A D Journal 1986

  By August 1983, everything caught up with me. Pauly hadn’t paid anything for the upkeep of the apartment for more than two months, and I was broke. I had to put my car in the shop and so required me to take buses to the Fotomat in Clifton. Fran was involved with Bill romantically, yet still coming around to have sex with me. Things really got out of hand after Labor Day when I bounced two checks I had made out for food. And the job turned into a nightmare as well, bad processing and late orders turning customers into lynch mobs with me the only possible target. More importantly, I understood I needed to break my ties with Pauly, Fran and her brother or otherwise go crazy. My nutty uncle leaned heavily on me for emotional support I didn’t have enough of to give him. I went back to working at Dunkin. Having a real job went a long way to easing my psyche. I worked my way back into becoming the night baker with the luxury of isolation. For the first time I truly u...

  As I said yesterday, after Texas came Bill, Fran’s one-time lover she claimed had simply become a business partner, a situation I never believed, and a fiction Fran did very little to maintain. He seemed to have a power over Fran I never fully understood, a man full of mind-games and dramatic mood changes. And once again, I found myself in the middle of a love triangle I never intended to get myself mixed up in. Although Bill was always somewhere in the background, previously she was involved with Frazier. After her trip to Texas, I got insecure and needed reassurance from her that I was still a central part of her life. I had grown up with people constantly walking out and got to believe anyone I got emotionally attached to eventually would as well, and often as not, I caused the event. But her trip magnified these insecurities. She said good bye while I was at work in the Fotomat booth in Clifton, after which I heard nothing from her for more than three weeks. I rec...

    As I pointed out yesterday, I should have been warned by the car crash with Fran, and Pauly’s two gig band disaster. I felt crowded by Fran in the early months, trapped in a system of work and romance that didn’t seem to leave much room for writing. This may be because I had so much time before, to run, to write, to be lonely. Only recently have I learned that this is a typical male reaction to personal relationships. I was also struggling with a story called “Corn Meal,” during which I described making love of Louise (changing the names to protect the innocent only to have Fran see right through the façade and felt threatened by an event that took place more than a decade earlier. I recall my first spat with Fran at the Passaic Park Friendly’s when some of our differences became very clear. She had a way of living she refused to allow me to disturb as did I, shaping the landscape later for many of our problems. She eventually changed, but not in a good way...