by Rebekah Reeves
12/21/96
Event, events. So many all the time. Most ultimately meaningless and trivial distractions. Didn’t go to The Nutcracker with N. Woke up this morning feeling terrible (and not from a hangover completely by the way). I think N. will be mad really well at me now. D. dropped off something at their house and Ron mentioned how much $ N. had spent on tickets for that (this was after D. told Ron how hung over she was). I still feel kind of weird. Well, fuck it. Too much dwelling, no regrets please for actions taken.
Talked to Dave B for a long time last night. Find him quite irresistible for some reason. He’s so god damned jolly and his smile is utterly wundervul. Personality is perceptive. He asked me to kiss him and I said no. Of course, we were surrounded by people in The Pleasure Inn. Amazing, after he asked me to kiss him I really started staring at him. It was nice. Don’t want to build it up though because he has my number and I don’t have his. That’s that.
12/23/96
Checked my messages. There was one Saturday evening from Dave Baker. He recited a poem. Very good poem. At least, it sounded good to me over the phone. Hell, he could’ve read nursery rhymes and I might say it was original. That’s how wise I am, ladies and gentlemen. I have to wonder if he did that because- no, I don’t. At least not on paper. Too final and everlasting. Like my devotion (right?).
12/24/96
It’s another Xmas, working its way through me like Taco Bell beef. Well, today I was lazy- as usual. Mom gets mad at me cause I don’t help in the shop- I don’t know what the fuck to do. Oh. Trivialities. Hunter called Ron and asked for me and D’s numbers so he can call and apologize to us and wish us Merry Xmas. Go figure. He said he’d remember and he did. I love that. I really do.
Kent told D. that I’m going back on Saturday to Louisville. And that night I will see Dave Baker. And that night I will kiss him. D called Kent and he was the one who volunteered info. It was even his idea to get together at Dave’s. I didn’t have to do a thing. I hate to babble about this as it seems like all I do these days. D asked Kent if Dave just wanted to get laid (said she had to take care of me, you know). He said that Dave was actually excited about me. Now, that was terrible and confessional and gossipy. So, I’m going to go steal my mother’s darvocets.
12/27/96
Tomorrow I plan to be in Lville at this time, fairly drunk, fairly stoned, fairly darvoceted, and looking irreverently into the eyes- be they magic and sparkling?- of one man whom I have anticipated over this break.
1/10/97
Bitter as a child can be I write of things paid and thought through… I am shredding stories of remorse to be re-organized at some later point. To bury countless memories and start new ones. To spend my money quickly- painlessly… Tonight with Dave I will be drunk and thinking that no words can capture what this is, what this may mean. Eat low fat bologna for poetry’s sake. Slip and slide on the snow which has fallen, slip and slide on the money and the poverty of the future of me. Chaste be so chaste as I can be. Haunting and terrific time. Walt Whitman on my mind, green grass growing making his shadow live again. It is all in the word choice and line breaks. A slave to revision and attention.
John Hagan tells me my poetry doesn’t really fit in the book. I know this, knew it all along. Wait- I do not care. And really I don’t. Yet, I feel like I should since John does and he obviously blunders his way through apologies and sweet remorse is coming again to mark her path. Hunter S. wishes D. and I to work for him this summer perhaps. Are we to be thrilled, filled with trepidation, utterly useless to ourselves in the end? Doomed to float tepid from man to man, losing blood, losing time, trying not to lose hope. Writing and waiting, forming no plot for future actions, forming nothing stable, stormy the twenties, home for the teens, what do the thirties fear to bring? Pushing back my cuticles, doing bong hits, life is so everlasting and so rapidly gone…
Write only for the books and fame. Write never for yourself as I choose. You will slip through your own hands, fall on already bruised knees. Tear at the floor to find its strength; it lies in the money of the timber you tear. Tear through your skin- find the story to make you the one with best selling name.Your home secluded on the hilltop above the town of your choice. There you will rest in suicide, worry, tearing floors and others’ skins for ideas and prizes to make your luxury bigger? How do you know when your soul is rotting? How does the heart see to eat itself? In this room lies and lives have and will be lived. In this body also. A prayer and testament to truth. A longing for true sabbath.
1/?/97
Have I been guilty to have too much with this new man [Dave B], this new man I will be led into the joy with. Is that it? I tell him I am a child. He jokes through my seriousness. I snap at the lovable, jovial one and feel entirely foolish now that he is gone and I have been cruel. I am afraid of my own inconsistencies I think.
This weekend blitzed by and I am going back to school tomorrow. The routine again. The routine and what does it do for me? I am feeling insufferable, alone, positively disjointed. Hormonally troubled. Afraid of the cold weather. I enjoy laziness with this man why am I being cold, uninviting, full of pressure and sarcasm. Already starting to get dark out there. My head hurts. Why does it annoy me when he does things like drink a beer as soon as he gets up- or do a bong hit? UGH- I must not be false to myself.
Tomorrow we are going to the Toy Tiger to watch the orgasm contest. We figured that’d be fun. Am thankful that tomorrow thoughts will be different than todays… I have gotten frustrated too because of money. Ah, it all lays itself out plain to me now. I am being scared of a rut with a man where we lay around and I spend my money and he does nothing but fart, consume, and fuck. It’s all clear now. As soon as I can fix that attitude, get a grip on outlook- I’ll be alright. There will be no couch relationships. No none at all.
1/21/97
…I am feeling overwhelmingly sad. My mother investigated for embezzlement, the wind howling and shrieking, my sheets not changed forever. _______ habiting all space in my brain. Literally, all I have done for 4-5 days is cry. I want to make the dreams stop. I just want them to go away. I am nervous and confused.
1/ 25?/97
Well, hmm. The torments have passed. But, I’m sure they will rise again. Perhaps with the next full moon. I’m in Vanceburg, reading Mimesis, and wondering at the lives of the people around me. How can we be so blind to what importance is? I myself have done that repeatedly this week.
I guess I might have really hurt Dave- no- he probably won’t let it go that deep. Like me he is fairly unwilling to care. I am tired of stupid mistakes and all. I remember him telling me how well he could please people in bed. The mark of someone who methodically does those things which he thinks should please someone (and no doubt have for him), yet also the mark of someone whose ears and eyes are not willing to reinvent lovemaking tactics to suit them with me- to make us a unit…
2/14/97 2:35 AM
Sent Dave Baker a shot of vodka tonight as a token get back kind of thing… he deserved some sort of recognition for leaving my shirt, 5.00, and a note telling me to tell Kent to fuck off. Of course the best part was the entire package was doused in vodka… what a brave and honest and caring man. He is such a loser. I have sunk to the lowest form and now plan to rise from my phoenix ashes.
Rebekah Reeves, poet and teacher, grew up in Vanceburg, Ky., attended the University of Louisville for her B.A. in English from 1993-1998, and earned her Master’s in English Education from The Ohio State University in 2001. She was Hunter S. Thompson’s personal assistant during the 1996 Hunter S. Thompson Tribute. She is a middle school language arts teacher/literacy coach who lives in Lexington, Ky.