Thanksgiving. Memphis. 1966

My father and I went to the local Holiday Inn for our Thanksgiving dinner.

My mother was indisposed, once again, because of her drinking.

We ran into Anastasia at the restaurant; she was one of my father’s loyal,  female friends. If I had looked closely, I might have seen the Trojan condoms in her Lucite handbag; Anastasia was a wealthy divorcée who got her kicks by pimping for the secret society of artistic, homosexual men in the East Memphis neighborhood.

She threw raucous, extravagant parties where handsome young boys and older patrician men were introduced. Women were invited also, but they tended to be in their 50s and 60s and were oblivious to Anastasia’s lascivious machinations.

Writing in my diary is my therapy. Goethe said:

“The beginning and end of all literary activity is the reproduction of the world that surrounds me by means of the world that is in me, all things being grasped, related, re-created, molded and reconstructed in a personal form and an original manner.”

Often, I wish I were a ballerina so that I could sweat blood for beauty and for art. I gesticulate in front of the mirror, with my arms outstretched reaching farther and farther.

Art has helped more people recover from abuse, abandonment, and betrayal than all the psychiatrists in the world.

If not that route: War…Hitler, Stalin, Mao—all were abused children. The plus side???

Abused children have much more interesting sex lives as adults. There are roles to be played: domination/submission; fetishes to act out; neurotic kinks that find expression at some deep, dark primal level.

I must bring energy to despair. Move over Jean Rhys!