Denise mailed me a Sylvia cartoon titled The Woman Who Lies In Her Personal Journal Is Bummed. The spurious diarist has been fabricating events for years, presumably inspired by Oscar Wilde's epigram about always having something scandalous to read. (She's bummed when she finds out some newspaper journalists also make everything up.) It reminded me of my very first diary, begun in 7th grade, which was entirely fabricated. I started my diary after reading Anne Frank's, and I couldn't bring myself write down all the boring or humiliating events that were actually occuring so I just made stuff up. I planned for my grandchildren to find the thing in an attic, although I've never lived in a house with an attic, so I wrote about all the fun, interesting parties I went to, talked about the friends I had, and even detailed my first kiss.
Talk about spurious and humiliating.
I've long since burned the thing, but I kept my high school and college diaries. Actually, I think my high school diary has gone missing; I'm sure I haven't seen it since about 1985 or so. But I can put my hands on the bright red notebook containing the searing drama and daily hijinx of my late seventies self, and hoo boy, it's a scream. Nothing's fabricated, either. Sorority rituals, nail biting over choir auditions, endless blithering about friends, and hilarious assessments of my constant round of blind dates. If not for the red notebook I would long since have forgotten my brief stint with ROTC. I didn't belong, but I volunteered at the Canteen (a lot of the sororities did), and met a whole lot of conservative military freaks. I always thought they were so cute in their uniforms, but then they'd open their mouths and I'd realize a music major who spent her free time writing, drawing, and reading just didn't have much in common with them.
I kept a paper journal until 1979, the year I dropped out of college. Two years later I discovered science fiction fandom, fanzines, and the art of the personal essay. In between lay a gradual diminution of intellectual stimulation, a high incidence of rock and roll craziness, and a deep dissatisfaction with my life.
Once I wasn't in school I started waitressing at cocktail bars and working in record stores. I stopped writing. I decided I was going to try being a normal person instead of an artist. I really wanted to see something of the American West, so I spent three weeks hitchhiking with truck drivers and listening to country music. I saw every truck stop between Seattle, Boise, Denver, Amarillo, and Bakersfield, but I'm not sure that counts as seeing the west. It was educational, though. I learned to use only single syllable words, and say ain't. I decided I wasn't "a little bit country."
Having got that out of my system I moved in with a friend who had a Capitol Hill apartment, and promptly got sucked into the high gloss world of discos. Suzanne made me go out with her so she wouldn't have to stand in line at the clubs alone, but then she abandoned me inside. She did, to be fair, teach me to dance in our living room. But I was a big loser, and no one ever danced with me that I recall, so I spent most of my evenings playing backgammon with other losers and listening to the throbbing backbeat. I decided I wasn't ever going to be a "dancing queen." I still didn't write.
Popular culture finally turned my way the same year I found fandom, and everything looked up. Suddenly, I had friends whose minds I respected and admired, and the music on the radio was intellectually stimulating on a regular basis. Oh, how I worshipped Elvis Costello and the other British imports. The new style of clothes (Doc Martens, black leather jackets) looked great on me, and made me feel powerful instead of phony. I moved out of Suzanne's apartment. I started writing again.
Thus my only non-writing period corresponded exactly to my least intellectual period, one I still remember as being extraordinarily boring. My attempt to reinvent myself as a fad-conscious, unintellectual person failed. I took up my true interests in music, art, and writing with no backward glances. But I didn't start keeping a diary immediately, being so busy with fanzines, and letters of comment, and articles for newspapers, and so on.
Finally, sixteen years later, I got around to it again. I'm sometimes tempted to fabricate, since my life distinctly lacks scandal these days, but the habit of truth is ingrained now, and besides, other people read it just like I always wanted. I figure the least I can do, since I'm not going to have either grandchildren or an attic, is let you browse around in the reality of my life and take from it what you will.
The Woman Who Tells The Truth In Her Personal Journal Is Just Fine With That.
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