Okey dokey, I want to make blogger's edit your blog page my browser's home page, changing it from one of the news and information pages (the Guardian, the Boston Globe, CNN) it usually resides on, but I am torn. Shouldn't I also want to know what goes on in the world? Besides, who would keep an eye on the genocidal politicians? I mean, I know we in civilized society have systems and people in place to do that for us—to watch the genocidal politicians. Unfortunately watching is all that ever seems to be done by those systems; the journalists, the opposing political parties, the mothers of these soulless despots. That just isn't enough. However, when I try and watch them myself, it is simply too much.
Ahh, coffee cup dilemmas. I suppose I have GE to thank for my leisure comfort, and for the ability to sit, sock-footed, and contemplate their crimes. Thanks go out too to the big-money, power-mongering conservatives who keep it all in order—growing the economy, controlling the culture, restraining all those wild anarchic liberals. And that's just their domestic venue. They are blood-spattered rapists abroad, all their actions beneficiently intended to prevent our precipitous fall from our familiar American standard of living to something closer to the standard at which 99% of the world suffers.
More coffee.
And why make the page at which I compose these diatribes which I spew into my spitoon-website, why make this the page I come to every day, automatically? I wish I came here reluctantly, but I can't control my eagerness to bitch and moan. I am still playing the part of victim; I have not yet moved into that next role of my existence, ...I don't even know what it's called. Besides, I might not assume that role until a later lifetime. In the meantime, as a victim, bitching and moaning is the only comfort I know. Is that pathetic, or what?
Peter Wiedenman. The name is all I have been able to keep. The rest all scared me too much. I remember the moment I saw him; he walked in late to an orientation meeting at a summer job on Cape Cod. He had short blonde hair, except for a braided tail that hung down to the middle of his back. He had to keep it hidden while he was working, he was a waiter. That was odd because the place was very tolerant of a whole lot, but he had a reputation there, at Wequassett Inn. Peter lived nearby, and had worked there before, and he was mischievous and irreverent. He was fearless.
I concluded he was way out of my league; cute, young, charming, and popular with all the right sorts of people—or more accurately, unpopular with all the stuffed shirts and authority figures. I didn't want to embarrass myself by revealing the powerful attraction I felt toward him. He was 20, I was 30.
It is amazing how low a person's self esteem can be; I was certain he would disdain me from the start—if I were fortunate I thought, I would be able to evade the focus of his attention completely. How completely, completely wrong I was.
Very early into the season, Peter suggested to me that he and I go swimming the next night in the pool on the property, which of course employees were forbidden to do. I was scared and looking for hiding places from this attention that I was so afraid to want. But at the same time I was thrilled, and lost. I thought Peter might be gay. I felt guilty for hoping that he was. We did it—swim, I mean—I brough. a bathing suit, he was naked. He stood above me, at the edge of the pool, a perfect, tanned young body. I focussed on swimming, pretending I didn't notice. He wanted me to do exactly what I wanted to do, but I was paralyzed with fear, hiding in the water. His ego must have been at least a tiny bit wounded, and I went home, sorely dissappointed in myself.
He didn't let up as the season progressed. Not that the focus of his attention on me was withering, but he did persist. Once he sneaked in the night to the bungalows where most of the employees stayed and, outside my door, he took my bike—which was as important to me then as it is now—and he climbed up on the roof, completely unnoticed, and propped it there, directly above my door. In the morning, late as usual, I came out to jump on my bike and dash two miles to work, but the spot where I left my bike every night was bike-less. I was stunned. Someone stole it, I thought, panicky. But I was late, and I would have to deal with the theft later. Just then a co-worker was in the parking lot, starting her car, and I asked if I could get a ride in with her. "Somebody stole my bike," I said as I got in the car. Then, as I looked back at the building I had just come from, I saw it. My bike, a teal Bianchi, stood upright in the roof-gutter directly above my door like a kind of makeshift bicycle store sign. And I knew, with a giddy pleasure, that it was Peter's attention focussing on me again.
(I'll have to finish later. I am late for work, as usual.)