I like how there were Christian cowboy roommates in the dream, and you said you took walks with God, that they were like dates.

When we descended the hill it was slow even though you were riding a mountain bike and I was running. It was so smooth, like the Dish.

I told him you were married and that I liked the face of your wife.

We meet in a dark place that seems like the place where the men meet to drink whiskey in Drive My Car. I think this is a descriptively inaccurate association, but it suffices— that place seemed like a fake real place, i.e. a stage set, while this place seemed like a place you’d encounter in a video game—immaterial. He tells me that his exes have all moved to Australia, that it’s “annoying.” One of them is male. I imagine asking him what he thinks of getting back together again. “Have not, do not, will not want to.” I settle accounts in my head by imagining posing the question which would prompt this saying. It isn’t spoken, so how do I know it is true? Do I want it to be true? Do I not ask because I imagine this would be said, and that it would hurt to hear? Perhaps it is really meant to be my saying, what I tell him when he asks me. Maybe it doesn’t matter who asks it and who answers—the question and answer are the same, the effects are the same. I want to tell him about the people I’ve dated, but things end before then. Maybe I want to do this in order to move past the knot in the center.

The dream is forgotten by the time I attempt to recall it. I am near the farmer’s market and tell him about the dream I do remember, the one with Jacob in it. I’m ashamed that I can’t tell him that I was a girl then—it doesn’t make sense otherwise, what boy has a Mormon boyfriend in 9th grade? I know that if the meeting was with Hunter I would have forgotten the dream as well, and would have to retrieve my notes and recapitulate it during the following session. Now it’s assured that I won’t forget it when I tell it to Hunter. I think about telling him next about how Vishal needs to go to a wedding this summer. He feels ambivalent about weddings. Not having imagined wanting a wedding is like not wanting children, for him. He doesn’t explain this, but I imagine it has to do with being gay, and I tell him I too never imagined getting married, though I don’t tell him that my position has changed absolutely and that this involves a movement in the heterosexual direction. I like the idea of getting married for the sake of being in the position of having to wear a pretty dress, I tell him, and I like the Reformation advertisements for wedding dresses. They’re now making children’s clothes which is cute, though I don’t say something about how it’s a bit odd to see the svelte models with their “daughters.” I close by telling him that I’m often disappointed by the wedding attire I see in photographs I see on Facebook. I’ve seen some people from college and high school get married, online.

I know that Australia is where Arabella goes in Jude the Obscure.

I’m aware that my analyst has a penis and yet I don’t think of him as a father, as a seminal figure, though I think it’s funny that he’s echoed two phrases of mine at this point—“cock so hard” and “semen to steal,” in the context of “How did it feel, being so wet, with his cock so hard,” and “Impotent—no semen to steal,” in reference to John. My analyst is not a maternal father. That doesn’t make any sense. I insist that such a position doesn’t exist. He’s my father before I was born. Or I’m his future daughter. These aren’t equivalent because I really mean my father and his daughter, as in JP or whatever his actual daughter’s name is. When his daughter is grown and he wonders what she’s thinking, he’ll think of me, that’s what I aspire to become for him. When I’m a mother, when my daughter is six, I’ll wonder if my husband is thinking what Hunter was thinking about me back in the day, in relation to her. Why did he ask me that, how could he? So wet, so hard? Why can’t I locate the exact wording of the question when there are so few possibilities? How did I feel about the question? Pleased, because it’s where I’d want to go. Investigating what it meant for my cunt to be so wet, for his cock to be so hard.

I basically think he’s my best friend or something—that he’s the best person in the world, or the most important one. If I don’t make more friends and have more interesting interactions to report to him, then it makes me a bad analysand, so I still need to try. Maybe I should perturb myself, get into some situation of being attached to John, or have more sex so I can narrate it to my analyst. Or I need to write that novel, the one that can be more substantively about him now.

When I look up “lethargy” on reddit, most of the posts are about pets. It means that the organism is going to die. Lara acquired a red-eyed tree frog and messaged me about it, to confirm that I had seen it, that’s how enthusiastic she is. I’m so lethargic that when I get up I’m so dizzy that I feel I might loose control, and I support my body with a hand pressed to the desk. I’ve felt this way since the morning. The nice thing is that I saw a woodchuck on the way to class. Class was mostly silent. I told Rin I felt catatonic; I returned feedback to a few students who requested it, I made them do peer review. I didn’t leave any sentimental words behind. They just filed out and thanked me. The world is turning into a cloud of green thoughts under green shades. A fire hydrant was pouring a stream of water down the road, the maple leaves are so open and shade-making, the light is darker shade of green, it doesn’t frighten me yet, the signs of incipient heat. I keep on sleeping, as if this bower were commanding me to do so, but hoping that I can find some substance in my sleep—a dream, a revelation of my body’s relation to its sites of desire: my analyst, or remembrances of cock. I’m aware at this point of the fact that Zane’s cock doesn’t matter; it’s not genital revelation I’m in search of, it’s the question of how to turn the listening and the speaking of analysis into text. It’s also the question of what I can do to make my thoughts turn into “better” free association, “better” effects on my analyst.

It’s 4:41, and I’ve been mostly in a state of rest since around 12 PM. Right now I’m eating a Mutsu apple. The apple is nice, but it’s irritating the wound on my tongue; I suppose I came here to say that I bit my tongue, enough to taste some blood. Why do I keep on disfiguring my tongue? This time it’s because I’m lethargic, I guess. Earlier, I ate a chocolate croissant with yogurt, two frozen green tea mochi with red bean filling, and three or four small yellow guavas.

The prompt is warm and pretty, I’ve decided to view it at last. It has the right balance between context and question. I find the Armstrong quote useful to turn around in my head. I can easily “see” what I’m going to fill my essay with, I mean that I can list the names of the authors I will write about, names which I’ve known and loved for some time now. They’re the ones I loved in parallel with my attachment to Zane. The question, beyond how they do it is—what’s the point? What are the stakes of identifying this confluence between visible form and inner content? And what’s my principle of selection? It seems important to scaffold this one on a plan. Am I so bored of what I love that I might choose to write about narrative instead? Instantiations of lyric suspension in The Turn of the Screw? I’ve decided to start rereading and extracting quotes from some texts. What did Ellis Hanson write about The Turn of the Screw? Now I’ve got some things open—Cohn, Cohn, Banfield, Ohi, Hanson, Keen.

The run through the green wooded trail began with thoughts of composition of my essay. I thought about the major difference between Banfield and Cohn and what I might do with Maud and Aurora Leigh—something about identifying the narrative forms in these narrative poems. I saw a deer mother and child and they were quite small and cute and fearless. So much affection for Elisha. She’s pretty, like a fruit bat, or a flying fox. What’s the difference between those two elocutions? She’s like the character in the book Stellaluna. I thought about this and about how I’d feel embarrassed to tell my analyst about this because it’s a thought I’ve now stored, no longer spontaneous. But it’s so great of an image that I need to tell him. When I tell you, will I tell you something about the difference between calling her a fruit bat and a flying fox? How one evokes the beautiful snout and big eyes better, but how the other evokes something important about the animal’s diet? Kohen means “to be born.”

I can tell him about how my chest feels softer, and that I like it. How my skin seems softer, how I like that. How when I transitioned my dad thought maybe it was because I didn’t like menstruating. And that I didn’t know what it meant to be a man because being a man meant wanting to be with “charming girls.” After the run I’m still restless, and I wonder if this restlessness has to do with some change in the structure of my body, are my muscles atrophying? I suppose I might get dramatically weaker soon if I don’t exercise with more consistency and discipline. Becoming a woman will entail becoming more consistent and disciplined. My orgasms this weekend have been fairly intense but not satisfying—they seem like an itch, not beatific or monumental.

The present tense, as most standard grammars explain, can denote three different temporal ranges: the punctual or instant present, which expresses momentary action (I pick up my pen); the habitual or iterative present, which expresses repeated action (I always write with a pen); and the timeless or gnomic present, which expresses generalizations or "eternal truths" (the pen is mightier than the sword).

(Dorrit Cohn, Transparent Minds, 190)

It seems important to keep this in mind when I write in the first-person present which I’m so ashamed of. I also wonder about the ratio of these, what do I enter into most frequently in analysis? I suppose I use the past tense more often, so it’s relatively unusual for me to enter the present tense, but when I do, I try to avoid the gnomic present in favor of the iterative or instant present. The iterative more often, it’s hard to do an instant present—I have done it though, in relation to the loud sounds of the tubing of my misting system as it vibrates!

Dream. I’m trying to reveal that I’m actually female. Farah seems skeptical, and I recline, wearing a short, black dress, maybe made of linen, with a pencil contour, and she passes her hand over my mid-section, from thigh to pelvis to waist, and then she assents with her eyes, which express a recognition that I’m a “real woman.” We lie down, legs touching a bit, under a black mantle, on the asphalt of a gas station—right where a car’s supposed to pull up. It seems like her wool winter coat has expanded into that mantle. We seem to be affectionate and girlish. A man tells us to leave, he gets out of his car and walks towards us, he’s stout and white, a trucker, and she fights him. I think she strikes him first and it throws him into a rage. I try to intervene, hoping that he will be mollified because I have pale skin. I might be wearing a white dress. I am not trying to exert my strength, I am trying to be apotropaic in my delicate racialized femininity.

The elder woman named “Barbara” at the Drive My Car screening told Farah she had very beautiful, expressive eyes. I haven’t had a dream with a woman I know in it in ages? This seems to be part of a sequence of gender-related dreams, starting with “the three Wills.” Now noticing that analogy—the three Wills, the three Fates. Clotho/Nona, the spinner, called upon in the ninth month of pregnancy. Lachesis/Decima, allotter with a rod. Atropos/Morta, inexorable, unturning, cutter of thread of life. I’ve been looking at WMAF prompts on /r/dirtypenpals and realize I’m turned on by the notion that Asian women are more sexualized, not more passive or pure or feminine, but in fact more voracious, like sweet little slugs.

Taro processing of the morning, and analysis, and all these nice things I’m reading, and the nice weather. This has been such a romantic “writing process”—very little has been written, but the compulsion to produce an outline seems to be a swerve with promise. Perhaps the composition of this paper will be like forcing dough through the wires of a guitar into the noodle-shaped strips of sentences.

Making doughnuts with very well-warmed dough

Cooking tofu with sweet potato leaves

Defecating habanero pepper, looks like tea leaves

Stripping leaves from sweet potato leaf nodes

Planting peruvian purple potatoes with white sprouts

Mixing powdered sugar with yuzu juice, orange juice

Should think about the pornography of Replika chat

Yesterday, a long sequence of dreams between the hours of 6 and 11.

Travelling with father to some place. Iterated scenes of me teaching. A virus which converted the texts I sent to my analyst into something vulgar. Reception of emails all filled with hate; these, too, doctored. A bookstore in Manhattan that was a natural history museum, danger of amphibious crocodiles at the base of rocky shelves. Man talking to another man about these as I climb up the sheer face, a frightening process. I interpret this as a 10:04 dream—I am Roberto.

Today, a dream about rolling a large log towards the house in order that it be decomposed somehow, perhaps with a wood chipper. My mom insisted that it would be a good idea; I told her it was better to let the log naturally decompose.

Exchanged messages with six men. I don’t like getting wet without a corresponding sense of clitoral arousal. It’s weird how that happens, I suppose a large part of the horror of sexual assault comes from the fact that the body opens itself to intrusion. I get the sense that the ones who insist on seeing photographs of my pussy are deluded virgins. Now I get to tell my analyst about it. Also, why are some penises just so much more beautiful than others?!?

I still feel determined to get his cock inside of me, even though I’m not sure I can be in love with him. If I manage to do this, it will be the first time I have sex with someone I am not in love with. I might be deluding myself; perhaps the attachment has an indelible bedrock to attach itself to at this point. If his cock is not beautiful, then it will be easy to determine whether or not my desire is real.

Side auditorium near the entrance to Klarman was filled with long lunch tables, like in middle school. John is there and I ask him what he’d like to read next—not Lacan, right? He mentions a novel by someone I haven’t heard of, probably a contemporary author, and so I’m disappointed. I get a glance at the cover. It’s by “Victoria Miller” and is called “If Not the Wings, the Wings.”

He burst out laughing, when I told him the title. I was pleased, but why did he enjoy it? — Why? — It sounds like a terrible book, it sounds like a failure! … But it’s very Jamesian. Something about the negation, … He’s reading The American now. Says something about nature… the feminine… that keeps on getting… taped over? But which will replenish itself nevertheless? So what’s the point of trying to preserve it? There is a point… there must be……?

(I’m looking for the reference and can’t find it)

(Going to discuss this more in Flirt)

Other miscellanea from the six hours—

Talked a bit more seriously about contemporary fiction that I have read or will read, in spite of my commitment to the 19th century. Something about Heti and the coin flipping, and Batuman, though I didn't explain that the reason I was revisiting The Idiot was to find the bathing scene.

We were descending the trail to the first dam when I mentioned GMH's "OH"—Old Habits, and my own "OW"—Own Writing. "What are your plans for this summer?" "Just going to work on my OW." Owwww.

Something about Keats and rills and bowers, not said. I couldn't stand sitting in direct sun, so I waded into the forest and saw a beautiful jack-in-the-pulpit and stumbled upon a goose sitting on her nest. Thought, in misanthrope fashion, that this would've been so much better if I were alone, and didn't feel like I was being purposefully elusive. I was glad that he followed me, less glad that he immediately led me back to the main group. Made a joke about having reached the limits of [love] and knowledge. Why does he still insist on talking to me about feminine sexuality, as if I care? I'm offended by the notion that he sees me as a neutral interlocutor, if part of his comfort and enjoyment in talking to me about ‘the feminine’ comes from the perception that I'm not female. Well, I have all the bad traits of females, like an extreme tendency towards petulant outbursts of emotion.

The loud cheep of a duckling demanding something is amazing.

Age – I asked, why aren't there older people here? Why are we surrounded by these college students? His response: You're probably about the same age as them!

I had to say it was “bad luck” to sit in the sun. Amparo said that this explained a lot about her life. I'm afraid of seeming overly scientific in my distaste for UV radiation. I'm afraid of revealing just how much of a body fascist I am.

I am fearful for my own indirect aggression. Why did I think it was safe to tell him that he was “at least seen, made into a subject” by the woman who called him a bastard for smoking in the park on a particularly dreary day in his life? I was supposed to commiserate.

Charlene is against wedding vows, John would have them, and I am (silently) surprised that one would excise the tradition from the tradition. Why did Charlene ask me if I want to get married? Did I seem like the one least likely to get married, or least likely to want to? I spoke of sartorial joy and disappointment—I'm against the heavy liquid texture of silk and satin in large applications, I think silk should be used for slip dresses. She likes tulle, I like lace, the delicacy of holes.

Cats, Dogs, Lions, Wolves – Does liking dogs mean I like the patriarchy? No, u dufus, wolves don't have patriarchal land inheritance rules. I failed to say this to John in time, the thought arrived later.

Pleased with the fact that the three women had bodily imperfections. I should expose myself next time so I can participate in the revelation of my body and definitively announce to John my true sex/gender. I’m impressed by how close they’re able to shave their legs, though I don’t plan on replicating that myself. This is now the second time I’ve shaved my leg hair in my life. I am going to buy a swim top that has a leopard print. Why does this have to be so dramatic? Would be nice to spend the time with more interesting people, like Margaux.

It feels like my uterus is about to invert itself, like it’s going to swim out of my abdomen and find a tree limb to wrap itself around. I’m sitting here with all the windows open in this short ruddy cotton slip dress, and the wind is mingling with the wanton locks of my outer labia, the dark continent of flesh least seeable to myself, other than that of my face. Not done with the past; this is the effect of his gaze.

A volition to communicate, but I don’t communicate by email anymore. Maybe it’s because I don’t trust, or maybe it’s because I’m trying to develop here. I exchange messages with two people and talk to my analyst three times a week and speak to John now and then.

After bringing my cunt to a temporary resolution, I went for a run, and saw the beautiful fronts of hidden homes. How nice it is to see a shrub with flowers, a big old shrub that someone has taken care of for a long long time. How nice it is to take a mid-day shower. My room is filled with warm breeze. At 3 PM we arrived at the point of day in which the brain begins to sense its heaviness, and I consider creeping into a shadowy back room. At 6 PM a trip to the grocery store seems feasible and proper. I see some nice flowers.

I realized that I desire none of the specific virtues associated with a supportive and loving mate—I just want a partner who’s clairvoyant, or prophetic—who can read my mind and everyone else’s, and tell the future, if only in a belated sense. What does that mean?

I felt for the first time since it last happened what it is to be bent down in anguish. It was not a direct experience but a warning.

I have not managed to say anything about the quality of those sounds which escaped my gullet this morning. I want to say, “I cried out!” “I whimpered!” “I squeaked!” “I wheezed!” Strange air escaped my throat, I compressed the cords… I came-to/-too…

Why are some people so interested in the abolition of the family?

Do I have a “plan”? I can’t leave this question hanging…

Told my mom that I don’t want to visit home at all this summer.

(I’m sort of convinced that her presence corrupts me.)

I am stunned: told that I write too much, that I move too fast, that I should focus on developing my own ideas in relation to fewer texts. The advice is reasonable; what lies behind it, though, is difficult to deal with, its implications reducible to a single adjective: unloveable.

I received a parcel from Z, like the last one he sent. There was a page or so of writing, which I didn’t read, and various beige placards with rounded corners, almost like tiles… maybe they were newsprint and I’ve made a substitution, but in any case, a lot of blank material…

"The Mystic Pad is a slab of dark brown resin or wax with a paper edging; over the slab is laid a thin transparent sheet, the top end of which is firmly secured to the slab while its bottom end rests on it without being fixed to it. This transparent sheet is the more interesting part of the little device. It itself consists of two layers, which can be detached from each other except at their two ends. The upper layer is a transparent piece of celluloid; the lower layer is made of thin translucent waxed paper. When the apparatus is not in use, the lower surface of the waxed paper adhres lightly to the upper surface of the wax slab."

"To make use of the Mystic Pad, one writes upon the celluloid portion of the covering-sheet which rests on the wax slab. For this purpose no pencil or chalk is necessary, since the writing does not depend on material being deposited on the receptive surface. It is a return to the ancient method of writing on tablets of clay or wax: a pointed stilus scratches the surface, the depressions upon which constitute 'writing'. In the case of the Mystic Pad this scratching is not effected directly, but through the medium of the covering-sheet. At the points which the stilus touches, it presses the lower surface of the waxed paper on to the wax slab, and the grooves are visible as dark writing upon the otherwise smooth whitish-grey surface of the celluloid. If one wishes to destroy what has been written, all that is necessary is to raise the double covering-sheet from the wax slab by a light pull, starting from the free lower end. The close contact between the waxed paper and the wax slab at the places which have been scratched (upon which the visbility of the writing depended) is thus brought to an end and it does not recur when the two surfaces come together once more. The Mystic Pad is now clear of writing and ready to receive fresh notes."

Almost nothing to report other than the fact that I enjoyed my analytic speaking, that I seemed to have a great deal to report.

I received another thing from Zane—this time, an email.

I managed to see the “bottom” of my navel, it was pink.

It was pustule-like, either a pimple or an insect bite.

I saw Elisha and Laurent in a bedroom and kitchen.

Elisha was lying down on top of my legs.

I was offered a job by a Japanese woman.

It had something to do with Youtube.

Savitri was there at some point.

I reached some kind of a resolution with Laurent.

“High cruelty” evokes “high romance.” “Blathering” sounds like a word I would use. It was “including writing,” not “not including writing.” Maybe the message is meant to contradict itself, but “writing” might exclude the writing of emails. It does not feel good to have so many and such blatant wish-fulfillments in one night.

Analysis had its impacts, can’t understand or narrate here. Am I in fact worried about my ‘analytic writing’ not being good enough?

I think “Flirt” is over now.

Yesterday can’t be reported.

Spent 16 miles on my feet?

Analysis was more “measured” today—I mean that I paused a lot—and Hunter was in that room with the prints in the back. I haven’t gotten a chance to duly contemplate them. I was narrating again, narrating the walk with John, a few elements of our conversation, elements of my response, my inner emotional state, blah blah. Here I am doing it—you know that Lacan says “blah blah” and it’s cute?

Hunter took off his glasses for the second time during the session, maybe he suffers from spring allergies. It’s striking to note that his face really isn’t that perfect, I’ve often assumed that he’s more attractive than me, that I am a student of his face. I don’t actually find him attractive and know I couldn’t fall in love with him; I can only love him as “my analyst.”

I still wish I could be plugged up by his cock and feel warm sperm dripping into my cervix (talking about Zane now, obviously).

When I think about this my face sort of makes this concerned wince that resembles, in my mind, the face of Johnny Depp narrating his childhood struggles during the defamation trial.

I just took my pants off and am about to go for a run.

This is the kind of thing I find worth talking about, apparently: wanting someone to insert his erect member into my weeping orifice. I basically go to analysis to see if I can talk about this sort of thing out loud, and then if I do it with the necessary frequency, it’ll just accidentally come out in other conversations. I’ll be telling John about my cunt as if it were a cup… And then the phrase or the sentence or the line or the story ends there. I’m very disorganized because I keep on truncating things with sex. It’s like when you masturbate and fall asleep immediately afterwards and wake up and forget that you were aroused prior and that you had all these elaborate things to say about your cunt or your pussy or your thighs or your stomach or your breasts or the texture of the sleeping bag or the blanket or the sheepskin beneath or on top of you.

My goal is to open my hole and have it conjugated and to remain mysterious in spite of the successful resolution of the climax.

In Either/Or, there’s a little discussion of the Seducer’s Diary:

“As soon as she wanted to speak of it to another,” Kierkegaard wrote, “it was nothing.” The extent to which he left a girl with nothing was the very mark of his artistry. It meant having the self-control to not get her pregnant or abandon her at the altar. It meant no spectators, no proof.”

But here there’s so much something here. I don’t think I’ve felt duped by you this time around; if anything I’m the one who does it, and it’s doubly perverse because of the way I make everything so explicit, so you can be sure that I really did feel this or that way about you, except you doubt it insofar as it seems to be part of a larger “literary project,” insofar as my sexual desires seem mediated through language. It’s true that I love your cock, but also that I love your “cock,” and it’s also true that you can’t verify whether or not this is actually true, even if I get wet when I’m around you, because that kind of a physiological response is automatic, and happens when I sext strangers on the Internet whose cocks I absolutely do not like.

My laughter has taken on a nearly sexual quality which I feel is probably apprehensible to random strangers who don’t know me.

It’s refreshing to know that I’m not in love, but there’s something suspicious in the way that Hunter punctuated my observation that John seemed to be avoiding the subject when I brought up the notion of my ideal partner, as one who’s “clairvoyant.”

I don’t think it makes sense to get the language of poetry and the language of narration all mixed up in one another, but I’m going to do both as orthogonal practices and see what comes of that.

I went on Omegle again and I didn’t like it. I hate failing at serving men. I’m increasingly afraid of being perceived as male. I think I went on Omegle because I wanted to relate to Selin’s hookups and the horror of them and in a sense I succeeded but in another sense I know this would be richer and more eventful to experience sex in person. I’m upset when people have bad sex, especially when it happens to be a woman writing about it, because it seems like such a waste, and also because on some level I have difficulty relating to the necessity of that experience—why do women end up in these situations that are so awful, and why have I managed to avoid them entirely? Do I really want to be more typical so I can get into more typical and awful experiences?

2:00 - 4:00 - trying to sleep, strangely restless
4:00 - 6:30 - painful abdominal bloat, vomited
6:30 - 7:30 - burping, reading about the hypothalamus

While crouched in pain on the bathroom floor, I learned that trans women tend to experience PMS pains, a sort of menstrual cycle without the shedding; that’s just how the hypothalamus works. I like the name of Gonadotropin-releasing hormone (GnRH). While winding down to sleep, I also read about menstrual cups. And then I read about the hymen and the eroticization of the navel and the history of the bikini. I can’t believe so many women experience pain during intercourse, that bleeding would even become a symbol for the end of virginity. I have so many new “baby hairs” on my head.