A Madwoman's Diary Read online

  Drove me home, or to the place around the corner where my alleged friends live. When he stopped the car he looked at me as though he wanted to kiss me.

  But didn’t.

  I almost wish he had, and yet am glad he didn’t. Very strange.

  14 April—Wednesday

  A line or two before I go see Bill.

  Sunday I take my first pill. Wish I didn’t have the curse now because I think I’d let him fuck me. Or do something, anyway.

  Nice thing about our ridiculous relationship is that menstruation doesn’t interfere with the normal course of things.

  My ad was in Screw. Embarrassed me to look at it. Felt naked, exposed to the public eye. Jennifer Starr now a matter of public record. Thought it wouldn’t be in until next week, but I guess the mails were faster than usual and that they have a late closing on the classified pages.

  I don’t expect much. If I get two or three replies I’ll be happy.

  I wonder what I expect to get out of all this.

  That’s easy.

  Fucked.

  15 April—Thursday

  Checked my Post Office box. Nothing in it, which was to be expected. The ad just came out yesterday, and even if some pervert rushed straight to the mailbox, his reply wouldn’t show up before tomorrow at the very earliest. I didn’t really expect anything today, just went and checked because I had some time to kill on my lunch hour.

  On the way home, I bought some cow shit for my plant.

  If anyone had told me that the day would come when I would spend fifty cents on cow shit for a plant, I would have told him his head was on backwards. (As it happens, no one ever told me, so the world was spared that exchange of sparkling wit.) But I did. Spend fifty cents, that is, and for my money I got a two-pound bag, yellow with green lettering, of sterile dried cow manure. I suppose it’s very important that it’s sterile. I wouldn’t want my philodendron to have a baby, would I?

  I took a teaspoon and mulched my plant with cow shit. It smells sort of nice, actually. I don’t know whether all cow shit has this pleasant open-air smell to it, or whether this only happens if they dry and sterilize it. At any rate, I mulched Mother with about a half-inch of the shit all around the base, and then I watered it so it wouldn’t blow all over my apartment, and now I feel I have done my good deed for the day. Also for the month, as the plant won’t need any more cow shit for at least that long. Judging by the amount I used, and the quantity I still have on hand, I’ll be able to feed my little green darling for the next three years before it’s time to run out and buy more cow flop.

  I wish there were something to do with it besides feed philodendrons. Maybe I could mix it with water and drop it out the window on people’s heads.

  “Look, Ma. A flying cow just shat on me smack in the middle of Manhattan!”

  Somehow I think not.

  Last night I watched Bill with a girl.

  Got there and he said another girl was coming over. I asked if it was Wanda again.

  “Not Wanda. A girl I never met before. She called up in response to the ad. Very nervous sort. Married, and never had an orgasm. Married six years, I think she said. A couple of kids. Bought The Sensuous Woman and tried masturbating but she’s too embarrassed to make it work for her. Husband just throws her an in-and-out three or four times a week. Pops before she can get in the mood. Thinks if someone would cat her for a month or so she might find the path to Paradise. Not that she put it that way, but that’s what it seems to boil down to.”

  “You’ll want me to leave, then.”

  “Not unless you want to.”

  “But—”

  “Thought it might be kicks for you to hang around and watch, Jennifer.”

  “But she won’t want that, will she?”

  “Who’s going to tell her? You squat in the closet, peep through the door. She won’t know you’re around.”

  “I thought you never like to lay a bad trip on a girl, all that rap about existing wholly for her pleasure.”

  “And so I shall. Her pleasure and yours, love flower. What she doesn’t know won’t cramp her style. She comes, she goes, and you keep quiet in there. Won’t hurt her a bit, will it?”

  And so we play it that way. Terribly exciting. And dirty- feeling at the same time, because I am watching someone in secret, watching someone who does not want to be watched, who would not put up with it if she knew. Crouching naked in the closet, easing the door ajar a few inches after she and Bill begin to get acquainted. Dark in the closet, light in the room—no way she can see me, of course, but seems to me she would have to be able to hear my ragged breathing, the pounding of my imperfect heart.

  Tall, big-boned girl about thirty. Not fat yet, but she will be if she doesn’t start having orgasms, because it looks as though she’s already beginning to search for them at the bottoms of cookie jars. Large Earth Mother breasts. Dimples in her bottom. Dark curls of twat hair reaching almost to her navel.

  (Fantasy: I would like to eat a girl someday sans pubic hair. Either too young to have it—how perverse—or freshly shaved. Shall I perhaps shave my own? I wonder if the absence of hair there would be apt to turn men and/or women on or off? In pornography that I’ve seen they almost always have pubic hair. The men always do—I’m sure I’ve never seen a picture of a man who shaved there. And almost all the women. All the ones in the movies, and most of the ones in still photos I’ve seen. Though I do recall—quite vividly—a close-up of a shaven woman. Wonder whether it appealed to me in and of itself, or because it was so different from the unshaven ones, or on the third hand—look ma, three hands—because one could glimpse details otherwise obscured. But I would surely hate to cut myself shaving. Suppose it’s not that much different from shaving under your arms. Could become routine and automatic, something one does before dates—shave the pits, shave the crotch, put on lipstick and perfume, and off we go to the orgy like a well-brought-up young lady.)

  Helen (her name last night) would have worn out a razor blade a day. Really a copious bush. This didn’t seem to turn him off. Nothing about her seemed to turn him off.

  Interesting to watch him operate. She had come up specifically to be screwed, or in any case to be eaten, and they had established all this in front, and yet he had to seduce her. Not romantically, but he had to talk her into it. All of these stupid objections she raised. “Oh, I don’t know. Oh, perhaps I’ll hate myself afterwards. It would be terrible to hate myself forever for an act of adultery. Oh, if I could only be sure—”

  Took him fifteen minutes, and then he played her gradually, romanced her physically, much kissing and petting and slow undressing, playing that genius tongue over those oversize breasts, getting the old hand between those plump thighs, fingers on safari through the jungle of dark curly shrubbery. Little sounds from her—“Oh. Ooooh. Ah, oh.”

  Then abruptly she sat up, weight supported on arms extended behind her, eyes clenched tight.

  “I don’t think this is working.”

  “What’s the matter?”

  “I can’t let go.”

  “Just go along with it, Helen. Just be passive, just enjoy. Relax with it. Don’t think about where you’re going. Just think about where you are.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Just enjoy how it feels. Doesn’t it feel good?”

  “Yes, but—”

  “Isn’t it exciting?”

  “But I’m not excited.”

  “But it feels good.”

  “Yes, but—”

  “So lie back and enjoy it.”

  Odd watching. Quite unlike a movie. Better and worse than a movie. Worse because crouching in a closet is far less comfortable than sitting in a plush seat, even the seat of a shabby Times Square porn house. And because one’s perspective from that closet cannot shift as the camera can, dollying in for close-ups, moving back and around to examine the problem from different points of view. One static shot, distance and camera angle never changing, and not all of the acti
on visible from that fixed angle.

  Had my eyes been a camera, the movie they would have recorded would have been a boring one. Vastly inferior to the general run of commercially available filth.

  In that sense, worse. In another sense, better. Because these were not actors speaking written lines but people engaged in a real drama, and only one of them even knew I existed as the drama’s audience. And so I was able to get into the skin of Helen as I wouldn’t have been able to do had she been performing an identical role on a movie screen.

  The identification was not total. I became Helen to an extent, felt what she felt, struggled as she did to lose self and to be overcome by flesh. But I also remained me, ARjenniferLENE, thrilled equally by my own peeper’s role, the visual input enhanced by a helpful finger on my clitoral nether-finger, trembling on the brink for the longest time but holding off, deliberately holding off, keeping my own culmination back in the hopes of synchronizing it with Helen’s.

  He ate her for ages. Ate her while she thrilled to the newness of it, ate her past that point until her body understood it, then went on eating her until her body got out in front of her mind and she was able to respond for what was probably the first time in her life. At one point I knew she was going to make it and my heart thrilled for her. And she did make it, coming with loud cries and much kicking of feet, and I in my closet joined her in a more restrained fashion, coming in sedate silence and moving not at all and still enjoying it every bit as much as she.

  While she was still reverberating with it, he sprang up and piled onto her, sank his cock into her, and began screwing away madly. I watched the rise and fall of his buttocks. The camera angle was particularly unfortunate for this scene, as it were; I was so situated that I was looking right up his ass and seeing little else. She cooled off a little and he banged away some more and she heated up and came again with a wall-piercing shriek and he collapsed on top of her.

  There was more conversation afterward but I paid hardly any attention to it. Then the shower was running, and then she was putting on clothes and leaving. After the door closed behind her he came over and opened the closet door and grinned down at me.

  “Enjoy?”

  “Mmm-hmm. Must be an ego trip, making two ladies happy with one cock. Did you mean what you told her?”

  “I told her a lot of things. I think I meant most of them. What?”

  “That now she would be able to make it with her husband.”

  “Oh. Sort of. It would help if she could train him to go down on her, and she’ll probably try. That or scout around for a lover. And she’ll get more of a kick out of playing with him, whether it’s her husband or lover, and she’ll have a better idea of what her body is supposed to do.”

  “Good Doctor Bill.”

  “Not quite.”

  “Oh? I’m not so sure. You know what you are? You’re a sexual therapist.”

  “That’s a nice thought.”

  “It’s what you are.”

  “And instead of fees, I get orgasms.”

  “Didn’t get one tonight, though, did you?”

  A stare of surprise. “You knew that? How?”

  “I was right, wasn’t I? I just knew you didn’t come. I don’t know how I knew.”

  “Too much concentration on getting her off, I guess. Too much holding myself in check to let go when the time came, and it didn’t seem right to make her hang around until I got it together. More of an ego trip for Doctor Bill to send her home properly glowing.”

  Took his cock in my hand. Long but still limp, but it quivered a little as I handled it. I like the ease I have come to have touching him, my familiarity with his flesh and, through it, with all other flesh.

  People still intimidate me, but their bodies are much less the vehicles for intimidation.

  “I came good,” I said. “I owe you one. Bad time of the month for certain things, but there are other things, and I think we can work something out.”

  “Forward little devil.”

  “No. Shy and scared all the time, actually. But not scared of your cock any more. Scared of you in certain secret ways. But not of your cock. I want it in my mouth for awhile, but after that you can come anywhere you want. You can probably think of an interesting place.”

  “I can think of several.”

  “I was sure you could. Surprise me.”

  And afterwards:

  “You almost scare me, Jennifer.”

  “How?”

  “She didn’t know I didn’t come. Christ, it was her body that I didn’t shoot into, and she didn’t notice the difference.”

  “Maybe she just didn’t want to mention it.”

  “Maybe. But you knew.”

  “So I’m psychic.”

  Oh, Bill. I was there, Bill. In a way that Mrs. Big Tits wasn’t. I was both of you and felt what each of you was feeling. I almost scare you?

  Hell.

  I almost scare me.

  16 April—Friday

  Forgot to check my Post Office box. Think I’m getting a cold. Head stuffy and headachy all afternoon.

  Time for an early-to-bed.

  17 April—Saturday

  Haven’t been out of the house all day. Barely out of bed, just to make tea and toast, water my plant, and make very frequent trips to the toilet. I was going to take sick leave from typing this but decided to make an entry as much out of boredom as anything else.

  Suppose I have a fever, but no way to check. No thermometer. Doesn’t seem to matter. I’d act the same way if I knew for certain I had a fever. Do feel dizzy, and the less said about my gastrointestinal system, the better.

  18 April—Sunday

  Feel worlds better today. One of those twenty-four hour gimmicks, I guess.

  I just spoke to the Bored Housewife whose ad I answered a few light years ago. It seems I always get the impulse to call her on nights and weekends, which are precisely the times when her Boring Husband is apt to be home. Decided the hell with it, there’s nothing suspicious about a woman calling another woman, and I called. She answered the phone herself, said her husband was downstairs building a model train. If that’s how he spends Sundays, I know why she’s bored.

  Problem is where to meet. I told her I live with my parents so my place is out. Her place is fine, but only during business hours when her husband is away, and those are the hours I work. She suggested maybe we could go to a hotel room or something on a weekday evening. I suppose it’s possible but we didn’t make any plans. Left it open—I’m to think things out, and so will she, and I’ll call her back in a few days and we’ll see how it goes.

  I don’t think I’ll bother to call her.

  I have a feeling there are letters in my Post Office box. Would have checked yesterday but how? Couldn’t even leave the apartment. And today the place is closed. At least I think it is, and I’m not going all the way over there to check.

  I’m sure it’s closed. Maybe the main Post Office is open on Sundays, but the branch stations must be closed.

  Nothing more annoying than the certainty there’s a letter for you and no way to get to it.

  Took my first pill today. Period just finishing itself up.

  I can now fuck with impunity. Or at least without getting pregnant.

  19 April—Monday

  Eleven letters. Incredible!

  20 April—Tuesday

  Three more letters in the Post Office box this afternoon, making a total of fourteen. I really didn’t expect this much of a response. I tried to work the ad to make people answer it but I didn’t think that many would be interested. Fourteen of them.

  One I’m pretty sure is a fake. It’s supposed to be from a couple that likes to do everything that is in any way sexual, but there’s a tone to the letter that makes me think it was written by a guy who gets a kick out of writing dirty letters. On the one hand it’s wildly obscene and excessively detailed, and on the other hand there’s a lot of nonsense about not sending a photo of the two of them out of fear
of exposure. They risk a lot more from the contents of the letter, assuming it to be true, than they could possibly risk with a non-obscene photo. And “they” (I’m sure it’s really just a “he”) go to great lengths asking me to describe just what sort of act I would like them to put on for me, and what acts I have enjoyed watching in the past, and could I please send a naked and preferably obscene picture of myself? No, friend, I could not. Your letter’s a lot of fun, but don’t expect me to reply to it.

  The rest are all possibilities. And thirteen out of fourteen is a damned good average, I would think. Interesting how many of the letters include at least a phrase or two weighing the possibility that I am actually a phony of some sort, and then going on to say that they will presume I’m on the up-and-up, at least in terms of the first letter.

  I should have done this ages ago. Placed an ad, that is. This way I get replies from people who want what I want instead of having to write blindly to people who are less than enthusiastic about my scene.

  Jennifer, new worlds are opening up for you!

  Surprising that I got that much response. I never would have thought there were that many people hot for having someone watch them. I guess it isn’t a main kick for the people who answered me. They mention that they enjoy being watched, but it doesn’t seem to be their major preoccupation. More that they’re generally open to new things, and that the idea of having willowy me sitting around watching and playing with myself strikes them as more fun, say, than a hot poker up the ass.

  My language has either loosened up or deteriorated markedly in the past two months. Depending on how you want to look at it.

  I feel positively wealthy. I sit with my fourteen letters in my hands and ruffle through them, feeling like Scrooge McDuck romping in his money bin. What an abundance of riches! All but a couple of them have included photos and phone numbers. The photos are properly innocent things, head and shoulders shots, which I find reassuring; I would be a little put off at the thought of meeting someone sufficiently moronic to send actionable photos through the mails to an unknown recipient. I read the letters and look at the photographs and consider the phone numbers and realize that the possibilities are, if not endless, at least far less closely bounded than they were before. I could, at any moment, on any whim, call this one or that one or this one or that one—