12:14 a.m. Dear Diary, yesterday I went to see "Adaptation" with Romilya. She kept asking me about Valerie. I kept trying to shrug off answering her questions, primarily because I didn't know. I had last seen Valerie 7am Monday morning, when she had walked past me smoking on her way to the train station. "Bye," she had said. "Happy New Year," I had said. "So you don't know when Valerie's coming home?" Romilya asked. I tried to shrug off answering her question. But as we ate, a wild hope began to percolate within me: maybe Valerie was home now. Maybe she'd be waiting for me when I got home. I tried not to hope. I tried not to rush through dinner, tried not to hurry Romilya through her one glass of wine. When I did get home, the lights were dark. But there was an unwashed bowl in the sink; could that have been Valerie's customary bowl of ice cream? or was it a bowl I had left sometime in the mists of antiquity? I couldn't remember. I didn't dare just simply open the door to her room, because I didn't really want to know. Imagine if I were Bluebeard's 13th wife, my gosh! what a horror I would be.

When I awoke this morning I tried not to buzz about the house. Valerie's door was open; was she here, or had I opened the door after all? There was her luggage on the floor: was it always there, did she ever unpack after moving here, or was she home after all? I found a cigarette and a Tony Kushner piece I had printed out from the online New York Times Magazine. I went outside into the unnaturally hot morning and leaned against the garage and smoked and read.

It was a piece about the Queen of Albania meeting Lucia Pamela on the moon. After a while of puzzling over Kushner's trademark expressionism I suddenly realised: this was an obituary. The Queen of Albania and Lucia Pamela are dead.

When I finished reading, I found Valerie walking up the road towards me, carrying two bags of groceries.

"Hi Jonathan," she said, and walked past me.

"I didn't know you were here," I said. "Happy New Year!"

I tried to embrace her. She pulled the bags of groceries up to prevent me from completing my embrace. I pretended I was trying to complete a pli� and she walked past me into the house.

* * *

Later on we screamed at each other and I told her I hated her. She started crying. I apologised awkwardly and she started putting things in bags. "I'm moving back to Los Angeles," she said. "I never imagined you could say something like that." Just then the phone rang. It was Lily. "Come over to where I work," she said, "I can give you free food."

Lily always knows just what to say.

* * *

It turns out that the place Lily works at gives free food as a kind of fillip to what they really serve, which is tits and ass. Lily's stripping. I've never been in what's known as a "tit bar" before.

"You're such a virgin," Lily said. "Here, lemme give you some nachos, I can't really take food for myself but I can serve you."

She gave me potatoes and gravy and nachos. She then proceeded to eat the nachos and potatoes and gravy.

"My god, I'm starving," Lily said.

"Is this why you called me here?" I asked. "Just as an excuse to get food?"

"Well, you're gonna tip me too, right?"

I gave her $5.00. She winked and folded it nimbly into her garter. "This gets you a lap dance," she said. "You're lucky you're my friend. I usually charge twenty." At my look of horror she laughed. "C'mon," she said, "you've got a book." (Which indeed I did have, Charles Dodgson's Symbolic Logic. As she proceeded to gyrate over my supine form, I read these following charming sorites from that very tome:

1. No kitten, that loves fish, is unteachable;
   
2. No kitten without a tail will play with a gorilla;
   
3. Kittens with whiskers always love fish;
   
4. No teachable kitten has green eyes;
   
5. No kittens have tails unless they have whiskers.
   

Answer: No kitten with green eyes will play with a gorilla.)

A drunken fellow then gave Lily an inordinate amount of money to gyrate over his bookless supine form for a long while, so apologetically I fled. But not before promising to fly out to New York with her January 25th to chaperone her at some stripping club against any uncouth types. Perhaps she intends me to bat at them with my books. At any rate, dear Diary, mark your calendar: we're to New York on the 25th.

* * *

Years and years ago, one January 3rd, my father met my mother at a blind date in Charlottesville, VA. They spent the whole afternoon together, and the evening and the morning again, walking around the town. At the end of the walk they had found themselves before a courthouse, and the man who was to become my father said, Shall we find a judge? My mother giggled and said, Why not?

So they got married, at the end of their first date.

My mother had called and talked to Valerie about this, since I was gone on my mission of sin. When I got home Valerie had not, after all, packed and vacated the house. She said, We should go to dinner and celebrate your parents' wedding anniversary.

So we did. We dined on boiling hot Korean tofu soup, which is not what my parents would have done. I bought Gosford Park on DVD for $5.00 from Blockbuster, and when we got home, we watched that. Valerie slowly inched over the couch and very slowly, as if trying not to incur my notice and my inevitable wrath, she softly placed her head on my chest. Her hair smelled of medicinal shampoo and cigarettes.

* * *

And that's all. Happy New Year, diary. Hopefully this year will not be our last.

the Funny Show

agriculture poem

my life in the ghost of Bush

time-lapsed (part 1)

unreconciled

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Images are taken without permission from the fine and trusting folks at Folk Arts of Poland; please purchase something from them. Background music stolen without permission from Epitonic, Basta Music, and just about everywhere else my unscrupulous hands could grab something. No rights reserved.

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