Today: Journal, July 21, 2007
by Ann Bogle
Today: Journal, July 21, 2007
“Today” is supposed to be the best day there is; today is the day that matters, the one that counts, the one to concern ourselves with, to live. Today has been a day of non-stop turmoil and panic and yesterday (who is my friend) brought awakening, knowledge, interest, intrigue, and some fear. I woke in the middle of the night. This has been happening, due to the telephone ringing, and I am good enough to answer, then plagued by the decision, and faulted for it if I lose sleep. We are not to answer the telephone in the middle of the night. Who calls besides drunks? No one. I used to call my manfriend crying in the middle of the night. I cried that I would not have sexuality after all—that was a big sob when I was thirty; I wasn't drunk. I can see crying about that. I would comfort someone crying about that. I understand that—it's natural to believe that sex is essential, but in reality, in practice, romance and sex fail to work out much of the time. People use each other to stave off loneliness and to get past despair and they create new boxes. Sex is a sad reason to be alone with someone. Yesterday I learned so much in one quick hour that I would have hired me on the spot—anyone who can learn as much as readily deserves glad recognition and constructive work. The decisions I am facing lately relate to smoking, coffee, stress, and men. I want women friends very earnestly and might do many new things to meet new ones. I do not want sex. This is just true and no longer a sad subject. I believe writing will result from my new direction.
Today (continued), July 21, 2007
Because what is sex, afterall, besides conformity? Sex is produced by television. Sex is a bag of potato chips with a fat man. Why isn't he fat at the time? Why doesn't he stop whining and wincing and rejecting everyone foolish enough to get to know him? What is sex, really, except a false arrangement? A bypass to a trip to the gym? Why doesn't the fat whiner go to the gym and try his whining on someone there? It sounds like I've met a fat man; I haven't, but I've met them before, and it's always the same—that I take a dim view of them later—fat men are all alike. Why, if that is so, do I not like thin men, then? I have taken a stand against thin and short men—not in themselves—but for me. This has resulted in a mistaken willingness to meet fat men who joined the military or who snarl at their loved ones or who are too mean. Why are fat men mean? Does it make sense that they would be mean, when someone has been willing to know them? They ought to hide in shame if so, but they are fat, so they take up spaces. Not so with fat women. Fat women come in two sizes. Why do fat men and women not enjoy each other? Why don't the good fat women take up with the good fat men? Let the snarling and whining fat ones enjoy it. At least I am not too thin to be restive. I look like a doe in the mirror. I look like a doormat, someone said, a two-cent; but to my eye, I look like a doe.
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Good, good, good.
"Because what is sex, afterall, besides conformity? Sex is produced by television. Sex is a bag of potato chips with a fat man."
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Thanks, Sam.
Though this has never been true for me, "Sex is a bag of potato chips with a fat man.", I can see the general validity of this statement. Love this journal. Consider myself addicted.
So many truths here, Ann. Especially: Sex is a sad reason to be alone with someone. Required reading for everyone. Peace *
I changed the title of the second passage to "Today (continued)". Thanks for reading, Marcus and Linda!
Oh good, a tough one. Wonderfully disturbing. Like Linda, I am very taken with, 'Sex is a sad reason to be alone with someone." Also love the end.
This is amazing, I kept nodding and agreeing and nodding and thinking: how does she say this in such a way that allows us access into her deep mind parts.
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Sally, thanks for reading. Thanks, Susan T.
No one is saying s/he is finding this funny. I'm finding it funny in a privately distorted sense. Though I wrote it sincerely (once), I think it's comical now -- it has the comedy of anti-fat bigotry. The comedy of freely chosen speech.
"What was I thinking?" someone said to me once, about a fling she had had that had turned pricy, but I knew she hadn't meant it or been blind. I knew she had watched the story as it had unfolded through her telescope.
The story I did not write that provoked me to write "Today: Journal, July 21, 2007" appalls me in memory. I could not tell it fully except as fiction. The man it concerned surrounded himself with lawyers after he'd returned to Iowa following our one-night-stand at a drug-infested motel in Plymouth, Minnesota (there because it was cheaper than the place I had suggested -- which was nicer but not expensive, per se -- and because my mother had not wanted him at her house where I was then living). We'd arranged the date by internet. His ex-wife was a professional opera singer in Des Moines. Why am I telling you this? He was an American veteran who had fought for Israel in the 60s. His daughter was beaten until her bones broke by her boyfriend, and he, her father, didn't seem to care, thought only in legalities. On the freeway in search of a cheap motel, he attacked the air as he drove, against the Palestinians. Fearful, I called my sister. The red flags, the signs were mitigated by the cell phone photo he'd sent of the iris he'd propagated. Lawyers when he returned to Iowa because he'd lost his nursing job at the V.A. and they were already on hand. Well, if I had been younger, we would have called it date rape, but at my age I described it as "low consent."
You write a diary not to be mean but to curl up inside how mean someone can be. For me it is not what I write every day, just one day or so per year.
You write like no one else I know. You are entirely Ann. Always interesting. Consistently fabulous. Never less than riveting.
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Honored, privileged, Bill. See you next week!
motel diaries never occurred to robert lowell, but our ann once again takes us to places where a girl can get shot to the heart and turn up among the living limping strong--
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jump back & read
"Does it make sense that they would be mean, when someone has been willing to know them?"Really cool stuff..
amazing writing.
Gary, amazing comment. Forgot to say so.
Thanks, Darryl and James.