I'd Rather Go Blind

14th May 1958

Please forgive the torn-out pages at the start of this journal... I am going to summate a number of diary entries and write from now on in more organized prose.

I'll continue to address you as Dear Diary -- mon copaine bien-aimé, how I have missed you! Here for me always, to capture the highs and lows. Apologies for the abandonment, but my life has been so frustratingly humdrum. The same thing, day after day, week after week: keeping the store, growing herbs and failing to convince my so-called friends to see a show with me.

But at last I have a reason to write in you -- I am in love!!!

There is a delicious new creature in the Colony. A man with monocled (on the right) red eyes and sharp, dingy teeth. He must be new in these parts, for such a dc can't have escaped my attention for long. The first sighting was at the butcher's on Reaper Lane, on the 18th of April.

Something set him apart from other sinners. The confidence and decorum with which he carried himself, and a gorgeous smile. He had a paper under his arm, but I was too far away to see which paper it was; it might've been a half-broadsheet. What a shame if this creature was partial to yellow journalism!

To give an impression of the entries I removed (ripping them from your memory in the process, dear diary!): for several days, I stalked the streets and hoped to see him again. For the first time in months, I took real care of myself. My girdles and corsets were washed, my hair was styled, and my shoes mirror-shiny. Ah yes, dear diary -- your friend Rosie was back to her old self, her heart swelling with renewed hope and joie de vivre!

It was the early stage of love, the pre-cynical stage in which none of my efforts are presumed to be in vain. Superstition is my keeper and instructs everything I do -- just for the chance of seeing my dc again!

Yes, I know it well.

The second sighting was on the 26th, and this time he looked at me. I passed him on the street while riding my bike. He wore a striped coat, beautifully tailored but threadbare around the edges. It's hard to describe the pleasant little heart-stab I felt as our eyes met. Sometimes, when you are taken with a man's beauty, you forget there's a life inside of him, peering out. This was my first good look at it, and only made him more beautiful.

I wanted to pump the brakes and say hello, but he was in a hurry somewhere, and Superstition was chattering in my ear: I cannot annoy him on the first meeting! This must be fastidiously planned, I thought. First impressions and all that! That evening, I dragged out every unsightly article of clothing from my closet, and burned them in the garden.

I wanted to pour myself onto the page and describe him, but I couldn't! The picture of him in my mind was woefully incomplete. All I could think about was his tattered coat-tail, and how I wanted to patch it up.

Days passed, unfortunately, without another sighting. I wanted for a pair of binoculars, and the cynicism was creeping in. Wasn't I being ridiculous? It had only been two sightings, and Rosie was mired in her feelings, like a clumsy bull-elk stuck in a swamp.

There was little else to report. I spent the time scouting new items of furniture for the store, and found a wardrobe which needed only minor restoration. However, the seller tried to foist a counterfeit timepiece off on me, and I took him to task -- rather more violently than I meant to. Sally was pissed-off, because we'd have to get the ceiling washed. Between you and I, dear diary, Sally is horribly shrewish at times. It shouldn't have mattered -- my shadows can clean the ceiling!

To get back on-topic... I tried the butcher-shop every day, in hopes of seeing Dc. Every day, I had a nice bit of bacon or lamb -- it's only polite, after all, to patronize a shop when you visit so frequently -- but no sign of my favorite!