A WOMAN I KNOW

has plenty of brains
and beauty that will never cease
knocking everyone's socks off
and she goes around acting the moron
with men, I suppose because of the usual
supposition that men
don't like women with brains, but they do! They do!
Real men do. But there are men
who don't mind them as long as they play dumb
and that's the kind she finds. She listens to the
chauvinistic stories they tell her as if she could not
think for herself. I'm afraid if this goes on long
enough it will become true. And as far as I can see
this will be fine with her.

Who would want
to hang around such men? Women find
men to sleep with, men to dance with, men
to converse with, without turning themselves into
morons. So I started thinking, "What are her
core values?" and it struck me that perhaps following the
teachings of her first lover, she became a
mammonite. It's sad, too; mammonites never
get to enjoy what money can buy for them (a study of which
would reveal their core values); it's the money, the mere
symbol, they go after, not the thing itself. As for me,
I love to spend money but I don't like to work
for it, but though I spend whatever is given me I
would be just as happy without it, I'm
funny that way. And they
are money that way. I think
my happiest years were those I spent trying to figure out
how to stretch a borrowed three dollars to cover
dinner for two and how
to pay it back. Working. I don't like to
work but I like
having a little coming in and making it
do me, while all the while wishing
for more. Oh, it's a lie, that I
don't like working, I do, I love it. Even
sitting at a desk alI day had its
moments but remembering to bring the
promised coffee and making change while taking orders
- that was joy. I don't remember ever thinking
"Oh, how I wish I were happy" when I had
hardly any money. Now I have enough and don't
even have to work for it any more and
wish that all the time.

THAT DAMNED CHRISTINA

That Damned Christina

disappeared my nuts. I'm going

to kill her. Perfectly good nuts
ziplocked away
without the slightest attraction for ants.
I remember her
standing over there saying something about
how she hated ants and I
agreed with her, never dreaming she would
throw my nuts out. She is nuts and if I could I would
throw her out. Never mind, I'm going back to
Fonda this very day and get more nuts and
this time I will put a big sign on them saying
DO NOT DISTURB. ON PAIN OF DEATH,
DO NOT
MOVE THESE NUTS FROM THIS SPOT.

I used to have belongings that I thought
were mine - a doll, a rattle, a yo-yo I couldn't
work - that I learned were not mine by having them
disappeared by my mother, the boss of
the universe. Christina is not
my mother and she is not the boss of
anything in this house but she acts as if
she were both. I think I will just
tell her the next time she comes, "Christina,
if you move my nuts or anything of mine
from where it is to somewhere else where I will not
know to look for it - if you do that, Christina, I
will kill you. On the spot. In cold blood. And your
children will go hungry and I will go to
prison I know but that doesn't matter because I am
not long for this world now anyhow and I will die happy knowing
you can never again hide my snacks.