Excerpts from my Journals
[From 1995, overheard on the street of my suburban neighborhood as I was trying to fall asleep.]
[In the distance, barely heard voices talking – arguing. One is a man’s; the other a woman’s. The man is doing most of the talking, and the only word that can be made out if “fuck” and only because of its repetition. The woman’s tone is pleading.]
[The voices draw nearer and become clearer.]
Man: I don’t fuckin’ care what the fuck you want. I’m fucking getting the hell out of here.
Woman: Please [almost whining], come one. Talk to me. Please!
Man: [shouting] I don’t fuckin’ care at all about you. I’m fucking getting away at the first fucking chance I get. I don’t give a fuck about you.
Woman: But we’re married…
Man: [shouting] I don’t fuckin’ care.
Woman: Wait, wait…I want to give you some money.
Man: I don’t want your fuckin’ money.
[The voices begin to fade as the woman’s pleading is now louder than the man’s curses.]
All these years later, coming across this torn out page pasted in another notebook, I feel the same tightening of my gut, feeling the desperation and the anger so raw that I felt that night as a thirteen year old kid hearing this from his window in the early hours of the morning.