I�m not sure how much the rest of me believes this, but the cold-blooded biologist in me has lately been thinking about � in some cases against the will of the rest of me � how there is a sense in which when men act like that, they are, yes, being bastardly pig-dogs, and they are also being expensively true to their deepest cellular impulses. Just today I�m realizing that I may have been thinking about it because the Harris case has been in the news. The thing is, for organisms driven to reproduce, lifetime fidelity is contraindicated in every way. There is no evolutionary advantage. Male organisms, male human organisms who remain sexually faithful to their mates � sorry to sound so clinical; I need to make it clear that I don�t mean this as an apologia for dudes who sleep around � are working against their bodies� own chemistry and hormones and , yes, raison d�etre. They are swimming upstream. So what is for us female organisms to do who are wired so differently? I have been thinking lately, and hoping somehow to be convinced that I�m being too fatalistic in doing so, that we must half-expect that sooner or later the men in our own lives might lose the fight against the David Harris in them. Any man could walk in the proverbial door any night and say, "Honey, I�ve been thinking it over, and I am very sorry but I don�t find you attractive anymore and I am going to go pursue younger, firmer, less wrinkly and more fertile organisms." And in being such a pig-dog he would only be being honest. This is where I get hung up � would I want Mr. Man to do me the decency of being honest about it and then to be left alone but independent and challenged in a way few people ever get to experience, to be forced to test myself against, no, in tandem with the world, or would I want him keeping me warm in bed at night under the mortgaged roof, both of us knowingly huddled against different sides of the same delusion? I don�t know. It�s kind of the kidless corollary of the concept of staying together for the sake of the children, when everyone knows that when it gets to the point of rationalizing the matter that way, the coupleship is already so far gone that it can only screw the kids up worse.

I have a friend who�s semi-on the make for a girlfriend, and when putting himself where a candidate might be found, he refuses to wear clean or ironed clothes, to tidy himself up a bit, to make an effort to seem interested. To him, maintaining the appearance and demeanor of a disaffected college kid amounts to a political statement, since any girl who�s going to sign on with him must love him for his true self, dirty shirts and poor conversational skills and all. He says that he won�t pretend that he�s something he�s not. Myself, I am unfashionably in the opposite camp � it�s never come to this, but I�ve always thought that if there were a Mr. Man and he made clear his preference for long hair, say, and I didn�t feel strongly about it either way, then I would grow mine. I mean, he would have to look at it every day, a lot more than I would, and essentially every second that you inhabit a female body, you are involved, at the biological level, in a competition against all the other female bodies. And I suspect that deep down, many women know this, or at least instinctively know that the uncomfortable sleazy underwear, the shaving cream and the sweet-smelling grooming products, are an investment in their security and in their futures, or at least an example of hedging one�s bets. This stuff isn�t exactly embarrassing to write, but I know I�m going to get some flak for it. I don�t want to pretend though that it isn�t on my mind, especially recently when I�ve been having all these what-is-to-become-of-me thoughts.

I know a lot of women who have financial contingency plans for in case their fellas die or walk out on them or whatever. I am beginning to think � cold-bloodedly, matter-of-factly, self-protectively because that is what my biological workings demand of me � that those plans should also include an emotional element, so that our grief and rage doesn�t turn us into Clara Harrises, and more important, so that we do not blame ourselves. The going-away party I went to last night is for a girl who�s going to teach English in South Korea for a year. Her boyfriend can�t leave his job and is staying here, and they were all kissy-kissy at the party and are going to stay in touch while she�s away, but what was unspoken between them and among us all was Well, who knows what�s going to happen. The girl didn�t love her job or relish the thought of finding a new one in this economy, and she liked the idea of traveling, getting out of debt, and getting some teaching experience, so despite the kissy-kissy boyfriend she signed on for the teaching stint. She put all her belongings in storage and her flight leaves in a few days. In public � or at least in smallish groups of fellow females � I can be relied upon to mouth the usual platitudes about love often requiring sacrifice (for instance: name all the institutions to which I am considering applying for MFA school), but last night, listening to this girl talk about her decision, I admired her, I thought she had balls. Maybe part of the reason for this is that years ago, my second summer in Seattle, I wasn�t finding a job and could only find shitty temp work and was uninspired by the cultural options and drinking a lot, and I replied to one of those Teach English Abroad ads and took the tests and did the interviews and got the recs and was a few weeks away from lighting out for Budapest when I got a call from the law office � the one where I met Julie � that would lead to the paralegal gig. And I made the choice I did for all the wrong reasons: this teaching-abroad thing had already become a clich�, a tacit admission of failure by liberal arts grads, and I was embarrassed by having had to resort to it, and also I still had that chip on my shoulder about living the least bohemian lifestyle I possibly could as a sort of fuck-you to all of those who always identified me only by my schoolgirl brain. I yearned to debase myself in being a drone, so I told the language school sorry but no, and I bought some nylons and a lot of neutral-toned dry-clean-only separates and I went to work. Now, this does not fall under the heading of Regrets because if I hadn�t done what I did, I wouldn�t be the person I am now and I wouldn�t know the people I do, etc., etc., But I am older now and my decision would be different.

And maybe this is what I�ve been roundaboutly getting at in this entry: since the job market sucks the way it does, since Gastro is the opposite of a career move, since I�m less and less convinced that teaching is for me, since the one expert opinion I have makes me think I ought not to bet on getting into MFA school (and anyway if I did, I am not sure I would want to go into the kind of debt that even an in-state program would require), since I am not a part of a community religious or otherwise, since all I can ultimately count on, in my whole life, is my self � what is stopping me from making a similar kind of decision, from taking a teaching contract or an admin job with some relief agency and getting out of here, of forging a partnership only with the world, that will never desert me. The single body alone in the universe against its own best time, remember? I wouldn�t need a lot of money. If the kind of job I have here were done from a desk in Budapest, I�d be all the hell over it. You could come visit me. What do you think? (Otherwise, what is to become of me?)

I had a lot more I thought I was going to write about, funny how that happens sometime. Maybe tomorrow but maybe not because I have to get out of here early and take my car to get fixed. They quoted me $680 and 5 days for a like-new repair job that would have included the calibrated hammering-out of a dent I can�t tell is there or $280 and an afternoon for the ghetto version that fills in the shattered panel edge with something called Bondo and includes a new piece of molding on the rear passenger-side door. I can�t spare the car for five days at any price. I have things to do around the house with the afternoon and should spend my morning here working and then I�m away skiing over the weekend, so don�t bet on another entry until at least Monday. Have a good weekend. If I bummed anyone out with my biological fatalism, I am sorry. Don�t mind me. This is a diary, and I use it to think out loud.