I want to know the reason I could hear and didn�t hear what he was saying, the reason why I thought the story could end differently for me.

� Pam Houston, in "The Best Girlfriend You Never Had"

I wrote the first two paragraphs of this one at Gastro on Friday. I�m finishing it now because there�s something rather tonally different I should address here but can�t figure out how to, and anyway I need to talk to Catharine about it first and she is away this weekend. So maybe next week.

Yeah, it�s Pam�s diary, I just write in it. But other topics, other topics, anything but that one! my brain urges insensibly, as if pulling me down a corridor on the way out of a burning building. And my brain knows what�s good for me, so even though as I write this entry there�s part of me that�s still roasting in Todd�s crematorium, I am not going to address that part, or, more accurately, I am not going to let it speak. Except:

When I saw Number Two on Wednesday, naturally the letter was my main concern, and in talking about why I�d had to write it (she agreed) we got onto the subject of that old recurring conversation, the one where I used to tell Todd how much I loved him and how great I thought he was and he�d say first of all that I didn�t love him, I just thought I did because I wanted to be in love with somebody and he was who came along and second that I did not think he was great, it was clear that the people whom I thought were great were Other, namely grad students with perfect table manners. Me: That�s not true at all, I don�t want to go out with a guy like that, I�ve done it and they�re boring and, besides, I want you. Him: You know, you don�t have to pretend. It�s OK, just admit I�m not your type and I never will be. I know it and you know it, so you wouldn�t be hurting me. Me: I�m not going to admit it because it�s not true. How is it that I don�t even get to say who I want to be with? Him: Because I can tell. I can tell these things, and that�s how I can tell you�re lying. Just stop lying and admit it and we�ll both feel better, you�d rather be dating a grad student. Me: No. I want to be dating you. Him: Why do you have to keep saying something that we both know is a lie? Why do you keep lying even though I�ve asked you not to? �lather, incense, repeat. Anyway, I was talking to Number Two about that conversation, and I told her that it was horrible because the only way I ever could have gotten Todd to stop it would have been (a) to say an untrue thing and (b) to admit that I was being a liar, neither of which I was willing to do, so the argument never really went away, it was always only in remission. She said that it was important that I also add (c), which was: tacitly to endorse the implication that there was something wrong with me, wrong with me *because* I felt the need to tell lies and *because* I could not give voice to my real feelings. And there is nothing wrong with you, she said. I also talked about the phenomenon where the good things about me had become threats or liabilities, for instance the perversion of You�re smart into You think I�m stupid, and she said that it must have felt like I was getting squeezed into a narrower and narrower space, since I was constantly trying to excise the bits that were likely to cause that kind of trouble: manifestations of braininess, the habit of brunch with an ex or drinks with pals who happened to have testicles, my own interest in graduate school. I had not thought of it in those terms, but as soon as she said this I felt the weird sick/grateful rush that always comes with letting myself realize belatedly just how bad the now-over bad thing was. Squeezed was a really good word.

Last night I watched "Gaslight," because it had been many years since I�d seen it and I wanted to make sure that my references to it were accurate, that I was entitled to make certain comparisons. And was I entitled? I was so entitled that I got nauseated and had to turn off the VCR and go to bed, and I lay there rattled until after three, not quite able to concentrate from one sentence of Alexie to the next and small solace to be found even in the Thomson. I was thinking about how if there were a racy-youngster version of "Gaslight" made today, adapted and updated in the same way that "Cruel Intentions" was from "Dangerous Liaisons," couldn�t you take the exchange in the previous paragraph and drop it right into the script? Wouldn�t the boy say to the girl, and I am thinking maybe Gregory Smith from "Everwood" and Anna Paquin, You don�t know what you want in a boyfriend, you only think you do? Wouldn�t he say things like Since we don�t have anything in common and don�t have anything to say to each other, what do you say we break up and just stay fuck buddies, since that�s the only part that�s any good? One day he would tell her that she�s a kind and beautiful genius who far outshines all of the women he has met online and is by the way dating, she is unimaginably marvelous, and a few days later he would have turned ice cold and harsh and annoyed with her, and he would make a little production out of pushing the playback button on the answering machine as he passed by and then dashing back to it and scrambling for Stop when another woman�s voice began to speak. While she was in his bed, he would say something in the future tense that concerned offspring, he would say this while stroking her hair, but then they would get up and he would talk to her in indifferent monosyllables. She would cry and cry and use the word "surreal." So now I kind of want to know, if that wasn�t a gaslighting I got, what was it? Did he love me at all, in the sense in which most people mean this word when they say it? How (ha) stupid am I? Then again, I also kind of think I�m better off not knowing, and instead I should run like hell down the corridor and make my break for air and sunlight.

(Some things are harder for me to write about than others.)

Disclaimer: the title of the song in question here is an unfortunate coincidence in the context of something I just typed, and typically it doesn�t have anything to do with what the song�s about. After I typed in yesterday�s mini-entry, I got what felt like a flash of seeing myself in an objective manner, and this led me to self-second-guess, and specifically to wonder whether the fact of my choosing that passage was incompatible with the fact that my new favorite song is the Mountain Goats� coruscatingly nihilistic "No Children." I mean, talk about a tonal difference. I wondered briefly whether this juxtaposition suggested that there was something wrong with me. But then I remembered, nope, there�s nothing wrong with me whatsoever, and that nobody else gets to tell me what�s incompatible with what. There is integrity here. You remember that too, OK?

P.S. (Monday morning, 6:34 a.m.): I changed the title of this entry. I called Catharine a few minutes ago and said "HOLY SHIT" twice before I could think of any other words. I am blasted dumbstruck. You will get filled in probably tomorrow. You are happy for me.