If Only I Knew What I Wanted

From The Night Buddy Willard Kissed Me And Said I Must Go Out With A Lot Of Boys, He Made Me Feel I Was Much More Sexy And Experienced Than He Was And That Everything He Did Like Hugging And Kissing And Petting Was Simply What I Made Him Feel Like Doing Out Of The Blue, He Couldn’t Help It And Didn’t Know How It Came About. Now I Saw He Had Only Been Pretending All This Time To Be So Innocent.

I Had Imagined A Kind, Ugly, Intuitive Man Looking Up And Say, 'ah!' In An Encouraging Way, As If He Could See Something I Couldn't, And Then I Would Find Words To Tell Him How I Was So Scared, As If I Were Being Stuffed Farther And Farther Into A Black, Airless Sack With No Way Out.

I Suppose If I Gave Myself The Chance I Could Be An Alcoholic.

Life Was Not To Be Sitting In Hot Amorphic Leisure In My Backyard Idly Writing Or Not Writing, As The Spirit Moved Me. It Was, Instead, Running Madly, In A Crowded Schedule, In A Squirrel Cage Of Busy People. Working, Living, Dancing, Dreaming, Talking, Kissing- Singing, Laughing, Learning.

I Began To See Why Woman-haters Could Make Such Fools Of Women. Woman-haters Were Like Gods: Invulnerable And Chock Full Of Power. They Descended, And Then They Disappeared. You Could Never Catch One.