his neck and entwine my ankles above the middle of his back.
“Barely worth it, wouldn’t you say?” He grins down at me over a forkful of steak. “A Candid Camera stunt’s livelier.” But his eyes shine as if he had a low-grade fever and I don’t need to wonder whether mine do too.
I HAD NEVER allowed anyone to read my diaries. They had been a fitful business, sometimes carried on intently in lurching subway cars (one hand shielding the page from passengers standing above me, selfconscious sidelong glances at those touching my thighs to the right and left); equally selfconscious at my desk, between a hurried return from a demonstration with a client and a staff meeting scheduled fifteen minutes later; or alone at night, a foot away from a mute and bright three-inch Kojak running heavily down a windy street, his crook of the evening sliding around a corner, garbage cans silently sent sprawling on sidewalks; or in locked bathrooms, crouched on a cold toilet cover, water left running in the sink so as not to let on to the man in my bed that I was writing: “This is getting to be… I used to want… long overdue …”; daily entries obsessive for months, then neglected for no clear reason for half a year except for sporadic sentences, “March 8, raining, hair wretched.”
1 had always been wary of people who published their diaries. It seemed a violation to me to have a true diary read publicly, and a diary written to be read by others-having lost its purpose: to be one’s secret place-could at heart be no more than variations on “March 8, raining, hair wretched.”
Some years back I had surprised a lover holding my open diary. Though I knew he could scarcely have read a word, so short a time had I been gone from the room; though I knew he was unhappy at how things stood between us and had maybe hoped for a clue; though 1 knew that my leaving him over the diary would not be to the point, the incident clearly a pretext even to me-still I thought, that’s it, this does it. I said nothing and watched him close the book awkwardly. I left, and for weeks thought of him only in terms of half a sentence: “… reading my diary, too.”
Since I had met him I had written every day, three or four sentences at first, soon pages and pages. When he picked up the diary one evening out of my open briefcase next to the coffee table, and began to leaf through it, a curious mix of sensations rose up my spine: dismay at first; then relief, enchantment, exultation. How had I been able to bear it? All the times when he hadn’t read this notebook, how long had it been, there had been no one to read me. An adolescent’s code, a dense scribbling complicated by a smattering of leftover Latin, meant to be indecipherable to anyone but me-and sometimes beyond even me, mere weeks later. All the times of rushing to bureau drawers when the doorbell rang, sliding notebooks under slips and handkerchiefs; all the times of last-minute looks around a room to make sure something I didn’t want seen, something I wanted no one to know about, hadn’t been left exposed. Always to be laden with recesses not to be opened to anyone; the grim isolation, the bleakness of privacy. Over, 1 thought, it’s over, he knows me completely, there is nothing to hide, and sat down at the foot of the couch and watched him read.
JUST CALLED HIM at work, reassuring to hear the receptionist’s voice recite a company name, then croon, “Just a moment please.” Reassuring to hear his secretary answer half a minute later, reassuring to listen to her say, “… may be out to lunch, if he is he didn’t tell me, may I take a message?” I need reassurance. Left the office at ten-thirty, no appointments for the rest of the day, planning to get caught up on backlog working at home; and now this, instead.
He calls back. “We’re an anachronism,” I whisper, reading from the dictionary into the phone in a raspy voice; nearly every one of the definitions
“Barely worth it, wouldn’t you say?” He grins down at me over a forkful of steak. “A Candid Camera stunt’s livelier.” But his eyes shine as if he had a low-grade fever and I don’t need to wonder whether mine do too.
I HAD NEVER allowed anyone to read my diaries. They had been a fitful business, sometimes carried on intently in lurching subway cars (one hand shielding the page from passengers standing above me, selfconscious sidelong glances at those touching my thighs to the right and left); equally selfconscious at my desk, between a hurried return from a demonstration with a client and a staff meeting scheduled fifteen minutes later; or alone at night, a foot away from a mute and bright three-inch Kojak running heavily down a windy street, his crook of the evening sliding around a corner, garbage cans silently sent sprawling on sidewalks; or in locked bathrooms, crouched on a cold toilet cover, water left running in the sink so as not to let on to the man in my bed that I was writing: “This is getting to be… I used to want… long overdue …”; daily entries obsessive for months, then neglected for no clear reason for half a year except for sporadic sentences, “March 8, raining, hair wretched.”
1 had always been wary of people who published their diaries. It seemed a violation to me to have a true diary read publicly, and a diary written to be read by others-having lost its purpose: to be one’s secret place-could at heart be no more than variations on “March 8, raining, hair wretched.”
Some years back I had surprised a lover holding my open diary. Though I knew he could scarcely have read a word, so short a time had I been gone from the room; though I knew he was unhappy at how things stood between us and had maybe hoped for a clue; though 1 knew that my leaving him over the diary would not be to the point, the incident clearly a pretext even to me-still I thought, that’s it, this does it. I said nothing and watched him close the book awkwardly. I left, and for weeks thought of him only in terms of half a sentence: “… reading my diary, too.”
Since I had met him I had written every day, three or four sentences at first, soon pages and pages. When he picked up the diary one evening out of my open briefcase next to the coffee table, and began to leaf through it, a curious mix of sensations rose up my spine: dismay at first; then relief, enchantment, exultation. How had I been able to bear it? All the times when he hadn’t read this notebook, how long had it been, there had been no one to read me. An adolescent’s code, a dense scribbling complicated by a smattering of leftover Latin, meant to be indecipherable to anyone but me-and sometimes beyond even me, mere weeks later. All the times of rushing to bureau drawers when the doorbell rang, sliding notebooks under slips and handkerchiefs; all the times of last-minute looks around a room to make sure something I didn’t want seen, something I wanted no one to know about, hadn’t been left exposed. Always to be laden with recesses not to be opened to anyone; the grim isolation, the bleakness of privacy. Over, 1 thought, it’s over, he knows me completely, there is nothing to hide, and sat down at the foot of the couch and watched him read.
JUST CALLED HIM at work, reassuring to hear the receptionist’s voice recite a company name, then croon, “Just a moment please.” Reassuring to hear his secretary answer half a minute later, reassuring to listen to her say, “… may be out to lunch, if he is he didn’t tell me, may I take a message?” I need reassurance. Left the office at ten-thirty, no appointments for the rest of the day, planning to get caught up on backlog working at home; and now this, instead.
He calls back. “We’re an anachronism,” I whisper, reading from the dictionary into the phone in a raspy voice; nearly every one of the definitions
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