June 1st, 1999
What a marvelous day to start a new journal. The sun is shining and the air has that early-morning heat that gives me hope that summer has finally arrived–I’ve survived another winter. Most superficially, and sadly, importantly–I don’t have a single zit on my face or anywhere else visible to a total stranger, and I am debuting my rosy-pink linen dress, pink being my single concession to the fashion must-haves of the season, “Pink everything!” (As dictated by the tyrannical editors of the Sunday Styles section.)
This dress is a size 2, and even though I know the Gap shrinks its sizes to keep customers happy and coming back for more t-shirts and khakis, even though I needed the jaws of life to extract my floobage-heavy ass out of the junior size 9 pedal pushers I was trying on yesterday at another store that will go unnamed because it will NOT get my business in the future, I am glowing from this private, pitiful accomplishment.
So here is the fundamental problem with me writing this so-called book: No plot. Coming in a close second is the fact that I sit in front of my computer screen all day long editing important contributions to the annals of journalism (i.e., “The Rck Method” in the The Cosmo Kama Sutra, in which we convince our readers to press a rock, yes a flat, clean, rock up against their lovers’ most tender of areas [the taint] during the Outdoor Boog-a-Loo or whatever euphemism we’re using for sex this month), so the last thing I want to do when I get home is open up my laptop. Every weekend I tell myself that I’ve got to work on my so-called book. And every weekend I don’t. So my on-the-job unhappiness is entirely my fault.
C says that there’s only one thing I need to start my novel: MAPS. All his favorite books start with maps. This is true, but he’s kidding. And thank God I’m still sufficiently hopeful to laugh at the joke.
