January 12, 2002
I figure I'd better write: I'm drunk – I'd say drunk off my ass but it isn't as true now as it was a couple of hours ago, and I'm managing to stay in the lines. Yesterday I took my prelims, wrote for 4 straight hours, get home, call [Scott], get the story that he and [Chani] … went out the night before and made out for 2 hours straight. Oh, I said, thanks for waiting until after my prelims to tell me. Yes, he says, and we're going out tonight. Oh, I said, what are you doing? I don't know, he said – which told me that they mainly were looking for an excuse to get on each other again. So then [Parker] and I had a date last night, a celebratory dinner at Plumshire Inn, and B____ watched [Denali], and we had a great time. Came home & had some great sex, too. But last night I couldn't sleep, thinking of [Scott] with this other woman, thinking of them having sex, thinking of what it was like the first time [Scott] and I made love, and having to watch that whole scene again, only with her in my place. I couldn't sleep. Today he was supposed to come over around 11, but I figured he'd be out late and yes, he was still at home when I called @ 10:30 before going to the farmer's market. He sounded nervous. Then when I saw him he still seemed nervous. He said he was tired and when I asked how late he'd been up he glanced at [Parker] nervously before he answered, I fell asleep, oh, around 2. We went for a walk and he told me she SLEPT OVER. This was actually worse than I'd imagined – this is their fucking SECOND DATE, remember – and so then, of course, when I asked, so you had sex (more a statement than a question) he said yes. It was like all that adrenaline and stomach churning had a REASON. I didn't know what to say. Mainly I didn't want to say anything because I was afraid I would freak out. I am, and have been, disappointed in myself a bit. The jealousy is such a visceral thing that I can't seem to reason my way through it. I wanted, for instance, desperately, to have sex with him, but I couldn't bring myself to – and then when I had just about gotten myself there, after we'd had our celebratory high tea @ Ciocolat, I learned that he'd had sex with her THREE times last night – which shouldn't surprise me, knowing him, but still, it was like it kept getting worse & worse. He seemed happy about it, and to feel good about it, the more so because she's not being freaky and demanding fidelity from him (God knows, she'd be out of line to insist on that on the second date though), and honestly I know this is a good thing for him, and I should be happy for him, and … [I'd hoped] he'd be able to be interested in someone other than me & feel less isolated, and then this happens all at once like a bomb and I'm cursing myself for a fucking martyr – like what the fuck was I THINKING? He kept telling me how amazing I was, how I was his first priority (and reminding me that I couldn't say the same about his status in my life), and I was so happy to hear it and at the same time I was wanting to roll my eyes at all the rhetoric. Of course he's going to say all those things. And you know I wanted to make him suffer a bit, and hated myself for wanting that, and when at one point I got a little miffed, since he has always maintained he couldn't have casual sex, that he would have to care deeply about someone before he could go there with them, and he said, “I do care about this girl, I care about her deeply,” and I said, “Sex on the second date is something I define as casual sex” and he was horribly offended & complained later I had really hurt his feelings. Whatever. But then I can sit here and be bitter, and think with sarcasm and cynacism [sic] of his cute little protestations derived from Mike Myers movies, the little pout, the “You complete me,” with hand gestures – and yet at times I believed him. And I still believe him. This person he slept with last night...cannot just breeze in and overthrow all we've felt and experienced together: nothing could take that or rob us of that or alter it, turn it, in hindsight, to something baser and fleeting and mistaken. I was such a jerk, such a disappointment to myself, but I was physically ill over this. It is so not easy. And then I couldn't eat dinner here (after eating nothing all day but picking at the high tea delicacies & having about 7 cups of Earl Grey, black) – [Scott] and I went out this evening & we went to Sophia's bar and I had 2 drinks, a Thaibreaker and a Thaiphoon, the first of which had about 3 shots in it, and on an empty stomach, boy, I got knocked for a loop. It was so sweet, and so terribly maudlin, too, with [Scott] professing undying love, and saying that what scared him is that if I told him he couldn't do this, had to stop, he would – that he swore after L___ he'd never let himself go so far, be so at the mercy of someone and his love for them; and me saying I was happy for him but kicking myself for working us both into a position from which I hoped he'd take such a chance with someone else – partly because I believed I'd have more warning! – and getting smashed, and [Scott] crying, and me apologizing for taking it so hard, and really meaning it and also really believing him and also, in some hard place inside of me, thinking BULLSHIT, this man is feeding me lines, he's just come from fucking another woman, some practically a stranger, all night last night, and here he is and says he still wants me, and I roll over and say yes, yes, please fuck me, do – where the hell is my self respect? And then I think, well that's pretty damn hypocritical. What I can't stand is the thought that he's telling me one thing and telling her another and God only knows what he really thinks and feels. But I have only myself to blame, seeing as how I have soft-sold him in the past on how into Mr. E I was, but then I think god DAMN it, nothing happened between me & Mr. E, nothing at all – and then I suspect that part of the reason for that is that I told him too much about [Scott] and how jealous [Scott] was, and how I didn't want to freak [Scott] out....I have this crazy impulse to prove to myself...that I can command others' interest if I so choose – thus my jumping on the notion B____ brought up last night of going dancing in the city this coming weekend, even though [Scott] and I had talked about going on a little vacation then. But I remember what happened the last time I went dancing with the intent to prove my own sexiness – I could easily have gotten raped. And then [Scott] was so crushed that I'd consider bailing on our plans; he seemed genuinely to be looking forward to going with me, I will just have to reschedule with B____ and C____. God, what a pathetic moosh I am....Of course, [Parker] thinks I'm nuts, and as he put it, teasingly, this morning, it really sucks to have a wife who's all freaky & jealous when he [Parker] isn't even getting to do anything fun. But I think [Parker] knows how devoted I am to him – I say this, and then I think he's had to go through what I'm going through – and if it is possible for me to be totally committed to him despite my love and adoration of [Scott]...then surely I could have the faith & strength of character to believe [Scott] when he tells me the same thing. Right? And then I think, maybe this is a sign from the universe that I need to stop focussing [sic] so exclusively on my love life. Maybe I could write something, something good, or at least get my Ph.D. done. And let's hope I passed the prelim. I think I did – I had too much to say, if anything – I over-studied, not understudied. I had lines & lines of poetry in my head. Stevens. “Casual flocks of pigeons make / ambiguous undulations as they sink / downward to darkness, on extended wings.” That's me, baby. Or Frost: “When to the soul of man / was it ever less than treason / To go with the drift of things / To yield with a grace to reason / To bow and accept the end / of a love or a season?” I hope this isn't the end. I hope [Scott] is true, to himself and to me, when he says it isn't just rhetoric, that he doesn't want our relationship to end or change drastically. And I hope that my jealousy or competitiveness or whatever doesn't fuck it up either.
January 14, 2002
The last entry was technically the 13th, since it was written after midnight. Anyway that night I couldn't sleep for more and 3 or 4 hours, and had horrible dreams. The first one wasn't that bad, but it involved me being drunk, being kissed by two teeny-bopper girls, one on either side, and then I moved on to have sex with two separate boys – I say boys because they were kids from my highschool who somehow hadn't grown up. Then after that, it was one of those fever-like dreams that keeps repeating itself in slightly different permutations – first it was like one of [Denali's] mind games, Susan, in which my piece was always getting surrounded, hemmed in, defeated, by pieces labelled [sic] “HER.” The her and me continued: a cocktail recipe in which it was 3 parts “her” and one part “me.” And so on. I woke up a complete mess, not too hung over, but all freaky. I felt I had to DO something to free myself. Funny how I go in for symbolism so heavily when I am so skeptical: I put my hair into a ponytail and then chopped it off. [Parker] later did a good job evening it out for me – it is a bobbed style, about chin length all around. I've had long hair my whole adult life, plus some. I can't decide yet whether I am going to like it. But I felt much better.
At many points yesterday I felt I was being way too melodramatic. [Scott] and I have always known we couldn't expect fidelity from each other; I pushed him into this, and he was operating under my blessing, in a way. I had said, “Well, have fun and I'll try not to think about it” before he had sex with her. Given our situation, isn't it ridiculous for me to behave as if I've been betrayed? I haven't. But I think what freaks me out is a loss of control, a loss of power: who knows what he says to this girl, how he presents things to her. With [Monique], there was the “other” element, but I knew what was going on: he was misrepresenting things to her and I was getting the straight story. And now, who is to say that I'm not in [Monique's] position? That's my fear. And I know he's capable of deception on a grand scale. I don't think he's deceiving me, at least not yet; he outed the whole story, I'm pretty sure. And I told him, straight up, never to soft-sell this to me. The few things I'm still mad at him for the other day were his little evasions, the trying to make himself sound innocent. For example, I get, “I was so surprised, so shocked, and so was she – we had no idea it would happen so fast – it's not something I planned.” And then later, defending himself from my charge of casual sex, “I polled a bunch of people & none of them thought sex on the second date was casual sex” or something like that – and given the timing (he sleeps with her and then comes straight over here) the poll had to have taken place before the date. So I say, “You POLLED your friends about it & you want to say you weren't planning to have sex with her?!?”
...I think what it is, is my anger having no outlet. I can't be mad at him; I have no reason, no excuse. And yet I am angry, deeply angry, and the feeling has no outlet. And I also want this other woman to know about me, to have to be in the same position I'm in, not guessing or wondering but knowing that there's someone else, someone who counts (meaning, someone with some power, some ability to affect [Scott's] state of mind, if not his choices). Thus my [revenge] fantasies: they are a reassertion of power, on the one hand, a way of forcing myself onto this woman's horizon; on the other hand, they give me an excuse – and not just an excuse, either – for my rage. It is a righteous anger, there, not an irrational one; it's one that must be expressed, not quashed. But I don't really want that excuse, and that's why I've warned [Scott] to be upfront with me, and with her too.
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