to enjoy oneself?

In the evening, I browsed in the bookstore, where I learned that malaria is on the rise, and that we may in greater danger of global cooling than global warming, and that the Mormons are expanding rapidly, along with various facts about how food affects health. Why do I fill my head with such rubbish? I felt disgusted afterwards. I would have been better off sitting in the cafe and listening to music.

Another response to my ad. She is thirty-five years old and likes "little kisses, giggles and holding hands". She's looking for "a special man, physically fit of course, professional, by which I means goal-oriented, and someone willing to put the time and energy into being my best friend." She spent about $6 answering my ad (three minutes describing herself at $2 a minute) so I feel somewhat obligated to reply. But on the other hand, I can't imagine we'll be a good match for either sex or friendship.

I spent several hours in the evening visiting Helen at her apartment. Paul is driving her to the airport tomorrow, for her flight to spend a week with her family at their vacation house. I predicted that she will be crazy with boredom by the time the week is over. She then asked me if, in the event of her untimely death, I would destroy some smut she had downloaded from the Internet and printed and now had hidden underneath some clothes in her dresser, since she doesn't want her family to find it. "Absolution for Guilty Submissive Women" was the title of one of the items. Another included the phrase "pain slut." And then there was poem about fellatio entitled "Kneeling". I'm sure these phrases have some magical resonance with Helen, whereas I had to make an effort to remember them. This sort of erotica just leaves me cold.

I told her that she subconsciously wants to get back together with Paul. She left her car with him and now is asking him to drive her to airport. But she insists their relationship is over. She says he has the "Peter Pan" syndrome, meaning that he "won't grow up", whatever that means. Supposedly, he recently had a fight with an eighty year old woman, who had pushed his clothes onto the ground in a laundromat for some reason. He responded by pushing her clothes onto the ground. The woman then pushed him. So he pushed her back. I agreed that his behavior was reprehensible, since he is so much younger. But of course, Helen is probably exaggerating some aspects of the story. In any case, she didn't see the fight. Rather, Paul himself told her about it. Why would he paint himself in such a bad light? She is worried that she might be pregnant, but dreads the idea of an abortion, yet also doesn't see how she can raise a child alone, nor can she bear the thought of being married to or living with Paul for the rest of her life. "I'm think I'm mostly in love with the expensive suits he wears."

A day of being obsessed by sex—several hours of masturbation, followed by listening to music while intermittently reading books about sex, then several hours in the public library, skimming trashy books about men and women and the problems they have relating to one another.

I have 50% of my money in cash, which is foolish. I would be worth much more if I had been more fully invested in the stock market these past few years. And yet I've always known that keeping so much money in cash was foolish. But what would I do with more money? Give it to friends and relatives? Might giving them money just wreck our relationships? Or is my worrying about this possibility just a convenient justification for being selfish and foolish with money? It is almost as if I deliberately don't want to ever have more than about a million dollars. Not less, but also not more. And then live off the interest without supporting anyone else. Why is this what I want? Why don't I want to support anyone else?

I spotted the red-haired woman while salsa dancing. We smiled at one other and said hello and then I made a point of avoiding her. I later noticed her instructing all the men she danced with in the same way she had done with me, which annoyed me such that I've been avoiding her ever since. The music was live, which is nice, but this club is much too crowded for my tastes, so I just sat and watched most of the evening instead of dancing.

I stopped by a salsa club in the evening, but it seemed empty. So I went and sat in a nearby park for an hour, then dropped by the salsa club again towards midnight, but it was still empty. Then I walked to another club that I've never been to before. A beautiful establishment, but also almost empty. I sat alone for an hour, then asked one woman to dance, but she refused, so then I sat alone some more. Good house music, but no one was dancing. Finally, it seemed as though all the women had left, so I talked to one of the managers, who apologized for the emptiness and suggested I come back tomorrow, when there would be four hundred people present, he promised.

At last a day of real work! Namely, I fixed a problem in one of my programs. It was very satisfying to at last do something besides process orders. Though for most of this week I haven't ever bothered to do that. Instead, I just lie on the sofa all day.

I visited the nightclub where I had talked to the manager yesterday. He recognized me and even remembered my name and let me in without paying the usual $10 cover charge. I didn't particularly care for the music, however. Many attractively dressed women, but all of them in groups and immature acting: dancing alone or with each other, gyrating their hips obscenely, running off giggling to the bathroom together ("Now, tell me, do you girls hold each others hands while you make a pee-pee?"), talking loudly, laughing, chatting with the bartender. A woman slumped over the bar like an alcoholic. A black man in overalls doing break dancing like a minstrel: Uncle Tom's Traveling Nigger Sideshow. A white man in his fifties, short, bald and with a pot belly, wearing a white shirt and tie, with a harem of beautiful young women in their twenties, smooching with and twirling one of them about. "Excuse me, sir, is that your daughter?" The other women in his harem dancing with one another and ignoring any men who approached them. A gaggle of attractive women in their thirties acting like noisy teenagers. Some despondent looking women dressed in denim jackets, accompanied by equally poorly dressed men, huddled over and cringing against the wall. One woman, in her late twenties or early thirties, with dark hair and average looks, separated at last from her friend and glanced at me. I asked her if she wanted to dance. We danced for a few minutes, with her smiling like an idiot the whole time, beseechingly, as if wondering why I didn't grin like an idiot myself, as if a smile were something sexy. The bigger her smile, the more ferocious my glower.

I called and left a message for Karen. She was on business travel at the time, and without having received my message, called me. So it seems that we each had a simultaneous desire to talk to the other. She is tired of constant traveling, tired of her apartment, and tired of the city she lives in. I told her I would call after returning from my trip for my lawsuit, and possibly schedule a visit to see her. I didn't ask, but I don't think she has found any new lover since my visit a month ago.

Salsa dancing in the evening. For once, I danced with numerous women. Among others was a plump young blonde, probably twenty-one since she was with a girlfriend who was celebrating her twenty-first birthday. She had a very pretty face and a horrible sunburn on her shoulders. She was born in Mexico, but her mother is Irish, which is why her skin is so fair. We danced for about ten minutes, and then the music stopped. She pulled me to another room where music continued to play, and we resumed dancing there, packed in with a crowd of other dancers. At one point she dropped down as if to perform mock oral sex on me. She seemed to be drunk. When the music ended in the front, she and her friend ran off to the bathroom. I waited at the front door. They came out together as part of a large crowd and climbed into a large limousine, which had probably hired for the birthday celebration. I had some fantasy of bringing this girl back to my apartment, but that wasn't to be.

Only six phone calls. Two from resellers requesting information, three from people trying to sell me something, and one order. So it appears the business is finally slowing. The email backlog continues to build, however. There are now over thirty envelopes sitting on my desk waiting to be processed: orders, requests for information, etc.

While sitting in the cafe, I noticed a young man there who resembled me in appearance in many respects. What nationality or ethnic group is this? He was even wearing clothes similar to mine. The italian shoes that I was so happy with a few weeks back didn't look so stylish on him. The leather doesn't shine brightly, so that from a distance they look almost like black work shoes. He was homosexual, I think. A friend came and sat next to him after a while, and when he talked it was with a gay sounding voice. I had no desire for sex with him, but I did want to stare at him closely, even to look at him naked, and to learn something about his life. It would be like looking at myself from the perspective of another person. I thought him very sexually attractive, the way he sat, the expression on his face, his dress, though his face wasn't particularly handsome.

I spent the evening at Helen's apartment. She stopped by Paul's apartment today at lunch, allegedly because she was feeling tired. One thing led to another and they had sex. Without a condom: he withdraws right before orgasm, then runs to the bathroom to ejaculate. He also refused to wash beforehand, as she has requested. Now she has a bladder infection.

Should I feel exploited by her? I buy her a stereo. I make tapes of my music disks for her at her request. I give her books. I buy her a necklace. I plan to pay her $2500 to do a few hours work for me when I am out of town for the lawsuit. I treat when we eat out at restaurants. I act as if she was my girlfriend, in other words. And yet I don't really want sex with her, nor do I ask for sex from her. And I don't feel jealous about Paul having sex with her. Though it does concern me that she might get pregnant by him and not be prepared either to have an abortion or to marry or to raise the child alone. I don't resent the money I spend on and give to her, even though she is effectively another man's girlfriend and he spends nothing on her.

During her vacation with her family last week, she complained about a headache. Whereupon her young niece remarked, "other adults don't have these problems." We both suspect that this niece is probably echoing her mother. Helen and the mother (Helen's sister-in-law) have never gotten along well.

She is resigned to inheriting little from her parents. They have several valuable pieces of real property, but not much in the way of stocks or bonds, and most of their income (pension, social security, dividends and interest) goes towards basic living expenses or upkeep on their real property. Taking all factors into account, Helen should get at least $250,000 if the parents were to die now, which is not inconsiderable. But if the parents were to spend many years in nursing homes, she might get much less. So perhaps she is being unduly pessimistic about her inheritance, perhaps she is being realistic.

Another company is marketing a product with almost the same target market as mine. They have a four-color ad in the same trade publication that I advertise in, right next to my cheap-looking black-and-white ad. I'll have to give their product an evaluation. Based on their ad, I don't think their product competes directly with mine. I spent the day trying to reproduce a problem a customer complained about three weeks ago. I still haven't even acknowledged his email.

My lawyer called. There is to be a pretrial meeting tomorrow. My sister's lawyer indicated that she is willing to concede that my father is incompetent, but that she insists on being his conservator. Also, she refuses to agree to repay any of the money she has taken.

I'm noticing much improvement in my skills at salsa dancing. During lessons tonight, I danced for a while with a pretty brown-haired girl, who seemed interested in me. But then I left her when the instructors told us to switch partners, and someone else grabbed and held onto her for both the lessons and afterwards.

Helen came by for training on how to run the business while I'm away, and I was able to observe an aspect of her that I haven't seen many times before—conscientious, responsible, helpful, diligent. Unfortunately, there is too much to learn in just a few days. Probably I'll just have her read fax messages aloud to me over the telephone. The thought of letting the business slide for a week makes me want to laugh out loud. Why not let it slide forever? Maybe if I had some employees I would feel more responsible, instead of just hoping the business would die.

Dinner with Lisa (her invitation). She was dressed in a dark pinstripe suit which reminded me of a costume from a science fiction movie: wide padded shoulders, narrow cut at the hips, straight legged pants. All in all, she dresses like a man or butch lesbian, and yet she grows her hair long and insists she is a feminine submissive who only desires sex with men. Someone (but not me) should do her a favor and give her some instruction on how to dress, assuming she truly wants to attract men. A friend of hers, a lesbian, was using her basement as a workspace to do some car repairs, relining the brakes or whatever. This lesbian has long blonde hair and a light, musical voice which is so much more feminine than Lisa's deep growl. She is also very pretty, in the folksy, smiling hippie way, especially when clean and decently dressed. Tonight she was wearing overalls and had her hands and face covered with black grease. There was no tension from the fact that I call myself heterosexual, Lisa calls herself heterosexual, and her friend calls herself a lesbian. Maybe we are all wrong.

Lisa nearly started bawling again while complaining that her forty-five year old virgin boyfriend seems to gloat that he doesn't have to worry about finding sex partners because he is impotent, while she is always suffering for lack of sex. Her ex-boyfriend comes by for a fuck now and then. Another of her sex partners, who runs an auto-repair business, gives her, and other women, free auto repairs in exchange for sex. She feels bad about accepting the free repairs, however. She wants to at least pay for parts if not for labor. The man says he enjoys giving free repairs to women he likes. She enjoys the sex with him but not overly so. He is somewhat older and average looking, and she feels "embarrassed" about going out with older men, though not with younger men, or men of other races, or women. Then she reflects that perhaps "embarrassed" is a misleading term. Perhaps she simply doesn't find older men attractive, and the "embarrassment" is due to her shame at admitting such a dislike, since it means she is judging sex partners based on their age, which she resents when done by men. I felt uncomfortable talking about sex with her. I've had no sex since I last met with her (none since I went to see Karen, in fact), so there is nothing to tell. And I don't want to have sex with her. The more I'm around her the less I want sex with her. She isn't a beauty, but she isn't really ugly either. It's more of a personality issue. I feel bad when she talks about difficulties in finding a man to have sex with, and she seems to want sex with me, but I don't feel like obliging her, even though I don't think I'd be impotent. I feel like I'm enjoying basking in her desire for me, without giving her anything in return. But she seems to like my company. I picked up the tab for dinner. It seems the least I can do. She needs some advice on how to be more sexually attractive, but I'm not sure we're at the stage in our friendship where I can tell her this.

We talked for a long while about money. A man she dated was planning to start a business as a mortgage banker and seemed to despise her for being satisfied with her job as a technician. Then a long discussion of my lawsuit. Afterwards, I stopped by her house and fixed a tricky problem she was having with her computer, which she would almost certainly not have been able to fix on her own. So at least I'm of some use to her.

Helen called about noon inviting me to have lunch with her. Afterwards, I rubbed her back and massaged her neck as we walked down the street, until we were both aroused, though I had masturbated in the morning. She said she had tried to masturbate the night before, but had a "stolen orgasm," meaning her body contracted as if in orgasm, but there was none of the flush of pleasure of a real orgasm. I convinced her to go to her apartment for a nap, even though she suspected we would have sex there, which she didn't want due to bladder infections. She took off her pants, allegedly due to the heat and we began kissing and hugging. After a while I took my own pants off and she sucked my cock for a while, which aroused her. Then she then fell back and lay still, the usual sign that she wanted to be licked. So I took off her panties. Her crotch smelled of urine and sweat, but I didn't want to break the mood by asking her to wash up. She came fairly rapidly, which disappointed me because I wanted to drag the sex out as long as possible. Then we lay for a while, talked, and listened to music. She had lost interest in sex after her orgasm. When it became clear to me that she wasn't going to get aroused again, I decided to just jerk myself off while kissing her mouth.

Dinner at the same restaurant where we had eaten lunch. I took some photographs of her on the way back, pretending to be a gay photographer with a model: "Gimme, gimme, pump it for me, oh yeah baby, do it for your man!" I complained that the photographs she makes of me seem to make me look immature: a petulant little boy or a smiling simpleton. She wants me to smile. I tell her smiles aren't sexy. She argues with me until I finally laugh. Then she takes the picture while I'm either laughing or trying to wipe the smile off my face. We ended the day at my apartment, where I showed her more aspects of running the business and also gave her a set of keys.

Something is wrong in the sex between us. I enjoy touching her body and kissing her. I enjoy her desire to suck my cock and smell my underarms and hair and crotch. But even if she were willing to let me put my cock in her cunt, it would still be unsatisfying, as if she is resisting the full passion of sex. I feel emasculated around her. This business of wanting to make me smile when she takes photographs, a goofy little-boy smile, seems characteristic of what she wants in general from me. A little boy with her as the mother, or me a father with her as the little girl, anything but an adult man and adult woman grinding our pelvises together like animals. She seems afraid of sexual energy.

An enjoyable evening of salsa dancing. I danced merengue with a tall bleached blonde. Attractive but not an outstanding beauty, with a wide mouth, probably Brazilian with a mixture of Indian and Negro. Initially, we were touching then she pushed me away. Still, a very erotic dance. Getting as close as possible without touching, breathing in each other's face, watching sweat beads form on one another's foreheads, looking each other straight in the eye. She put up arms up as if inviting me to grab her around the waist, but I didn't. We danced about ten minutes, then she wanted to stop due to the heat. We couldn't hold a conversation due to the noise and because she didn't speak English very well. I think she was with a boyfriend.

Later, I danced with a young, beautiful looking black-haired girl, in her early twenties, who resembled my officemate from when I used to work at the corporation, except younger. She didn't know how to dance, but I said we could dance free style, and so we did that. She asked me if I came to the club often, I said yes, then she told me various things about herself, which I couldn't hear because of the noise level. A beautiful girl, but none of the sexual energy I had with the blonde.

I watched, made eye-contact with, but didn't dance with a woman I had previously danced with at another salsa club. For some reason, she brings to my mind the expression "big peasant girl". She isn't a beauty, but is still very attractive sexually. I felt like sticking my face between her legs then throwing her on her back and fucking her hard.

Lunch with Helen at the cafe, then we walked to her apartment and lay on her bed there, reading together a book about homosexuality, which I had just bought at the used bookstore. She became aroused, I sucked her breasts, she sucked my cock for a few minutes, I licked her cunt until she came, I masturbated and ejaculated on her stomach. As usual, she doesn't want penetration because of her "bladder infections". I masturbated imagining myself fucking her, however. Afterwards, for several hours probably, she worked on her computer, while I continued reading.

I took an early flight, then rented a car at the airport, and then drove four hours to the town nearest to the farm where my sister and father live. I tried to economize by staying in what looked to be a budget motel chain. A squalid room, with the air conditioning turned off initially, so that the room was hot as an oven, and a sagging mattress on the bed.

I was able to dial in and run the business as follows. First, I called Helen at my apartment. She told me what faxes and phone messages had been received. I instructed her to return some of these calls, and processed others myself. Then I logged on and processed the email orders. In all, the work took about three hours. This description of running the business remotely is true for the remainder of the trip as well, so I won't repeat it.

Dinner at a fast-food fried chicken restaurant, then immediately after finishing, I felt tormented by a terrible headache. It might have been food poisoning or it might have been simple stress—the result of the flight, the drive, the sunlight, the heat, the anxiety about getting the computer to work remotely, the lawsuit. I returned to the motel and struggled there to vomit for over an hour, drinking water to give myself something to throw up with, and sticking my finger deep into my throat to provoke a gag reflex. Finally, the half-digested chicken began to come up, big chunks that stuck in my throat on the way out until they were washed loose by the flood of water from my stomach. Immediately after puking, I felt better. I left the vomit sitting in toilet and didn't even bother to wash my mouth or hands, but just flopped down on the mattress, covered only by a sheet, with the air-conditioner blowing cold air over my back but still feeling the heat radiating from the ceiling and walls, and fell asleep at last.

I felt much better in the morning. The room was still hot even after a night with the air conditioner turned on, so I broke into a sweat during my exercises. This sweating followed by a cold shower made my body feel cleansed once again. While packing up, I noticed a large dried roach hidden under the sheets of the bed. I checked out and had a light breakfast of tomato juice bought from a nearby grocery store.

This was my first face-to-face meeting with my lawyer and his father. The latter is the town attorney. That is, he handles the town's civil cases, but not the criminal cases, which are handled by the district attorney. They both seemed very competent lawyers, especially the father. At their request, I reviewed the events leading up to the lawsuit, with most of which he and his father were already familiar. I think they just wanted to see how I would behave on the witness stand. Afterwards, I did a little sightseeing, then checked into another hotel in the evening. What a difference from last night! Clean, cool, firm mattress, tasteful furnishings, sparkling bath, pretty view. And yet the cost was only slightly more than the so-called budget motel.

The trial began the next morning. My lawyers started the proceedings by reading parts of the doctor's report into the court record. Supposedly the judge had already reviewed this, but my lawyers suspected not, so they wanted to read it aloud and force him to listen. The judge then took a recess, during which he apparently studied the rest of the report. Then my father took the stand. He did better than I had suspected, especially on numbers, but was still clearly not able to manage his affairs properly. He didn't remember having deeded part of his land to my sister, didn't recall how much he had paid for the land, knew nothing about the cattle business he was supposedly involved in, etc.

I then testified. First I described the incidents leading up to my filing suit: how my father acquired his money, his stroke and consequent inability to manage his financial affairs, my sister's proper management for the first few years, then her mismanagement in the last few years, how several hundred thousand dollars had been removed from my father's stock portfolio two years ago, and another several hundred thousand last year, and how I had confronted my sister, and how she had cut me off from information regarding my father's finances, and finally how she had moved my father to another state. During a break, my lawyer said I was doing fairly well on the witness stand, but sounded more like an accountant than a son, that I need to warm up and look the judge in the eyes when I spoke instead of staring into space. During cross-examination, my sister's and father's lawyers asked about my own finances, presumably in order to imply that I was concerned about my father's finances because I had no money of my own. I said my income was over $200,000 last year and was expected to top $300,000 this year. They then attempted to trick me into admitting that my father was competent to manage his affairs. My lawyer said I did very well during cross-examination, that I livened up.

The next day, my sister testified, with my lawyer asking questions. She was hostile and argumentative from the start. The judge interrupted after about ten minutes of her testimony, on the grounds that he had to attend a funeral. Before leaving, he called the lawyers into a conference and indicated that he was strongly inclined to appoint a conservator for my father, based on what he had heard so far. The afternoon was spent in fruitless settlement discussions. My sister was adamantly opposed to any settlement which involved a conservatorship while I insisted that conservatorship was absolutely required.

The next morning, my sister's lawyer arranged for me to have a private discussion with my father for five minutes, prior to resuming the trial. We started with pleasant small talk. I discussed my business and gave him my business card. He showed me a picture of himself on a tractor. I then explained why I was insisting on conservatorship. His comment was: "Terrible, just terrible. He's bad. Married bad man." He was presumably referring here to my sister's husband. My sister then entered the room and I explained to her why I was insisting on a conservatorship. "Don't you care about your father? This is your own father you're suing. How can you do this to him? Don't you love your father?" she asked, speaking in a robotic tone of voice which I found disgusting.

The trial never resumed. Instead, the day was spent in settlement conferences: the lawyers and the judge, myself and my lawyers, myself and the opposing lawyers, my lawyers with the opposing lawyers. We finally reached a tentative settlement about mid-afternoon. A conservator would be appointed for my father, the conservator would be a local accountant, my sister would be given $3000 a month to take care of my father, $2500 a month would be placed into my father's checking account for him to write checks to charities or make gifts to relatives, my father's estate would pay my legal fees, other issues would be resolved at a later date, pending some investigation of my father's finances by the accountant.

After finishing with my lawyers, I drove back to the city and spent the night at the house of one of my cousins. She was playing bridge with my aunt and my aunt's friend, a very intelligent woman in her eighties, with cancer in her liver, lungs and spine. The cancer is being held in check by chemotherapy, which makes her tired. She is currently writing her autobiography. A Russian-born Jew, whose father was a medical doctor who supported one of the democratic factions during the revolution. When the Bolsheviks triumphed, the family fled to Germany. Then to France when Hitler came to power. Then to the United States when Germany invaded France. She wanted to be a doctor, but couldn't get admitted to medical school because she was penniless, a Jew and a girl. She taught German and French for many years. Her daughter married an Arab, but was later divorced by him when he took a second wife and she complained. I explained how she could publish her autobiography on the Internet, which seemed to cheer her up. She had been depressed at the thought that the autobiography would never by read by anyone. She then discussed how, when she was growing up in Germany and France, so much about a person could be determined simply by looking at their clothes and voice and gestures, but how in America there are few class differences in dress, and how this is one of the difference she most notices between America and pre-war Europe. I discussed my relationship with Helen, how we were still in love but each had our own lovers, and how we told each other what we were doing in bed with our lovers and so forth. They found this very amusing. Dinner with my aunt, then I felt overcome by exhaustion due to the lack of sleep all week and went to bed early. Tomorrow morning I will be flying back home.

I saw Bernelli (who calls himself Father Angelo) at the cafe. We had talked several times last year, but he didn't recognize me today. I joined him at his table outside and then bought him a hot tea and also a pack of cigarettes from the nearby convenience store. He showed me a medical report from about ten years ago, discussing some sort of cancer of the anus, from which he has apparently recovered. The report listed his birthdate, which I used to calculate that he must be about age sixty-three now. The report also noted that he has a history of violence and assaults and is currently on parole for assault and battery, and that he takes lithium to control his mental problems. According to the work history on the report, he was once a monk, then later worked as a hairdresser and currently receives a Social Security disability pension.

He asked if he could visit my apartment and I replied yes. On the way, he took a piss against a bank, then later stopped to give candy to two children, who were accompanied by their mother. Perhaps he makes a habit of giving candy to small children, like the dirty old men I was warned about when I was a child. We rode up the elevator with a young woman from the floor below. Bernelli asked her if she was Irish. She replied that she was German. Then he went off on some discussion of the Germans, which she seemed to find amusing.

We spent several hours talking and drinking, with him smoking heavily all the while. He seemed to get carried away by the alcohol, and finally guzzled a huge glass of vodka in a single gulp. It was late by this time, so I offered to let him spend the night on the spare mattress, which I dragged from the closet. The following is just a sampling of his fascinating speech:

"These fucking cops, they're all faggots. I'm not a faggot. I just love to suck cock. Oh, I've had thousands, millions. I used to walk down the worst parts of the city: people being robbed, beaten, murdered in the middle of the street, I didn't care. I just wanted a cock to suck. I made millions for everyone, but now, I can't even get a cigarette. I love you. I adore you. I want to suck your cock. I want to swallow your heavenly sperm. My mother was a real bitch. Hated me. Used to put me to work. Clean the goddamn floors! My dad, put me work doing roofing at age sixteen. And then this mick, this fat slob, fucked me in the ass at the age of seven, turned me out. Oh, heavenly! He was so beautiful. You need to meet Pepe, he is the most gorgeous boy. How long has it been for you?"

"Since I had sex with a woman? About two months. Of course, I masturbate daily."

"And where does the sperm go?"

"Into tissue paper."

"That's a sin! Wasting sperm like that. I want you to put your sperm in my mouth. I need the protein. Shoot it all over my face. Look at my skin! So old. I was gorgeous when I was young. Now all wrinkled. I need a sperm bath, honey. You're so macho. I remember Bobby Kennedy. I gave him a blowjob in London. Such a gorgeous boy. And Rock Hudson. He used to pay trade, rough trade, to come in a fuck him in the ass. Rough niggers. No wonder he got AIDS. My ass is virgin. I'm a woman. I want to be your bitch. I want to be your nigger. Ever had a nigger? No? Then you haven't lived. Everyone should have a nigger to kick around. I'll be your nigger. I'll be your black slave. Cause I am a nigger. What are you? English, Spanish, Irish? You must be part Spanish. I can see the Latin in you. That's why you're so macho. You're so manly. This town is full of faggots. Faggots! Faggots! I'm not a faggot. I'm just a cocksucker. Use me like a toilet. I'll get you women, beautiful women. They can't get laid because every damn man in Hollywood is a fucking FAGGOT! Oh, you should have seen my first lover. A big black nigger. I loved him. Do you drive? No? You have to get a car. When I move in..."

"Now, look Patrick..."

"Oh, no! Don't call me Patrick. Patrick is dead. His family killed him. They used and abused Patrick, took everything they could from him and then threw him away. Call me Paddy, daddy. You'll be my daddy. I'll be your son. I love my daddy. Or call me Father Angelo. I'm a Jew. A Jewish Catholic. A cardinal in the Catholic church. Did I tell you how I sucked off the pope? Lifted up his cassock and gave him a blowjob in the Vatican chapel. Oh, you don't know! In Europe, most of the priests are men, real men. They fuck women. But here, just a bunch of faggots. They wouldn't let them in the priesthood in Europe. And child molesters. These police, they're all child molesters. I called one of them that and they beat me. When I was in San Quentin prison, they threw me into solitary. It was like Auschwitz! And I'm a jew! I know what Auschwitz is like! Auschwitz was a good place! Don't believe these lies they tell you. Hitler was a good man, a manic/depressive like myself. He was a simple man, sensitive, nervous, a vegetarian even. He wrote his wonderful book, Mein Kampf, while in prison. Of course he wanted to kill all the Jews. Who doesn't? You look so kosher. Do you know what kosher means? It means fit and proper. You are fit and proper. You are so elegant. You don't spill your food when you eat. You chew with your mouth closed. I'll be sucking your cock sooner or later, don't argue with a priest, I'm a priest of the holy mother church, don't argue with me. I sucked off every famous person in town. I told the city councilman, don't fuck with that faggot cop. But he didn't listen to me. Look what happened. Don't ever ignore your father's advice. But I want you to be my father, my daddy. I want to do whatever you tell me to do. I'll give myself up to you. I used to spend thirteen hours at stretch in public toilets, my mouth glued to a glory hole, a hole bored through a marble wall, sucking off one cock after another, swallowing that delicious sperm. Have you ever been sucked off by a man, a man who knows what he is doing?"

"I'm pretty straight, you understand."

"Oh, I know. You like women. Women. I like them too. But don't trust the bitches. Not these American bitches. West meets East! Get yourself a chink, a jap, a mexican. You don't see those mexicans taking shit off no woman. They beat the fuck out of them if they don't like they way they act. These American bitches, they just want your money. Oh, no, no, no, you poor boy. Listen to and learn from me. Get a chinese girl. So obedient. Anyway, I've got a better pussy, a tighter pussy than any of them. My asshole is virgin territory. An asshole is so much tighter than a pussy. I made millions for that ritzy department store, you know. They were nothing until I showed them how to run their stores. Now, I can't even get proper service. I bought a little something, a Christmas gift, asked the bitch for a big bag, she says no. I started screaming, you fucking bitch, I've spent millions in this place, you fucking Hebrew kikes, where the fuck is the manager! They threw me out, won't let me come back. I'm banned! And these Hindus. What a beautiful apartment this is. You need some mirrors, though. Cover this wall with mirrors, reflecting the view of the bay."

"Not a bad idea."

"I know design. People came from all over the world to my hair salon in Beverly Hills. I used to charge $50 just to sit in my chair, and this was in 1961. I made such millions, gave it all away. Squandered it on ungrateful boys. They just want me for my money. And they things I've done for them. I bring them in. Wash them. Clean them up. Suck their cocks. I was taking care of my cousin Jimmy, paralyzed from the neck down in a car accident, used to suck him off. He needed to be relieved! Who fucking cares about bandages? That boy needed his balls emptied! These bitches don't understand a man's needs. Only a man can understand a man's needs. When I was in the Marines, Korea, a medic, they brought some lovely young boy in, unconscious, on the verge of death. I sucked him off and the next day he was walking about. Raised him from the dead with a blowjob. A man needs sex! My God! Jesus was gay. A fucking homosexual! Of course he was. And don't give me this Virgin Mary crap. She fucked sand niggers! That's what they call Arabs, you know. Sand niggers. What can you expect? Joseph could never satisfy her. But that's so far in the past. Here, I want you to wear this."

"But this is a star of David. I'm not Jewish."

"Like hell, you aren't! Look at that schnoz of yours! You're a lovely Jewish boy. It will protect you. Wear it with the St. Christopher's cross I gave you earlier. We're all Jews at heart. I want to swallow your kosher semen my lovely Jewish boy."

He snored horribly, so I didn't get to sleep until well after midnight.

Early the next morning, just after dawn, Bernelli climbed into my bed and tried to molest me: grabbing my morning hard-on and trying to suck it and then offering to let me fuck him in the ass, then trying to wrestle with me. I was beginning to tire of him and pushed him away. Luckily, he had an eye doctor appointment at nine. He left somewhat after nine (late for the appointment) leaving most of his belongings behind.

I spent the morning cleaning up from the mess he had made. Aside from leaving cigarette butts everywhere, he wet the bed last night, so that the mattress, sheets and rug underneath were all stained with urine, as was one of the kitchen chair pads, the cloth draped over my office chair and all of his clothes. I washed the clothes and sheets, and dragged the rug, mattress and chair pad to the roof to let them sit in the sun. Then I cleaned up the kitchen and mopped the bathroom, since he made a mess in both of these places as well.

Bernelli telephoned about noon and invited me to lunch, but I declined on the grounds that I was busy. But then I ran into him on the street while walking to the post office. He was carrying a frame with one of those fake Egyptian papyrus prints that the street vendors sell. He said it cost him $30, but was worth $1500, and that he was insuring it for $3000. I was annoyed to have met him, since I wanted to spend some time alone at the cafe. But he insisted on visiting my apartment to drop off some items. We argued on the way. He had to stop many times and talked about a heart attack. I wished he would have one then and there so I could get rid of him. "I'm like a pain in the ass, I never go away, ha, ha, ha!" He is still strong, despite his age of sixty-three, with a history of violence and with violence always lurking beneath the surface of his joviality. The mentality of a child. If he doesn't get his way, he throws a temper tantrum. If I don't love him, he might decide to stab me. This morning he playfully made a stab at me with the kitchen knife. "Oh, I would never hurt you. I'm just joking. I would never, ever hurt you because I love you," he protested when I ordered him to put the knife down. But the incident got me to worrying. Now that I can't seem to get rid of him, I'm worried even more.

He dropped off the hideous picture along with some other trinkets he was carrying. And then he refused to take the junk he had left from this morning. He did return my clothes which he had borrowed, however. I checked to see if they were soiled. They weren't, so apparently wetting the bed was an accident due to being drunk, and not due to chronic incontinence. He also insisted that I put a moldy hunk of cheese and a unopened jar of mayonnaise in my refrigerator. I imagine he found these in the garbage somewhere. He called me paranoid, "just like all the others", because I wasn't as friendly to him as I had been last night. I held my ground and chased him out after fifteen minutes, alleging that I had to meet a girlfriend for a dinner date. I gave him a crucifix I had hanging on my door, as a consolation for my unwillingness to spend time with him. Then he asked when he could see me again. "Breakfast?" he suggested. "No," I replied, "Breakfast is out of the question. Call me at noon and then maybe we can arrange a time to meet in the afternoon." Finally he left.

What have I gotten myself into? No sooner is the lawsuit settled than I create more problems for myself. Now I can't go to the cafe anymore, my beloved oasis, without the risk of running into this pest. What's more, he has my phone number and address, so he can bother me at any time. The only hopeful aspect of the situation is that my apartment seems to be inconvenient for him to visit. And he said he was leaving the city all next month for some reason.

What have I learned from this experience? Safe people are boring, but interesting people can be annoying and dangerous.

Phone conversation with a woman who answered my ad. She works as a computer analyst in the suburbs, and didn't seem my type. I gave her a web site where I had uploaded a photo of myself. If she finds it attractive, she might give me a call. After my night with Bernelli, I can begin to appreciate why women are often so skittish around men. Namely, we are usually bigger and more violent than them and want to stick something inside their bodies. Also, I tend to give a very misleading picture of myself, presenting myself as some sort of loud, clumsy oaf, which probably scares many of them off.

I'm currently reading a book about how to play Afro-Cuban rhythms on the conga drums, with the idea that this will help my dancing. Though I'm improving in any case. Tonight, for example, I able to pick up the steps of the pattern almost immediately. Then, because there weren't enough women, the woman instructor danced with me and commented that I was doing very well (she recognizes me because I attend lessons at this club on a regular basis). I hope she is telling the truth and not just trying to encourage me with false compliments. With a later partner, there didn't seem to be much chemistry, except during the dancing itself, when we seemed to draw closer to one another. Another woman I found very attractive, but she was slightly too tall for me with heels on and ended up slamming her elbow into my nose while turning, since I didn't lift her arm high enough. She stood alone after the lesson ended, but I was tired from lack of sleep and so didn't bother to ask her to dance again. Another attractive woman had made eye contact with me earlier, but another man latched onto her during the lesson. I saw them go inside later for a drink. And there were some other attractive young women standing alone. If I hadn't been so tired and frazzled from the night before with Bernelli, I might have been able to dance with some of these.

The rug still seems to have some piss smell. So I washed it again in the bathtub and dragged it to the roof to dry. Then I sunbathed there for an hour, while reading. Everyone comments on how pale I look: Lisa, Helen, Karen, my lawyer, Bernelli. Maybe they're right and a tan would improve my looks.

Bernelli called at noon and wanted to eat lunch. I agreed instead to meet him at the cafe in the late afternoon. He never showed, and so I spent a delightful and peaceful two hours there alone. Then he called in the evening and wanted to come over or for me to meet him at a nearby bar. I refused both suggestions, but agreed to meet him on Sunday for mass at a nearby church. He told me that yesterday, while leaving my apartment in the morning, he bumped into a beautiful Mormon woman with a baby. This description fits that of the resident apartment manager: she is young, pretty, has a baby, vacuums the halls, and might well be Mormon. He told her she had an Irish face and cursed her for being of the race of cannibals. Then he said he wanted to commit suicide because I was playing games with him, and was breaking his heart, and had driven him to despair and to committing all manner of foul deeds with young and old ruffians, including a mick who threatened to fuck him in the ass unless he gave him a blowjob.

Another response to my ad. She used to work as an elementary school teacher, but is currently unemployed and busy applying for jobs. She expects to find one this week. Thirty-one years old, likes sports, cheerful, outgoing, loves children and school teaching. She seems incompatible with me, in other words. Nevertheless, we tentatively scheduled a date for next week.

Phone conversation with Helen. She is sick of her job, as usual. This weekend she plans to meet her former musician boyfriend, who will visiting the city to attend a friend's wedding. Whatever sexual feelings she once had for this musician are long gone, and so she plans to meet with him in the daytime, away from the romantic atmosphere of the night, so he can see once and for all that their relationship is finished.

Karen called and we talked. She is hating her apartment and the city she lives in more and more, and hopes the corporation will keep her traveling as much as possible. She will be going to South America soon, and suggested I visit her there, or else visit afterwards, when she will be back home for a week of training.

Bernelli called.

"I found a beautiful sweet girl for you. Fat, but very nice. Most of these American women are dykes. Lesbians. The reason that dyke girlfriend of yours won't let you fuck her is because your cock is too big. When I can I see you? All you ever do is work," he complained.

"Maybe this afternoon at the cafe."

"That place is full of faggots. Let's go someplace else. That place is full of queers and faggots and cocksuckers. They're all cocksuckers there. Meet me at that nice place, further up, away from these faggots, across from that gay bar, where they threw me out and won't allow me in anymore. That place with the white awning. What's it called? A wonderful place. Girls go there! Beautiful girls. Nice people, straight people, rich people. Not so many of these cocksucking faggots."

I met him at the cafe he had suggested and spent an hour there talking, then we strolled down the street together. He introduced me to various proprietors of stores. Some smiled, others seem to be exasperated by him. The counterman at the juice bar started screaming at him to get out or he would call the police. Bernelli explained that he had once had a fight with a customer in this place. The customer threw the first punch while outside. He chased the customer inside and hit him.

I bought a disposable camera at the drug store and then we walked back to my apartment to take photos. He was playing opera on his boombox as we walked. My original plan was for him to take some photos of me naked with a hard-on. These photos I would then send to women who answer my ad but want a picture before meeting me. Bernelli nixed this idea, which he said might expose me to blackmail once I became a movie star. (Who is the crazier of us, I wonder, as I reflect back on this idea of mine the next day.) We did take all the photos with my shirt off and most with my pants off as well. I wore the leopard pattern underwear that Karen gave me. He puts me in a very good mood, and so I was smiling in most of the photos, which otherwise came out very well.

Afterwards, we talked some more, or rather he talked and ranted while I listened. We then walked up to the roof deck, where my elderly neighbor was sitting. Bernelli told her she was a beautiful lady, and cursed the faggots and perverts that are destroying the world, then asked her many questions. She is originally from the mid-west, has never been married, used to work as a window dresser for fancy department store, is now in her late nineties. When we first moved in, this neighbor asked me and Helen if we needed furniture, since she had some extra items which we could borrow. That's very nice but no thank you, we replied. The manager of the building had already warned us that this woman has filled her small apartment to the point of bursting with all sorts of furniture, and now whenever someone moves into the building, she tries to offload some of her junk onto them. She is very secretive about letting people see the inside of her apartment. For example, if she and I happen to open our doors at the same time, she immediately shuts hers until I've left. But once I opened my door while she was in the process of pushing some boxes into her apartment, so that she couldn't immediately shut her door. I couldn't see much, because the view was blocked by all the junk piled up near the door. I imagine the whole apartment is like that, junk piled up to the ceiling with just enough free space for her to shuffle around from front door to kitchen to bathroom to bed.

I agreed to accompany Bernelli to a nearby bar, which he raved about as something not to be missed. We walked down the street with the boombox blaring, both of us dancing, pedestrians and passing motorists all staring at us and laughing. His tale of being a hairdresser and later a monk is all lies, I'm pretty sure. In fact, I suspect he has spent most of his life in mental hospitals. He said something about being "dead for twenty-three years". Maybe he was locked up for this period of time. He also mentioned doing time in maximum security prison, of having a long record of arrests and convictions, and of being disabled by virtue of being diagnosed as a psychopath. He is intelligent, however. For whatever reason, being around him makes me feel very happy.

Bernelli had promised the bar would be full of beautiful girls. In fact, it seemed a typical honky-tonk: the jukebox blaring rock, the customers mostly trashy looking men except for one woman who was sitting at the bar and arguing drunkenly with her boyfriend. The bar was tended by a stunning looking woman with a heavy accent, mid-forties, beautiful blond hair, thick arms, legs and breasts, narrow waist. I commented to Bernelli that she was quite a looker, which he immediately relayed to her. "He thinks you're cute." "I know I'm cute," she replied in a commanding voice, "He's cute too." Then he argued with her because she gave him a small glass of coke for $2 instead of a large mug. I was paying and offered to buy a second round, but he insisted we leave. He then dragged me to a restaurant down the street, where I bought us both sandwiches. These were average in price and quality, but he seemed to think they were an extraordinary buy. He said the reason I wasn't too impressed was that the cook hadn't carved from the right place on the roast. "They saw you with me. They always try to gyp me. I'm going to sue them for one million dollars."

Next stop was a hotel cafe, where he seemed to be well known. The security guard smiled, waved at him and said, "Now, remember, don't disturb the other customers or out you go." He had coffee, I had tea. We sat and talked for several hours, until about midnight, at which time I began to feel tired. I called for the check, despite Bernelli's insistence that this was a mistake, that they always gave him coffee for free.

Helen called and invited me to breakfast at the cafe. She is miserable at work and wants to quit her job. She had sex twice with Paul. She visited him, they fucked. Then she humped his leg until he got excited again. "I didn't want to fuck again, I just wanted to hump his leg." The second fuck left her with a painful urinary tract infection. She told him that she wanted to go on short trip to the mountains. He replied that he is broke, because he spent all his money recently on a $500 version of the Scrabble board game (made of pure ivory with gold leaf lettering, or some such nonsense). She doesn't know why she went to see him. Unprotected sex as usual, withdrawal method of contraception. He is expecting to be fired any day now. Thinks he might find a job in South America. Hinted at marrying her and their having a child together. He also promised to take her to Europe someday.

Her evening with her musician ex-boyfriend was a fiasco. She had the bladder infection from sex with Paul and so was feeling miserable. Also, she was underdressed, wearing jeans versus the ex-boyfriend's elegant suit. They had an unpleasant meal at a restaurant, then stopped by my favorite cafe to have an after-dinner drink, but were almost immediately forced to leave because the cafe closes at eleven in the evening. They then returned to her apartment, where both of them started yawning. They talked for a few minutes, then the ex-boyfriend left in a taxi. Helen concludes that this ex-boyfriend is interesting, but not sexually attractive. "He's funny looking. His shaved head makes him look like a man from Mars."

After breakfast, we lay about in her apartment for while, then had dinner at a restaurant, then lay about some more in her apartment, hugging and kissing and talking.

I attended mass with Bernelli at the Catholic church. He started a conversation with a woman in a wheelchair, and told her he was fluent in French and seven other languages. A man standing nearby overheard and asked about taking French lessons from him. I suppose I shouldn't mock people for taking him seriously, since I believed some of his nonsense myself at first. We walked around the church together while waiting for the service to begin. A gift store in the basement, where I spotted him shoplifting a medallion. I didn't comment about this however, either at the time or later. At the holy water fount, he anointed me several times. At a table with refreshments, he took three doughnuts and cup of coffee. One doughnut he ate, the others he placed into in a metal cookie container he was carrying. Some of the priests seemed to know him.

The mass was tedious in the extreme. The only relief was staring the golden hair of a teenage girl sitting in the pew in front of me and fantasizing about licking her naked body from head to foot. I was bored with Bernelli after the mass and wanted to leave, but agreed to visit his apartment. A typical piss-in-the-sink single-room-occupancy hotel room. At first I thought there might be some truth to his story about the hair salon in Beverly Hills. Perhaps he had once been a hairdresser, and then became mentally ill and stupid due to drugs and beatings in the head. But no, my visit to his room shattered these illusions. He hasn't the slightest sense of taste. Trash and bric-a-brac from the garbage, some of which he tried to foist off on me.

"Goddamn it, I don't want this shit, okay! I don't want any more of your crap in my fucking apartment!" I shouted.

"But I want to give to you. You give to me, I want to give to you."

"Then buy me a tea somewhere. I just don't any more shit in my apartment. I'm not carrying anything back and you're not carrying it either."

"On, please, please, don't yell at me. I love you so! Don't yell at me! It makes me go crazy. Here let me give you some incense."

"Fuck, no! Quit trying to give me all this crap! I don't want it."

"I'm just trying to help. See, isn't my apartment wonderfully decorated? You should let me decorate your apartment. You're mentally retarded about decorating."

"Look, I decorate my apartment, you decorate yours."

"But..."

"I don't want you fucking with my apartment, okay?! I'm sick of it."

He fixed me some tea, using a tea bag which looked like it had been retrieved from the garbage. I drank it politely, then said I wanted to leave. We stopped off at the drug store where I gave him $5 for new batteries for his boombox. Then we passed by a vacant storefront which he said he planned to rent for his hair studio. $2000 a month. I wonder how many people he initially fools with his spiel about once being a wealthy man, who lost or gave away everything and now dedicates himself to religion. There are, in fact, people whose true story corresponds to his fantasy.

I spent an hour in the cafe afterwards, eating chocolate cake and calming down from the state of agitation Bernelli had induced in me from our afternoon together. Then, when I got home, he telephoned. I brushed him off with an excuse about being busy.

I called Mark and discussed with him the possibility of his working as a caretaker for my aunt, who is senile and whose estate is being depleted at the rate of about $60,000 a year (she needs twenty-four hour a day care, at $7 an hour). He said he would think the proposition over carefully.

While salsa dancing, a attractive young woman seemed interested in me. Everywhere I went, she seemed to follow and to try to make eye contact with me. But I wasn't in the mood for approaching women, probably because of still feeling stressed out by Bernelli. Which was too bad, since many of the other women also seemed interested in me.

The owner of the laundromat told me about his experiences growing up in China during the Japanese occupation. He is sixty now and blames his ill health on starvation during those years. There were several famines, during which his legs became pencil thin while his knees swelled up enormously. To amuse themselves, the Japanese invaders would throw babies up in the air and chop them in half with a sword as they fell. In retaliation for attempts to resist, the Japanese would burn houses and crops, then chop people's heads off and hang the heads and bodies from poles. He shuffled through some gun collector magazines trying to find a picture of one of the guns he remember the Chinese using. German-designed World War I Mauser pistols, which he said jammed very easily when exposed to dirt or low quality ammunition. The Japanese, by contrast, had high quality oil-cooled machine guns which they used to mow down huge numbers of resistance fighters. He said he was plagued by nightmares about these experiences. Then he smiled and thanked me for listening.

Karen called. She now has a firm schedule so that I can make plans to visit her later this month. She is depressed because her apartment may be sold soon, which means she will have to spend her vacation looking for a new place to live. I applied for a passport in case I decide to visit her while she is traveling in South America.

Two letters from Bernelli in my mailbox:

"Hi Daddy, You sure can be mean. You sure give pain and you like to see me suffer. All because I love you. You sure hate women. I'm sorry for that. Why make me suffer? I forgive you because I love you more than God and myself. It's the little things that you do. Listen, my son, to what I tell you now. Do not be troubled nor disturbed by anything. Do not fear illness nor any other distressing occurrence, nor pain. Am I not your mother? Am I not life and health? Have I not placed you on my lap and made you my responsibility? Do you need anything else? Your brother in Christ. (signed) Father Angelo Bernelli."

"Dear Bow-wow, You sure are a dog. Please send the photos to my hotel. Let me know what I owe you. I'll send you a money order. I'll never call you again. Too much pain in your game, Satan. You made me cry too much. You are a sick bitch. You are no man. You are worse than a cocksucker. You like to see women suffer. Good-bye, love of my life. I regret the day we ever met. I'm leaving Friday for Beverly Hills. I pray for you, you son of a bitch. (signed) Cardinal Angelo Bernelli."

Bernelli came by my apartment and behaved more or less sanely for a change. He apologized for his letters: "I was very upset, you don't know." When he left, he took with him all the junk he had left here last week. I didn't ask him to do so, but I suppose he wanted to please me and knew that I didn't care for him to be leaving his possessions in my apartment. I gave him a set of the photographs he took of me last week, which pleased him. Then he asked me to give him a pair of shorts of mine that he liked. I agreed, since I seldom wear them myself. While he was still here, I did my leg calisthenics. I suppose he got turned on watching me exercise half naked, flexing my buttocks and leg muscles. After he left, I took the bus to the wilderness park, and sat for a while under the trees. What a relief to get away from civilization for a few minutes now and then!

Bernelli noticed me while passing the cafe, and joined me at my table, without invitation of course. "These niggers are no good," he said loudly, perhaps intending to be heard by a black man sitting behind us. "I'll make a lampshade out of that Jew. Hitler was right. I taught Princess Diana and Mother Theresa both how to suck cock." I felt myself becoming more and more uncomfortable, and then worried that if Bernelli caused a disturbance, and the staff blamed it on me because he was sitting at my table, they might hold a grudge against me and get their revenge by cutting me smaller slices of cake in the future.

I've accomplished almost nothing in the way of work all this week. I oversleep in the morning and then nap in the afternoon, as if I'm seeking enlightenment through dreams. Customers are sending angry emails wanting to know why I haven't answered their previous email. I feel like I am on the verge of cracking up.

Bernelli called. He wants me to go to some bar tonight. I told him maybe. He confirmed that it was he who came by last night and rang from the front door of my apartment building. (I had suspected it was him and so didn't answer.) He called some punk "white trash" recently, whereupon the punk knocked him down and broke his radio, which he now can't afford to fix. It seems as if he spends his entire monthly social security check within a matter of days. What a wild and uninhibited way to live! Later, while returning home from the cafe, I saw him dancing on the other side of the street with a boombox held against his ears. I hurried along so he wouldn't spot me.

The email backlog has been reduced to under forty, many of which are duplicates from people wondering why I haven't responded to previous email. These remaining emails tend to be legitimate trouble reports, for problems which will require a considerable amount of work to fix. My reduction in the email backlog has to great extent been accomplished by simply discarding emails from several months ago. It seems absurd to respond several months later to what was originally a simple request for information.

Bernelli called and wanted to see me. He said he was beaten black and blue and the Jew hospital wouldn't take him and someone stole his bus ticket and could I spare $71 so he could get a credit card and he would repay me soon since he is a very rich man, related to the Rothschilds. I told him I absolutely didn't want him to come by and that I could spare a few dollars but not $71. He then asked if I could meet him in the afternoon. I agreed to meet him in front of a cafe in the late afternoon. He annoys me, but he also helps me to get some perspective on my own life. Everyone should spend some time now and then dealing with a lunatic.

I took off work early and then sat in another cafe from the one where I had arranged to meet Bernelli. I decided to break our appointment, in other words. He is getting on my nerves and I don't want to encourage him to spend too much time with me. On the way home, I spotted him across the street, sitting in front of the juice bar talking to one of the workers. The same place where he once had a run-in, so that they threatened to call the police. I hurried along, hoping he wouldn't see me.

In the evening, I received three phone calls on my private line (which is connected to the front door of the apartment building), spaced every thirty minutes. But the caller hung up when they got the answering machine. So maybe he came by and was hanging around out front. If so, this is the second time he has paid me uninvited visits and found me apparently not home (in fact, I was home both times but pretended not to be). Since it is a struggle for him to walk all the way to visit me, I hope he has learned a lesson, and won't be paying me any more uninvited visits.

A bosomy, attractive and stupid-looking woman at the nightclub stared at me at as if wanting me to approach, but I didn't. This was just before closing and she apparently wanted someone to go home with. I saw her a few minutes later dancing and kissing with some man who I was certain she had just met. I reflected as I walked home that I wasn't sorry at all to have missed my chance. I'd rather masturbate.

Breakfast with Helen at a cafe. I told her about the hassles I'm having with Bernelli. She said she called me once yesterday. Besides the front door intercom, the only calls I get on my private phone line are from Helen and the apartment manager. Since I doubt the apartment manager called, this implies Bernelli came by twice.

Helen's boyfriend Paul was told by his supervisor that he has two weeks to shape up or he will be fired. He went to a job interview and would have gotten the job—one which he wanted—except that he told them he only planned to stay around for at most two years, since he wasn't interested in being a "backoffice techie." The possibility of getting fired has made him anxious. He attempts to relieve this anxiety by spending money.

Helen wants me to buy her a book about anal sex, since she is convinced she can never have vaginal sex anymore. She is embarrassed to buy the book herself. I had previously bought her this book as joke, and she refused to read it, so I sold it back to the used bookstore. I wasn't interested in it myself, and thought it might offend squeamish women, and so didn't want it on my bookshelf. (But then why I am not equally worried about women seeing my collection of books about homosexuality? Or my issue of a homosexual porn magazine, which includes a photo of one grotesquely fat man with his tongue reaching out to tickle the ass of another grotesquely fat man, both of them on all fours with their pot bellies sagging down almost to the floor?)

This remark about wanting to experiment with anal sex, reminded me of an incident that occurred about a year ago, while Helen and I were having sex. During a break from sucking my cock, she said, "I want you to buy me a butt plug." So the next day, I went out and bought three of these devices: small, medium and large. I remember the cashier there (a person of dubious gender, though probably male) looking at me knowingly and saying, "have fun." Helen tried the small butt plug once, then asked me to take them all away in a fit of disgust. I have kept them ever since in the closet. I later tried the large size on myself, just to prove that accommodating it isn't difficult. So, when she told me today that she was interested in trying anal sex again, I brought the butt plugs over to her apartment, but then she got angry and told me to take them back or she would throw them away.

Bernelli called collect, but I didn't pick up the phone. Then a few hours later, he called collect again later, and this time I picked up the phone but refused to accept charges.

I processed some orders and new emails, but backlog remains at forty. Then I spent an hour sunbathing. I want to get a suntan on my ass and pubic region. How to accomplish that? And why on earth do I care? Do I really think women will be impressed by an all-over tan? Don't I have more important things to worry about?

A date with a woman who answered my ad, and who I talked to on the phone yesterday, at some length. She had seemed obsessed with looks. This should have been a warning, since I've noticed that it is typically the unattractive women who are most concerned about appearance. "You wouldn't believe some of the men. They say they're attractive, and then ugh! Sorry, but not for me." She said she herself was a beauty, resembling a young movie star. "When I walk into a bar, I get immediately hit on. I'm tired of it." If she finds it so easy to meet men, then why is she using the personal ads? I found her to be very unattractive: overweight, huge circles under her eyes, graying, lifeless and unkempt hair, her skin leathery from too much sun. She also seemed to be a compulsive liar. "Yeah, I was making megabucks, living the fast life, money coming in faster than I could spend it, booze, drugs, the works. Tired of it. Time to slow down." But as we talked, it became evident that this "fast life" was just a fantasy of hers. Her ex-husband, from whom she recently got a divorce, was supposedly an abusive alcoholic. This part of her story might well have been true. "No way. I don't need the hassle. Been there, done that. Someone gives me a hard time, I'm out of there." But then why was she married for ten years to this man? And why did she spend last week helping him out after he crashed a car while driving drunk and ended up in the hospital and then tried to commit suicide? I listened patiently, without saying much. She seemed to grasp that I was repelled by her. "I described myself truthfully, didn't I?" was her final plaintive question. "Oh, yeah, sure," I replied. I didn't have the heart to tell her otherwise.

Bernelli called and wants to meet me this afternoon. I agreed to do so. I walked with him from the cafe to the post office and back, then we parted ways. Thankfully, he was too tired to accompany me all the to my apartment. He is starting to bore me. He's suing this faggot, suing that greasy Arab, suing the police, has nineteen felonies, can't go into the drug store because he tore the place up when they refused to take back his radio after it broke (or was broken by a kid who knocked him down after he called the kid "white trash"), had all his favorite possessions stolen from his hotel room, probably by some hustler he picked up, and so on. I don't know how he supports himself. Perhaps by begging. Perhaps his disability check from the government.

My lawyer sent me email indicating legal bills of almost $20,000. The other lawyers are challenging my request for legal fees to be paid by my father's estate. At most they want 1/4 paid, on the grounds that part of the suit concerned undue influence and the statute doesn't provide for paying legal fees for that, or some such reasoning. The judge will be issuing a ruling soon. What a lot of money that is! More than I spent this entire year on discretionary expenses. I can't write it off as a business expense either.

I partnered with a number of pretty women during salsa lessons, but afterwards just stood and watched instead of dancing. For whatever reason, I feel less and less interested in meeting women. I dread the idea of having my tranquil existence disrupted by their boisterousness and laughter and general hurly-burly.

Helen called and invited me to dinner. I declined. She is going out with Paul tomorrow night, but won't be having sex with him, or so she says, since they are breaking up. I pointed out to her that it took one day for her to break up with her previous boyfriend. Why four months to break up with Paul, unless she is in love with him?

A mixed-age and well-dressed crowd at the nightclub, where I stood and watched for the most part, other than one dance with a woman who had eyed me. I should have known better than to approach her, as she didn't really attract me: young, immature acting and, worst of all, part of gaggle of a half dozen similarly immature acting young women, with whom it is obvious that I had little in common intellectually. Why do I willingly approach and ask for dances from women who don't really interest me, but avoid the women with whom there is obvious mutual attraction?

Another women was sitting alone at a table, stirring her drink. Provocatively alone. In fact, too provocative, as if she had a chip on her shoulder and would lash out at any man who approached her because he had insulted her by not approaching sooner. One man did sit with her for a while, and then they danced, and then she returned to sitting alone and stirring her drink.

The only woman I found desirable wasn't particularly pretty in the face, but did have a full womanly body. She was approached by almost every single man she passed. She was obviously alone and also obviously not with a chip on her shoulder. But she wouldn't talk with anyone, and left alone after about an hour. She stood by me, so I walked over, said hello and smiled. She looked at me like I was a creep, so I returned to where I had been standing, and resumed watching the scene. Then later, we made brief eye contact again. Perhaps she had reconsidered me. But I didn't see the point of approaching again without some clearer indication of interest on her part.

I feel so little sex drive in these places. By the time I get home, my cock and balls have shriveled up and gone numb.

I went on a spending spree: $154 for music disks, $20 for a black-and-white poster, $50 to a political cause (namely, for the reform of drug laws in the direction of legalization or, at least, milder penalties) I've been supporting for some years (Why do I care about this particular issue? Why do I bother to vote? Why does anyone care about anything that doesn't benefit them directly? What does "benefit directly" mean precisely?), $61 for two shirts and a pair of pants. One of the shirts is in a flashy black leopard print pattern, and makes me look either sleazy or homosexual or a gigolo, or maybe a combination of all three. The other is white and makes me look washed out. My head looks small with these billowing shirts. And yet my hat size is one of the largest normally available. The pants are polyester. I had forgotten how hot that fabric can be. So I doubt I'll ever wear them. A complete waste of money, in other words. I suppose I shouldn't feel guilty about spending money. If I didn't do it, someone else would.

Helen called and invited me to lunch. We agreed to meet at the cafe, but on the way there she realized that she had locked herself out of her apartment, and so she doubled back, in order to intercept me and then return to my apartment to pick up the spare set of keys that I keep for her. I tried to kiss her, but she pushed me way and insisted that she was determined never to have sex with me again. I gave her the poster I had bought yesterday. Upon looking at it together with Helen, my opinion of it fell: the lack of color is depressing. Then I showed Helen the leopard patterned shirt I bought yesterday, and she immediately burst out laughing: "Now you really look gay!" She's probably right. I would have looked and felt utterly ridiculous at the nightclub I went to last night in such an outfit.

A long litany of complaints about her boyfriend Paul, with whom she says she has broken up. While with him and his sister several months ago, she went to the kitchen to get something. When she returned, they were talking about family members who she didn't know and acting as if she didn't exist. Then last night, they went to a play together. Paul had bought the tickets several weeks ago, which is the only reason she agreed to go. No sex, before or after. While at the play, there was a long line of women waiting to use the restroom. Helen complained about this to Paul, saying, "the majority of the patrons of this theater are old women, and they clearly don't have enough toilets. These old women should boycott this theater until something is done about it." Paul replied, "Do you want to leave?" Helen countered, "That's not what I said. I don't want to leave. I was complaining about the line at the restroom." Then they both folded their arms across their chests, leaned away from one another, and said nothing more for the rest of the play. Afterwards, they ate at an expensive restaurant. Helen had previously agreed to pay for dinner, since Paul had paid for the tickets to the play. But then Paul ordered expensive cocktails and appetizers. Helen protested and Paul agreed to pay for that part of the bill. Helen had one drink, which made her sick because I and other men had ruined her health by fucking her and now she can't tolerate alcohol. The total bill was $72, of which $45 was her portion. She planned to pay the bill itself by credit card, but to leave cash for the tip. Paul suggested she leave a $15 tip. She thought that high and so put a $10 bill into the folder.

"So, you tipped $20. That's very nice," said Paul.

"No, $10. That's plenty enough. What did he do anyway? Why should I pay him—a man, by the way—more per hour than what I make?"

"That shows poor class, to be cheap with tips."

Paul wants Helen to come to a dinner party he is hosting at his apartment later this week. The other two guests will be a former coworker, who was fired and now works at another company, and that man's wife. Helen surmises that Paul's idea is to impress the other man at how he has been able to find a young woman to screw. Likewise, she thinks the reason he staged a previous party, to which another coworker had been invited, was precisely so that coworker would go back and tell everyone at work that she and Paul were having an affair, and then Paul could throw his hands up and say, "Well, I didn't tell anyone, I guess people just saw what was happening and started gossiping." And on and on with more complaints of this ilk.

I suggested Helen visit the lesbian nightclub and explained how to make herself approachable—go alone, dress nicely, stand alone, put on a pleasant expectant expression. She got upset at my discussion because the woman sitting behind me, who almost certainly could overhear us, appeared to be a lesbian herself. We began to get on each other's nerves. On the way back Helen said, "You're like a bratty younger brother. The one I never had, and never wanted, either."

While browsing in the sex books store later that afternoon, I noticed the book about anal sex there which Helen had asked me to buy several days ago. I decided not to get it for her, however. Let her get up the gumption to visit the store and buy the book herself.

Customers are complaining about problems in my products. I promise in my most businesslike and serious manner to have fixes available soon. Then I lie back down on the sofa and resume reading, masturbating, listening to music, staring out the window, anything besides fixing the problems. The email backlog remains at forty-one, with messages from over a month ago still unanswered.

Bernelli called. He was beaten up by two men in the nightclub district, or so he says, first by a white guy and then, after he began yelling "nigger, nigger, nigger!", by a black. He called the police and then noticed his wallet was missing. So now he plans to sue everyone—the church, the police, the restaurant owners—then get a gun and come back to town and start shooting people. He asked if he could see me tonight. I said no, he didn't insist.

There was a pair of expert dancers at the salsa club this evening, who I found absolutely fascinating to watch. When I returned to my apartment, I tried imitating their style, the essence of which is a sort of cat-like smoothness, especially in the man. This type of salsa dancing requires a large amount of floor space, however.

I received a call wanting information for a buyer's guide. This is just the sort of press coverage I've been wanting! Information is due in two days. I responded by email, since I'll be with Karen then. What if this request had come tomorrow? What if they ask for more information tomorrow, in response to my email?

While working through the email backlog, I ran across a simple question about purchasing methods from a month ago. Today, this same person submitted his order. Apparently, he figured out the purchasing procedure for himself. I felt embarrassed at having ignored his question.

Bernelli called and wanted to see me. I told him I was leaving tomorrow to visit a old girlfriend. He said he would come by tomorrow morning. He wants $30 to buy a bus ticket. I told him no. He said I was Jewish. He is having problems with his hotel. He got beat up again because he started yelling "nigger, nigger, nigger!"

While getting ready for my flight to see Karen, Bernelli called from the front door. I told him to wait. Then I walked with him down to the shuttle bus. "Women are horrible creatures. I have never had sex with one and I will never have sex with one. They just want to steal your energy," he said. I gave him $5.

It took almost four hours to get from the airport to the city, due to my trying to save $11 by taking public transit instead of the shuttle bus. I hadn't masturbated for several days, but nevertheless, I felt little sex drive when I got into the car with Karen. Perhaps she sensed my lack of arousal. In any case, she immediately started complaining about a recent business trip. She had stayed in a hotel with a casino, so there was noise all night and day. The factory where she had been conducting an audit didn't have air-conditioning. One of the women who had gone with her didn't speak Spanish. The woman had lied on her resume and no one had ever tested her. The heat was insufferable. She had to terminate the audit due to lack of cooperation by her coworkers. One of her coworkers refused to accept her directions, even though she was project leader. She had been involved in an accident between her rental car and a taxi and had to spend an entire day in the police station, before finally paying the taxi driver about $150 to drop charges. More complaints about the service and food at the restaurant where we had dinner. And more bitterness and self-pity about how difficult her life is. I felt like telling her off, but since I was her guest, I had to bite my tongue. And, as usual, being forced to bite my tongue made me resent her. The whole visit was starting off on the wrong foot.

Her apartment gave me bad vibes. Something about the way it resembles a lifeless hotel room. Just last week she bought a dining room table for this apartment, using a loan from the credit union at work. More complaints: the credit union was sending her bills even though the loan repayments were supposed to be automatically deducted from her paycheck. Also, the table came with some scratches and was missing a screw and she thought about sending it back. It was a glass top table, expensive looking and utterly without character. The sort of thing that costs about $1500 at a department store.

I gave her a necklace I had bought last month. She acted pleased by this gift, though I really hadn't expected her to like it, since I never have been able to understand her taste in clothes. "It's the thought that counts," I said, since I suspected she was acting pleased out of politeness. I also gave her some special Japanese tea she had asked me to buy, since she can't find a store here which carries it.

We showered and got into bed. I licked her cunt slowly and teasingly, bringing her to a climax several times, before she finally pulled me up and said she wanted me inside her. But for whatever reason, I couldn't get a solid erection. Her cunt was sopping wet and loose, so I was able to get inside, but then I softened completely and pulled out. I wanted to try again, but she said she was satisfied and so we just lay in bed, hugging. I told her my lack of a solid erection was due to dehydration and tiredness. Neither of us seemed convinced by this explanation.

I slept well and awoke early, then performed calisthenics in the living room while Karen was still lying in bed. She emerged about an hour after I had gotten up, with a sour expression on her face and complaining of a terrible backache, which she blamed on being forced to sit for long periods of time during her business trip. She also complained of having slept poorly. "Did I snore?" I asked. She replied no.

I flipped through the newspaper, trying to think of something for us to do together, while she telephoned the doctor to request a prescription of painkillers for her backache. "Oh, so the doctor isn't in? Well, when will he be in? I'm in pain and I can't wait until Monday! Yes, I'll be here and I want him to call me back." Then she slams down the telephone handset. "Fucking assholes! Why can't they be in the office when I need them?" I tried initiating sex but she brushed me off.

"So, what have you decided about today? Are you ready to go somewhere?" she asked.

"I thought maybe we could do some things here first."

"Look, I really don't want to have sex now, okay? Save it for later, like in the afternoon. What happened last night?"

"I don't know, just one of those things." I felt like saying "fuck you, bitch", but then that would have ended the weekend before it had even started. Also, it was possible she really was in pain.

The doctor called and said he would phone in a prescription to the pharmacy. We drove there, picked up the pills and then did some other errands. Karen mentioned that her supervisor and his wife each carried around a bottle of disinfectant, with which they cleaned their hands each and every time they shook someone else's hands. She thought this a good idea. I think it's neurotic, though didn't say so. I pointed out that door handles and money were also sources of germs. She agreed about the door handles, but said she wasn't willing to forego touching money.

We took the train into the city and spent several hours there browsing in a ritzy department store. To me, the merchandise looked cheap and unattractive, but Karen thought it all wonderful. We had tea in a cramped and dreary little cafe in the basement, done up in Japanese style decor. Somehow the conversation got around to the subject of smell and pheromones. Karen said that, even in a crowded room, she could immediately pick out the men she wanted to have sex with, based on their "smell hormones". I asked her what my hormones were like. She said my hormones were disguised. I wasn't sure what that was supposed to mean.

I suggested we visit the former residence of the famous designer Halston, whose biography I had recently read, since it was only about ten blocks away. It really was a distinctive looking townhouse, just as the biography had described. I waxed enthusiastic:

"That house has seen some extraordinary goings on. A four story living room, all the furniture covered in beige ultrasuede. And the people he used to bring in. He had a procurer go to the ghetto and walk up to big black men at random, offering to pay them $500 to fuck a white man in the ass. About half of them accepted the offer. Isn't that something? Yes, straight black men. Then his long-time companion used to bring in men for orgies. Halston was furious when they left shit and come stains on the beige ultrasuede furniture. Disgusting!" I exclaimed.

"If it's so disgusting, why do you insist on talking about it? Okay?" Karen quite reasonably responded.

We wandered about some more, though Karen complained that her back was in agony. We had supper at a diner where we had nothing to say to one another. I offered Karen a pulp novel I was reading. She glanced at it briefly, then rejected it with disgust. She seems to have a great deal in common with the women described in the book. Abused as a child. Nymphomaniac tendencies. Wants to exploit men for their money. Self-destructive. Perhaps the obvious similarities were disturbing to her.

By the time we crawled into bed, I was tired of her company and don't really want to have sex, even though that was the main reason I came to visit her. But then she lay her head against my shoulder and stroked my chest, whereupon my cock hardened and I became aroused. I licked her, then fucked her hard. She cried aloud something about "I want you to come in me!" and so that's what I did, without any further delay. I was afraid that if I postponed coming until she had an orgasm, I might tense up and not be able to come at all, which would anger her, especially since I had been partially impotent the night before. I don't think she came. If not, then this would be the first time we ever had sex without her coming. Perhaps she sensed that I was bored and annoyed and contemptuous of her, and therefore she couldn't get aroused enough or relax sufficiently to come. She spent about twenty minutes afterwards soaking in the bathtub. We had only fucked about five minutes, but I did it hard and deep and maybe bruised her. She had no complaints when she returned to bed, however, and seemed more content and relaxed than earlier in the day.

The next morning, I fixed myself a bowl of cereal and stood eating it in the kitchen. Karen entered and said, "You know, you don't have to eat standing up." I felt like replying, "I want to eat standing up." But she is so hostile and defensive and has such a temper that I was afraid that such a statement would provoke a fight, which would eventually lead to my being thrown out and having to spend two nights in a hotel. I was more concerned by the amount of money this would cost than by the prospect of having to spend the rest of my vacation by myself. Indeed, I wanted to get away from her.

She asked me what I wanted to do. My preference would have been to spend several hours in bed fucking, good sex instead of the tense and lousy sex we had had so far, and then take a nap, and then fuck some more. But she didn't seem in a very receptive mood. I wanted to say, "Look, I came her to fuck. I want to fuck and that's all I really want." But we had been down this path before. Her response would have been, "Well, I'm not your personal whore. If all you want is sex, you can get the hell out of here." So instead of speaking the truth, I uttered more polite lies. Over a period of days, she is much too intelligent and sensitive not to detect and be offended by the contempt the underlies such hypocrisy. In desperation, I suggested we go to the city for the day and spend some time in a used bookstore.

More tense moments waiting for and then travelling in the train. I discussed King Farouk of Egypt, and his miniscule cock, and my psychotic street-person friend Bernelli, and then I asked her about her dreams in life.

"I want to be a society matron, living in an expensive condominium, spending my days going to ladies luncheons, or shopping, or maintaining my body—manicures, pedicures, hair-dressing. And maybe learning some new languages."

"What about sex?"

"I'd use a call-boy service. And if he can't get an erection, he doesn't get paid. I'd use one now if I could afford it."

"My dream is to do what I'm doing now. I'm financially independent, you know. That's the real reason I'm bored by my business. I don't need the money anymore."

"I don't have that luxury."

"As soon as the business ends, I plan to spend my days lying on the sofa, listening to music, and reading, mostly about sex. I'll get up late and stay out late at nightclubs. Not a lot of travel. Essentially, I'll do what I'm doing now, except I won't have to handle any business phone calls. Maybe I'll become an author of pornography. I'd like to write books like this." I held up the copy of the pulp novel I was reading.

"That's a pathetic life you want to live."

"And I'll probably live alone. I'm starting to realize that I'm just not compatible with women. I prefer to be alone. I even prefer masturbation."

"Why did you come here anyway?"

"Oh, I don't know. I guess I'm learning a few things about myself."

At one point, Karen mentioned that she was interested in a famous high-brow literary novelist, and hoped to find some of his books, which were out of print, at the used bookstore. This surprised me, since my impression had always been that her pleasure reading consisted mainly of gruesome murder mysteries, about women chopped up by sadists and whatnot.

We browsed for two hours at the bookstore, then Karen declared that she was tired and wanted to get a non-alcoholic beer. So we wandered around searching for a cafe. "We always seem to end up in the sleazy sections of town," she complained, though the neighborhood looked gentrified to me. Finally, we found a restaurant which offered what she wanted. But she sat at the bar instead of at a table. We start fighting because I want to sit at a table and have a snack. Karen says she wants something crispy, like tacos, as opposed to a sandwich. I point out that tacos is on the menu. But she is looking at a sandwich only menu which doesn't list tacos. A strained conversation, with Karen looking to squabble. She finishes the beer and walks out. We walk for a while in silence.

"So what do you want to do?" she asks.

"I don't care. What do you want?"

"I asked what you want."

"Well, if you want to know what I want, then I want a snack."

"Why didn't you have a snack back at the restaurant?"

"Because you sat at the bar instead of at a table. I wanted to sit at a table. In fact, I didn't really want a snack until you told me you want the non-alcoholic beer. At that point, my stomach got to rumbling and so I decided a snack would be a good idea. I don't really need a snack, however."

"What do you want then?"

"If you're asking what I want, then I want a snack. But I don't have to have a snack."

"Let's get a snack."

"Where? Do you want a snack?"

"I already told you, I don't want a sandwich. I want something crispy and crunchy."

"Okay, a snack in other words. They had tacos back at the restaurant we were at. I saw them on the menu. Tacos are crispy and crunchy."

"Okay, then we'll go back there."

"You said you wanted to go to the dress shops. That's in the opposite direction."

"We can walk back to get your snack and then walk to the dress shops."

"As I've pointed out, I only said I wanted a snack because we were in a restaurant and a snack seemed like a good idea. I don't need a snack but in any case, I'm sure we can find snacks wherever we go. The city is full of cafes."

We had the snack and then there is more tension and squabbling until she indicated that she wanted to go home. We returned in strained silence, then picked up a takeout pizza and three rental movies: she selected two comedies and insisted I also select something, so I selected a horror movie.

We watched one of her movies while eating the pizza. A comedy about a man who tries to maintain a harem of girlfriends. Then he meets a rich, beautiful but mentally unbalanced woman, who he subsequently abandons. She tries to murder him, but fails. In the end, he decides to settle down, marry and be everlastingly faithful to his old high-school sweetheart. Meanwhile, the mentally unbalanced woman is sentenced to jail. A dopey morality tale that I would never have sat through on my own. "I hope you don't plan on doing something like that to me," I said, during a scene in which the mentally unbalanced woman attacks the man with a knife. "I left a note indicating where I was going." She turned and looked at me with disgust. I elaborated: "I always leave a note when I travel. In case of a plane crash, or other accident."

She continues to be spoiling for a fight. I eat half of a pint of chocolate ice cream and then offer the rest to her. She tells me to eat it myself. I do, but am still hungry after. Since she has stopped eating, I ask if she wants the remaining pieces of pizza. She says no, so I eat them as well. And still I am hungry, since we didn't have much of a lunch, and so heat up an English muffin while she is in the bathroom. She walks into the kitchen.

"What do you think you're doing?" she asks.

"I'm heating up a muffin. I'm still hungry."

"Well, maybe I'm hungry too! Or didn't you think of that? Before you ate all the pizza and ice cream!"

"I asked you if you wanted the pizza and you said no. I also asked about the ice cream. Besides, there's another muffin in the refrigerator."

"Maybe I don't want a muffin! Maybe I want to order some more pizza! Didn't you even stop to think about that? Don't you ever think of anyone but yourself?"

"If you were hungry, then why did you let me eat all the pizza? I asked you specifically whether you wanted it."

"I was still hungry! You just ate so fast, the way you've been eating all weekend, gobbling like an animal."

"I asked you specifically if you wanted the remaining slices of pizza. You said no."

"Oh, fuck you!"

She turns and stalks off into the bedroom. I finish the muffin, drink some water, then sit down on the sofa. She comes out, with a grim expression on her face, and hands me the portable telephone.

"You need to change your reservation to go back early. I'll drive you to the train station tomorrow morning."

"Okay."

The airline says the flight can't be changed. I enter the bedroom, where she is sitting on the futon, flipping through a book of Portuguese grammar, which she had bought earlier today. She will be traveling to Brazil in the near future for business and needs to learn Portuguese.

"I can't change my flight, but I'll figure somewhere to stay. So don't worry, I'll be out of your hair after tomorrow morning."

"You know, this whole weekend you've been deliberately trying to disgust me with your chewing sounds." She makes vulgar and exaggerated chewing expressions and noises.

"Now wait a minute. That's bullshit. That is utter bullshit. You asked me not to chew with my mouth open, and I said I was sorry and wouldn't do it anymore and I made of point of not doing it anymore. Maybe I chewed the English muffin like that, but that was because I was eating alone in the kitchen."

"Eating alone! Worrying about yourself! The way you've been worrying about yourself all weekend. Selfish, that's what you are. We had to go the bookstore because that's where you wanted to go..."

"You asked me what I wanted to do and I said that was my first choice. I didn't insist and furthermore I also asked you what you wanted to do and you didn't have any ideas. We went to the bookstore because we didn't have anything better to do."

"And your snack. We had to have a snack, just because you wanted a snack."

"You wanted a beer!"

"That's right. I wanted a beer. I had a backache and I was tired of standing in that bookstore."

"Okay, so we did what you wanted. We went and got you a beer."

"What did you come out her for anyway?"

"What did you invite me out here for?"

"Because when I first met you, I thought there was something in you, some spark or glimmer or possibility of something worthwhile. But I was obviously mistaken. Oh, well, it's over now."

"It's taken you a long time to figure that out. We've been having sex now for over a year and a half."

"Having sex! That's all you can think of. I'm your whore to come fly in and fuck. Well, then. You got your fuck. Now you can go back satisfied."

"And you got your fuck."

"Yes, I got fucked."

"You know, that's one thing that has always bothered me is this idea you have that your body is better than mine. You seem to think that I should be so grateful because you let me have sex with you. Well, I'm sorry. My body is just as good as yours. You get my body, I get yours. An even exchange. I don't owe you anything. And I don't use you for sex, as you like to say, any more than you use me. You want it just as much as me."

"I never said your body wasn't any good."

"You said I stink. What is it with you about cleanliness anyway? You're constantly bathing and wanting me to bathe until neither of us smells like anything except soap and perfume. I happen to like the way humans smell."

"Well you smell plenty. You didn't even shower this morning! You went around all day stinking."

"I showered just now."

"But you didn't shower this morning."

"I wasn't dirty."

"I could smell you and I'm telling you, you stunk."

"Fine, I stunk. Anyway, I suppose you don't want me sleeping in the bed tonight. You mind if I take this blanket and a pillow, so I can sleep on the sofa? I have a long day tomorrow and I'd like to get a good night's sleep."

"Sleep in the bed! Take the whole thing for yourself! You've been selfish all weekend, I don't give a damn!" Saying which, she leaps up and grabs the blanket and a pillow herself and stalks off to the sofa.

"Look, wait a minute. It's your apartment. If you want me to sleep on the sofa, I'll sleep there and you can sleep in the bed. Just let me have the blanket and a pillow."

"Just go sleep by yourself in the fucking bed! Okay?!"

"Sure, okay. Wake me when you get up then."

"Wake me when you get up then," she mimics.

"Why are you so in such a bad mood?"

"Because I'm tired of your selfishness."

"You make life more difficult than it has to be, Karen. We won't be on this planet for long, you know."

"I was an abused child! No one recovers from that."

"Plenty of people have it tougher than you. What good does it do it dwell on abuse that happened long ago? Look on the bright side of things. We all have our good and bad qualities. You do and I certainly do. If the good outweighs the bad, then you try to avoid the bad and enjoy the good. And if the bad outweighs the good, well, move on to something better."

"I am moving on. Me and my bad qualities. I'm going to have sex with many men. I'm going to find someone to love me! And you can go hang out with your homosexual street people friends, and read your pornographic books, and talk about King Farouk and his miniscule cock who nobody wants to hear about, and shit and come stains on the ultrasuede sofa, and all the rest of your filth! I'm sick of listening to you. Just sick of it! You have nothing interesting to say. Nothing! Your mind has gone to rot!"

"I think I'm pretty interesting."

"Well then go jack off by yourself!"

"You sure you don't want me to sleep on the sofa?"

"Just get back into the bedroom and leave me alone! And I warn you, if you try any funny stuff, I'll call the police."

"What the hell sort of funny stuff are you talking about?"

"Just don't try anything."

"Fine, I don't plan to."

I lay for several hours in the dark, unable to fall asleep, worried that she might try to stab me, or call the police and falsely accuse me of rape. I considered calling a taxi and leaving early. Laziness finally overcame paranoia, and I fell asleep sometime after midnight.

It later occurred to me that she might have wanted me to rape her. To tell her something like: "You can't throw me out so easily. I love you, and I'm never leaving you, not ever. You'll have to kill me to get rid of me." And then passionately make love to her. Or maybe she wanted me to get brutal: "I came her to fuck, I'm going to fuck. So shut your goddamn mouth, get your ass in the bed, spread your legs and any more crap out of you and I'll beat you fucking black and blue. ¿Comprendes?" And then fuck her in the cunt as hard as I could, until her inner thighs ached, pulling back on her hair and cursing at her the whole while. But I'm much too cautious to act in this manner.

I woke just after dawn and lay quietly in bed until Karen woke a few hours later, thankful to still be alive and not stabbed to death or with my cock cut off or arrested and faced with false charges of rape. We dressed, I packed, we walked to her car, she dropped me off at the train station on her way to work. We didn't exchange a single word or glance the whole time. Very peculiar, but I'd be damned if I was going to be the one to break the icy silence.

I spent the day browsing in used bookstores, then had dinner, then dawdled the rest of the afternoon and early evening in a park, reading one of the books I had bought. I arrived at the airport late in the evening. The terminal is a depressing piece of modern architecture, with cold marble floors, no chairs, and no place to lie down and sleep. I wandered around trying to kill time, then stopped off in the restroom, where I had an enormous bowel movement, my first in days. It seems all the tension with Karen had made me constipated.

Afterwards, I sat on the toilet and listened carefully until I was sure the restroom was empty, then pulled out my cock and masturbated. A solid erection and a sort of tingling desire such as I hadn't felt in years. Other than the one fuck with Karen, it had been over a week since my last orgasm, and two nights in a row I had shoved my face into Karen's cunt, which always tends to arouse me. Also, masturbating in the restroom brings back old memories of college days, when that was the only place I could masturbate in private, and of the years in the corporation, when I used to masturbate in the restroom during the afternoon, when bored by work and horny from looking at my officemate. I had a tremendous orgasm, shuddered and felt faint. It was like being a teenager again.

I then joined a group of travelers who had apparently missed their flights and so also had to spend the night in the airport. Some of them had sleeping bags. I lay on the marble floor with my head resting on my suitcase and a black sock over my eyes to keep the bright light out, and finally managed to fall asleep after midnight.

I woke about four in the morning after three hours sleep, then lay for another two hours, then was rousted by security guards. There were empty seats on the early morning flight, and so I was able to fly standby. I slept another two hours while flying, then talked to a young woman sitting next to me, who had offered me some of her popcorn. She had a beautiful face and body, with white teeth, golden blonde hair, fleshy downy arms, and perfect complexion. I felt a tremendous attraction to her, but she seemed underage (she later told me she was age twenty-four, though she might have passed for sixteen). When I went to the lavatory, I conspicuously lay a lurid novel I was reading on the seat between us, so she could read the back cover blurbs and perhaps get to thinking of me in the same sexual way I was thinking of her. She has a college degree in public health, and has been working for one year as a public health inspector in a small town (inspecting restaurants, housing, and so forth). She lives with her parents, doesn't have a boyfriend, but enjoys going out with friends. She probably had a very happy childhood—happy parents, popular in high school, a good student. I am impressed with and also bored by such happiness. She was traveling to visit friends. I told her how I had been kicked out by Karen and then had to spend the night in the airport. She said I should dump Karen: "She gives all women a bad name." I told her I was pretty tolerant or I would have dumped her long ago, though I agreed that, under the circumstances, I wouldn't be visiting Karen again. I gave her my business card and suggested she call me if her friends weren't available and she wanted to have lunch. I had to apologize for the photograph on the business card because it has a beard and is a bad picture anyway. I really need to get a new set of cards made, with my more recent photograph. Also, I might want to omit the title of president. Several people have remarked that this title seems inflated for a one-person operation, and I agree. But I can't call myself owner of a corporation, and there were good reasons why I wanted to incorporate. I either call myself president, or I omit a title altogether, or I call myself "principal", but that sounds even more pretentious than president, though maybe I'm wrong about that.

I was awoken early several times by phone calls, which I ignored before finally crawling out bed about mid-morning, still feeling groggy. The email backlog has risen to fifty again. A customer with a site license is complaining again about problems with one of my programs. They sent email a month ago for this same problem and I never responded. Earlier this week they sent two emails, to which I have yet to respond.

I dropped by Helen's building on the way back from the cafe. She wasn't in so I left a message. When we talked later, she asked me not to drop by unexpectedly in the future, nor to leave intimate sounding messages on her answering machine, since Paul might be visiting. "He's already very suspicious of us as it is." They have been having strictly anal sex recently, with her lying either on her stomach or on her back. She prefers the latter, since it is more intimate, but needs to practice since it makes her sore to keep her legs lifted up in the air for long periods of time. Anal sex was exciting at first, but now it just bores her to have him pumping away while she lies passively. On the other hand, she doesn't get bladder infections from it. I inquired about some specifics. She says his cock doesn't seem to get dirtied by shit, nor does she have an urge afterwards to take a crap, though she did after the first few times. She also mentioned that Paul has bad breath, which annoys her.

I described my visit to Karen, then Helen related that she and Paul also had a fight this past weekend. It seems she borrowed his shorts when she went to work on Saturday, since it was hot and she had worn long pants to his apartment on Friday. He later complained that, because she had taken his shorts, he was unable to go swimming. Another dispute occurred last week, when she promised to cook him dinner, but then later suggested they postpone dinner for a while until the temperature dropped, whereupon he launched into a long harangue: "You have to learn to keep your promises. I've noticed this about you in the past, you say you are going to do something and then you change your mind later. This is something that you have to work on. You're being very selfish." That same night, after they had sex, he told her that the relationship was a very strange one, that all they do is bicker and there is nothing but friction between them and she doesn't show true devotion and love and so forth.

Paul was fired from his job two days ago, due to incompetence and bad work attitude. The consultant who fired him said he needs to take a pay cut and start again at the bottom. He has a degree in engineering, but his skills are out-of-date. According to the consultant, his work is "sub-par". After he was fired, he went to the unemployment agency and was the only Caucasian man there. This job he just lost was the first he has ever held for more than a year. For three years prior to obtaining this job, he was unemployed and supported by his wife at the time. Only when she divorced him did he go out and find a job again. An unstable work history, in other words. He says that, as he ages, he expects it will be increasingly hard for him to find work. He doesn't know what he is going to do. I warned Helen to avoid giving Paul any money, since I suspect he is on a trajectory towards homelessness. My impression is that he has too much pride to work at a menial job, but he won't be able to find the sort of high-paying job he thinks he deserves, and so, unless Helen supports him, he will quickly exhaust his savings, go into debt, declare bankruptcy, be evicted, lose his car, fall into depression and listlessness and eventually end up in the gutter. I also warned Helen that Paul might make one last attempt to leave behind some spawn before he drops into poverty and loses his attractiveness to women. Helen replied that there wouldn't be any spawn as long as they confined themselves to anal sex.

Bernelli called and talked excitedly for half an hour. The usual insanity. The district attorney sent him a notice indicating charges had been dropped for an arrest last week, when he created a disturbance in a church. He is suing the mayor for stealing $6000 he lent him. He is buying a Cadillac ("Jew canoe") for $800. He has bought three cars in the past from Lucky Pete's Used Car Lot but is always ripped off because he is gullible. Received his Medicaid card finally. Some nigger-filipino woman was giving him a hard time. White trash punks stole his wallet. Train ticket expired and is no longer valid. Grounds for another lawsuit. And on and on it goes. He says he will call me this weekend.

I masturbated with a rock solid hard-on, to fantasy of fucking some woman in the face. I've decided to abandon restraint and masturbate as often as I want and to hell with not being aroused if and when I find someone to have sex with. The more I masturbate, the more I want to masturbate.

Bernelli called. He just said hello then goodbye. He had a cold and was going home, he said.

Helen called. She had a miserable weekend with Paul. She was feeling sick but he nevertheless convinced her to have sex. He was fucking away at her butt and all she could think was, "how did I get into this miserable situation and how can I escape?" Then the phone rang and he pulled out to go answer it. She took advantage of his absence to run into the bathroom. "Saved by the phone!" He tells her later: "You have many things to offer—beauty, talent and intelligence—but the key word is offer. You don't seem to offer anything to me." She replies nothing, waiting instead to vent at me. "I don't offer him anything? I offered him my ass to fuck! The selfish creep! And what does he offer me? Sex that I don't enjoy, constant criticism and dutch treats at restaurants! Why am I spending time with this jerk?"

Paul will be traveling to the east coast soon and is confident of getting a job there. He expects his future employer will pay enough for him to maintain his existing apartment here in the city, as well as another apartment in the east, and to pay him to fly back and forth, and possibly even pay for Helen to accompany him on these flights. Helen thinks he is completely detached from reality. She typed up his resume for him at her place of work, since he can no longer use the computers there. I pointed out that he could rent a computer at the office supplies store.

Today was the first time I used the weight vest I recently bought. The idea is to build leg strength by wearing this weight vest while stepping up and down on a stool. I felt completely exhausted after performing this exercise. I always eat a can of water-packed sardines on days when I do leg calisthenics, so that my body will have enough protein for muscle building. This in addition to the usual breakfast of a big bowl of oatmeal and wheat germ.

While at the cafe, I had two pieces of chocolate cake. The first I ordered from a fussy faggot with his hair styled into a cowlick. Who wants to have sex with such a creature, I wondered? Other effeminate faggots? He swished about in a hurry and cut me what I considered a smallish slice of cake. Before going back to order the second slice, I carefully waited until he was no longer behind the counter (he was swishing about cleaning tables instead). Sure enough, the other counterperson cut me a slice that was about twenty percent larger than what the swish had cut.

I was feeling tense in the afternoon, and so decided to masturbate. My fantasy was fucking deep inside Karen's cunt. She was sopping wet the two times we did have sex. Afterwards, luxuriating in post-orgasmic calm, I tried to imagine what it would be like to be fucked in the ass by a man, or to have him jack off while I sucked his balls. The idea is appealing, but only if I'm in a woman's body. The idea of sex with a man, while inhabiting a man's body, just doesn't seem to interest me. I also wondered if maybe I should try sex with Lisa after all. The physical act couldn't be all that bad. Or could it?

A long conversation with Mark, who had called last week. Tony is up to a liter of booze a day, and is starting to have heart palpitations, a swollen tongue, and other signs of imminent physical collapse due to alcohol abuse. Tony is twenty-nine now and has been drinking steadily since he was sixteen, so that Mark worries that he might die within a few more years. He is considering whether to drive Tony to the hospital and have him admitted there for detoxification treatment. Tony doesn't have medical insurance, but a doctor friend explained that if they fabricate some stories of seizures, then the hospital won't refuse admission. Mark probably won't be taking the position of caring for my aunt, partly because of the pay, which is less than what he is currently making taking care of the old woman in the suburbs, and partly because he is taking nursing classes and is happy with current situation. I wasn't surprised, since I hadn't expected him to take the job, for precisely the reasons just noted. But I did at least want to give him an opportunity to consider it.

To bed at about midnight because I was feeling tired, then I woke up again at dawn, feeling completely alert, then back to sleep, only to be awoken several times to process orders. I masturbated, returned to a drowsy half sleep, masturbated again, slept some more. Why am I so tired? Last night I dropped off to sleep almost immediately after lying down. Am I sleepy because of oversleeping? Maybe I'm sick. Or maybe I'm exhausting myself with these leg calisthenics with the weight vest.

Dinner with Helen at a restaurant, where I let her read large sections of this journal. She found it amusing and offered some corrections. For example, she continues to sometimes want to take a crap after anal sex, such as just this past weekend, which is why she ran to the bathroom when Paul pulled out to answer the phone. She wanted to know about an ex-girlfriend I occasionally fantasize about. I then told her I had chosen her over the ex-girlfriend because this ex-girlfriend was too sensitive and refined and would have never been able to tolerate my crudeness. She took this as a dubious compliment, which it is.

The dinner tasted fine, but afterwards we both had horrible smelling burps, as bad smelling as farts. We decided to visit the rooftop nightclub together, but the band was playing a cacophonous mishmash of musical styles that neither of us liked. So we left after just an hour and returned to Helen's apartment, where we lay in bed, talking and hugging. Towards the end, I got aroused and "mauled" Helen, as she put it. She says she doesn't want to have sex with me because she doesn't want to be unfaithful to Paul. But she seemed to enjoy my state of arousal.

The cafe was closed today when I stopped by in the afternoon. A young man outside was passing out flyers. From the rear, he appeared dressed in the uniform worn by the cafe employees, so I assumed the flyers were to explain why the cafe was closed. I asked him, "What's up?" He turned and I was able to look at his face. He appeared about eighteen, with good complexion and bright blue eyes, his pupils dilated and with a frightening dead expression on his face. A heroin addict. "Looking for a date?" he asked, in a lifeless voice. I turned and quickly walked away. What do his "dates" do with him? If a heroin addict, he probably can't get an erection. And he seemed too lifeless to give a decent blow-job. Do they fuck him in the ass, perhaps? Slamming away at his limp body, pulling his head back by the hair, bellowing with sexual fury? Do they use a condom? Perhaps his dates get a special jump from the idea of pumping him full of their own AIDS. Or do they just fondle his youthful flesh, getting a thrill at being so close to a boy so young, so smooth-skinned and yet already so perverted and careening towards an early death?

Helen was working from home today, so I stopped by her apartment to help her with sending a fax via computer. Then we argued about where to eat dinner. I finally convinced her to go to a quiet cafe up the street from the one that was closed. She would have preferred someplace in the nightclub district. But the restaurants there are always crowded and noisy, which would have set the stage for a quarrel between us. The cafe I chose, by contrast, was wonderfully empty and tranquilizing. After dinner, we walked to the avenue and waited there for the bus. She plans to spend the night at Paul's apartment, since she is feeling sick and doesn't want to have to walk a long distance to work in the morning (his apartment is very close to her place of work). He is out of town and has left her his keys. I told her she is like a hermit crab, always wanting to move into the apartment of the man she is in love with.

I lay on the sofa upon returning to my apartment, and began to feel tired again. Finally, disgusted by my laziness, I rushed out to a nightclub for live salsa dancing. But enjoyment can't be forced. So I sat tired and miserable for an hour, unable to enjoy either the music or the dancing. I ducked out when I spotted the salsa dancing instructor heading my way. I didn't want to meet him when I was feeling depressed, since he is always cheerful and greets me with a big smile whenever we meet. I decided my tiredness was partially due to undereating, and therefore bought a pint of chocolate ice cream at a corner store, and gobbled this down when I returned to my apartment. What a mistake! My body seemed to scream in pain at having been stuffed with toxic food.

I woke up late, feeling groggy despite or because of nine hours sleep, with a stopped up nose, and still disgusted by the pint of chocolate ice cream I ate last night. After processing a few orders, I lay back down and masturbated, and then fell into a dreamy half-sleep, which was interrupted several times by phone calls. I would leap up cursing and wishing I had never started this business, then run to the phone and pick it up, and begin speaking, politely but without achieving full wakefulness until midway into a conversation, so that I worried later that I might have blurted out something crazy, like: "Hello, this is the fuck-up corporation, pisser speaking." Then back to bed after finishing with the call. I masturbated a second time in the afternoon. I hadn't really wanted to masturbate at all, but then I got bored and wanted to check whether I was still capable of an erection, and one thing led to another.

Stopped up nose, feeling of utter exhaustion and of being stuffed by ice cream, oversleeping, excessive masturbation, hours and hours of dreaming (I can remember none of the dreams, incidentally). Maybe I really am sick. I climbed out of bed late in the afternoon and made my way down to the cafe, huddling against buildings and under eaves to protect myself from a fine misty drizzle, which had been falling all day. This rain is a pleasant break from the constant sunshine of the past few weeks. I had pizza for dinner, then remained in the cafe reading until closing time. I was feeling euphoric on the way back to my apartment, smiling and laughing and with a return at last of vigorous energy in my leg muscles. The joy of recovering health after an illness!

Some of my thoughts while at the cafe are as follows. I don't know why I feel sorry for myself for not having friends and lovers. I enjoy masturbation and always have. Certainly, in many respects I would prefer sex with a flesh and blood woman. But I also miss not having a cat to pet, and yet the lack of a pet cat never makes me feel sorry for myself. If I really wanted a woman, or pet cat, I would have long ago gotten one. As far as friends, I can meet a wider variety through the Internet than I could ever meet in person. I should spend a few hours each day seeking out compatible conversation partners in online forums or via websites. Of course, then I have to figure out something to say to these conversation partners. Also, I'll have to feign interest in what they say to me. Back to square one.

Lisa called and invited me to an tour of art galleries this weekend. I agreed to go, though I don't feel the slightest desire to have sex with her. Masturbation has completely exhausted me. Also, after the experience with Karen, I'm leery of sex with women who don't excite me, and Lisa certainly fits in that category. Why doesn't she interest me? Perhaps having sex with her would restore my sex drive. Helen had called earlier in the day and mentioned Lisa, coincidentally. She has been reading a book about oriental sex lore and thinks I need more yin energy, and the book says the best way to get this is by having sex with a woman.

My performance in the leg calisthenics has improved tremendously in the past week. Perhaps I've been sleeping so much in order to build muscle. I had sardines and oatmeal for breakfast, then listened to music, then sunbathed for a half-hour on the roof. A heavy lunch of lentils, followed by a nap, followed by dinner at the cafe, followed by a second dinner of six scrambled eggs and four english muffins. I'm thinking again that my tiredness may be due to insufficient food, especially protein, in light of the heavy leg calisthenics I've been doing.

I got a solid erection while napping, and played with it, but didn't persist to orgasm. I'm feeling sexually alive again. Perhaps the interest Lisa has shown in me is the cause of this awakened desire, though I still don't relish the idea of having sex with her. Still, it's nice to know some woman wants me for sex. Helen seems fond of me in every way except sexually. Maybe I should just try sex with Lisa and see what happens. If a fiasco, then we resume being "just friends", which is all we are now. Otherwise, I get my needed infusion of yin energy. I don't know how to approach her, though. "Well, Lisa, if you're still having trouble finding a sex partner, I'm willing to try with you." It seems pointless to pretend enthusiasm and excitement, since she will probably see through the pretense and resent me for not respecting her enough to tell the truth. I could go on and on like this, considering possible scenarios and courses of action. This is how I have spent most of my life. Never bothering to take action. Just speculating on what might happen, especially what unpleasantness might happen, if I did take action.

Lisa came by in the early afternoon. As noted above, I had considered the possibility of having sex with her. While I haven't used her in my masturbation fantasies, I have tried to think of her in a sexual way. But the minute I walked out the front door of my apartment building and saw her grinning at me, dressed as unattractively as possible in tennis shoes and faded blue denim pants and denim jacket, I just lost all appetite for sex. She tried hugging me, but I slipped to the side so we avoided a full embrace or kiss. We spent the afternoon driving around to art galleries. I had neglected to bring my sunglasses and so got a headache from the blazing sunshine (as well as from the stress of pretending to enjoy Lisa's company). None of the art or artists struck me as being even remotely interesting.

Lisa mentioned that she had placed a personals ad, from which she received at least twenty responses (she stopped counting after that). Of these twenty, she talked to twelve and met eight. Of these eight, she had sex with two. One was unable to get a solid enough erection to put on a condom. The guy suggested Lisa suck his cock to help him get hard, but she refused for several reasons. She had a cold sore which might infect him, his cock was full of piercings, and he didn't seem very knowledgeable about sexually transmitted diseases, which she thought worrisome. So they didn't have intercourse. She didn't elaborate as to what they did do and I felt embarrassed to ask.

The other man she had sex with kept biting the side of her neck, painful bites deep into her flesh, as if her were trying to bite loose a chunk of meat, though without breaking the skin. She asked him to stop but he persisted. She later asked a lesbian friend about the man's behavior. The lesbian said this sort of abuse sounded weird, but then what did she know, she was always getting abused by her lovers. "She used to go with men, and they abused her, and so she did a switch to women and now they abuse her. I always meet up with weird friends. Oh, well, so I decided this wasn't going to work." She has admitted that most of her friends are lesbians and either irresponsible or slightly kooky.

She complained that most of the men who answered her ad were old, unattractive and/or lacking any sort of strength of personality. Her ad specified that she was a "submissive." She complained that the men who answered were "dishrags", and thus, presumably, the opposite of what a submissive would want. Presumably, the natural complement to a submissive is a dominant. But what exactly do these terms submissive and dominant mean? I didn't ask her this question nor did I ask her dozens of other questions that popped into my mind. She interests me and annoys me at the same time, so I just don't feel comfortable talking to her. There is a kind of coarseness to her that I would normally associate with the most masculine bull dyke. At the same time, she seems to have a desperate need for something I can't put my finger on, but whatever it is, I don't feel like providing it. Perhaps she has always felt herself scorned by men for not being sufficiently feminine and wants some tall, dark, handsome and dominant stranger to come riding up and make her feel like a true woman. She told me she had been sterilized about fifteen years ago so she could have sex without condoms or birth control pills and not worry about getting pregnant. But she now requests men to use condoms anyway, as protection against AIDS, so her sterilization was pointless.

She came back to my apartment after the art gallery tour, to use the bathroom and phone and to briefly chat. I showed her my own collection of original art, such as it is (there is one good finished painting, by an old friend, everything else is sketches or fragments cut from unfinished paintings). I don't know what she expected me to do, try to seduce her perhaps? We sat in my living room and I discussed the prices I had paid for various of my furnishings, though I don't know why, since such money-obsessed conversation disgusts me. Maybe I want to annoy her and drive her away. I had anticipated that she might visit me, and so had shelved all my books about homosexuality, and conspicuously spread a number of books about heterosexual sex on my coffee table. I kept wishing she would comment on these books, but she didn't. Nor did she stay long, as she had previous plans to attend the symphony with a girlfriend. I spent the rest of the evening by myself, reading.

Helen called and asked for help with her computer. We spent several hours together, including dinner at a restaurant. She has been staying at Paul's apartment while he is out of town. Her sister is pregnant again. She says she wants to find a man and start having babies herself. She put a personals ad in the paper and got several responses, including one from a man who says he was once friends with the President of the United States, which we agreed was a ludicrous sounding boast to be making in a response to a personals ad. She asked me what it was like when a man has an orgasm. I told her this was a ridiculous question but she insisted on an answer so in exasperation I told her it was like a bowel movement. Needless to say, she wasn't impressed by this answer.

Bernelli called. He was sitting outside the cafe, when one of the workers there ordered him to leave. They got into an argument. The worker then allegedly threw a glass at him. A cop came and, after reviewing Bernelli's prior arrest record, arrested him on charges of battery and took him away to jail. If he gets another felony conviction, he could be sentenced to life in prison, so I hope he is careful. The phone conversation was interrupted as we were speaking. I wonder if he was calling me from jail and wanted me to bail him out. Why didn't he say so? Or is it reasonable for me to expect rational behavior from a lunatic?

I'm getting sloppier and sloppier with the business. Today, for example, I spent all my time transcribing my old voice diaries instead of doing real work. How these old voice diaries bring back memories! On one of the tapes I listened to today, there was something about how a woman with whom I had gone on a date had told me I should quit my job after I told her I hated it. This was back when I was working as a computer programmer for a large corporation, piling up savings in preparation for retirement. "You shouldn't spend time doing something you don't enjoy." Easy to say, of course. But her words do provoke reflection.

My lawyer called and filled me in on what is happening with the conservatorship for my father. He also asked if I wanted to proceed with a suit to recover assets misappropriated by my sister from my father's estate. I replied no, since I've had enough with this legal squabbling for now. Also, if I do eventually want to proceed with such a suit, there is still plenty of time before any statute of limitations kicks in.

Afterwards, I decided to call my sister and father, for the first time since the trial, but got the answering machine. My sister has changed the greeting to be less crazy sounding than before (no imitations of a cow mooing, for example) but it still isn't normal-sounding. I left a message saying I want to talk to my father. A few hours later he called back. Supposedly he has a private phone line, but I don't know the number. So I asked him for it while we talked but he couldn't tell me. I then asked him how he dialed my number. He didn't know, so I assume my sister dialed for him. We talked briefly. He started discussing his conservatorship and got flustered. "I can't do a God damn thing! I can't do anything!" Evidently my sister has been impressing on him that he is powerless now that a conservatorship has been established, trying to make him feel humiliated so as to turn him against me, with her ultimate goal being to grab the whole estate for herself, by getting him to write a new will cutting me out. She may already have accomplished this. Of course, she won't get the money until my father dies. My father is angry with me and with his brother. I wasn't aware of his anger at his brother (my uncle), but it explains why this brother never gets responses to his phone calls. It is really pitiful how far my father's mind has deteriorated. He is now a complete pawn in my sister's hands. At the end of the conversation, he urgently requested that I write him a letter. Probably some idea my sister planted in his head, for who only knows what purpose. Perhaps to use as evidence to show that I feel my father is sufficiently competent to read a letter. In any case, I wrote him a short letter and sent it to him together with a recent photo of myself.

Afterwards, I thought about my possible courses of action if my father has signed a new will. (Note that it will surely be my sister who writes this new will. My father will merely sign where he is told to sign.) My current thinking is that I'll contest, but only if a lawyer agrees to take the case on contingency. I don't really relish a fight at all, and certainly not one where I stand to lose another $30,000 in legal fees.

Bernelli called. "Oh, sweetheart, it's so good to hear you. Listen, I've been through hell. The cop just knocked me down, wouldn't listen to what I had to say. Everyone stood around laughing. He stole my wallet, too. That's a lawsuit. I'm going to sue him and sue that faggot place that got me busted. I was just sitting outside and the little Hitler who works there comes out and throws a glass at me."

"The one who wears glasses and a baseball hat?"

"That's the one. A Nazi. He hates me because I'm Jewish. And the owner is a faggot from Germany. I wasn't doing anything. They were going to bust me for panhandling because I asked for $5. I told the cop, I don't need money, I'm a rich man, I was just on my way to the bank to make a withdrawal. Then he looked in my wallet, got my ID or whatever, looked up my record, and decided to bust me for battery."

"Where are you now?"

"I'm in the mental hospital. They think I'm crazy. All I did was start screaming, die! die!, and so they thought I was going to commit suicide. Of course, I'm screaming die!, that's because this whole city is full of faggots with AIDS trying to kill themselves. It's that cop who rides a bike up and down the street harassing people, the one with a scar on his face. He came here from New York City to replace the one who got shot at the drugstore four years ago. A mean person. Oh, my life is a soap opera! And you're part of it now, sweetheart... They're afraid of me! And they should be. It once took seventeen cops to bring me down. I'm having problem with my hotel. Never, ever have I seen so many drug addicts in my life. And filthy! A nice girl next door, though. I decorated her apartment. You might want to meet her. Voluptuous body. She's probably out on the street corner now trying to earn some money. And then the gay convention at the hotel. What a spread of food they had! But they wouldn't serve me. And I had money. I don't need your charity, I told them, I'm a rich man. I made thirteen and a half million dollars and now I can't get social security. It's a filipino communist plot. Along with the blacks. This black guy on the bus. I said to him, I'm going to put a spell on you. So he stopped the bus and wouldn't go on until I got off. So I got off and got on the next one. Oh, you've got to get out of this town! It's full of drug addicts and vicious Nazi's. Come to Beverly Hills. You'll see, everything is so much better there. I'll keep my little apartment here in the hotel, though. Make it my office. Then get a big place in boy's town, so you can come visit me. I'd never even have gone to that faggot place if it didn't bring back memories of the day you met me. You're the only person who's ever been nice to me in this town and I've lived here twenty-seven years. You should have come to the German party, remember the one I told you about? All kinds of ex-Nazi's, a man who used to sell spices to the Fuehrer. And then the Kaiser, they locked him in a concentration camp because he was a member of the Kaiser's family. They kept telling me to get out, but I didn't pay them any attention. Ha! Ha! Of course I harass them. They won't serve me. I used to know everyone down there. Now it's all run by these anti-Semitic Arabs. I'm going to sue them all. I saw a car for sale, $4000. I'll buy it on the installment plan and drive down to Beverly Hills in style. Everywhere I go, cash and carry. I'd sue the church if I could. I gave them $2000. Now they kick me out and call the police. A lawsuit! But you can't sue the catholic church up here. They're too powerful. I can make $100 giving a haircut in Beverly Hills. And my family. Very well-known, but low-profile of course. I can't find any of them because they have unlisted numbers. My brother is in the Mafia, my uncle is in the Mafia. They own the city. Oh, well, thanks for listening. I'll talk to you later." Then he hung up.

I processed the more urgent orders and let the others pile up. There is a huge backlog of email that remains unanswered. A sales executive from a reseller called trying to get me to advertise in their catalog and establish them as resellers. I was busy transcribing my voice diaries and didn't want to talk, so I told her the business was not doing too well and I couldn't afford any new advertising, which managed to dampen her enthusiasm somewhat. Nevertheless, she said she would call back next week. How persistent these sales people are! As for the transcribing, it is damned slow and tiresome work.

The fire marshal and police were in the process of shutting down the first nightclub I went to tonight, for having too many people inside, which is a violation of the fire code. Their official limit is fifty, which is probably reasonable given the layout of the club, though I have been there many times in the past when there were over two hundred people jammed inside. I went instead to the large disco, where I danced up a sweat in the main room, then sat for while in the chill room, then danced some more in the downstairs room. Life is certainly more enjoyable now that I'm accepting that masturbation is my true sex life. None of this frustrating worry about picking up women. Though it seems pointless to be going to discos if I'm not interested in finding a sex partner. But if I don't go out at night, then how will I pass the time?

Lunch with Helen at the cafe. I showed her my transcriptions so far of my voice diaries, including the first month she and I were together. Afterwards, we went back to her apartment and lay down on the bed there and hugged and talked. I got an erection and showed it to her. "See what you've done. And to think, I masturbated this morning. You really arouse me." At first she acted annoyed, then she suddenly leaned over and began sucking me. Which led to me licking her to orgasm, and then my masturbating while she kissed and licked my balls. Then we talked some more, then worked on her computer and afterwards had dinner at a restaurant. On the way back to her apartment, we passed the tobacco shop, where she sniffed at the odor of tobacco emanating from within and remarked that it was a smell she greatly enjoyed. I suggested we go inside for a minute. I pointed out a tabloid with some headlines about a celebrity murder scandal and asked Helen if she'd been keeping up with that story. She shook her head, then whispered, "Buy me a porno magazine." So I picked up one and thumbed through it until I came to some pictures I thought might interest her: a bearded and tattooed man coming in a woman's face, while another man fucks her in the cunt, both men wearing a few items of black leather clothing, the woman held down as if being raped. I showed her these photos.

"Do you like this?" I asked. Helen moved away and pretended to be reading some other magazines.

"Don't embarrass me!" she hissed.

"I thought you'd like this."

"Forget it. I'm leaving." She walked out of the store with me following.

"Well, do you want the porn or not? I'll buy it but only if you want it. Don't say no if you want it, but don't waste my money either."

"I want it but only if you get something tasteful."

"Okay, I'll go get it then."

"I'll wait across the street so no one can see me and think I'm associated with you." I returned to the store, bought the magazine with the photos of the bikers, crossed the street to where she was waiting, and handed her the magazine, discreetly concealed in a bag.

"Here, you'll probably enjoy this." Helen accepted the bag and tucked it under her arm without looking inside.

"I know I said I wanted something tasteful, but then I changed my mind and thought that maybe I'd rather you got one of the kinky magazines, something where the woman gets tied up and beaten."

"I think you'll be happy with what I got."

"I'm going to start masturbating more. I have no other choice, since I can't have intercourse."

She is feeling very stressed at her job, to the point where she is thinking of quitting, or telling her boss off, or committing suicide, or calling in sick tomorrow. She wants to go back to work as a temp, doing word-processing and other white-collar office work. I recommended she stick with her current job until she has some good idea about her future plans, since office temp work is likely to be no different from what she is doing now, except for less pay, less benefits and less respect.

I spent about twenty minutes at a salsa nightclub talking with a young woman, with whom I had danced several songs. I gave her my business card, then showed her my driver's license, at which she laughed, because it shows me with a beard and looking like a madman or mass murderer. After that, the conversation died. She seems intelligent, but we have no real compatibility, despite the strong physical attraction. She is a first year college student, majoring in child development and psychology, and obviously planning to get married and start having babies soon. I soon regretted coming over to her table to talk. How to politely escape? Luckily, someone else asked her to dance and I slipped away, never to return.

Towards the end of the evening, I danced with an older woman, about fifty, dressed in evening clothes. She didn't know salsa dancing, and kept trying to pull me into a tight hold where we could sway together. I finally obliged, whereupon she humped her groin against my hip for several minutes, grinding her clitoris against my hip bone. She was with another woman, both of them from the distant suburbs, and visiting the city to attend the symphony and then go dancing. I considered inviting her back to my apartment, but the presence of her friend and the fact that she is from far away made it an unlikely proposition, especially since I don't have a car. Also, her mouth had a stale smell, probably from cigarettes, which disgusted me. Otherwise, she was in good condition for her age, and certainly very horny. We chatted briefly, and I felt comfortable with her. But she was probably stupider than she at first seemed. I tend to overestimate women's intelligence when they are obviously attracted to me. My feet felt exhausted when I got home. I didn't get to sleep until almost four in the morning.

Helen stopped by on her way to work, to use my bathroom. She said she had thrown away the porno magazine I bought her yesterday.

"It was disgusting!"

"But I bought it because you asked me to. Did you see the pictures of the tattooed man fucking the woman in the mouth?"

"I threw it in the incinerator and I don't want any more of that trash in my apartment. Now I've got to go." I was still naked, since she had woken me from sleep. I lay down onto the futon and pulled the comforter over me as she talked. "Why aren't you dressed and working? Is this how you plan to spend your day? What's with you? Did you go out dancing again last night?"

She called me later from work, wanting to schedule dinner with me, but I was out when she called, and didn't get back in time to return her call.

In the evening, I stopped by the tobacco store, to get another look at the magazine I had bought for Helen. The photos of the tattooed men were part of a series about teaching inexperienced young woman about bondage, discipline, submission and other aspects of sex. That is, exactly the sort of erotica that Helen always tells me she interested in.

About midnight (and thus three in the morning on the east coast) Mark called and left a message, asking me to call him back. Some big event has supposedly occurred in his life and he wants to ask my opinion.

While doing leg calisthenics with my weight vest, I've been roaring and bellowing at the top of my lungs, which seems to relax my chest and stomach muscles, so that I breathe easier the rest of the day. I think it's been years since I last roared at the top of my lungs (and maybe fifteen years since I last cried). Maybe this is what primal scream therapy is like.

A customer called and wanted an enhancement to one of my programs, consisting of about ten lines of code, plus documentation updates. I tested for backward compatibility, then uploaded the new version to the web site, then sent the customer an email thanking him for the suggestion and indicating that the enhanced version was now available. All this was accomplished within two hours. It feels good to know I'm still capable of doing competent work.

Mark called and we talked. He went to a dinner party the other night where he was fed drug laced brownies. Apparently, the brownies had been prepared earlier by a housemate of the host, and then left in the refrigerator. The host saw them there, and decided to serve them to his guests, not knowing they were drug laced. Mark says he was awake and high all night. This was the "big event in his life" which he had mentioned in his phone call, which had been made while he was still high.

Dinner with Helen at the cafe. I gave her a necklace as her birthday present. Her birthday is actually tomorrow, but she already had planned dinner then with Paul. She discovered today that his sister is also invited to this dinner, which she thought strange and annoying. Paul spent heavily during his recent trip, despite no longer having an income. He was visiting his family and felt obligated to take them out to dinner, buy them presents, and otherwise put on a show of spending money. I warned Helen to beware of him, since he definitely seems in denial about his financial situation, and may start trying to get her to support him soon, using every psychological tool at his disposal. I warned her that he either is, or soon will be, desperate for money, and that she is a easy mark for a man who knows how to manipulate her, make her feel guilty and take advantage of her good nature. She phoned me later from her apartment to ask a computer question, and we got into an argument. She accused the cafe of drugging their food with speed: "They tried to poison you, and who can blame them, but since we swapped dishes, they ended up poisoning me instead."

Phone conversations with two women who answered my ad. Neither of them wanted to meet me, nor was I particularly enthusiastic about meeting them. We had little to say to one another, with them cutting me off as soon as I started to ask probing questions. I don't want to listen to or talk to them. They don't want to listen to or talk to me. A hellish world of men and women who can't stand one another's company but also can't stand being alone. Why do I torture myself with these ads? At least in nightclubs there is the consolation that we find one another physically attractive. But with these ads, there is just pure disgust with the voice at the other end of the line. Disembodied souls who despise one another's essence.

I masturbated in one of the porn shop video booths in the nightclub district, staring at close-ups of blowjobs and fucking. I didn't come and didn't really want to come. The chair was clean, unexpectedly, so I was able to sit down while I watched. The booth has a wire mesh ceiling, so I can hear a medley of sounds from the rest of the store. The cashier chatting with a friend, doors opening with a squeaking of the hinges and then banging shut, moaning and other sexual sounds from videos playing in the other booths, the cash register ringing. $2 for about five minutes. Afterwards, I browsed in a used bookstore until I got a headache. Altogether, it felt like a wasted day. Of course, ultimately, all days are wasted. We all die in the end. I ate a whole package of oatmeal raisin cookies as a bedtime snack.

Phone conversation with Sonya, a young woman from Russia who answered my ad, then we met at a cafe and talked some more. She is very attractive—medium height, light brown hair, green eyes, slim and in excellent shape, a delicate body just made to be licked and fucked—and there was strong sexual energy between us. She left Russia seven years ago and now works designing bridal gowns. Someday, she hopes to open her own business. She likes to read. "I love that store, I could spend my whole day in here," she said, referring to the bookstore next door to the cafe. I brought up the subject of astrology. She is somewhat skeptical of this pseudo-science, and I told I was too, but that I tried to believe it in order to stretch my mind, so to speak, by forcing myself to believe in both science and astrology simultaneously. She is a Scorpio, which I told her is very compatible with Capricorn (my sign). "How so?" she asked. "Well, for one thing, they are very compatible sexually," I replied. She laughed and then almost immediately looked around nervously, as if to see if anyone had been listening in on our conversation. We discussed getting together for salsa dancing tonight. She may or may not come, depending on how tired she is. I said I would call her soon in any case.

I reflected later that this Sonya seems like the most promising date I've had in months. I didn't bring up the fact that I don't want marriage or children, because, surprisingly, I got to thinking that maybe I did want to marry and have children with her. I didn't tell her this, of course.

I danced with six women at the salsa club this evening, but did poorly with them all. Perhaps I made it evident that they didn't interest me, which offended them. After the meeting with Sonya, I find it difficult to feign enthusiasm for the woman at these dances, with whom I feel I have nothing in common. I ended up pushing several away and having us dance separately. Unfortunately, the dance floor was too crowded to do free style dancing. Also, I was feeling tired and probably wasn't dancing with much energy. One woman, who was smiling widely herself, asked: "Can't you smile even a little?" So I broke a brief smile then resumed my normal blank expression, probably tinted with some hostility, since I hate being told to smile. She interrupted the dancing after a few minutes, cocked her head as if politely thanking me, and wandered off, still smiling. A phony smile, even more tiring and unpleasant to look at for long periods of time than a sincere smile. The salsa dance instructor recognized me, clapped me on the shoulder and said, with a big and sincere smile: "Get yourself a woman!" I smiled back at him, a more or less sincere and spontaneous smile of my own. It's interesting that he says "woman". North Americans usually prefer a neutral term: partner, person, someone.

Phone conversation with Helen, who had left a message yesterday. This past weekend, she visited her sister, who is having morning sickness from her pregnancy. Paul is now working part-time, doing contract work at $75/hour. He boasts that he will eventually be working full-time at this rate, making $200,000 a year and thus able to buy an expensive new car and a house where he and Helen can live together. Meanwhile, she mentioned to him that she had $5,000 that she wasn't sure how to invest and he told her, "Give it to me." She didn't know whether he was joking or serious, but, in any case, she refused. Whereupon he said, "So, you don't like to share?" Earlier she had bought some raspberries, which are fairly expensive this time of year. She pointed these out to him, saying, "They weren't on sale. I splurged." "Good," he replied. I warned her to be careful of mixing her finances with his. No joint checking accounts, no co-signed loans or leases, no credit cards in common, no lending him money, and so on. I briefly described the concepts of separate versus marital property in the event they marry and then divorce.

Paul now leaves for work before Helen and returns later. Perhaps because of his schedule, he has arranged that Helen feels obliged to make him dinner and then do all the dishes afterwards. "What a lot of pans I have to clean!" she complains. He told her one of his dreams, in which he is sitting on the toilet in the bathroom, when a crowd of women come in: "the cleaning people." Helen wonders if that is how he sees her, as a cleaning person. They had sex (she refused to give details) and she got her bladder infections again. I told her briefly about Sonya.

Salsa lessons in the evening, where we practiced hair combing, which brings the partners very close to one another. I was a tense mood for some reason and didn't feel like getting close to anyone, even attractive women, and started to feel hostile, and then began sweating from nervousness and frustration and had terrible body odor by the end of the evening. Nevertheless, I signed up for a whole slew of lessons next month. I'm determined to resolve my status with respect to leader/follower style social dancing. Either I confirm that I'm a flop, or else I learn how to do it properly. I bought a six-pack of beer and a package of cookies to help me relax after this stressful evening.

I spent much of the day idly dreaming about Sonya and masturbating to fantasies of licking her while lying on a grassy hill in the wilderness park, where I had sex with Helen once. Sonya has fair skin, so, if we ever try such a stunt, we'll have to be sure to provide sun protection. I left a message for her in the evening.

On the way to the cafe, I passed the quadriplegic who rides in a motorized wheelchair, which he controls by means of some buttons and sticks that he pushes with his chin. He asks, "Can you give me a quarter?" but I always give a dollar bill when I see him. He thanked me profusely, as usual. His voice is very weak and most people pass him by without realizing he has asked them for money. Probably his paralysis makes it difficult for him to speak loudly. Something about him cheers me up. Maybe his high spirits, in spite of his terrible physical impairment. He doesn't ask for pity, just for money. He doesn't seem to mind if he gets money or not. But he's grateful if he does get it.

In discussing with Helen my recommendations for a printer for her computer, I mentioned something about "ream", referring to reams of paper, and she exclaimed, "I don't want to hear that word!" Apparently, she is tired of being reamed in the ass by Paul. She refused to have sex one night, whereupon he put on a display of being too sexually frustrated to sleep. He tossed and turned in the bed, and finally he went to sleep on the sofa. She then had a dream wherein he went out and picked up a blonde floozy in a bar, Russian like Sonya, and brought her and her daughter back and had sex with both, while she was forced to watch. She is exhausted from work, from sickness, and from Paul's constant attentions. She wants to be alone when she gets home from work, and is trying to figure out a way to avoid Paul this weekend. "But I don't want to be completely alone. That's the only reason I stay with him...I think."

While processing orders, I found an order from one of my resellers, dated over a week ago, which had slipped down behind the desk. So they will be calling soon to see why it wasn't delivered. I feel so embarrassed at providing sloppy service.

Helen stopped by the cafe while I was having tea, and we had dinner there together. She is feeling physically sick and also tired of her job. Paul was ill today so she had an excuse not to visit him. She is thinking of quitting her job in a few months, then using her savings to take a year off to recover her health. Her sister is having very bad morning sickness, and is also depressed about job possibilities after she graduates. She has a very busy life. One young child, pregnant with a second, part-time teaching, working on her dissertation, at least an hour commuting to the university. I talked some about Sonya, then we walked together to the pharmacy, looking for a hot water bottle, then to the video store where Helen picked out a horror movie.

Sonya called and we talked on the phone. She expressed surprise that I was not out for Halloween. I was embarrassed and told her some lie about planning to go to a friend's house for a party, dressed in my leopard pattern shirt and oversized sunglasses. Looking like a sleazy nightclub character was I how described it, though looking like a flaming faggot might be a better description. Why did I feel compelled to lie? Then I suggested a meeting tomorrow, to which she agreed.

An unexpected call from that Eurasian dentist who answered my personal ad several months ago. She said she has been monitoring my ads ever since, and recently looked my name up in the phone book in order to find my address. "You live in a white building, don't you?" she asked. I expressed a willingness to meet, without much enthusiasm, however. She replied that she would call me sometime. I have already decided I don't want a sexual liaison with this woman, since she appears flaky, but I am interested in meeting her.

Helen called, to belatedly thank me for her birthday gift: an inlaid box with a necklace inside. She was busy eating herself sick with popcorn and plans to go on a shopping spree tomorrow. For her, these are typical symptoms of feeling depressed. Though when I inquired, she insisted that she wasn't depressed. She suggested we have breakfast together tomorrow. I declined, saying I had some errands to run before an afternoon date with Sonya. "You want to see that Russian woman instead of me. I can see what's happening here."

At the library, I checked out a copy of the novel Sonya was reading, then read through a few pages and found it tiresome, primarily because it is a novel and I find all novels tiresome these days. But I'll slog through, if for no other reason than being able to discuss the book with Sonya. Then I took the bus to the park, where we had arranged to meet. She was about twenty minutes late. We walked through the park to the residence and studio of a painter, who was holding an open house. Then back to the park, where we sat and talked while Sonya smoked her fancy brand of cigarettes. These are of tobacco, but such a strong type of tobacco that they make her feel intoxicated, she says, so that she would never dare smoke them while driving. She asked me about what I did last night. I had already lied about going out, in order not to appear anti-social, and so had to make up some story about a "bunch of people dressed up in costumes, I didn't stay too long". She probably detected something false in my tone of voice. Then we walked down a street lined with shops and stopped in at various used clothing stores, where Sonya looked at vintage wedding dresses, for ideas to incorporate into her own designs. She had initially planned to be a medical doctor, or at least work in the medical field, but now plans a career as a bridal consultant. She says she dreams of someday running her own business.

Dinner at a noisy restaurant, where we both had spicy food, washed down by sangria. I enjoyed the food and drink at the time, but it sat very poorly with me the next day (as I write). There was an hour wait for tables, so we sat instead at the bar. While there, she struck up conversation with a man sitting next to her, who offered us some of his carafe of sangria, which he couldn't finish. Then he exchanged names and phone numbers with us. After dinner, Sonya and I went to a sort of smoking bar, where we took turns smoking a hooka. She speaks fluent English, but seemed to be babbling at times, about soul mates and previous lives and dreams in life and whatnot. Maybe the sangria and tobacco went to her head. I walked her home through the park. She mentioned that she had been robbed several times in Russia, and that it was very dangerous when she was last there. We hugged but didn't kiss when we reached the house where she rents a room.

Helen called in the afternoon. She was feeling ill and wanted to come by, but I told her I had to leave early. A man answered her personals ad via email, and she and he are now exchanging email correspondence. She uploaded one of her stories (written in an extravagant style that I find unreadable) to her web site so the man could read it. He wrote back that "she writes like a nut, but a good nut." I told her that she seemed to be in a manic mood.

Dance lessons in the evening, preceded by a private lesson, with a very attractive woman dance instructor. I seemed to make great progress with her, especially guidance as to how to lead properly. The instructor of the group lesson taught a difficult maneuver, which I will never be able to use in a nightclub, and so I decided to leave early.

Helen came by to pick up a printer I had ordered for her. She was tired from work and for whatever reason began complaining that I had stolen this apartment from her after we broke up, and how she should have kicked me out and taken a roommate and made me live in a "dump" like the one she is now living in. I carried the printer to her apartment, where she seemed to cheer up. She proposed we eat at the cafe. I was annoyed because I had planned on a quiet evening alone.

"You mean you want to eat there?" I said, echoing her.

"Yes, I want to get out of this apartment."

"But I was planning to attend a meeting of the society of wits."

"A society of wits? Since when did you have any friends?"

"It's true that the society of wits I belong to currently only has one member. Namely, myself. Nevertheless, we are having a meeting and I don't want to miss it."

"Are you really crazy or just pretending to be crazy?"

"I am not at all crazy. I'm witty, as befits a member of a society of wits."

"Well, I'll join your society tonight."

"You don't have enough wit to join."

"Fool! You're the one who's lost his wits. Go on then, I don't want you here anymore."

"Well, perhaps we'll make an exception in this one case. Since you are not a real wit, just a halfwit so to speak, we'll let you come to half of our meetings, including tonight's. Now sweetie, my little pumpkin, don't get upset. My petunia. My buttercup. I'm using these terms wit and halfwit in the technical sense, which is different from their ordinary usage."

This fragment of conversation gives some idea of the infantile conversations we have. There is something about her that makes me act in a childish manner. No one else brings out this behavior in me. I always feel emasculated after spending long stretches of time with her, as if I had reverted to the level of a prepubescent boy.

While walking back to the cafe she remarked that it was such a pity that I had what she wanted—money—but yet didn't seem to care about it or enjoy it, while she had what I wanted—opportunities for sex—but couldn't enjoy sex due to her health problems.

"I talk about wanting to find a girlfriend, but let's look at the situation realistically. I'm not bad looking. I'm not an unpleasant person. If I really wanted to find a woman to have sex with, I could do so. Don't listen to what I say, instead look at what I've done with my life. Which is exactly what I planned to do when I was fourteen: accumulate money so I would be financially independent and not have to work for a living, live alone in an apartment in a big city, and spend my days reading and masturbating," I said.

"But that was your goal when you were fourteen years old! Goals change."

"Mine haven't. Not in their essential aspects at least. What you do in life is a much more accurate indication of your true desires than what you think or say you want. Anyway, the fact that I've had lovers, that I have this relationship with you, that I even lived with you for a few months..."

"And what misery you put me through!"

"...this is far more than I ever dreamed I'd achieve. And I feel very happy with my life, for all my complaining. I got what I really wanted, and much more besides. You were like a bonus I never expected."

She hasn't seen Paul since last week. They have spoken on the phone, however. His employment contract was for only three weeks and she doesn't know when he will be working again. He was working as an independent contractor. Several days he worked only four hours but he nevertheless plans to bill for ten (at $75/hour). "There he goes again, poisoning the waters with yet another potential employer," I commented. As an independent contractor, he is eligible to deduct business expenses on his income taxes. To take advantage of this tax write-off, he recently bought himself a deluxe laptop computer, costing over $5000. "He spends money on himself, not on me," complained Helen. They plan to go to a spa sometime soon, Dutch treat, for massages and whatnot. Upon parting, she despaired of ever finding a man to marry and have children with. "I'll always be your friend," I offered. She shook her head and said, "Surely you don't expect me to continue like this, do you? Eighty years old, living in that same dump, you and me still trotting down together to eat dinner at that same cafe? I don't think so."

I bought a shirt and pants at the discount clothing store. Not that I need any more clothes. I now have three shirts of the identical black pattern and four similar pairs of black pants, which I wear to nightclubs. And this summer I bought three identical pairs of black shoes. My reasoning for all this duplication is that I always seem to have trouble finding clothes I like and which fit me well, so whenever I do find such items of clothing, I should stock up. This way I can wear the same style of clothing for several years, even as one particular garment wears out or is torn, without the bother of further clothes shopping. Also, having a replacement sitting on the shelf makes me more relaxed about possibly damaging whatever clothing I'm wearing. This isn't the first time I've reasoned thus. Many years ago, I bought six identical pairs of khaki pants, all with size thirty-six waist. My waist then was actually size thirty-five, but since it had been size thirty-four the year before, I extrapolated the trend forwards, and anticipated that it would reach thirty-six by the time I started dipping into my stockpile. In fact, my waist dropped back down to size thirty-four shortly thereafter, so for several years I went around wearing pants that were baggy looking in the seat. Since I only wore these pants to work, I didn't much care how I looked in them. It took about eight months of daily wearing for the seat of one of these pairs of pants to wear through. I quit the corporation where I worked just about the time I had started wearing the last of these six pairs of oversized pants. When I told this story to a former girlfriend, she said I sounded insane.

Sonya called, responding to a message I had left. Tomorrow is her birthday (she will be thirty), so I invited her out to dinner, and also asked for her exact birth time and place, in order to prepare her astrological charts. The restaurant she picked is an expensive one. I had been discussing my business, how I didn't bother with paying customs duties, how it was strange that companies paid thousands of dollars for what is essentially a piece of paper (a software license) when I can sell the same piece of paper to an unlimited number of customers, and so on. Also, I told her how I sometimes felt anxious at making money so easily, as though I were accumulating a moral debt of some sort that I would someday have to repay. "You could give the money away," she suggested, the same suggestion Helen makes. I explained that if I did so, I would create another moral debt between myself and the person I gave the money to, which could end up destroying that relationship. So I suppose she figured out that I'm rich and decided to take advantage of the situation and go to an expensive restaurant. Or perhaps she just has champagne tastes.

Lisa called. She was feeling depressed and lonely and wanted someone to talk to. During the course of our conversation, it struck me once again how unattractive her voice is. Deep as a man's, raspy, throaty, but also with a slight country accent, such that the terms "bull-dyke" and "dumb yokel" both seem to come to mind. As for her laugh, it varies from a braying sound to a painfully loud whoop. I've never had the heart to tell her how offensive I find her voice and laugh. But they are certainly among the main reasons she will always have trouble finding lovers, especially when answering personal ads by telephone, where the sound of a person's voice is so important.

I asked her about her recent dating experiences. She replied that all the men she had met through her personal ad (a total of thirty so far) seemed like "doormats", meaning they weren't assertive enough. She called herself a "submissive" in her ad, though again I couldn't get her to explain clearly what she meant by that term. She said something about wanting someone "not vanilla, not conservative, not a doormat, and not broke." Most of the men she met were either unemployed or worked in menial jobs and made little money, and were reluctant to spend money on her. Instead of taking her to a restaurant and movie for the first few dates, they wanted to watch a video at her house and eat pizza. And they expected her to pay half the cost of the video and pizza.

"They just don't have any money!" she complained. "Now, I don't mind going to inexpensive restaurants. I like expensive restaurants, but I understand that not everyone can afford them. I'd rather eat out often at an inexpensive restaurant, then seldom at an expensive restaurant. But these guys don't want to go out at all. Also, they don't seem very sexually attractive. And if I don't want to have sex with them and don't find them interesting to talk to and we can't afford to go out to a restaurant, then what is the point? I still haven't found anyone to have sex with me!"

We then launched into a long discussion of sex, in which I maintained that sex should be regarded primarily as a physical function of the body, in the same category as eating or sleeping, and that lack of a sex life was no reason to make a person feel either depressed or lonely, and that masturbation could provide most of the physical pleasure of sex, in the event that a partner was not available. Masturbation is to sex with a partner what eating bread and water is to eating at a fine restaurant. Boring, but adequate to satisfy any physical craving. At the conclusion of our conversation, Lisa thanked me for talking to her: "I feel a lot better now."

Dinner with Sonya in the evening at the expensive restaurant she had picked. Her family was among the first to start their own business after the Soviet Union disintegrated and private business became legal once again in Russia. They managed an apartment building, ran a restaurant, engaged in various other enterprises. Things were very profitable until the Mafia began moving in and the government instituted oppressive taxes. She spoke of having apartments in both Moscow and St. Petersburg, of living a wild life, of seeing many of her friends killed by the Mafia, of being threatened herself, and of finally leaving the country when the stress became too great. She told no one of her plans to leave, until just before she was about to drive to the airport to catch the flight to the United States, when she told her mother.

She asked about my dreams in life and so I told her essentially what I had told Helen the other night. Namely, that all I ever really wanted was to retire early, so I didn't have to go to work in the morning, and then spend my days reading and listening to music. I left out the part about masturbation as another way of passing time. Then I brought up the lawsuit with my sister, probably in connection with the fact that I was glad to have chosen a career in computer programming, as opposed to some other line of work, such as lawyer.

She seems to want to live a rich and elegant lifestyle, loves books, fine restaurants, beautiful clothes, paintings, furnishings, elegant apartments in the middle of the city. But she doesn't have the sort of personality that is likely to succeed in the world of business, and so, to live her expensive dream lifestyle, she'll need a rich husband. We didn't discuss the issue, but it concerns me. I don't want to sacrifice my life working, just to make money so as to satisfy some woman's expensive tastes.

After dinner, we browsed in a bookstore. In passing the drama section, I mentioned how I had once liked the plays of Eugene O'Neill, during a "dark and moody period of my life." "That's how I feel now," she remarked. Then we walked back to my apartment, where I fiddled with her computer to see if I could get it connected to the Internet. She didn't have all the necessary pieces, however, so I will have to make some further adjustments when I visit her someday. The computer seems to run very slowly, probably due to the small amount of memory. During pauses in the work, we discussed her astrology charts, which she found amusing.

I had initially thought that we might have sex after I worked on the computer and that, in fact, her whole intention in bringing the computer to my apartment, was so we would have an excuse to come back to it afterwards, thus setting up the opportunity for sex. But after I had finished with the computer and was tidying up, I noticed she had put her coat back on and was preparing to leave. I offered her some tea or a drink, something to tempt her to stay, but she said she had to go. So we to the bus stop and waited there together, sheltered by her umbrella from the intermittent drizzle. She asked if I believed in God, and said she did, that it gave her hope and enriched her life, or something of the sort. I tried to discuss my own beliefs, but it isn't a subject I find it easy to discuss. "If God created the universe, then who created God? If God didn't create the universe, then who did? These questions leave the human mind utterly dazzled. We can't comprehend eternity. So I don't know what I believe," was all I could manage to say. Then the bus arrived. She offered me her cheek, which I kissed. I would have liked to press against her body, to kiss her neck, to kiss her mouth, to touch her hair. But she didn't seem interested. Perhaps she is right to keep our relationship one of friendship only, to hold off on sex for as long as possible. We seem physically attracted to one another. She puts on perfume, makeup, dresses nicely, smiles and behaves pleasantly, dilates her pupils when she looks at me, does everything possible to make herself attractive to me. Premature sex might well ruin everything. Maybe she senses this. In a way, I'm glad we're not having sex. It allows me to enjoy her company without worrying that I'll someday have to marry and support her and her expensive tastes.

Helen called. She and Paul were planning to go to a mud bath, but had a fight, so she got her haircut instead. Later, they reconciled and she spent the night with him. She says she couldn't resist, that his apartment is so convenient to work and she didn't feel like walking home. Then she brought up something that had happened after the second time they had sex. Namely, Paul called her an "introvert", which greatly offended her then and has bothered her ever since. Paul plans to deduct his recent computer purchase on his taxes, and Helen asked me to explain how this was possible, so I went into a long explanation of the tax aspects of sole proprietorships, until she was thoroughly bored. "Understand, Helen, he probably won't be getting a big refund next April. On the contrary, he'll probably owe something, so don't budget now for spending his non-existent tax refund on a vacation to Hawaii. I know how your mind works."

Later, on her way home from work, she stopped by my apartment, where I hugged and pawed her, so that she said, "You really need to get a woman to have sex with." Then she asked about Sonya. I mentioned that she had visited my apartment. "Hmmm. I see. How did you get her up here so soon?" I explained it was just to work on her computer, that we hadn't had sex, hadn't even kissed. We couldn't talk long, however, because I was on my way out to dance lessons. So I left her in the apartment, saying that she could just lock the door behind her on the way out.

I lay about the apartment all day, feeling drowsy due to lack of sleep last night, and masturbated three times to images of a woman I had danced with during yesterday's salsa lesson, a skinny and sluttish-acting young redhead. Chinese takeout for dinner. The owner seemed glad to see me back. I hadn't been there in several months, though I used to go frequently, and he sees me walking by each day, so he might have thought I was angry at him or disliked his food. Samba music at a newly opened nightclub nearby. I sat in the balcony and watched what little dancing there was to watch. I had one drink, a vodka tonic. Either this drink, or sitting alone for two hours, made me feel slightly depressed. I bought some oatmeal raisin cookies at the liquor store on the way home. Eating the whole package seemed to cheer me up.

I spent two hours at a nightclub with Nancy, a woman who recently answered my ad. A stunning looking woman of thirty-two, beautiful enough to be a model, medium height, slender, light brown hair. She works for a computer related business in some sort of marketing job. Supposedly, mine was the only ad she had answered recently, though she had answered ads twice when she lived in another city a few years ago. One of these previous meetings was okay, the other unpleasant.

We had a pleasant conversation, then danced together for about twenty minutes, staring into each other's eyes and bringing our faces close together. She didn't know salsa, and just as well, since we managed a passable job just holding one another's hands and moving about gracefully. She had plans to go running early tomorrow, as part of some group that is preparing for a marathon, and so had to leave early. I waited with her at the bus stop, shook hands upon parting, and promised to call her soon.

One worrisome note: she insisted on paying for the drinks, which cost $7.50. I tried to pay, but she whipped out a $20 bill and handed it to the waitress before I could even finish retrieving my wallet. The waitress acted shocked: "You mean she pays for both drinks?" I just shrugged like an idiot. The waitress then walked off to get change and I put my money back in my wallet. The worst part was when I told Nancy she should leave a tip. She asked, "How much?", and so I suggested $1.50, which is excessive, but then, since she still seemed confused, I snatched up this amount of change and pushed it at the waitress. So not only did I not pay for the drinks, but I also used her money to give an overly generous tip, and then made it appear as if I were giving the tip, not her. But I hate these arguments about who will pay. I usually assume I will, but I didn't want to offend her by trying to be dominating. I just hope she doesn't hold it against me.

On the way home, I was as if floating along with satisfaction at the way the evening had turned out. I bought some ripe and hence bruised looking pears at a liquor store, then gave the change to a pair of street people. "Buy some gas for your Rolls," I told the man, referring to his spiel about only being temporarily down and out, that he actually had a mansion and drove a Rolls-Royce. I should have given more than fifty cents though. Why am I always so stingy with panhandlers? I certainly wasn't stingy with the waitress at the nightclub.

I'm absolutely amazed at the quality of women this ad is attracting. First Sonya, now this Nancy. The ad read: "Single white male, thirty-six, tall, handsome, fit, mostly intellectual interests: books, music, conversation. Recent and somewhat out-of-character interest in salsa dancing. Seeks compatible single female." If I had to run it again, I might change the "recent and somewhat out-of-character interest in salsa dancing" to something less pretentious sounding. Or maybe I should change nothing. Even the women who refuse to meet me, for whatever reason, seemed high-quality.

I woke up late again. A disgusting feeling this is, of waking up with the morning almost over. I masturbated twice to images of an older woman (late forties) who I danced with last week. Why not to images of Nancy? Last night, Nancy recommended a movie because it had a scene with tango dancing, which we had been discussing. I thought about this movie out as I walked past the video store, then recalled how I just can't sit through movies anymore. And when I got home I found a Christmas catalog from a chain bookstore in the mailbox, advertising page after page of new bestseller novels. I feel utterly disgusted by the idea of being "enthralled" or "spellbound" by a novel, of "losing myself in a story," as the ads put it. Something about make-believe, of movies and novels, just no longer appeals to me. I spent the evening at home, listening to music, dancing around the apartment, getting slightly drunk on beer, and overeating.

A long phone conversation with Mark. He may be coming out to visit in a few weeks.

"How's Tony?" I asked, referring to Mark's former roommate and off and on lover. "Is he still drinking himself to death?"

"At an accelerating pace. It used to be three quarters of a liter of whiskey a day, and now it's over a liter. I try to avoid him as much as possible these days. He's like Calamity Jane. Always some sort of problem. You just can't trust him with anything. Like the other day. I had my car out in the suburbs being fixed. Then the day I was supposed to pick it up, we were having a yard sale. You should have been here. It was postponed for two weeks because of rain and we finally had it last week. So I looked Tony over and he didn't seem too drunk, at least that's what I thought, but who can tell with that guy. With me being busy with the yard sale, I sent him out with my brother to pick up the car. He was supposed to follow my brother back, driving right behind him. Well, fine, they made it back safe and sound, as I was happy to see. Until it came time to park the thing. And then I see Tony trying to park in this completely half-assed way, he was drunk naturally, one wheel riding up on the curb. And the space was too small. So he ended up wedging the car in so tight that he couldn't back up or go forward. The next morning I came out and found the right front tire flat. Of course, I've been meaning to get some new front tires. They're having a sale... Anyway, that's the sort of thing that's always happening with him. I told my friend who's been spending time over here, if the phone rings and he picks it up and it's Tony, tell him I'm not home. I can't have my Sundays disturbed by all his trouble-making. This is my time to relax. He's looking real bad too. Skinny and weak. Could be the booze or could be AIDS, I've been thinking."

"I warned you years ago to watch out for him, the way he messes with those crack whores. But AIDS should take several years to develop symptoms."

"Well, it's been several years. And he's always getting into scrapes with hoodlums and who knows what sort of creatures. Wakes up in the street with his wallet missing. I don't know how many times that's happened."

"What a way to live."

Just in case I forget to note this later. Helen had agreed to reimburse me for her new printer, which I had selected, ordered, paid for, and arranged to have delivered, all as a convenience to her. But she hasn't done so. So that is $200 she owes me. I'm going to remind her a few times then drop the subject. It won't be the first time she has pulled a stunt like this. For whatever reason, I don't really seem to resent her taking advantage of me.

On the way to the cafe, I passed the woman from the apartment on the floor below, who I hadn't seen in months, and waved to her from across the street. She seemed happy to see me, and paused as if wanting to talk, but I rushed on because I had to make it to the post office before closing. What a body she has! And what sexual tension there is between us! But I don't make any attempt to pursue her, for whatever reason. A similar situation at dance classes in the evening. Plenty of sexual tension with the various women I danced with, but I do nothing about it.

I had called Sonya several times in the past few days, leaving messages saying that I'd like to help her with her computer, or at least see her. Finally she called back and we arranged for her to possibly stop by my apartment this evening. But she never showed. We didn't have a definite date and it was drizzling, so maybe the rain kept her away. I was disappointed, however.

I arranged a date with Nancy this weekend, with exact plans to be determined later. She used my first name several times during our conversation. I recall that Dale Carnegie recommends this as one of the ways to "win friends and influence people." She works in marketing, so maybe she does this with everyone, or perhaps she is doing it deliberately to attract me. It is an effective technique, even when I am aware of it. I masturbated to images of her afterwards.

I'm almost finished the transcribing of my voice diaries, and thank God, because it is depressing to revisit this unpleasant period in my life. Working constantly, either at my job during the day or on my computer at night, and fighting constantly with Helen. My next project will be to recollect the events of the period between the end of these voice diaries and the start of my current journal. This desire to chronicle my entire life is starting to become an obsession. And what's the point?

My lawyer called to say the judge finally issued a ruling on attorney's fees in the conservatorship case involving my father and sister. My total attorney's fees were about $18,000, and the judge awarded me about $12,500, to be paid from my father's estate. My lawyer will be sending exact details by mail. Last year I paid a retainer of $2500, so now I still owe about $3000. The reason I didn't get the full amount requested is that the suit wasn't just requesting conservatorship for my father, for which attorney's fees can be awarded in the event of a successful suit, but also involved undue influence charges against my sister on behalf of my father. Looking back, I don't know why we filed the suit in this manner. However, since we did it that way, the judge is probably being fair in not awarding all the attorney's fees. My lawyer asked if I wanted to pursue the undue influence issues. I said no, let the conservator do it, if she thought it proper. It isn't my business anymore and I don't want any more legal bills.

He also mentioned that my sister and father want to sell the house where we grew up, which they co-own. My sister has supposedly found a buyer who is willing to pay about $210,000: an excellent price in my opinion. The conservator wants to know if I plan to put up any objection to this sale. I said no. Then my lawyer mentioned that my sister wants to be paid a 6% agent's commission on the sale, to come from my father's share of the proceeds, since she found the buyer. The conservator replied that the court would never approve paying an agent's commission to a co-owner of the property. My sister probably still has liens on her house, work to be done, attorney's fees to pay, and perhaps other debts. So who knows how long the $100,000 or so she receives will last.

The whole affair leaves me feeling disgusted, especially now that it's costing me. I'd like to see my father lose all his money before he dies, in a stock market crash or through heavy medical expenses or whatever, or else rewrite his will to give everything to charity, so that neither I nor my sister inherit anything. I don't really care about the money and I certainly don't want another trial, even if a lawyer takes my will contest case on a contingency basis. But I hate the feeling that I'm getting "screwed" by my sister. I'm assuming, of course, that she has convinced my father to rewrite his will to give her everything. Maybe this hasn't happened and I'm being paranoid. I'm not sorry about the dispute alienating me from my sister, since I never liked her anyway. I'll pay the legal bills and then hopefully I can erase this nastiness from my mind.

Another private dance lesson, in which I did well. The dance instructor is even more attractive than I remembered. I noticed my clothes looked shabby, standing next to her in the mirror, and yet I was wearing the dress pants that I was so proud of when I bought them. They cost $12.99 and looked it. I told her that the dancing on my date last week was a fiasco, since I forgot all my moves and the woman I was dating didn't know the basic. "All that work you did for me, trying to drill these steps into my head, all gone to waste. My mind just went completely blank."

During the salsa group lessons, I danced well with the women I found sexually attractive and poorly with the others. I suppose this is my body's way of rejecting them, since I wasn't doing it consciously. Then a conversation with a woman who I'd danced with several week ago. While talking to her, I reached back to get a peppermint candy, since I was afraid my breath might stink from pesto on the sandwich I had just eaten. She then reached for a candy herself, as if likewise anxious not to offend me with her breath. I later noticed that she was with a male friend. They were taking private lessons together.

Another woman there has shown interest in me before and showed it again tonight, all kinds of strong signals. But I feel the same way towards her as I do towards Lisa. A nice woman who I'd like to make happy, but there's no way I can have sex with her. I felt guilty at not being able to give her what she wants, so when I saw her standing alone, I asked her dance, figuring I was doing her a favor. But then I lost track of the rhythm completely, something that hadn't happened with the more attractive women. A miserable time for both of us, stumbling along unable to follow the music, bumping into each other due to my mistakes. "Don't worry, go slow if you want," she said soothingly. She reminded me of a woman trying to console a man who can't get an erection. And impotent is probably what I'd be if I agreed to have sex with her.

A brief conversation with Nancy, during which we arranged our date for this weekend. When I initially asked her what she wanted to do, she replied that she didn't have any ideas. I had anticipated such a response, and so had spent about an hour beforehand coming up with some ideas for movies and restaurants. I wanted to avoid one of those pathetic conversations which goes something like:

"Well, what do you want to do?"

"I don't know, what do you want to do?"

"I don't care, whatever you want."

I fixed in bug in one of my programs, involving conversion from universal to local time. Initially I had thought the user didn't know what he was talking about, but it turned out to be a legitimate bug, so I hustled to fix it.

Helen called. She has been staying at Paul's since last week and enjoying it there. "He's a nice, normal man, so unlike you. It's refreshing to be around someone who is normal. Oh, he has his little quirks, but fundamentally, he is normal. Such a pleasant change from what I'd been experiencing for the previous five years!" However, normal though he may be, he is also out of a job as of today. He might be going to a job interview in the northeast, though Helen doesn't particularly want to move there herself. Today, she had a day off, because her employer was relocating to new offices, and so she invited me to lunch, but I was busy with processing orders. She and Paul have been having strictly anal sex, without any stimulation of her vagina, neither fingering nor cunnilingus. She doesn't get much pleasure this way, but merely does it to satisfy Paul. Despite her precautions, she nevertheless has a bad bladder infection and is feeling ill. The other night she and Paul went out to eat and consumed a pitcher of margaritas. She got drunk, but wasn't very sick the next day. Normally, she gets violently sick from even a slight amount of alcohol. I asked her about the $200 she owes me for the printer I ordered. She promised to repay me.

Dinner at a restaurant with Nancy. I was shocked again when I saw her walk up to meet me. She is even more striking-looking than I remembered. Of course, I've always been somewhat leery of beauty. It attracts too much attention and I prefer to remain inconspicuous. After dinner, we went to see a movie. I was somewhat apologetic when discussing the movie with her afterwards, since it was a children's movie (The 5000 Fingers of Dr. T) and I didn't want her to get some mistaken idea, such as that I was trying to show that I could relate to children and thus was suitable husband/father material, or that I thought women were like children and therefore should be taken to children's movies. "I only picked it because I remembered someone had recommended it highly, I just remembered the title, I don't usually go to children's movies, there was no particular reason I picked a children's movie, you can pick the next movie. Though I did enjoy this movie very much." Nancy's opinion was that it was "different". The audience was mostly adult, I should note.

Nancy asked how I planned to spend Thanksgiving and whether I would go to see my parents for Christmas. At first, I beat around the bush, but finally I felt disgusted at myself for being evasive and so explained that I didn't plan to visit my relatives at all in the immediate future, due to the recent lawsuit with my sister and father which had poisoned feelings among us. On and on with seamy details about my sister stealing money, her husband being a bigamist, growing up in a crazy family, comparing my sister to Lady MacBeth. She revealed that her own family had been split up by a lawsuit, with one of her brothers suing her father concerning a family business. Also, her mother and father had been split by a bitter divorce. She invited me to have Thanksgiving dinner with her and some friends from out of state and also suggested we meet again tomorrow evening at a cafe. I accepted both invitations. She had a car and drove me home. I leaned over before getting out, and gave her a brief dry kiss on the lips. My own reaction was strong, an immediate sense of warmth throughout my body. And she seemed to be smiling after I pulled back. So I suppose we are sexually compatible.

Breakfast with Helen at a restaurant. She claims now that she is enjoying anal sex, while it is Paul who is objecting. He is worried about anal sex being "abnormal" and wants to go with her to a sex therapist. But she is convinced that her bladder infections (and consequent inability to have vaginal sex) have no psychosomatic element, and she doesn't want to listen to some psychobabbling sex therapist tell her otherwise. She doesn't dare tell Paul about her fantasies: the smutty stories about spanking and domination that she downloads from the Internet.

While browsing in a used bookstore, I bumped into Sonya. We spent an hour talking over ice cream and coffee at a nearby cafe. It was hard for me to conceal that, while I still find her sexually attractive to contemplate and fantasize about, she no longer interests me as a potential real-life sex partner, primarily because I've met Nancy, but also because I sense that we would not make a good couple. It isn't just her champagne tastes. I sense some other conflicts between our personalities. She picked up on my lack of sexual interest and seemed to withdraw somewhat from the conversation. I mentioned going out dancing sometime. She replied that she was interested, but that her only free night is Saturday, which I wanted to reserve for Nancy. So I avoided making a date. Then she asked what I was doing for Thanksgiving. I told her some lie about going to visit relatives, since I didn't want to mention Nancy. Finally, I said I had to go, because I had scheduled to meet a "friend." I felt ashamed of myself for being so evasive. I really don't like this feeling of juggling potential lovers, the way I'm doing with her and Nancy. Upon parting she squeezed my hand and said, "You are looking very nice," then started across the street. I just stared at her like a dummy, without responding. It occurred to me a minute later than I should have replied, "And you're looking as pretty as ever" or something of the sort.

Dinner with Nancy at the cafe. I told her how I had spent the day at the bookstore. She asked if I found anything there, so I pulled out a book of plays I had bought, and let her read the introduction while I went to the restroom. This introduction contains a lurid description of a homosexual orgy in a public toilet. "Should be an interesting book," she commented dryly as she handed me back the book. I told her not to get the wrong idea about me, that I was really a very straight-laced person and was fascinated by deviants precisely because they are my opposite. "My own life is so safe, so clean. Sometimes I want to experience danger and dirt. But I'd rather do so vicariously, as a voyeur. That's why I'm fascinated by depravity, and for that matter, why I like sitting in this cafe, where I can watch the rent-boys and gutter punks and transvestites and degenerates of every ilk pass by." This statement seemed to resonate with her. She grew up in a small town and is fascinated by the diversity of the big city. She mentioned that many of her siblings and childhood friends feel differently. They are repelled by big city decadence. I took her on a walk past the nearby transvestite bar, and pointed out that all of the persons inside were men. "Not bad looking," she commented, as we passed one particularly attractive specimen.

She had to leave early to prepare for work tomorrow. So we walked to where she had parked her car, then paused on the sidewalk, and stood facing one another. I stepped towards her, leaned over and kissed her on the lips. She didn't back away, so we kept our mouths together, dry kissing, nibbling each others lips, one of my hands holding her shoulder, the other caressing her neck.

"I enjoyed this evening," she said during a break.

"I enjoyed it, too. I think we're compatible," I replied.

"Are you seeing anyone else?"

"Well, there were about ten responses to my ad, and I'm still working through those. But that's it." A slight exaggeration: the actual number of responses was eight: six by voice, two by email. I worked through all of these responses and only two, she and Sonya, were possibilities for dating. Why exaggerate? And if I must exaggerate, why exaggerate by such a small amount? And why didn't I ask if she was seeing anyone else?

"Have you ever been married?" she asked.

"No. What about you?"

"Yes, once."

"When was that?"

"A long time ago. I was very young. We were married for a year. Together for four years, married for one. And you've never even gotten close to marrying?"

"Oh, yes, I once got very close. I was with a woman for five years and almost married her after the first year."

And here I went into a long explanation of how Helen and I had been lovers for five years, but got on each others nerves because we had incompatible personalities, and that I had moved to the city to be with her, after she came here to escape me, but that we were now certain we couldn't be lovers, and that she and I had both had new lovers since breaking up. Then I said that I always tried to see if I was compatible with a woman before having sex, and that took time, dating the way she and I were doing. Which is a lie, of course, since I had sex on the first or second date with most of my former lovers, including Helen. Karen made me wait for the third date, but then she was talking about sex and putting her hand down my pants to see if I was hard on the second date.

More kissing, mostly dry on the lips. I ran the tip of my tongue along her lips but not inside her mouth. I had an erection which stiffened each time we hugged. Then she had to leave. I told her I would call her the day after tomorrow. My body felt excited after we parted, a generalized excitement and tingling, not confined to my cock. I masturbated to fantasies of fucking her, but found it more difficult than usual to come, which is typical after I've gotten close to a real women, as if my body is unwilling to be satisfied any longer by a substitute, now that it knows the real thing is an imminent possibility.

My uncle called. He says he talked to my sister recently, and that she prattled on about how happy everyone was at the "ranch", and how my father's prostate cancer was a mild and slow growing case and so the doctor thought there was nothing to be concerned about. My uncle wasn't able to speak to my father himself, however. I then explained that my father thought he and I were "bad" and the only "good" person was my sister and that is probably why my father refused to speak with him. He said he had suspected as much for some time. Then he invited me to spend Christmas with him and his family, which invitation I accepted.

Some thoughts about Nancy: what if I married her, had kids and then we had a nasty divorce? What are my plans in life, anyway? Do I really want to live alone, as I've been saying for so many years? Or is that just a reaction to the frightening prospect of living with Helen, quarreling constantly and feeling emasculated? Do I want to get married? Why am I dating women?

I accomplished almost nothing in the way of business. I still have orders from a week ago that haven't been processed. Most of the day I spent lying on the sofa reading and listening to music. While waiting for the bus, I gave some change to a street-person, who told me she planned to write a book about the horrid state of affairs in homeless shelters. She seemed articulate, but excessively negative. Who wants to read about unrelieved misery?

Nancy returned a call I had left earlier. She mentioned a woman who recently had sextuplets, the big news in television land this week. "She's already thinking about babies", was my first thought. Then she discussed her friends, with whom we plan to have Thanksgiving dinner. "I think you'll like them. My friend has been very successful selling real-estate. Her husband works as a computer consultant, and that's going real well for him." So she's probably imagining how we'll appear as a couple, in comparison with these "achievers". I'm not particularly worried though, even as I seem to drift towards shipwreck on the rocks of marriage and children. I don't know why. Maybe the same reckless attitude that I have towards my business—letting email go unanswered for weeks, for example—is now starting to percolate through all aspects of my life.

A lazy day, though I did manage to process the day's incoming email and faxes. A customer called and mentioned that my product had received glowing compliments at a computer conference last week, which was why she was buying it. "I don't know who this guy is [referring to me], but he sure writes great software," said one of the speakers. She told me the speaker's name, but I had never heard of him. So that plug should mean some more business. It's too bad that I've completely lost interest in programming, just as I start receiving all this recognition.

I masturbated twice, I forget to what images. Maybe some Swedish bimbo lying on my face and sucking me at the same time I was burying my nose in her cunt and swallowing her juices. Afterwards, I just lay on the futon in a dreamy state.

Dinner with Nancy and her friends at a restaurant. I paid my share plus half of Nancy's share. These friends currently live in the suburbs. The wife complains, without explanation, that living in their current house is like "living in a fishbowl", and so they plan to build a new house on five acres of rural land they've bought in the mountains. The husband runs a computer consulting company. Conversation about the usual safe topics, the weather and whatnot, and about their fourteen month old baby, who was at the table. I said very little. I thought of what Bernelli would make of this crowd: "You're all dead people!" Nancy suggested we dance. I wasn't in the mood, but couldn't exactly refuse, not with all my talk of taking dance lessons and wanting to be an excellent dancer someday. So we did a rocking sort of dance to a slow song. Afterwards, I walked with Nancy and her friends to their car, and told Nancy I would call her this weekend. We parted with a handshake but no kissing.

I piddled around the apartment most of the day, accomplishing little in the way of work, and instead read more of my book about homosexuals. What hellish lives these homosexuals seem to live! Tormented by the desire for sex and more sex. But then again, how different from them am I, in this respect?

I called Nancy, who said she was feeling out of sorts and planned to go to bed early. I got the feeling that she was disappointed that I hadn't arranged to spend this weekend with her. She is also probably wondering when I plan to take some sexual initiative. We discussed getting together in the future. Her marathon is next weekend, but in another city so she'll have to drive there the day before, which means she'll be occupied the whole weekend and so we won't be able to get together then. I suggested we go out the weekend after to celebrate. So at least she knows I'm contemplating spending future weekends with her.

I wrote a check for $3,313 to my lawyer, for attorney's fees for the suit with my father and sister. This is in addition to the $2500 retainer I paid last year, plus about $800 for the trip for the trial. So that makes about $6000 that I've spent on this lawsuit. In comparison to my current net worth or to how much I am earning from this software business, this is small change. Nevertheless, I bitterly resent this $6000 expense. I keep telling myself not to worry so much about money, and especially not to worry that my sister may end up inheriting all of my father's million or so dollar estate. I've concluded that it is less the money, than the feeling of being made a fool of by my sister, that bothers me about the situation. I suppose I should simply bite the bullet and resolve never to speak to either her or my father again. I called them the other day, but never received a call back. If I decide to contest his will, the fact that my sister refuses to let me speak to my father can probably be used as evidence in favor of my case. However, I'm not sure I want evidence in favor of my case. I'd almost like to prejudice my case right now, and make it impossible to ever consider contesting the will, and thus be able to stop worrying about this issue.

While at the cafe, an irritable, nasal-voiced man at the next table loudly asked the waiter, "Can't you do something to stop this table's seasickness?" I've sat at that table myself many times and have never been bothered by its slight wobble. Later, a street person came in and asked him for money. "What's the matter with you people? All you ever want is money. Everyone wants me to give them money. Forget it!" he yells, then waves the street person away with his hand.

Lunch with Helen, who has been spending most of her evenings with Paul. He wore a dark suit to Thanksgiving dinner at her sister's house. "He's like a child. He doesn't know how to dress properly and won't listen to what I say. He showed up looking like a Mafioso while everyone else was in jeans." Last night, they had vaginal sex and now she has a terrible bladder infection. He is out of a job, but is going to an interview this week. The airfare for this interview is being paid by the prospective employer, which is encouraging, since it implies that they have a strong interest in hiring him. However, he says he doesn't like the idea of moving out of state, and so Helen suspects he will sabotage the interview. She says he doesn't seem particularly competent as an engineer, from what she can tell. Now that he is unemployed, he spends most of his time playing computer games. He told her, in all seriousness, that he wants to be a househusband and have her support him.

She complains that he has been finding fault with her constantly. She forgot to turn the faucets completely off, which he interprets as a sign of unhappiness. She sits too close to the television, which bothers him for some reason. She says she sits close so as to read the subtitles on the foreign movies they watch. She didn't wash the dishes properly one night. She was driving his car one night and forgot to turn the lights off when she parked. Upon their returning to the car later, he noticed the lights were on, and grabbed the car keys from her hand. Luckily, the battery wasn't completely dead, so the car was able to start. "Is anything wrong, dear?" she asked him as they sped off with a roar. "I'm beginning to think you can't be trusted. First you left the faucets on, and now this," he replied.

Finally, she decided she wanted to break up. She waited until they were in what she terms a "neutral cafe", meaning a cafe that neither of them could consider "home turf". "We can't go on this way. I hope everything works out with you, though," she told him. "I hope everything works out with us!" he replied. Because he said "us", they didn't break up after all, though she insists that they will be breaking up soon.

I spent over fifteen minutes refusing to buy space from an amazingly persistent saleswomen for a trade publication, who has called me three times before. I don't know why I didn't just hang up. Perhaps I wanted to test my willpower to resist her sales pitch.

The focus of today's masturbation fantasy was a young woman I had danced with last week. Very pretty, about twenty years old and full of energy. "Frisky as a filly" is the expression that springs to mind. We glanced at one another as I was leaving the club, and then she seemed to lean forward and push her rump back towards me as I passed, as if wanting to be mounted from the rear.

I called Nancy, who seemed happy to hear from me. She is busy with her classes and work for the rest of the week, but we agreed to talk again on Sunday, after her marathon.

Helen called and we talked on the phone. Paul has returned from his job interview, which didn't go very well, so he doesn't think he will get a job offer. During the interview, he apparently made disparaging remarks about his former employers, which probably turned the interviewers against him. So, just as Helen had suspected would happen, he managed to sabotage the interview. (How does she know these things, unless he tells her? And why would he give such an unflattering representation of himself?) He remains optimistic, however. Recruiters keep calling with job leads, most of which he rejects because he doesn't like the location. One city, for example, he dismissed as being "like living in a cemetery." Helen thinks he might be only average intelligence, based on how he plays their favorite computer game. He makes her sit next to him and then plays very slowly, asking simple-minded rhetorical questions, like "Should I move here or there?" And then he doesn't seem to remember which items he has previously clicked on. Sometimes she tries to play alone, but he insists on getting involved. "What, you don't want to create a happy environment, with us playing together? You want to go off and play alone?" They had sex this morning without a condom, supposedly because he was excited after being away from her for several days. So now she has another bladder infection, plus the worry about being pregnant. She wonders how she will support a child. Paul's savings have declined from $80,000 to $8,000 in the past two years, so it doesn't look like he will be much help. She talked to her sister and then decided to give up anal sex because "it isn't right".

"What isn't right?" I asked.

"It isn't how we were made to do," she replied.

"Who was made to do what?"

"Men and women."

"You're feeling guilty then?"

"Me? Morality? Hah!"

"Then what's the problem?"

"My sister didn't need for me to explain it."

"Well, it still isn't clear to me. You told me you enjoyed it that way."

"I feel like one of those women from the Victorian age, when they would just lie there waiting for it to be over. I said to myself, this is liberation?"

"You should get a rich old man who can only get it up once a month."

"Maybe I should."

Paul planned a dinner party this Saturday, and invited to it an old couple, who were friends of both he and his former fiancée, the nurse who he dumped because she had a miscarriage. Helen thinks he wants to show off to them how he has managed to recover so quickly and find himself a younger and more attractive woman, and then have them report this news back to the former fiancée. She is thinking of spoiling his plan by making a scene at the party: wearing jeans instead of a dress, eating with her mouth open, using bad grammar.

I spent the entire day fooling with my new computer, which just arrived. I didn't even make it to the post office or the cafe. The computer has problems: some sort of hardware incompatibility. I screwed around unsuccessfully trying to get things to work, then wasted an hour on the phone waiting for technical support, and by the end of the day was feeling frustrated and violent.

While exchanging pleasantries with the dance instructor in the evening, she put her hand on my shoulder in an affectionate way, as if calculated to arouse sexual feelings in me. She is in her thirties, very pretty, intelligent, has a pleasant personality, and appears to be single. Nevertheless, I have no desire to ask her out for a date, even disregarding the issue of Nancy. I noticed that we smile constantly at each other, which I've always found to be a sign of sexually incompatibility. Maybe the fact that I am her student reminds me of being in school. She is the beautiful teacher, I am the little boy who would be laughed at if he asked his teacher out on a date. Who knows what the problem is? I have these confused feelings about so many woman. Superficially they seem to be everything I should want, but yet I just want to flee them. My usual technique is to act passive and stupid, like a shy little boy, smiling, nodding and saying nothing, because I know that is the surest method of getting rid of a woman. If I aggressively reject the woman, on the other hand, that just increases my desire for her, as well as her desire for me in most cases, in addition to making me feel guilty at having behaved rudely.

In any case, I didn't enjoy tonight's lessons, perhaps because I was still feeling tense about the computer. So I left early, feeling depressed at having wasted the evening, and decided to get drunk, but then changed my mind when I reached the corner store, and, instead of a six-pack of beer, bought a pint of chocolate ice cream. I ate this, read some, listened to music, masturbated and then went to sleep about midnight.

I lay about for four hours in the morning after waking up, listening to music, masturbating twice: images of fucking some woman in the face and the cunt, plus my current raging fantasy of licking her cunt until it is sopping wet, and then soaking up her juices with my pillow so I can smell her while sleeping.

I've reached the section of Boswell's Journal where he begins to lose interest in his law practice in the same way I've lost interest with my business. I'm just thankful I had the good sense to save my money when I was in my twenties, so that I'm no longer forced to work. I wonder if he masturbated? He certainly lacks recorded music, financial independence and good health, which are the other components of my current happiness. So it doesn't surprise me that he is so often "melancholy."

The waitress at the cafe initiated a conversation. We chatted briefly about my business and reading matter. She's another one of these attractive young women who I enjoy contemplating from a distance, or using in masturbation fantasies, but who I don't really want to get close to. Then an art movie in the evening. Mature sexuality, angry passion, the whole thing soaked in blood, including that of a child, helping to ensure the audience is in a properly solemn mood to appreciate a non-Hollywood style film. It was the late night show on a rainy Sunday night, so the theatre was almost empty. More masturbation when I got home, to the same fantasy as in the morning. I didn't get to sleep until near dawn.

I bought a six-pack of dark beer on the way home from the cafe, and drank two bottles of this, while eating a whole loaf of bread, several pieces of fruit, and huge hunks of cheese that I devoured ravenously even though I knew I had already eaten far too much. This evening meal was on top of a huge breakfast of oatmeal, a huge lunch of spaghetti, a big piece of cake in the afternoon, and assorted snacks. I felt absolutely stuffed by the time this food orgy was over, and staggered about the apartment moaning and rubbing my aching stomach, and finally tried to force myself to vomit, but the food had already passed into my intestine, so nothing but fluid came out, colored dark brown from the beer. I felt disgusted at myself for guzzling so, like some sort of stupid animal.

Lots of sexual energy with the women at my ballroom dance lessons this evening, especially a black-haired minx with a freckled face, who reminded me of a sexually-aroused female cat. But while good for fantasies, I can already tell she isn't suitable for dating. So, if Nancy doesn't work out, it's back to the personal ads again. I might still go to these dance classes just to be able to touch women for a while. After all, it's cheaper than lap dancers or prostitutes. The dance instructor asked which dances I liked most, obviously trying to start a conversation. "Foxtrot," I replied, and then was silent, so that the conversation fizzled before it had even properly started. Later, she echoed the other instructor's chant of "quick, quick", perhaps implying that I was being too "slow, slow" with her. Or perhaps these are all fantasies of mine. It has occurred to me that she might be using her sex appeal to lure me into paying for private lessons, as dance instructors are reputed to do. But that might also be a fantasy. The paranoid fantasy that women only want me for my money.

On the way back, I listened to a conversation about real-estate between the bus driver, who seemed intelligent and knowledgeable, and a passenger, who seemed a complete fool. I really don't know how other intelligent people can abide fools. Is it because they enjoy the feeling of mental superiority? My own reaction is one of despair. At least before a fool opens his mouth, there is the hope of meeting a kindred soul. Afterwards, I have to face the reality of my own loneliness.

I called Helen to remind her of the $200 she owes me for her printer, and of the fact that her monthly Internet bills are still being charged to my credit card. I feel bad about dunning her, but it seems improper for me to be subsidizing her when she is living with another man. She agreed to reimburse the $200 and pay future Internet bills herself. She and Paul have been living their usual life, punctuated by various petty disputes, and with no sex because of her bladder infections. They had the dinner party on Saturday night, without Helen making the scene she had threatened. Then she recalled an incident that occurred after Paul returned from his trip for the job interview. They had just finished having sex and were lying together in bed, when he said something like: "I was thinking of the worst-case scenario: suppose I marry you and we have a child and then the marriage is a total disaster, and we divorce, and then you expect me to pay you a million dollars as compensation. Given this possibility, would I want you to come to live with me in the northeast if I got a job there? Probably not." She remembers being furious with him, especially since she definitely became ill from the sex, and might also have gotten pregnant. He recently spent $1000 for a complete collection of Beethoven, which he saw advertised in a magazine. This expenditure is despite his being unemployed and having no income at present. He insists they go Dutch treat to restaurants and doesn't want to go with her on a vacation to Hawaii or Mexico, as she had hoped, because it would be too expensive. So she complains, once again, that he is spending on himself but not on her. While at a work lunch recently, she overheard a conversation that went something like the following. "It's incredible the number of managers they have in that department. It's like everyone is a manager," said the first speaker. The second speaker then said: "That's so the manager on top can say he's managing other managers. There's this whole business of using hierarchy to impress people, who is under who and whatnot. Like in this one department, they brought in this guy and made him a manager of the other engineers. He was absolutely incompetent. He just wandered around doing nothing. They finally had to fire him, he was so useless." This allegedly incompetent manager of engineers was Paul.

Another blissful, exquisitely languorous day: lying under the comforter, alternately napping and reading, jumping up to answer the phone a few times, then immediately returning to bed, not fully rising until mid-afternoon, listening to music, masturbating twice to images of fucking the dance instructor. The fantasy ran as follows. We are dancing, when she suddenly asks: "would you like to smell my cunt?" I say sure, so we go to her car, planning to drive to either her or my apartment. But I can't wait, so I order her into the back seat of the car, where I proceed to molest her: smelling and licking her cunt, then fondling her from behind while she sits on my lap. At last we both get very excited, and I fuck her from behind, her arms and legs braced against the sides of the car, me sitting beneath her and fucking upwards while rubbing her cunt with one hand and pushing against her back with the other, with our yells echoing mightily in the car's enclosed interior. She comes, but I deliberately don't. Afterwards, we eat at an all-night restaurant, where everyone gives us strange looks, since we are disheveled and smelling of sex. I am aroused the whole time we are eating, since I haven't come yet. Then back to the car for a repeat performance, with me still deliberately not coming. Finally we get to my apartment, where I fuck her missionary position and come explosively.

I left another message for Nancy, in addition to the ones I left yesterday and the day before yesterday. And the day before that I called three times but the line was busy. I suppose I should give a few more days before drawing conclusions. But it seems pretty ominous. I'll stop calling as of today and see if she calls me. She seemed happy to hear from me just a week ago. But maybe not, maybe she was just pretending to be happy in order to avoid a nasty scene on the telephone. Or perhaps she met someone else in the meantime, someone more sexually aggressive. The possibility of not seeing her anymore made me feel depressed. I got slightly drunk to console myself.

I called Sonya and left a message concerning a Christmas party to which we've been invited. The party is hosted by the man we met at the restaurant last month. She called me back later and seemed eager to go. "We can catch on up what has happened since we last met. Excellent!" So Nancy is gone but Sonya is back. Maybe it's for the best. Sonya is much more intellectually compatible with me. I must have been temporarily insane to have seriously contemplated marriage and children with Nancy.

A horrible experience at the salsa nightclub. I asked a woman to dance and then my mind went blank and my legs refused to work properly. It was as if I had stage fright. The woman looked to her friend and shrugged, as if to say, "I don't know what the problem is. He asked me dance. How was I supposed to know he was such a klutz?" Afterwards, I watched the other dancers for a while, including an older man, who performed some very simple moves, but ever so gracefully. What is my problem? Am I trying to drive the women away, I wonder? When I got home I danced by myself, imitating what the old man had done, imagining I had a partner. It seems so easy. And I had no problems during my lessons two days ago. I was dancing with the instructor, who made only trivial recommendations for improvement. I felt so graceful then. And tonight I felt like such an oaf. While walking home, I felt very depressed and so bought a bag of oatmeal raisin cookies at the all-night grocery store to help console myself, and washed them down with five bottles of beer.

A woman's voice left the following message on my answering machine: "Hey, it's Bernelli. I got a sex change...Umm, just got let out of the institute and I was wondering how you were doing, honey. Okay? Talk to you later, bye!" Someone laughing hysterically in the background.

I talked to Mark, who had called and left a message last week. "Oh, that was Raymond who answered the phone. He's sort of slow. You see, he used to live with a friend of mine. The painter. Did you know him? No? Well, anyway, he passed away and left Raymond $10,000. Raymond was like his man Friday, a live-in helper, kind of like his serf we used to say. Anyway, Raymond has always been cared for by other people. Renting his own apartment is something he could never possibly do on his own. You don't know what trouble is was getting him set up with a checking account, showing him how to use the money machine, and all that. But I must say he's very good about paying me his $300 monthly rent. He sleeps on my sofa. Father Flanagan's boarding house. Ha! ha! I know you're probably wondering how I can stand having a roommate when I'm living in a studio. But you know, I'm out four days a week. And I must say, he's the most docile roommate I ever had. None of this boisterous alcoholism that I had with Tony. I can't take that anymore. But the reason I wanted to talk to you was to say I'm finally going to be coming to visit in January. You see, the old woman I care for has been having seizures and so I couldn't get off in December like I planned. But I am coming to visit. Yes, indeed, most certainly. I need a vacation."

Today's masturbation fantasy was me lying on my back, the woman on all fours straddling me and not moving much, me fucking upwards furiously while pulling on her dangling breasts as if I was milking a cow's udders. I had an explosive orgasm, with semen spurting out all over my stomach and chest, then fell into a deep asleep afterwards. I woke up in the late-afternoon, feeling absolutely disgusted with myself for having spent the whole day indoors. The rain had stopped by this time, so I walked down to the cafe, where I spent four hours reading. The waitress gave me a free piece of cake: "It's a gift, since you're such a regular customer." I thanked her politely, though in fact I resented this gift, since it made me feel somehow obligated to her. After returning to my apartment, I got slightly drunk on beer, while listening to music and thinking about the young woman in the apartment below, whose jiggling breasts are perfect for the fantasy that had so excited me earlier. I went to sleep very late again, past four in the morning.

Nancy called. I mentioned that I had called her three times last week. She explained she had gotten back together with an old boyfriend. I told her I had suspected something of the sort, and that if things didn't work out with him, I hoped she would give me a call, since I wouldn't be calling her anymore. She thanked me politely and we parted on good terms. Perhaps the talk of an old boyfriend is true, perhaps it's just a polite way to get rid of me. I wonder, what does she really think of me? If only I could look at myself from a woman's perspective, I might gain some insight into myself.

Helen called. She is worried about being put in charge of the computer system at her place of work, and complains that she doesn't know what she is doing, that she isn't properly trained, etc. I told her that most people in the computer business were incompetent, so there was nothing to worry about. It turns out that it was she who left the message about Bernelli and his alleged sex-change, and her sister who had been laughing in the background.

I called my sister and left a message saying I wanted to talk to my father. Which isn't quite true since, as usual, I have nothing much to say to my father. But I would like to be in the position to tell my uncle and other relatives something like: "I don't know how my father is doing. I called ten times but my sister won't let me speak to him." Thereby causing my sister to appear to be the monster and not me. In any case, I do hope my father remains healthy and lives for many more years. The longer my sister has to wait for her inheritance, the better. I really don't relish the idea of another lawsuit with her, though it is difficult to resign myself to inheriting nothing from my father myself. The amount of money at stake is simply too large for me to forget about it. I suppose I should just try to keep my options open and then decide what to do after my father dies.

Today was the Christmas party of the man Sonya and I had met in the bar last month. I met Sonya outside and we entered together. I behaved politely for the first few hours, then got drunk and caused some sort of disturbance. Sonya encouraged my drinking, perhaps because she noticed how it made me more animated, talkative, outgoing, cheerful, and otherwise socially engaged. Or at least that's the effect during the initial stages of intoxication. I don't think she realized what a jerk I can become after drinking heavily. She seemed to be coming on to me: putting her hands on me, sitting next to me on the loveseat, and otherwise trying to be friendly and sexually receptive. Once I got sufficiently drunk, I began to respond, in a crude enough way: dancing about her, pawing her, probably making obscene suggestions, who only knows what. My memory of what happened towards the end of the evening is very sketchy. I remember molesting some other women, roaring in the kitchen, getting all upset that I was being unjustly blamed for some red wine that had been spilled on the carpet. I have a horrible dread that I yelled something about wanting to smell all these delicious cunts, though maybe I didn't go that far. I'm pretty sure Sonya left without saying goodbye to me, and that I did at least something to offend her. I also recall various men suggesting I leave. The host suggested I take a cab. I shouted that a cab would take too long, and that I was going to take the bus instead. None of which makes sense. A cab would be much quicker and, regardless, no buses run late at night in that neighborhood. I also vaguely remember running full speed downhill, and tripping and falling several times, and stumbling against buildings and posts. After that everything is a blank. Somehow I managed to get home safely and crawl into bed.

When I woke up the next morning, after a few hours sleep, I was in absolute agony. I staggered to the bathroom and vomited what little there was in my stomach, then lingered over the toilet dry-heaving. The next six hours were pure misery. I would lie down, my whole body racked with excruciating pain, especially my head, and wait for time to pass—the only true cure for a hangover. For some reason, my stomach kept generating yellow bile, even though there was nothing to digest, so every hour or so I would feel the urge to vomit. I would run to the bathroom with my hand over my mouth, kneel over the toilet and heave my guts again and again until nothing more would come up. Though I knew I was terribly dehydrated, I wasn't able to hold down water: it just made me vomit more. In addition to vomiting, I was sweating profusely and shitted three times, as if my body were trying to expel the poison from every possible orifice. At last I fell asleep again. When I woke up, in the evening, I was still feeling sick, but no longer as if about to die. I drank glass after glass of water until my piss was clear, then ate two cans of sardines and some spaghetti. I called Sonya and left a message, apologizing for my behavior the night before. Then I read some and went to sleep about midnight.

Upon awakening the next day, I felt more or less physically recovered. Maybe even stronger than usual during my morning calisthenics. I spent the afternoon wandering around the nightclub district, feeling full of generalized hostility and nervous agitation. As usual, I have little insight into myself so I don't what my problem is. Perhaps sexual frustration. I want to have sex with Sonya or some other woman, but whenever I find one who wants to have it with me, I sabotage the relationship. I'm certainly not depressed. On the contrary, I'm bursting with energy, though a sort of hostile and aggressive energy. The thought keeps occurring to me that I'm behaving like Bernelli.

Another Christmas party. This one hosted by Lisa, who finally has a steady boyfriend. I found this relieving news, since it means there will be no more pressure on me to be her lover. (But pressure from who? Why do I feel pressured?) I listened quietly to a long conversation full of whining that society won't properly support everyone who wants to be an artist and that this is unfair. The woman leading this discussion is an artist herself, and boasted that she makes a living from selling art she has created. But when pressed for details, by another woman who is considering a career as an artist, she reveals that she also teaches art classes. So probably the bulk of her money comes from teaching and only a fraction from selling her art. Which is exactly what I would expect and nothing to be ashamed of. However, she was evasive about this issue. "I don't know where my money comes from!" she exclaimed, laughing nervously and throwing up her hands, as if there was something disgraceful about the fact that she wasn't solely supported by selling artwork. Lisa's lesbian friend was looking beautiful and cheerful as ever. I'd love to lick her, if that's what she wants instead of fucking. Or is she a lesbian because she likes to be aggressive with women? Other than a brief chat with her, I sat silent and bored and afraid to drink any alcohol after the experience at the other Christmas party. It is obvious that I can't enjoy myself in crowds, unless I can somehow remain anonymous and inconspicuous, as at dance clubs. One more party to attend, that of my uncle, and then I can retreat back into solitude.

Helen called. I told her about my drunken behavior and how I seemed to be bungling and even deliberately sabotaging every chance I get with women. Somehow we got onto the topic of self-destructiveness in general, which led to a discussion of my lawsuit with my father and sister.

"I'll probably be disinherited completely," I said.

"Didn't you realize that might happen?" Helen asked.

"It occurred to me. But maybe that's what I really wanted. I was tired of telling lies to my father and sister, telling them how I loved visiting them and whatnot. Maybe I wanted the truth to come out. Namely, that I respected my father but never did enjoy his company, and that I despised my sister. I was tired of being pleasant just so I could someday get an inheritance. I don't care about the money anymore."

Helen scoffed at this last statement of mine, then mentioned possibly moving back to live with her parents and return to graduate school in literature. Both she and Paul are sick with colds. She caught cold first, then he complained that she was keeping him up at night with her constant coughing, so she told him: "I hope you catch cold so you can see what it's like." He replied that this was a terrible thing to say to someone she loved. Her doctor wants to get an x-ray of her breast, to check for possible cancer. She said that if she has to get a mastectomy, she plans to cover the scar with a tattoo of a breast. Paul wants her to get a tattoo now on her buttocks. She replied that she would oblige this request, provided he takes her on an expenses paid trip to Europe. The two of them have been spending money furiously on Christmas shopping.

In the evening, I experimented with sticking a silicone dildo up my ass, then masturbating my cock while moving the dildo in and out. I was trying to see why it is that women and homosexuals enjoy being fucked. This isn't the first time I've tried this experiment. But based on all my recent readings about how homosexuals allegedly enjoy being filled with a cock and massaged by it from the inside and whatnot, I thought it time to try the experiment again. I didn't feel pain, other than a sharp burning sensation upon first inserting the dildo, which faded as my anus slowly relaxed, but I didn't feel much pleasure either. Mostly what I felt was a desire to take a crap. I finally got aroused by imagining myself once again in the role of active fucker, fucking a woman's ass instead of having my own fucked. I didn't come, though this may be because I had already masturbated twice earlier in the day. I'm not sure what to conclude from this experiment. Often, while lying on my back and masturbating, I've imagined myself as a woman being fucked in the cunt. I believe this thought experiment has given me great insight into women's sexual response. But I've seldom imagined myself being fucked in the ass, either as a man or a woman. Perhaps my anus is simply not highly eroticized. To me, the word "anus" conjures up thoughts of constipation, diarrhea, difficulty finding a public restroom, lack of toilet paper, hemorrhoids, the stench of shit. Altogether, a source of trouble, in other words. I certainly don't associate my anus with sexual pleasure. Nor am I particularly attracted by other people's anuses. And I don't want to get my cock dirty with their shit.

I'm beginning to think the dance instructor is pleasant with all men, especially younger men, and that I was just imagining that she was attracted to me. I'll never know for sure unless I ask her out, and that I'm reluctant to do so since I'd feel very foolish if I were mistaken about her feelings, given that she's a dance instructor.

A typical day. I masturbated, processed orders, did leg calisthenics, then took off early and spent four hours daydreaming and reading in the cafe, then masturbated again afterwards to violent fantasies of ripping off a woman's clothes, sniffing and licking her cunt, then fucking her from behind while biting her neck. She protests weakly but secretly enjoys everything.

I read an interesting article in a magazine, which suggests that the real environmental danger we face is not global warming, but the opposite. Temporary global warming might precipitate long-term global cooling, due to changes to ocean currents. Supposedly, the climate could return to ice-age conditions in just a decade or so, which would cause worldwide crop failures, massive starvation, warfare, possibly including nuclear warfare, and the collapse of civilization as we know it. Hopefully, this will all happen after I'm dead. This made me think I should quit trying to accumulate yet more wealth and otherwise prepare for the future, and instead enjoy my every minute on this planet as if I were going to die soon, as I well might. I should quit working altogether, and spend my time doing what I truly enjoy: namely, sitting and reading in the cafe, dancing at nightclubs, and masturbating or fucking. To fuck, of course, I need a sex partner. Preferably an older woman, since they seem to threaten me less than younger women: they don't want my money, they don't want children, they don't expect me to marry or live with them.

I received a Christmas card from Mark. He writes, "You are one of my best friends, even though I haven't seen you for too long. I hope to visit in the middle of January. Hope the holidays are not too stressful or meaningless for you. Cheer up, amigo." Since I never told him I was other than cheerful, I imagine he is the one who is feeling somewhat gloomy.

Christmas dinner with my uncle and his family. All of his three sons are older than me, but only one is married and has children (two daughters). For some reason, it is consoling to know that I am not the only member of this family not to want to marry and have children. Perhaps we share some cultural heritage that makes us feel uncomfortable with mating and breeding under current social conditions. Besides these three sons, there were four other younger male relatives, in-laws of some sort, for a total, including myself, of eight men between the ages of twenty-five and fifty, all of us somehow involved with the computer industry. Everyone—men and women, young and old—seemed impressed that I was running my own business, and interested in hearing me discuss it. I feigned enthusiasm and didn't mention my feelings of discontent about the business. A pleasant enough gathering. People whose common sense I respect. But I don't feel the sort of joy in their presence that I feel around my mother's relatives.

My uncle called my sister, who answered the phone and let him speak to my father. My uncle beckoned me over and handed me the phone, so I was thus able to speak to my father for the first time in months.

"Hi, Dad, it's me," I said.

"__?" he asked.

"Yes, it's me. __, your son. How have you been?"

"Good. Good to hear from you." His tone of voice agreed with his words. Both indicated that he was, in fact, happy to hear from me.

"You know I called you several times and tried to get to speak to you. Are you aware of that?"

"Good heavens! No. When?" he asked.

"I called several times and left messages on the answering machine. You didn't get them?"

"I don't know."

Then I tried to make small talk, and asked what he was doing for Christmas and whatnot. He became flustered and unable to answer and so gave the phone to my sister.

"This is __, your sister. What are you trying to find out?" she snapped.

"I was having a pleasant conversation with dad and I was asking who he had talked to recently," I said.

"I don't see why you need to know that. Not only that, but I don't know what you think you're doing calling us up here. I thought it was just Uncle __ calling and so I let him speak to your father. But your father doesn't want to speak to you. Didn't his lawyer notify you? After those phone messages you left last month, your father went to his lawyer and asked him to tell your attorney that he doesn't want to speak to you any more and he didn't want you to come here for Christmas. Your attorney refused to forward that message. So your father's attorney was supposed to send it to you himself. He was supposed to either call or leave a message on your answering machine."

"I got no such message and my machine is on at all hours. I get business calls all the time."

"Well that's what your father is trying to tell you. He doesn't want to speak to you anymore."

"He can tell me that himself. Put him back on the line and let him say that to me if he wants to."

"Your father has difficulty expressing himself, as you well know. A handicap which you used against him in court, when you sued him. But he is perfectly able to decide that he doesn't want to speak to or hear from or see you any more. Do you really expect your father to want to talk to you after what you did to him? After you took him to court and sued him? And how dare you call up at Christmas and disturb our family gathering like this? After the things you said about me in court? Do you really think your father wants to speak to you after that? How could you talk about us being a family that got along well, when you went and sued us? Friendly people don't take one another to court, they talk things out. Enemies sue people in court. And what disgusts me all the more is how you tricked us into letting you talk to dad, by pretending it was Uncle __ talking to him and then taking over the phone. A typical sort of devious trick of yours. So, no, you're not wanted here and if you don't mind I have a turkey cooking and I have to go. Your father doesn't want to speak to you and I don't either. If you haven't heard from our lawyer, you will. We don't want you calling us anymore."

And then she hung up. I asked my uncle to save his long-distance phone statement so we would have some proof of this conversation, and also to be prepared to someday testify that my father seemed happy to hear from him. We both agreed that this will probably be the last conversation my uncle will ever have with my father (his brother), at least if my sister has her way.

A week ago, I was thinking that I don't really want to talk to my father again, but now I feel different. He is clearly unable to defend himself against my sister's manipulations. She brings him to a lawyer and does all the speaking there. Then he nods in consent and signs whatever papers she and the lawyer put in front of him, completely unawares of what is going on. Though I have never felt very emotionally close to my father, it does pain me to see him mistreated in this way. I would feel less bad if he truly didn't want to speak to me.

I'm starting to feel self-conscious at these discos, as if I'm making a spectacle of myself. A balding, middle-aged man trying to act like a teenager and pick up young women. Afterwards, I couldn't get to sleep due to sexual arousal, which is unusual for me after a hard night dancing, and so I masturbated furiously to images of fucking one of the women I had danced with, pounding the mattress as if it were her cunt, then flipping over at the last minute and ejaculating all over my stomach, with semen squirting all the way to my neck, and my whole body flopping about convulsively. What an orgasm! I fell asleep soon thereafter.

A book I glanced through today in the library recommended masturbation as a way to discover one's sexual potential, but cautioned against performing it too frequently, such as daily, since this might lead to a preference for masturbation over real sex. The author doesn't explain why such a preference is undesirable. My own preference is unclear. Based on the fact that I don't aggressively pursue women, and that I masturbate constantly, it would seem that I prefer it to real sex. And yet I am obsessed with finding a woman to have sex with, which indicates I don't prefer it. There is certainly a great advantage to a preference for masturbation, since it frees me from dependence on another person for sexual satisfaction. In general, the greater my independence, the greater my likelihood of achieving happiness. Or such has been my experience in every aspect of life besides sex. But this logic doesn't convince me emotionally. I remain attached to the idea of real sex, even though I recognize that real sex will probably make me less happy than masturbation.

Helen and I sat together and talked in the park during her lunch break. She was shopping for Christmas presents the other day, when a short unattractive man in his fifties ("runty-looking" is how she describes him) asked her, apropos of nothing, whether she was on the Internet. At first she was worried that this might have been one of the men who had answered her personal ad a few months back, and with whom she had briefly corresponded via email, including emailing a photo of herself. She hesitantly replied yes, whereupon he gave her his business card and suggested she call him some time. His email address is "wildman@___", which she thought absurd: "What kind of loser would have an address like that?" The man was accompanied by his wife, who was occupied elsewhere in the store. Helen seemed most offended by the man's presumptuousness, by the implication that she would even consider dating someone as unattractive and tactless as she found him.

She and Paul have been spending all their evenings together. One day they had a quarrel, which started when he mentioned that she had traces of a mustache on her upper lip and suggested she remove it by waxing.

"And you have nose hairs. You should cut them," retorted Helen. She insists that this retort was not hostile in tone. Nevertheless, Paul was annoyed by it. He pulled himself back into a grave posture and began lecturing:

"You know, Helen, in the professional world, when someone makes a suggestion as to how we should behave, we don't respond by making a suggestion of our own. We listen carefully. We reflect upon what was said, whether it has merit or not. And if it does have merit, then we follow the suggestion that was given to us. Furthermore, we don't do merely what is asked, we do more than what is asked. That is something you need to learn. You have, I think, the intelligence to learn. The desire to learn is what is lacking."

It occurred to her to respond that he had been recently fired because not merely had he not done more than what he was asked to do, he had in fact refused to do anything of what he was asked to do, on the grounds that it was beneath him.

"Look, I do plenty for you. A lot of women would never have the sort of sex we have," said Helen.

"Are you saying I should count myself lucky?" asked Paul

"Yes."

"You feel proud of yourself, then?" Helen didn't know what to make of this remark and so said nothing. After a pause, Paul resumed, "Sometimes I think you aren't ready to live in a relationship, that you should live alone."

"I'm going to live with someone and if it isn't you, it will be someone else. But I'll send you a letter if it's someone else."

"That's a terrible thing to say to someone you supposedly love," said Paul, grimacing and shaking his head.

The above conversation took place on a Saturday morning. Helen's bladder had begun to hurt due to her feeling under stress, so she decided to spend the day indoors, studying computer books that she had brought home from work. Paul objected that he didn't want any studying of computer technology in his apartment, because computers polluted the spiritual environment somehow. Something about computer programming turning humans into robots. So Helen decided to return to her own apartment to study. But as she was packing up to leave, Paul managed to reconcile himself to her, and they decided to spend the day together after all. Helen suggested they take a walk in the wilderness park. This walk turned out to be much longer than she had expected, and at some point they managed to get lost, which resulted in a heated argument. Paul was insistent on continuing with their original plans, even if it meant walking another hour, while Helen wanted to go back the way they had come. Finally, Paul just turned and went on by himself. Helen waited a half-hour or so, assuming Paul had simply gone to get directions and would soon return. When he didn't return, Helen realized that he had "abandoned" her and so she ran after and eventually caught up with him.

"How do you think I feel being abandoned like this? You talk about wanting marriage and children. What am I supposed to do, follow you all around the country because you can't even hold down a steady job, when you don't have the decency to wait for me when I'm sick? How am I supposed to trust you." Paul acted shocked at the angry tone in Helen's voice.

"None of the other women I've lived with has ever attacked me personally like you do."

The next day Helen called her sister to discuss whether she should break up with Paul over this incident. I told her it seemed like a typical lover's quarrel to me, and that I would be much more worried about him trying to get money out of her someday. He is still unemployed and still rejecting job offers, since they all involve relocation, and he doesn't want to move. I mentioned that I was spending many evenings each week at dance lessons. Helen said that she would like learn tango dancing. So I invited her to accompany me some time. She will now have to find some way to evade Paul, without arousing his suspicions. He is very jealous and possessive, and constantly asks her, "Are you still mine? Are you still all mine?" If she does go dancing with me, she will probably spend the night at her own apartment instead of returning to Paul's. "It won't take so long to get home that way. Also, that'll give my rear end a chance to rest." Rest from anal sex, that is.

I bought some new pants this afternoon. It had been painfully obvious to me, when I was sitting next to Helen in the bright sunlight of the park, that the pants I was wearing today were terribly cheap and shabby looking, which is hardly surprising given that they cost only $15 and I haven't washed them recently. I've been wearing these pants every evening when I go dancing, and never noticed before how cheap looking they are. It seems I have a hard time judging my own appearance unless I'm in the presence of another person.

Helen called and suggested we have dinner together. She is spending the night at her own apartment. I let her read some of this journal while we sat in the cafe eating dinner. She said it painted a depressing picture of her life over the past year. Upon reading the entry for last week, when I experimented with the dildo in my ass and didn't find it particularly pleasurable, she ruefully remarked that it wasn't very enjoyable for her either, and that she felt utterly bored waiting for Paul to finish fucking her, and that sex was seeming more and more like a chore that she dreaded, and that she could tolerate it once a week, but not every night, and that she was worried that her lack of pleasure in sex would eventually doom her relationship with Paul, since it was only a matter of time before she would no longer allow him to have sex with her at all, at which point he would leave her for another woman. I suggested again that she find an older man, someone with more money and less sex drive. But she objected that old people smell bad, as if their flesh were rotting. According to her, even Paul, who is only forty-six, is starting to have this rotting smell, which is why he wears cologne. He uses the term "visit" to refer to anal sex with her, as in "I want to visit you" or "that was a nice, long visit." One day before Christmas, when they were frantically shopping, he got euphoric and commented: "It's so nice to be around a happy, healthy woman." But then a little while later, his mood darkened and he complained that Helen seemed obsessed with mass-murderers, such as the Unabomber. She replied that most people were fascinated by criminals and crime, which is why these subjects figure so prominently in the news. Paul disagreed: "Somehow you seem to have an affinity with these sorts of people." He also says he doesn't trust her, though she isn't sure what he means by that.

I read an interesting discussion in Boswell's Journal concerning whether life was worth reliving. The consensus of the speakers was that most lives were so full of misery that people would only be willing to relive them on condition that they not have to make the same mistakes or suffer the same misfortunes the second time around. I put the question to myself, and came to a surprising conclusion. Namely, that I would be very willing to relive those parts of my life which I lived alone: reading, masturbating, listening to music, wandering about the city. But that I would dread having to relive those parts of my life which involved other people, with the solitary exception of some brief moments of physical sex, and even these moments only if I didn't also have to relive the periods before and after the sex act itself, since this always seems to be poisoned by the unpleasantness of having to tell stupid lies to the woman ("I love you") and/or listen to her foolish prattle. By contrast, every act of solitary masturbation seems to have consisted of unalloyed pleasure, and is thus eminently worth reliving. This thought experiment suggests that I am very happy now, living alone and masturbating, and that I might well destroy my happiness if I were ever to find a woman to have sex with. So why am I so intent on finding a such a woman?