Flashback: Journal, Grad School, 1984

Take a walk on the wild side, sings Lou Reed over my cheap radio. I’m taking the Valium that the doctor gave me, and I feel I’m only getting a staccato version of my life. I can’t even imagine my life. There’s nobody I’ve ever met and wanted to be. Nobody comes from the same place and goes to where I want to go. Once again there are railway stations right beyond my window and way beyond my reach. Places I might end up but who knows. No one would have expected me in London and Cambridge or Hanover for that matter. I’ve traveled far, and it isn’t well measured in miles. I’m not bragging (or am I?) but I’m in seats where no one would have expected to see me. So? What would I have expected anyway? A house and kids by 22, living in Long Beach or Queens, and having screaming fights with a husband near a screen window with a tear in it that lets in the houseflies, the only domestic part of the arrangement. Pregnant at 18, divorced at 23, working as a waitress. If I were lucky, maybe I would become a bank teller or a real estate agent. This is better. Although where I’ll end up, nobody will understand that. Nobody will congratulate me. They’ll either resent me or they won’t get it at all. I thought by this part, in my 20s, past my early youth, I wouldn’t want a man to fall in love with me anymore, that once I was married, I wouldn’t ever want another man to look at me, but it’s not true. The guy from class is cuter than I first suspected; I’m shocked that I’ve known him for this long and only recently found him attractive. How many days have I wasted by not looking into his eyes? He’s so sweet I want to lick him up and down like rock candy. But he’s too nice to be thinking such things of me. Or else maybe I’m just too old and fat. I’m almost thirty. But I could show him a thing or two. I could use my bag of tricks. I could show him how to dream at night in an altogether different way. He says he sleeps soundly, and all I want in the world is to interrupt that sleep.