“Neither do I.”
“You take a girl like Barbara Jo, she’s the little red-haired kid who sometimes calls herself Barbara Jo and sometimes BJ?” I nodded, knowing who she meant. “She gives me a lot of shit about how I don’t know what love is. Now nobody should have to listen to lines like that, right? I don’t know what love is. But she, she’s the authority. She ever talk to you about her man?”
“She wanted me to meet him. I told her I had a man of my own.”
“Very intelligent, Jan. Very smart. I happen to know a little about this man of hers. His name is Maurice. He’s a shriveled-up little spade about the height of a fireplug with this comical wrinkled-up face. I swear what he looks like is a monkey. It’s comical to see him with Barbara Jo, who’s little herself, but when you see him walking down the street with a pair of six-foot blonds it’s too much. He looks as though he’s walking a pair of Great Danes on leashes.
“I’ll tell you something about her Maurice. He has I think it’s eight girls now, all of them hustling like mad and dealing back every time to Maurice. And in return for this Maurice doesn’t even throw them a friendly fuck from time to time, pardon the language.” Pardon the language! “Because he can’t, the little brown jerk. He can’t get hard, this top stud. He can come if you suck him for a month or so, but without getting hard. That’s what BJ gets for her money. That’s how come she knows all about love, and I don’t.”
“Well, girls like that are crazy.”
“Yeah. But you’ve got a money hangup where you don’t know if you should quit after you make a hundred dollars in a day. What’s the problem?”
“Oh, I don’t know.”
“Right, and I’m too nosy.”
“No, it’s not that.”
“Whatever you say.”
Why keep it a secret? For what? I put out one cigarette and lit another and started talking about it. It all came out in a flood. Diarrhea of the mouth, once I started. I couldn’t stop. She was the right kind of listener, not getting in the way or anything.
When I was done she said, “Well, the important thing is to get you an abortion. I know this doctor, he’s really a doctor, not a butcher. Believe me I know about some of those. I’ve had what, four abortions. You would think I would learn what’s causing it, wouldn’t you?”
“Why don’t you take the pill?”
“And get cancer?”
“Jesus, everything gives you cancer. Smoking, soda pop, the stuff they put to keep the bread from getting moldy. Everything in the world gives you cancer.”
“I’ll tell you something, I think the world itself is getting cancer.”
“Maybe. But I’ll take the pill.”
“If you’re going to take it, Jan, take it all the time.”
“Yeah, that’s a point.”
“Anyway, he’ll do this for three hundred dollars. He’s good and he’s clean and he’s safe, and if there are complications afterward you can call him and he’ll come. That’s what kills girls, bleeding afterward and they can’t reach the abortionist and don’t have the brains to call somebody else or go to a hospital. Although I think of hospitals as places to go if you don’t care what happens to you. You wouldn’t get me into one unless they already had the priest for me. Are you a Catholic by any chance?”
“No.”
“Neither am I. Just an expression, having the priest for me. Look, do you have three hundred dollars? Then your troubles are over.”
“Except then I won’t be able to make the rent.”
“So when the landlord comes around you’ll ball him.”
“The landlord is a corporation.”
“Same thing here. That’s some hunk of rent you have to pay. Look, get the abortion first and then you’ll worry about it, right?”
I suppose she’s right. I’m seeing her tomorrow and then we’ll arrange a time and place for the abortion. The thing that bothers me is I’m sure I won’t be able to work afterward for at least a few days and maybe a few weeks. I don’t know how long it takes before one’s plumbing is back in working order. Are all abortions the same?
That’s obviously a stupid question. There are obviously at least two kinds of abortions, the ones where the girl lives and the ones where she doesn’t.
Cheerful thought.
July 29
Today’s the day.
I know it’s stupid to be afraid. So I’m stupid. I can’t help it. Somebody’s going to reach up me and cut something out. Of course I’m afraid.
And I’m reaching the point where I start wondering about the kid. The one that’s getting cut out in a few hours. I wonder which fuck caused it and whose kid it is. Whose kid it would be, that is, if it were going to get the chance to be a kid.
I’ll tell you something, my kid that I’ll never get to tell anything to, I’ll tell you this much. You’re not missing a hell of a lot. The game’s not worth the candle.
What bothers me more, frankly, is the question of what kind of abortion I’m going to have for three hundred dollars when the going rate is supposed to be something like three times that figure. According to Liz, this is a class doctor, but if so why am I getting a bargain basement abortion? She says he’s an occasional John and gets a kick out of aborting hookers. I suppose that’s possible. There’s nothing too odd or unusual for it to be some man’s personal kick.
Actually if he bungles the job and I die I think I’m ahead of the game. If nothing else it would certainly take some of the pressure off. Because I don’t see how I’m going to be able to make the rent. It’s due the first of the month, which is like three days from now. I’ve got three hundred for the abortion and another hundred and a half, and I won’t be earning anything for a week after that. (Maybe I could at that. Such a high percentage of tricks are simple blow jobs that I could probably keep body and soul together without using my snatch at all. Not the first day, of course, but pretty soon.)
Oh, everything will work out. I know it will. Liz keeps insisting she’ll lend me the money, and alternately invites me to move in with her until I get back on my feet. I hate to borrow from her but I also hate to give up this place. I know it costs more than it’s worth and more than I can afford and all that but I still like it.
I guess I’ll stay with her after the operation, though. I gather it’s a bad time to be alone. If anything does go wrong (I keep telling myself nothing will go wrong, but myself doesn’t even begin to believe this), you want to have someone else around to call for help.
Also they say it’s a dangerous time emotionally. You can have a perfect operation and be recovering very nicely and you get hit by this fantastic wave of depression and do yourself in. I don’t find this hard to understand. I’m pretty depressed and I haven’t even gone in yet.
August 9
How frustrating! This fucking book (and looking through it, that’s exactly what it is, a fucking book, since that’s what most if not all of the entries seem to be about) is habit-forming. A week or two can go by without an entry, but when I want to write something and the book’s not around, that’s something else again. I go into insulin shock.
The abortion was a breeze. (I suddenly get the lovely image of a column of cold air tunneling up my cunt and aborting me, the abortion as breeze.) It was not nearly the horror I kept anticipating, and it was over and done with quickly, and then I napped for an hour and he examined me and sent me on my way, along with a couple of bottles of pills.
I stayed with Liz. Stayed there until today, as a matter of fact, which is why I’ve been having withdrawal symptoms over the damned diary, which I couldn’t get to.