Stolen Pleasures by Gina Berriault

Author:Gina Berriault
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Counterpoint Press
Published: 2011-07-22T04:00:00+00:00

The Diary of K. W.

FEBRUARY 7

Often a young woman will marry an old man just because she likes his soul. But you don’t see this happen vice versa. You don’t often see a young fellow marry a sixty-three-year-old woman. When this happens, which is once every twenty years, you see their pictures in the newspapers all over the country. They live in Oskeegee, Georgia, or some place like that, and he looks moronic. Nobody marries an old woman because she has a soul.

FEBRUARY 9

At noon today I was fired from my job of cafeteria substitute helper at the Eunice B. Stratton Grammar School. I was told by my supervisor to go and see a psychiatrist. But I would rather argue with God. God costs nothing and His arguments are weightier. But I confess that after I was fired, this very afternoon, I strolled into a clinic but the social worker told me it would have to be group therapy because so many people came for help and I was not a desperate case, so I strolled out again without leaving my name. I don’t want to talk about my quirks to other people with quirks. It wouldn’t be so embarrassing if we were all alone together, but a psychiatrist sits there listening and I’ve heard he doesn’t say a word. You get the feeling that the ones who talk about themselves are the crazy ones and the one who sits silent is the sane one. Contrary to what I said above, God doesn’t answer either. It’s myself answering myself and sounding weighty, doing the job for Him. In my room I talk about my quirks to God with no embarrassment or not much. I threaten Him or disown Him, and then I answer for Him. If He’d answer, I’d die. But a man with a college education, why you expect an answer. I would rather write things down as I’ve decided to do in this diary and, besides, that immortalizes me, like Leonardo da Vinci. The psychiatrist takes notes, I hear, but that’s not the same as keeping a journal by yourself. He can’t take down the real meaning, just the cryptic stuff he swears by. He translates the quirks into a code and never knows he’s forgotten something.

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