December 15, 1987
Dear Diary,
I am sorry I have not written in so long, but I've been working so hard! There is so much you don't know!
First of all, I decided to make a deal with the Hornes. I realized, when I was up there last, that Johnny seemed lifeless, unattended to. Sad. So I proposed to them that I would tutor Johnny, three times a week, spend at least an hour, hour and a half with him, reading, talking, etc., for a small amount of cash weekly. They loved the idea, and have agreed to pay me cash, $50 a week, $200 a month.
The money helps me a lot with the coke, but it's mostly nice to be around Johnny because he loves me no matter what I do when I'm not around him. He doesn't hurt me or tease me or want to sleep with me or tie me up or cut me or any of the millions of things I feel like people do to me all the time. . . . Always touching me and taking something, always wanting more, and more and more.
All Johnny wants is for me to read to him. Sleeping Beauty is his favorite. He likes to rest his head in my lap and look up at me as I read to him. We take a moment every so often to look at the pictures, and I will sometimes have to explain the pictures, as well as some parts of the story, in a way that Johnny will better understand them. He often gets this very confused, lost look on his face, as if he is afraid he doesn't understand anything. I always stop when I see him feeling that way and go over it with him.
Many afternoons we go out onto the front lawn and play with his bow and arrow. He has these rubber buffalo that he shoots down from across the yard. He smiles so beautifully when he hits them. It's his high. It is the strangest scene. Johnny out on the lawn, the grass a blinding green under his moccasins, his arrow tight in the bow as he pulls back, smiling. He releases it after several minutes of concentration. The arrow seems to move at a slower than possible pace, Johnny lowers his arms, rises onto his tiptoes, and waits. . . . Direct hit. He's in the air, jumping, jumping. Then turns to me and smiles this smile of such excitement.
"Indian!" he exclaims.
I congratulate him on a fine shot, and encourage several more. He is always pleased to do so. I have to do a lot of lines around Johnny, or rather, in the bathroom . . . as often as needed.
It is horrible when I lose patience with him. It happened once and I felt miserable until I was certain he had either forgotten the incident or had forgiven me.
I will not go into the details, because my behavior was too horrible. To put it simply, I did a convincing as hell imitation of ███. It was cruel. The ugliest I had ever felt. I made sure to apologize and explain as best I could as soon as it happened. I wanted him to know I realized it and stopped.
I went and scraped up enough out of the bullet and a couple vials at the bottom of my purse, to get high. I could think. It's only hard when I don't have it. That's why Bobby and I are seeing each other so innocently and so frequently. But you don't know about all that, do you? Well, hang on.
I have to open up the bedpost here . . . and do a couple lines before Mom comes up to tell me I've got dishes, garbage, etc., to take care of. Shit, I can't believe how different my life is when I simply walk out the front door of this house.
I'll be back as soon as I can.
Laura
December 16, 1987
Dear Diary,
I'm sorry that it is a whole day later, but Mom and I had a talk in the kitchen while I did the dishes, and it lasted almost four hours. Dad came home and joined us for about forty-five minutes before heading up to bed early.
I guess Benjamin has him working pretty hard on some new plan. Dad just rolls his eyes when Mom and I ask how it's going.
Sometimes I think that my mom and I could be the best of friends. Every once in a while I will look into her eyes and think, I wonder if Mom has ever felt anything that I'm feeling . . . ? I sense that some of my experiences are ones that she would understand, but she comes from a family and a generation that doesn't really like to talk about things that make them uncomfortable.
Maybe ███ makes her feel uncomfortable. Maybe Dad knows ███, too, but Mom won't let us talk about him because it makes everyone . . . so upset . . . ? I don't know.
I guess we had a good talk anyway, because I know she was very happy when she went up to bed. I stayed downstairs for a while, then walked outside and studied the wall ███ always climbs to get to my window. It's amazing he hasn't killed himself, or at least fallen.
The nights I've snuck out, I've always had help getting down. I wonder if I could make it so that he would fall . . . ? He'd find a way up no matter what, and I still want Bobby Briggs to deliver my blow through that window . . . have a quickie while my parents are asleep or out.
That's what I wanted to get back to. Bobby Briggs. We are seeing each other like guys and girls do when they're in high school. It's weird. I see Donna more now, and she's with Mike. I guess she's happy, but the two of them remind me of a chewing gum commercial or something. "Happiness and ambition, athletics and academics, rah, rah, rah."
Last week I went through an entire bullet of coke just trying to deal with having a burger with them after the movies. Bobby and I didn't eat. Bobby had eaten a ton of junk in the theater, and I was too high to even look at food. Donna stuffed her face, and I knew she'd pay for that in zits and in the seams of her clothes when she got up the next day. I'll bet she gained five pounds. Mike is a pig. He just kept shoving fries and hamburgers into his mouth, like swallowing wasn't necessary or something. I swear!
I don't like the way he looks at Donna either. I worry about her, because, he seems like such an asshole . . . thinking he's something of a superhero with his letter jacket on all the time. Shit. I don't care. Donna's smart. I just can't believe Dr. Hayward hasn't said something.
So, the reason I'm seeing Bobby this way, going to the movies, dinner, studying at his house, going out to the gazebo and necking, taking his father's car to the Pearl Lakes, etc., is because he finally agreed to start selling cocaine for Leo. For me. I had been waiting for him to say he would, but he wanted me to promise I'd act like his girl again. So I do. When I want to, or when I'm out of blow. I really like Bobby, but he could never understand what happens to me sometimes.
The whole reason I go out for the orgies at Leo's, the reason I let him tie me up and hit me sometimes . . . the whole reason, besides a strange enjoyment, is because I feel like I belong in dark places like that. I belong with sleazy men who are actually crying babies. I tease them and pretty soon they're calling me "Mommy" and burying their heads in my lap crying about their pain . . . and then I have to tell them what to do. They like it that way. I belong with them. I must, or I wouldn't be so good at it.
I'll tell them what to do to me. Order them to do it. And when they do, when it's feeling nice and I can tell that they are really trying, I start telling them what I'm feeling. How wonderful they are. How they are "good, good boys. Such good boys." I tell them that Mommy is happy. They love it. A child and a man all at once.
All of them, these friends of Leo's and Jacques's (who I must tell you about!), are very nice to me. If I ever needed help, I believe that they would be there for me. I don't know. I've been wrong before.
So Bobby sells the coke around town, and Leo sells his usual stuff to people across the border, over in Canada. I always get at least an eight-ball free, and then each time I see Leo, he fills my bullet or a vial if I can find one.
Bobby makes really good money and everybody's happy. That's the whole point of life, right? The only thing that pisses me off is that the other day, when I went with Bobby to get the drug money from my safety deposit box (I wasn't going to hide thousands of dollars in my bedpost!), he said that Mike was going to start helping him sell.
I threw a fit and told him that if he did - and Mike ever told Donna - I would never, ever speak to him again. Donna would tell her father. I know it. I wouldn't be able to handle that. Dr. Hayward being disappointed in me . . . that would kill me for sure.
Bobby said he wasn't sure about it yet. But I made him promise anyway, and he did.
After that, we went out to the tree where the empty football is buried, near Leo's house. The money and drugs are exchanged through the buried football. Leo always makes fun of Bobby for his choice of hiding places. "The football hero," he calls him. Bobby is a football hero, though. At least the school thinks he is.
Jacques said that he used to play football, until he found out that you didn't have to ram yourself into a herd of huge guys all day to make good money. Jacques lives deep in the woods in a cabin with his bird, Waldo. Waldo talks and has learned my name perfectly. Jacques, Jacques Renault, works across the border at a casino somewhere. He's a big, fat guy, but he can really turn me on sometimes. He's the little-baby/big-man type, too, except that he knows a lot more about a woman's body than even Leo.
I went out to Jacques by myself one night, and we got super high and played all sorts of amazing sex games with each other. It got to the point that all he had to say was "Show me, little girl . . . show me," and I was reeling!
Waldo repeated almost everything we said all night and into the early morning. The whole way home I kept hearing Waldo say, "Show me . . . Show me . . . Little girl . . . Little girl." That was the morning I realized that the orgies with Leo took place in front of Jacques's cabin. There was the chair. . . . I sat in it for a minute, and knew.
I'll write again soon. I have plans for the night.
L
