A Stripper Seeking Work & the Susan Block Show. In the midst of the failing car, the laptop which needs work every week, the newly developed buzz in my ears, the lumps growing under my skin, the overwhelming needs of my business and the oppresive sensation that the other shoe has yet to fall I am often struck with a need to write about you and where we are.

Yes it is a good thing to lay out a journal of our days. I know that someday they may hold as much value to you as they do for me. It is so frustrating that for several years now these journals take second place behind the ever present tools breaking and my exhaustions. There are large gaps in time which I fill in letters to you every day, but which never make it to the page.

I am a different person through out my journals of my youth. Reading them now I see myself as a stranger. I know who I was. I know why I did what I did but I no longer understand the pressures I was under. I no longer recognize the reasons why I had these needs. So if when you read this as an adult you say to yourself, "this may seem like the privates notes of my dad but they are not the dad I know." it will be okay. You change everyday. I change everyday. That is to be expected. Do not be surprised and don't feel let down if the person you were does not live up to the expectations of today. Don't be let down that the person you will become does not live up to your dreams. It is all an illusion. Both your dreams and their realizations are there as guides.

Tonight I am sitting in a coffee shop I have not been in many years. I was to appear on the Susan Block Show this evening but somehow the effort in the midst of all of this just amounts to a gathering of stress I'm not willing to accept this evening. When I was younger I would have both scoffed at the notion of appearing on tv and been quite eager to participate in such a television show. But today I recognize that what I can do to care for myself and hence you is to simply let another appear on the show and serve my own needs lest I simply collapse from it all. You will be back home from your girlfriends' soon and we will sleep and tomorrow will be another day.

This week I discovered that your mother is searching for work back home. I know so many folks back there that I always seem to discover when she begins making the rounds in another adventure. In some ways I find it very disturbing because I have become like some kind of voyeur. I know many stories now about the various escapades which she has initiated. If she knew that i knew all of this, and she were in a healthy state of mind, I have no doubt she would be very embarrassed. Conversely I am confident she knows nothing whatsoever about what we have been doing. One of the brilliant things about being here in this town is that we are in control of who knows us and all those we come in contact with are now strangers to our old life. We only have a handful of friends left from the days when L was in our lives and they, above all others, are jealous guards of our privacy knowing full well the chaos which L leaves in her wake.

So L is going from restuarant to restuarant in town searching for work. She is in one of her very ill periods as the stories coming back are full of tales of her manic energy, her crazy whack job stories, and her intense rolling eyes. Apparently her resume has now been expunged of her exemplary record of waiting tables, her record of dutiful work caring for the developmentally disabled, and her near PhD status in Russian literature. Now L's resume is full of references to her history of stripping in all the major clubs throughout the west. She has deemed herself to be a new type of dancer who has reinvented the sport that is exotic dancing by conflating the normal bump and grind with classical ballet of the orthodox Russian variety. [filchyboy]

12/8/02:1:25:10 AM PST