(I think this is one major difference between Todd and me. I have no ethical issue whatsoever with a lie like that one, which allows me to keep my dignity and gets people off my back who don�t have any business being there in the first place. Here, I have actually had to parry entire lines of inquiry about such things as my lack of health insurance, what if I decided to have a baby, how on earth would I pay for something like that? And as the smiley perky temp, one is not in the position to respond with I beg your pardon, that�s a more personal question than I�m comfortable answering. Do I owe, to people in whom I would not choose to confide, free admission to the peepshow of my neuroses and the news desk of my life? I think not.)

Doesn�t that sound all kinds of plausible? And it totally spares me the superficially supportive gosh-poor-you, obviously-you�re-really-nice-and-really-smart-and-I-know-you-will-find-something-really-soon speeches that made Jeanne�s birthday party, e.g., an incompletely fun time for me. Sometimes, when someone just won�t let up and I start to get tense, I tell another one and say that I have self-pay health insurance, expensive yes but boy oh boy is it worth it for peace of mind. And then I change the subject. Anyway, I will be telling a version of the work lie to the Tankers who ask me what I�ve been up to since the last time most of them saw me, which was a little less than a year ago. I don�t need the aggravation. I will also be lying to the people who say Oh, what about your boyfriend, where is he, I really wanted to meet him finally � and, not to put too fine a point on what the Tank girls think of me vis-a-vis the fellas, they will be saying that for sure. I�m haven't decided yet, but the one I�m leaning towards is that his band had a gig out of town. An invitation to a party does not equal an obligation to satisfy the prurience of my fellow guests, and besides, the tale of the DL is first too unbelievable and then too epic for airy could-be fabulism; factor in the how-did-you-meet aspect of the situation, which the Tank crowd doesn�t know because at the last party we�d just started dating and I didn�t want to jinx things or to risk looking stupid later in case they went cold, and I�d practically need to throw a whole party myself to make a space big enough for the damn story, as I learned to my dismay when I made the attempt with Don. Q: How did you meet? A: At a show at the Crocodile. Easy. This represents not so much disavowal of the backstory � previously mentioned in this space � as disengagement from potential conversations I would very much rather not have, and that I have every right not to want to have. Technically, of course, I know that on the other hand I have no right these days to use or tacitly to endorse use of the unprefixed �boyfriend� or to speak in the present tense with respect to Todd, and that he might be peeved if he found out I did. But fuck it, I go to parties to have a good time, not to do penance and make other people feel better about themselves on account of not being as bad off as I am. And if the DL does not one day have an h.e. � that is to say, if Todd dumps me � then the next time there�s a Tank party and the girls crowd around again asking what-about-your-boyfriend, then I will simply say, �Oh, we broke up.� Q: Oh no, why? A: Ultimately it didn�t work out. It�s sad but what can you do.

And then I will change the subject.

I mean, I fundamentally can�t accept that this kind of lying is a bad thing. My friends know the truth, my friends know all the truth (I will clue Joe in so that he is not taken aback when he hears me spouting bullshit tonight). My diary knows the truth, so it�s not like I�m in denial to myself, either. I don�t know what the big deal is about wanting, and feeling entitled to so taking, this kind of privacy. This is one instance in which my self-preservation is at no one�s expense. Why can�t I have it?

I want Steven Pinker�s new book. The map of the United States in the CIA World Factbook shows only these six cities: New York, Miami, Houston, Los Angeles, Seattle, and Anchorage (uh, national capital, guys?). My sister likes the Posies! Last night when I got home, I talked to that bad monkey on the phone for a while and then went running. I took off like a shot because the last time I went out, I realized when I was about a mile from finished that I�d been holding back, and I was disappointed in myself for this and figured the better way was to exhaust myself early and cruise on fumes for the home stretch. But while I was out there, I was thinking about Lady Elaine and I got so fired-up irate that as I neared the final turnoff, I went north instead of south and kept on going so that by the time I stopped I would clock 96 minutes, the hour-and-a-half mark met eight days before the goal I�d set for myself. I came home and did some but not all of the resume shit I listed in yesterday�s entry, swayed by Rebecca�s (a) argument that almost nobody was going to jump all over it on a Friday, if I took care of it Friday evening or over the weekend then it would be attended to on Monday the same as it would have been otherwise; and (b) chocolate-chip cookies she was taking out of the oven at the same time as I�d have been heading down to my computer. Also I was kind of spacey � 96 minutes is a lot so soon, it turns out � and a beer and some Jon Stewart were much more in line with my mental faculties. But I did make sure to send the goods to the one woman who actually interacted with me in a positive manner on the phone yesterday, and here is the reply she sent me this morning, before 9 o�clock, hey hey: Thanks for rounding out your resume with your cover letter. Why don't you call me ASAP. I'd like to get you in here and start our process today if you are available. Next week is rather booked up for me and I am anxious to meet you. So that�s something, right? Get me with the ASAP, right? I left a message on her voicemail and asked her to call me back here this afternoon. Oh, also, I plan to tell a custom-tailored version of the work lie, if necessary, to temp-agency reps. I�ll tell them whatever I have to, whatever makes me seem like a shiny happy temp rather than a suspiciously disenfranchised brainiac, and I won�t feel bad about that, either. I should end this entry here, though, because my replacement will be showing up present-like for a half-hour of training, and I�m still working on lightening her soon-to-be workload. I�ve got some interesting stuff lined up for this weekend, starting with the Tank party � which, yup, I�ll go to only after spending some solid unemployed time online � and I hope you do too. Over and out.