August 6, 2018

Intending to do something else, got accidentally into play-submission mode. Fully ½ the notices on NYC Playwrights are “women only” or “women or trans only.”  Does anyone think this will make better theater?

Completed most of the tasks I’d set for myself today, and some I hadn’t. Except the unused bags of mulch lie all forlorn. 

Thought of dinner last night. I drove to the pizza shop on Main Street in Weaverville: full, families, turbulent, but very sweet. Big handsome boys working in the kitchen and cleaning tables. They gave me a free measure of Montepulciano because there was so little left in the bottom of the bottle. Out on the sidewalk was a shirtless–almost shirtless-- man with a dog. At distance I noticed he was being very kind to the dog. Up close, I noticed the smell of his body was strong, vital, glorious, the smell of a god; leaving out the floral, the best smell I ever smelled. I wanted to stay close to him, but couldn’t think of a way that didn’t require explanation.

Lois Lane to a just-resurrected-from-the-dead Superman in a movie on TV the other night: “You smell good.”
Superman: “Didn’t I before?”

Yes, my attraction to--hunger for, sometimes brutal hunger for–contact with the masculine is because my father was cold and distant. But the effect would seem so much greater and more consequential than the cause. I guess that’s what happens to the tree when the seedling is damaged.  I think my whole career as a singer came from a quarrel with my friend Jesse in the 3rd grade. He had been selected for the Betty Jane choir and I had not. The song they were singing was “My Donkey Deodoro. One day I was walking home from school singing “My Donkey Deodoro,” and Jesse, who must have been lying in wait, jumped out of cover and said, “You can’t sing that! That’s just for kids in the choir, and you didn’t make choir. You can’t pretend you did!” I actually though he must be right. Didn’t try again till 7th grade. Made it then. Made it ever since. Am I still refuting Jesse?

When I mention Jesse, people who know him pretty generally use the descriptor, “mean.” So he was then.

Thinking of Jack in a cowboy costume singing “I’m Going to Leave Old Texas Now.” jealousy in me unable even to say what it was jealous of.

Big wasp nest above my front door. Madame wasp managed to raise her brood without interfering with me once, nor I with her.