Neurotic

When I am in the Seventh Grade, Daddy goes back to college. He studies Psychology, which I soon find out is the most interesting subject in the world. Daddy brings home these big, interesting textbooks. There's a big black one called Introduction to Psychology. That one's okay, but there's another black one called Abnormal Psychology, and that one is fascinating.

Abnormal Psychology is the study of people who are insane. People who are insane fascinate me. There are all these rules normal people have to follow all the time, but insane people don't have any rules. Of course they have to be locked up in hospitals, because they're insane, so they're probably dangerous. How could somebody not be dangerous, living without rules like that? But isn't it kind of interesting? What must it be like to live like that, without any rules at all?

Men After My 23rd Birthday

At 27, I do the stupidest thing in my entire life, but it seems smart at the time: I tell myself that graduate school is not a fulfilling way of living, and being a college professor probably won't be either. I need a job with more meaning, I say to myself, and the right place to find this is in religion. I finish up my M.A. In History, but when I am done I leave the University. I apply to a Claremont School of Theology, to enter their Religious Counseling program, and while I am waiting to be accepted, I go home and stay with my parents in Barstow. While I am there, I substitute teach again, and pay a small rent to my mother. Now I've got more time on my hands, and with more time, comes more chance for dating. In other words, I go from my normal average of one date a year, to a new average of one boyfriend:

The first one, I meet while I am still completing work for my M.A. I am at an SCA event with Katarina. Like always, I am following her around like a little baby duck follows its mama, because I don't know any SCA people except Katarina and a couple of others, but as for her, she knows everyone. Like always, I am just hugely grateful to anyone who will talk to me and make me feel less lonely. Then I meet Henry, who not only talks to me, but is also interesting.

Men -- Before My 23rd Birthday

One time when I was like 13, my Grandma Johnson took me aside and told me I’d never get a man if I didn’t get rid of my pot-belly.  She said that’s what her parents told her, and then she did get rid of it, and after that she got a really good husband.  I don’t know what Grandma means about the pot-belly. -- Maybe she means I’m fat?  Because she’s kind of fat too, so apparently her “pot-belly” came back.  Does she mean I need to stand up straighter?  Mama and Daddy are on me about that all the time, and I just hate it, because I already stand up as straight as I know how. -- But I have no doubts what Grandma means about getting a man.  And even though I don’t really care if I ever get married, I understand perfectly well that I am a failure as a woman if guys don’t want to go out with me.

Things to Do to Lose Weight

The first rule of dieting is that if something doesn't have very many calories, you can have as much as you want of it. There's this place in the Diet Watchers' Guide for instance, where the author talks about how when she gets cravings for bad foods, what she'll do is go get a whole can of Chinese vegetables and eat it with mustard sauce on the top. Or there's this recipe for Unlimited Soup: All it's got in it, is things you can eat as much of as you want, like canned tomato juice, and celery, and cabbage, and bouillon cubes. Conceivably, you could eat a whole recipe of that stuff at one sitting, although all I've ever managed is a couple of bowlfuls.

Good Foods and Bad Foods

There is only one rule that decides if a food is good or bad, and that is if you're fat or not. If you're fat, the only good foods are tuna, and grapefruit, and vegetables. If you're not fat, anything you want to eat is good. For instance my sisters are not fat. Mama buys them delicious things like sugared cereals and whole milk. She makes them cookies, and when it's someone's birthday, they always get a slice of the cake. Grandpa Brown visits, and he takes us all out to Baskin Robbins for ice cream. Linda and Karen can have whatever they want, but Mama calls after me as we go out of the house, that I'd better watch my diet.

The Food You Eat Because You're Supposed To

I am a good eater.  I’m not picky like my sister.  I like eggs and milk (unlike Robin).  For a while there when I’m very young, I pick all the onions out of my food like she does, but I learn very quickly not to mind having them there.  They’re a little slimy, but they just taste like what they’re cooked with.  I like mushrooms.  I like fish, the broiled kind, as well as the kind fried in cornmeal like Grandma Johnson makes.  I even learn to like oysters, at least the chewy outside-parts (I leave the squishy middles for Mama and Daddy).  

There are just a few things that I really, really don’t like:  I hate lima beans cooked with ham.  Other kinds of beans are good, but lima beans have this weird sharp-taste.  Also they’re big and squishy, and kind of dry-feeling in the middle.  I always have to cover my serving with catsup so I can even eat it.  Then I’m still the last person at the table those nights, because I don’t like catsup very much either.  I don’t like squash.  Mama and Daddy have a deal with us:  You have to eat a vegetable with your dinner, but it can be either salad or the cooked vegetable, you don’t have to eat both.  So most nights when Mama makes squash, I eat the salad instead.  Only sometimes there isn’t any salad.  I eat one piece of squash.  I put it on the tip of my tongue, and I gulp it down like a pill, with lots of milk.  It usually wants to come right back up when I eat it like that, but I don’t let it, because I know I’m just going to have to eat another one if it does.

Spot and Rover

We used to have this place in the back driveway where we dump all our bones and meat scraps.  Our cats would go and eat them and, naturally, a lot of stray cats did too.  Some of them were kind of wild and fought our cats, but most of the strays were nice.  We liked having them there, because when one of our cats died, we could just adopt the friendliest of the strays and have a new cat.

I Am Outed As A Lesbian Only Not Really

My friend Faye works at a bookstore, and she knows how to find the best porn. It's in the Literature section, under the author name “Anonymous”. Most of it was written during the Victorian era, and whatever their reputatations, those Victorians had some dirty minds!

The year I graduate from college, I decide I am done being a good girl and being alone all the time. I want to be a bad girl and have some fun. I go to the B. Dalton bookstore at the mall, and I buy myself some porn. I buy The Story of O, which is frankly, boring. I buy Fanny Hill (which, it turns out, is all about “nasty stuff” after all). That one's pretty good, but the best book I buy is a Victorian novel about a brother and sister who's governess turns them on to spanking. That's the one I read over and over. I learn how to masturbate, to that book (and masturbation, it turns out, is pretty darn good). I keep it under the mattress when I'm visiting my parents. Then when the visit's over and I'm back at home, I just leave it out where anyone can see it.

Hell

Following rules is not a problem. Sometimes it's hard to know what they all are, but once you find out, well you just follow them, and then you're okay. Where it starts to be a problem though, is that you don't get saved by just following rules. Jesus said God isn't impressed by outward show. He cares about what's in your heart. And once I start to really think about it, I realize that what's in my heart isn't what God wants to be there.

Linda's Loser Sister

For about five years, I am better at stuff than my little sister. Then Linda starts right out in Kindergarten, getting better at stuff than me. She can already color pictures in better than me before she even starts the First Grade. – How you do it, is you use your crayon to trace an outline around the edge, and then you fill the rest in. I know, because she explains it to me. Only I never care about coloring other peoples' pictures in enough to do it her way. She quickly becomes better at making friends than I am too. We share the same friends when she is in First Grade and we're going to the same school. Then I move to a different school from her the next year, and I start doing nothing but losing friends, while she starts gaining them big-time.

How Do You Explain to People What You're Really Like?

In the fall of 1982, I start at a new college. I get a room in the downstairs residence hall nearest the cafeteria, and I get there the day before my roommate, and open the windows wide to let in cool air (of which there doesn't turn out to be any). I set up my record player and play my new Oklahoma cast album that I got over the summer.

When the others show up, it turns out most of them don't like me much. I'm in the Performing Arts dormitory, which you would think would be a good thing, because I like acting, and theatre, and that kind of thing. But it isn't, it really isn't. A lot of the kids on the hall are gay. I don't mind gay people, even though my religion says I should. Gay people are outsiders, like me, and I am always on the side of the outsiders. But after they find out I'm a Baptist, the other kids on the hall don't bother asking me what I think. They just make a lot of assumptions, and then they don't like me because of them.

Paper Dolls

I didn't like making paper dolls when I was little. I don't think I drew very well. Plus I couldn't get the clothes to fit the bodies. When I was little, I preferred my Dawn Dolls and my Fashion Flatsy's. I'd go into Mama's cupboard and I'd get out her scrap box. She let me take whatever in there that I wanted. I'd cut squares out of the prettiest fabrics. Then I cut holes in the squares for armholes, and make dresses for my dolls, and I'd put arms for holes. I cut strips to use as waistbands, and I cut out circles, with holes in the middle for my dolls to wear as hats.

I knew this wasn't real sewing. One time Mama helped me real-sew a doll's dress. It was very hard, and took a lot of sewing, and when I was done one of the arms was out inside-out. Mama sewed another one from the same pattern, which is how I knew mine wouldn't have been any good even if I had sewn it right. It wasn't really a dress, more like kind of a bathrobe, and made out of stiff, ugly pink-flowered cloth. I liked my own pretend-dresses, that were really just squares, but were long and pretty, and showed off the dolls' boobs.