Mallory's Camera

Snowing. Weather report calls for one inch; I think it's more likely to be four.

RTT at Dad’s house per the new arrangement – Dad does weekends, I do weekdays. Very peaceful in his absence.

Ben calls. I consider not picking up the phone. But of course if something bad’s happened to RTT, I need to know. Nothing bad’s happened to RTT. Ben just wants me to know that at 8 o’ clock in the morning, he’s driving to Dryden, 10 miles through the snow, to get Robin the brand of fizzy water Robin likes. See what a great father I am? read the subtitles.

Next time I won’t pick up the phone.

Alternately watching Low Down (Bill Murray is my Boyfriend) and reading David Simon’s Homicide: A Year On the Killing Streets and The Spanish Bow, by a woman named Andromeda Romano-Lax, a book I found at the dollar store for exactly one buck.

An elderly woman, extremely well-dressed, was standing on line in front of me clutching an armload of generic cleaning products to her chest. When she saw the garish red cover of The Spanish Bow – sadly, it’s packaged like the worst kind of romance novel – she exclaimed, “My God! What is that doing here?”

“Can I get you a cart?” I asked.

“Such a good novel! Do you read?”

“I do. Here – put your packages in this.”

“No, I mean, are you a reader? Do you delight in books? If you do, I’ll buy this for you!”

“No, no, no, no," I say. “If you like, I’ll buy it for myself.”

Vonnegut says unusual travel suggestions are dancing lessons from God. Possibly unusual reading suggestions are Cliff notes from the devil.

###

So, the good news is that the Stegner Fellowship people extended their deadline (which means I can write up saga of ongoing, angsty misadventure with Feckless X as a short story & submit it in place of the less-than-optimal short story I’d submitted initially,) plus I made this Indonesian satay sauce from scratch last night and it is to die for, plus my new bedclothes arrived yesterday and I now sleep in a regal splendor befitting Liberace. Gave up on the Moroccan-style motif, went for big, pouffy gold and red quilt! I realize that reads “horrible.” Actually, though, it’s quite attractive. And comfortable – possibly the most comfortable bed I’ve ever owned.

Bad news is that I have an infected iTunes file on my computer that is preventing me from emptying my trash. I’m going to have to get a firewire cable and DiskWarrior it off the iBook. Also my Little Lawyer has stuck me with nurse-maiding Tucker. Tucker is launching an online classifieds network for women. I don’t get why a 24 year old former marine who shaves his head and sports elaborate ink thinks this is the business model that will spearhead his eventual conquest of the Internet.

I’m supposed to be writing Tucker’s Mission Statement, his FAQs, his privacy policy, and his Terms of Service. Yes, the Little Lawyer is paying me – not enough, of course. What I try to do is make myself indispensable and then announce I’m quitting. My bosses fly into a panic and try to keep me by doubling my salary – far more than I would have dared to ask for in the first place. Passive aggression – it’s not just a personality disorder, it’s a business strategy.

“So, Tucker,” I say, attempting to modulate my near-sexagenarian rasp into a sexy contralto (on the phone, no one knows you’re an old bat.) “Why did you decide to start a site for women?”

“The Craig’s List killer was a tremendous business opportunity,” said Tucker. “Didn’t want to pass it up.”

“I see. But I mean, how are you make sure that only women use your site? Are you going to have users call in so you can verify them by phone?”

“Nah,” said Tucker. “Too much work. I don't really care if guys use it. Just as long as the owmen don't find out.”

Ho-kay.

Apart from Tucker I haven’t done what you might call real work in four days. I’m in a generative mood – scribbling scenes from all the various stories that populate my imagination on yellow legal pads, on the backs of envelopes, on NYSEG notices informing me of the three day countdown till my electricity and gas are shut off. (Guess I better pay them.)

So much of the time the stories that populate my imagination are vapor trails, bright flashes across a dark interior entirely bereft of granular detail. So when I can actually see the shape of the paragraphs, hear the rhythm of the dialogue and the sentences upon the page, it feels like God’s 11th Commandment: Thou shalt write it down.

More likely to be the sunny side up, hypergraphic manifestation of bipolar disorder, no?

Anyway, I’ve got to get slogging again on the ghostwriting project. Deadline looming.

Huge fight w/B in a supermarket of all places – he wanted to buy two packs of El Cheapo cookies (made from equal parts sawdust, lye and lard); I wanted to buy flour, sugar, butter and baking powder. Almost degenerated into a shouting match.

But then I gave up, stalked out, went to the near-by Barnes & Noble where I read the first forty pages of the new A.S. Byatt novel (awful) and thought about how unhappy I am, and what if anything I can do to change that.

There must be something, no?

Job is iffier than was initially described to me in the interview – right now I’m only working halftime, and halftime is not enough to support a family. No low hanging fruit in the Ithaca area employment picture, so if I want a full-time job I’m really going to have to go out and hustle – i.e. march into various tech start-ups (lots of these in Ithaca), resume in hand, and bludgeon my way into HR; initiate a relentless campaign of call-backs for six weeks following.

I’ve gotten jobs this way before, but of course back then I was younger, cockier, had all my teeth. Now I feel like that homeless woman muttering to her pet aliens you passed on your way home from work yesterday. Would you hire her? Of course not! In fact, you zizagged fifteen feet out of your way so you wouldn’t have to hear the aliens were muttering back.

My self-confidence is at an all time low. I really don’t know what to do about that.

I’m lonesome. Want somebody to talk to.

B and I used to be able to talk, that was why I stuck it out all those years. With all the bad, there was one overweening good: we spoke the same language. Very few people speak my native tongue. But now I look at him and think, who are you? And have to remind myself: Robin’s father.

You make your bed, you lie in it, I suppose. The problem is you’re supposed to get up occasionally and function.

I think I might be close to the point where I literally can’t function. Then what?

Almost finished with the short story. It took off on its own when little telekinetic Petra met the ominous and mad Kelly Kaspar. Lots of dying oak trees and Spanish moss. Wish there was somebody who needed a writer or an editor hereabouts – those are two abilities I never question, two things I do spectacularly well.

Somebody’s gonna make a shitload of money off me when I’m dead.