Dear Diary,
It’s a thousand light years later, lunar time.
Everybody’s been storytelling except me. I don’t have any stories worth telling. All I can do is draw pictures of monsters and internal organs and hate.
Another day, another blow job. The fuzz has clamped down till the town is mother dry. If I don’t give Big Ass a blow he’ll cut off my supply. Hell, I’m shaking on the inside more than I’m shaking on the outside. What a bastard world without drugs! The dirty ofay who wants me to lay it on him knows my ass is dragging, but he’s doling out the only supply I know about. I’m almost ready to take on the Fat Cats, the Rich Philistines, or even the whole public for one good shot. Goddamn Big Ass makes me do it before he gives me the load. Everybody is just lying around here like they’re dead and Little Jacon is yelling, “Mama, Daddy can’t come now. He’s humping Carla.” I’ve got to get out of this shit hole.
I don’t know what the hell hour or day or even year it is, or even what town. I guess I’ve had a blackout or they’ve been passing some bad pills. The girl on the grass beside me is white-faced and Mona Lisa like and she’s preggers. I asked her what she was going to do with the baby and she just said. “It will belong to everybody. We’ll all share her.”
I wanted to go and find someone who’s holding, but the baby thing really bugged me. So I asked her for an upper and she just shook her head like a stupid, blank, and I realized that she’s completely burned out. Behind that beautiful stone face is a big dried-up bunch of ashes and she’s lying there like a stupid dumb shit who can’t do anything.
Well, at least I’m not burned out and I’m not preg. Or maybe I am. I couldn’t take the goddamn pill even if I had it. No doper can take the pill because they don’t know what the hell day it is. So maybe I am pregnant. So what. There’s a pre-med drop out wandering around somewhere who will take care of it. Or maybe some goddamn prick would stomp on me during a freak out and I’d lose it anyway. Or maybe the son-of-a-bitch bomb will go off tomorrow. Who knows?
When I look around here at all the ass draggers, I really think that we are a bunch of gutless wonders. We get pissed off when someone tells us what to do, but we don’t know what to do unless some fat bastard tells us. Let somebody else think for us and do for us and act for us. Let them build the roads and the cars and the houses, run the lights and the gas and the water and the sewers. We’ll just sit here on our blistered tails with our minds exploding and our hands out. God, I sound like a goddamn Establishmentarian, and I haven’t even got a pill to take the taste out of my mouth or drive the bull shit thoughts away.
When?
A raindrop just splashed on my forehead and it was like a tear from heaven. Are the clouds and the skies really weeping over me? Am I really alone in the whole wide gray world? Is it possible that even God is crying for me? Oh no… no… no… I’m losing my mind. Please God, help me.
I gather from the sky that it is early morning. I’ve been reading a paper that the wind blew up beside me. It says one girl had her baby in the park, another had a miscarriage and two unidentified boys died during the night from O.D.’s. Oh, how I wish one of them had been me!
I finally talked to an old priest who really understands young people. We had an endlessly long talk about why young people leave home, then he called my mom and dad. While I waited for him to get the call through I looked at myself in the mirror. I can’t believe that I have changed so little. I expected to look old and hollow and gray, but I guess it’s only me on the inside that has shriveled and deteriorated. Mom answered the phone in the family room, and Dad ran upstairs to get the extension, and the three of us almost drowned out the connection. I can’t understand how they can possibly still love me and still want me but they do! They do! They do! They were glad to hear from me and to know I am all right. And there were no recriminations or scoldings or lectures or anything. It’s strange when something happens to me Dad always leaves everything in the whole world and comes. I think if he were a peace mission involving all humanity in all the galaxies he would leave to come to me. He loves me! He loves me! He loves me! He truly does! I just wish I could love myself. I don’t know how I can treat my family like I have. But I’m going to make it all up to them, I’m through with all the shit. I’m not even going to talk about it or write about it or even think about it anymore. I am going to spend the rest of my entire life trying to please them.
Dear Diary,
I couldn’t sleep, so I’ve been wandering the streets. I look kind of square because I don’t want to seem weird when my parents get here. I’ve got my hair tied back in a ponytail and I traded clothes with the most conservative girl I could find, and I’m wearing an old pair of white tennies I found in the gutter. At first the kids I talked to in the coffee house seemed a little uptight because of the way I looked, but when I told them I’d called my folks to come and get me they all seemed glad.
It seems inconceivable that all the time Chris and I were in Berkeley we didn’t find out anything about any of the kids. It was just one big tearing down everything and everybody vacuum. Tonight I learned about Mike and Marie and Heidi and Lilac and many others. I’ll probably use up the rest of the pages writing about them, but that’s good because I want to get a fresh new clean book when I get home. You,
dear Diary, will be my past. Then one I will buy when we get home will be my future. So now I must hurry and write about the people I have met just this night. It simply amazes me that so many parents and kids have trouble over their hair! My parents were always bugging me about mine. They wanted me to curl it or cut it or get it out of my eyes, or tie it back etc., etc., etc. Sometimes I think that was our biggest bone of contention. I met Mike at the coffee house, and after explaining my situation and my current curiosity about why kids run away he became very communicative and told me that hair had been one of his problems too. In fact his dad had become so angry that twice he had forcibly shaved his head and sideburns. Mike said his parents were taking away all his freedom and power of decision. He was becoming dehumanized, mechanized, forced into the mold of his father. He was not even allowed to decide which classes he wanted to take in school! He said he wanted art, but his parents thought only weaklings and bums were artists. Finally he ran away to preserve his personality and sanity. So I told Mike about the church and their efforts to bring about a new and human arrangement between my parents and me. I hope he goes there.
Then I talked to Alice, who I met just sitting stoned on the curb. She didn’t know whether she was running away from something or running to something, but she admitted that deep in her heart she wanted to go home. The others I talked to, the ones who had homes, all seemed to want to go back, but felt they couldn’t because that would mean giving up their identity. It made me think about the hundreds of thousands of kids who have run away and are wandering around all over the place. Where do they come from? Where do they even manage to crash for the night? Most of them don’t have any money and don’t have anywhere to go.
I think I’ll go into child guidance when I get out of school. Or maybe I should become a psychologist. At least I’d be able to understand where kids are at and maybe that would help compensate for what I’ve done to my family and myself. Perhaps it was even right for me to go through all this suffering so that I could be more understanding and tolerant of the rest of humanity.