What the doctor should have meant: dishery.diaryland.com

Speaking of titles, wouldn�t �Half a Fifth in Half the Bed� be great for a country song? Oh, man, it�s genius, I almost think I should offer it to Ian. Also, I am not sure that the title I gave the last entry is 100% devoid of pissy-little-girl defensiveness, and I might go back and change it because, one, I must keep in mind that a public diary requires always allowing for the possibility that anyone but anyone could be reading it and knowing it�s mine; second, would the bigger person have employed that title? I don�t think so. But wait, I have missed my own point: three, the social dynamic that admits such oppositional figures as a nemesis, the me-against-fill-in-the-blank, is one I need to work on not endorsing. One and Two make me sound like I�m just being strategic, and that�s not the case. This is Secret Heart speaking, not Calculator Brain: I wish I didn�t feel like what I said to Sam was true, and the less I say things like that, the less I will have my prejudices reflected back at me by people the to whom I have said it, and little by little those prejudices will wither from neglect. Their fat vines, which are like a jungle between me and whatever is *actually* true, will shrink to crunchy little twigs that I step on and break as I keep trekking forward.

I am going to change the title right now, in fact. Excuse me.

Or would that have worked better with an absolute-magnitude simile instead of the jungle one? Hmm, yes, with �reflected,� probably it would have. Oh well.

I hope that soon I snap out of this thing I�ve fallen into where in addition to writing in the Dishery, and let�s not even mention the embarrassing spanking-machine level of self-editorial scrutiny to which I seem to have become addicted, I am also its ombudsman. I feel like so far, this is basically a diary about having a public diary. I keep evaluating, repurposing, fact-checking, correcting. The ombudsman and also the Church Lady, more like: I decided not to change the title to something more innocuous, instead to leave its skeleton there as a reminder of what the menace is, another Don�t Let It Happen Again. And half of me is angry, going, �What the hell is this, that I feel the need to monitor my own ethics from sentence to sentence, that I keep subjecting myself to a full cranial cavity search?� (When I know I am a good person. Or am I just needing to show that, or the fact that the hypothesis holds up under brutal testing conditions, to anyone who, ahem, might be reading this? Am I even more screwed up over the sinking of the Monitor than I think I am? What's done is done, and if the answer to that question is yes, I need to slap my face and snap out of it.) The other half of me is abject and submissive, eager to lend a hand towards my own debasement, addicted to the punishment and the sight of blood. Half and half. Fifth, bed.

What menaces me is myself. Halfsharkalligator half man. Whose police state is this, anyway?

I need not to think about my diary for a few hours and just type shit from the tapes. For a little while I think I need not to think at all.

I don�t know what brought this on.

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Marriage is love.