Upstairs Gods, these days flash by at the speed of light. Faster, even. Foldspace days. I spent 14 hours at the office and another two on email and although my contacts are drying out I am still going strong. I look back at entries from January, February of 2000 and I realize that I now have my energy back. This is the me that worked four jobs when I was nineteen. I really am happy again, most of the time. It's a great feeling. Those are small words. But it's good to be back. I feel like a really strong and mature version of the person I was at 19. Or 17, really. I liked her, you know. The person I was at 17. B was accepted to Duke, Boalt, and Columbia. He is now setting up a bidding war among the Ivies. I took this news hard at first. I really did. When he said "Duke" the bottom dropped out of my world again. I asked myself why he kept leaving me. I cried like I haven't cried in nearly a year. The kind of crying where you only stop because the next step is vomiting. But. It passed. The next morning I was manic again. Ready to work. Ready to think. Awake. Sharp. Today I researched tax questions, and put a memo on the attorney's desk. I finished researching a contract question (interesting and sticky one about interment rights in a cemetery) and put that memo on an attorey's desk. I fretted that my Lexis usage was too high. Then I did some more tax research. Then I visited with the other law clerk and with a couple attorneys. My "midsummer" review is coming up. I will leave here in two weeks for Minnesota. Then I set up and ran a phone conference among my Eboard for the journal. Day-before-yesterday I got to sit in on a deposition we were defending. I had lunch with the lawyers: havarti, cucumber, sprouts, mayo on wheat. And chai. It was a steaming hot day and we walked around the downtown. We rode in another attorney's rental car: a lemon-yellow mustang. I carried my legal pad around. I drank ice water and ate court reporter donuts. It was a good day. I like this life. Duke ain't got shit on this life. |
Downstairs I've done my crying. Most of it. There might be more to come. But I'm glad to find that all the pillows I soaked, absolutely soaked, with tears in 1999 have come to fruition. I am just about cried-out over this relationship. And I am still here. And I am maybe still a good person. Good enough for somebody. Good enough for myself, even. Working on it. |
And In My Lady's Chamber I am perhaps unaccountably happy, even after such a long day, because I talked to D for an hour. The man I love to loathe. Or you can transpose that if you like. I reamed him for turning in half a paper in Law & Lit. Really lit into him about it. He damned well deserved to be lit into about it. So I let it rip, because I figure wtf, he's the only person at whom I really get angry nowadays. Yes, it's because I care. (I hit you because I love you?) Well, something in him evokes strong emotional responses. Let's leave it at that. And how does he respond? He takes it. Pretty well, in fact, he takes it. And then he tells me, "I finished that paper, you know." "You . . .what?" "I finished it. I didn't turn it in or anything. But I wrote the rest of it because I don't like having somemthing half-done sitting around. So I finished it for myself." THAT is why he just kills me. "You just kill me," I told him. "You behave like a perfect jackass and then you turn right around and do something so wonderfully sensitive like that, that there's absolutely nothing I can say to it." I think he was even telling the truth. This time. It fits with the D I want to see, anyway. That's what I have to be so careful of. "When I'm talking to you, unless we're playing, I'm not playing any angle," he said. "That's why . . . why I like talking to you, I guess." "D, I know your game now and can pretty well figure out when you're playing the angles. But there are still some grey areas. You don't give me enough information to make judgments. So I have to assume, when I do not know, that you're playing an angle whenever I am in doubt." So this is the conversation we're having while I'm in my Ohio office picking at a blueberry muffin and he's on a street corner in downtown Miami shrieking into a cell phone over the traffic noise. "We really did do some good talking this summer. And she kind of laid it out--she'd be willing to make this marriage work if I'd move back to *** and take a job there. That was it." "That was it?" "That was the deal." "Well, D, excuse me for taking sides here because I know I really should not, but for God's sake, you are her husband. You are going to be an attorney. You two are a team." "That's sort of what I was thinking. That's exactly what I was thinking." "I mean, unless she has some serious career reason for insisting, I really believe she can't condemn you to working in a minor metro if your career is taking you to a major metro." "Well." I don't know, Diary. What do you think? Is he playing an angle? Is he not playing an angle? "We broke up two . . . well, once officially, then two other times, while we were dating. And each time it was because I'd gotten a new job or I'd gotten promoted. And now she says I care about work more than about her." "Well . . . D, it's probably not a [Wife] problem. I mean, that's what I heard from my mother, that's what I heard from friends' mothers. I don't think we hear it so much in our generation. But what I'm saying is that I don't think it's a [Wife] problem. I think it's a situational problem. A role problem. "I was thinking about it the other morning and I realized, 'yeah, if I had what D has, and wanted what he wants, I'd be reluctant to give it up, too.' You want kids, a home, a wife, that whole picture . . . D, when you get out in this game it is damned hard to meet anyone. If I had what you have, I probably wouldn't give it up." "Yes and no. Right now I don't know if that is even what I want." "Well . . . at least you are starting to think about what you want." "Maybe for the first time in nineteen years . . . hell, maybe for the first time ever." And it goes on thusly, more or less, for an hour. Him screaming over traffic. Me picking blueberries out of my muffin. "Shit, well . . . I'd better get back to work," he says, "we've been down here for an hour." Yes, guess "we" have, and I guess we'd better. Back to work, everyone. |
11:41 p.m. - 07-11-01
Recent entries:
Sealy Writes - 04-04-18
Rewind to "Everything's Fine" - 12-25-17
What We Have So Far - 12-25-17
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Long Years in a Short Time - 09-11-13
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