Excite myself too much. I’ve got to learn to accept things as they are. Nobody has everything he’d like to have. Oh yes, be pious—shit! I’m dying, I’m dying in this place. I’m not alive. One day like another. I could be traveling around enjoying life. Then, too, if I was in a different situation I could be making my mark on the world. I could become somebody important, have people applauding me. Radio, television, etc. My picture in the paper. Being mentioned in the gossip columns & all the rest of it. Instead, what have I got? What am I?
If I could just decide how to start getting what I want. Maybe I can figure things out on my vacation next summer. Ought to decide ahead of time where to go, get things planned. I could leave the city by myself, Bianca wouldn’t care. She might not even notice that I was gone. So, that being the case, where first? Canada? England? Italy? Go to the South Seas? There’s money in the bank. About $400, I think. Not exactly enough to satisfy my appetite for life, but a start. Monday get a few travel folders.
Midnight. Picking at my face again! I sit here thinking, staring out the window, then suddenly realize I’m feeling my throat & ears & nose like a blind man trying to identify a corpse.
JANUARY 6
Must have been out of my mind last night because the truth is that I’m not going to go anywhere, not now or ever. Not enough in the bank? That isn’t the reason. Haven’t got the nerve. Set down the real reason: I’m afraid. Am what I accuse others of being.
Days, weeks, months. Get up at the same time every morning, put on a suit eight years old with the elbows polished slick as oilcloth, eat poached eggs & read the Chronicle, stand like a totem pole among perfumed stenographers riding the bus downtown, then sit on a stool until 4:45 P.M. Wiggle my toes for amusement. Look down at my shoes to see if the leather’s got any new cracks. Try to remember exactly how many times I’ve pretended to smile at the supervisor. Eh! Eh!
Caution, Summerfield. Don’t count the past.
JANUARY 7
Just fixed myself a bowl of soup, it didn’t sit well on my stomach. Don’t know what time it is, but late. Bianca’s asleep, grateful for that. Stopped at the bedroom door & listened to her breathing. Why did I marry the old lioness? She’s already 33, here I am just 26. I’m still young and she’s middle-aged. “We’re not children any longer, Earl.” Certainly lets me know, means more than it says, turns me away subtly. Oh she’s clever, closes everything up tight as a safety pin. “Earl in the name of sense stop acting like a child!” What am I expected to say? Turn my face aside? Apologize? She’s smarter than I am & I lose every argument, but that doesn’t mean she’ll win. I’m not weak. I know I’m not.
JANUARY 8
Newspaper item says some housewife in Chicago was tied up, painted with tar and then set on fire. Burned like a torch. Nobody could get close to her. People could hear her screaming even though the tar was bubbling across her mouth. Makes me think of those women fighting in the street. I keep seeing that one on her knees with her blouse torn and the white boobs spilling out—dangling like pendulums in a surrealist painting.
What else? Weather report calls for clouds & probable rain. My head feels squashy, afraid I might be catching cold.
JANUARY 9
Typical day at the Bureau. Mrs. Fensdeicke continually wiping her lips with a lace handkerchief while she glides around behind our backs, clipboard nestled like an unborn baby in her arms. Marks down her observations, smiles. “Please continue with your interview, Mr. Summerfield.” I should be used to it by now. If only I knew what she was writing about me. One day I’ll ask to have a look. Yes. Then her lips would turn into a pink pincushion and pat-pat with the handkerchief, smile to show she’s aware of the joke. She’s sick so I shouldn’t be so critical. Of course that overhead light does make every one of us look like a mummy, but am positive she’s ill. Bugs inside nibbling nibbling. Less and less of Mrs. Sara Fensdeicke. I guess I ought to feel sympathetic but the fact is I don’t. I’m worried that one of these days she’s going to accidently touch me with her shred of lace, then I’ll do something awful, God knows what. Kick her. Strangle. The way she holds that handkerchief for some reason reminds me of Bianca holding a cigarette—yesterday—no, day before it must have been—at dinner, had to shut my eyes. I think it’s certain mannerisms of women that make us want to kill them.
JANUARY 10
Thursday, Thursday, Thursday! What a tedious year this will be. Scarcely past Christmas holidays but already I look forward to vacation. Waiting for the bus this evening & noticed people staring at me, realized I was crumpling the newspaper. Forced to grin & make an excuse. Said out loud that I was tired of reading about nothing except corruption, murder, war. Nobody answered. Tempted to shout at them. “Are you deaf?” Don’t they know what’s going on? Gets worse every day but they go right on just as they always have, pay no attention. However, I guess underneath they’re as worried as I am, all of us hoping for improvement of one sort or another. Fensdeicke, for instance, worried about lungs or whatever it is, Magnus wandering around in search of the rainbow. Vladimir and his worn-out Bolshevik reforms, fifty years late. Old Clegg wanting nothing to change, absolutely Nothing! Pins & decorations on his lapel disgust me. McAuliffe must hope for something—more women, more liquor, that’s about all. At lunch today almost thrust my fork into his eyes when he kept talking about the women he’s had in Auckland, Port Said, etc. All right, he’s been to Faraway Places, had experiences I’ll never have, but what’s that got to do with it? He wastes his experiences, wastes his entire life! So why should I concern myself with him or anything he talks about?—he’s insignificant. Filthy. Filthy in body as well as in mind. Dirt under his fingernails, obscene jokes. He makes me sick. It’s an irony that we’re doing the same work, considering how much difference there is between us.
Well, I don’t know why I allow thinking about McAuliffe to upset me, particularly when I realize that before long I’ll be getting somewhere and he won’t ever. He gives me the impression that he’s rotting away inside. His liver must be gone, eyes watery as eggs. Disintegrating. So I suppose I ought to be grateful. Even if his liver does hold up he’s not going to amount to anything, always be what he is right now—Interviewer, State Employment Bureau—lowest possible classification. One grade above File Clerk. Magnus, Vladimir, old Clegg & McA & I in the same basket, all five of us perched on stools, 5 in a row. I’m the only one who doesn’t belong.
JANUARY 11
Today being Friday treated myself to a drink downtown after getting off work. Chatted quite a while with a wealthy man from New York who’s out here to open a branch of his investment business. Let him know I might be interested in joining the firm, made certain he caught my name. There’s no telling, he might call. I believe I made a good impression. Pretended I’d given out all of my cards. I think I ought to have some cards printed up.
JANUARY 12
So much violence that nobody pays attention to it any more. Old man on Potrero Hill beaten to death last night by gang of boys in painted leather jackets. Negro woman in Menlo Park stabbed so many times they just called it death from “multiple” wounds. Another woman’s body dredged up from