Girls with Insurance

I get quite irritated when people say the journals are the best thing. God knows, I've struggled with certain things in the journals, especially about being a woman and about being a lesbian. The militant lesbians want me to be a militant and I'm just not.

Fall, 1983

She may or may not be a Human Being. I put my hands in the water and feel a jellyfish. I take out my hands and the translucence slips away with the water. The translucence slips away through my fingers and soon the shimmering, effortless creature is still and opaque, like hardened skin. The lights that flash in the dark water stop flashing. The translucence slips away. I know I can remember feeling it. I put my hands in the water and felt it there. What more can I say? There is nothing to write today.

Arvo Pärt and circumstance are trying to tell me it’s time to talk about Him or talk about Her. I love modern recordings—the sniffles and squeaks. Little worlds like bubbles coming up from the bottom of the swimming pool. I will miss the sharks. I wonder if anyone will take to eating those bright tropical fish after the last exhausted haddock is pulled over the side and beaten to death with a baseball bat. I spent my childhood in chlorine. I used to find the bucket with the chlorine sticks. They were like radiant violations of the rules. I’d play with them in the nobody of my childhood and leave them around carelessly among sisters, cats and dogs.