I have failed to make anyone see the beauty inside of me. The multiple things I have tried, have been a failure. And I now find myself, alone, miserable, and still, as ugly as ever. I think I have always been ugly on the outside, but I used to be beautiful on the inside, but now, I am full of such hate, and contempt, that my soul is even ugly. It is not that I wanted to be beautiful just for others to see, but mainly just for me. I want, for once in my life, to be able to look in the mirror without hating what I see staring back at me. Don't get me wrong, I thought I was beautiful when I was very young, and so did everyone else, but when 5th grade hit, and I started to gain weight, I was no longer beautiful. I am not fat, or extremely overweight, but I am not the socialy acceptable stick like person either, I am in limbo. I have the feeling I will be ugly forever, since I can't afford surgery. I have only been told I am beautiful by a few people in my life, and those are family members, so that does not really count. There is a saying, and that is "there is only one beautiful child, and every mother has it"I think this every time my mother tells me that I am beautiful,and that some day some "lucky" guy will be "lucky enough to have me" I can see right though everyone's lies, and it makes me sick! I hate the way this all makes me feel, and all I want, is for one person in this horrible world to say to me, that I am beautiful......is that too much to ask?

1) family should count more than anyone else. 2) your attitude harms you much more than your looks. 3) work to change.

damn nate, that was the most heartfelt and serious thing i have seen you say in in in........shit....EVER! yeah listen to him, he makes some sense

you don't know how hard it was to not add 4) fuck you, you ass.

Nate's right. Especially about number 2. Think of the people *you* love, Star. Do you love them for their looks? Haven't you ever known someone who was really fun to be with, great to talk to, kind and helpful when you needed help, trustworthy and smart and made you feel great...and you didn't even notice that they weren't all that physically attractive because you enjoyed their company so much? Or that even seemed *more* physically attractive once you knew them and knew what a great person they were? And haven't you ever known someone who was a total knock-out in the flesh but a really ugly person? Who lied and hurt people, or who was boring and empty and a drag to be around? You're born with your face and (to some degree) your body. You create your personality and you shape your soul. Being ugly on the outside is one thing, but being ugly on the inside is entirely in your control. This is what you should change because *this* is what is making you miserable...not your appearance. And fuck social acceptability. I mean that across the board.

PS. No one has ever called me beautiful either. But yesterday my boss told me I was a joy to be around, and that I made everyone in the office feel comfortable and good about themselves, and that she wished she could bottle my personality and sell it to all the crabby people she knows. I'll take hearing that over being called beautiful any day.

Beauty is in the eye of teh beholder, they say. but when I here the word "beholder", then I think of the D&D monster - the one that is a floating scaly orb with a big mouth full of teeth, a huge eye, then a lot of little eyes on stalks like hair on top. This is why I can't get dates. Star - if you are serious about change, read "Body-for Life" by Bill Phillips It's a life-changer for sure, and it might help you with the attitude even more than it can with your body. and Rhiannon - you really are beautiful you know. just post those photos I sent you and everyone will agree with me as well.

Ditto re Rhiannon, both in this thread and in the other one where she said a prayer for Bell Jar's brother. By the way, I'm sorry but "Fuck you, you ass" just sounds lame. Not enough syllables. "Fuck you, you asshole" with emphasis on the "hole" has just the right ummpphh to it to drive it home.

i think you're beautiful too, rhiannon.

having people say you're beautiful, even when, maybe especially when, prefaced with "so fucking," often doesn't count for shit anyway. so fucking beautiful. as well as the sexiest voice, most formidable girl ever, dress well with purpose, smart, literate, the only other person as ambivalent as he is, soft warm tan skin, my hair smells incredible, svelte, the most amazing hips ever, well-appointed apartment, great body, etc. he even wants me to write a book so he can edit it. but I'm not sure he'd dump his girlfriend for me even if I were an heiress. maybe he would. (but he is taking me to a party friday night.) beautiful is pretty worthless except that it beats the shit out of being ugly. some bum passed me on the street this morning and I thought he said, "are you a police car?" I didn't look at him, kept walking, and yelled NO. "oh," he said. "well, you sure are pretty." then I figured out he had said "movie star." I have this attractive, smart lawyer friend. we go out a lot and we are usually the shittiest, most boring people wherever we go. we dress well and look good and like never fucking get laid. he tells me about how many hundreds of crunches he does in the morning and how he won't feel fulfilled until he has an armani suit and what great legs I have, and I tell him I don't care how many calories a margarita has and how I am really almost done with that philip roth review and how much it sucks that we don't know anyone else as shitty and boring in the same way that we are so we can have a shitty and boring CLIQUE, and then we discuss how we would like to die but all we can agree on is not a car crash because that would be so fucking common.

Hey, Star. I've been where you are, and not so long ago. I'm still pretty much in the same place. But something has changed. I'm not completely sure why, but I don't feel quite as bad, and I'm not even taking any St. John's Wort. I still don't like my body, but I don't feel like shit whenever I look in the mirror. I'm still intent on losing weight, but I'm actually doing something about it instead of sitting on the couch eating ultimate cheesburgers like usual. I'm not sure what's different. Maybe it's that I have something to concentrate on at which I excel: my work. Maybe it's because I've decided to be more honest and open in my current relationship, even if that might end it. Maybe these are just other symptoms of some mysterious new found confidence, I don't know. For some reason the bitterness doesn't bite as bad these days. It does get better. You don't have to be bubbly hapy about the way you are. Just find a quiet place, a peace about it: find some balance. When you're balanced it's much easier to walk forward. Hokey, yes, but it's true.

the plath journals sound fascinating. and I'm not even a fan. they've been released in britain already. here in the fall. this salon review has some good excerpts: http://salon.com/books/feature/2000/05/30/plath1/index.html

Even so, there are many passages whose previous excisions are understandable, lines and whole entries redolent with the whiff of taboo of one kind or another. Hilarious as it is to envision now, no doubt Hughes didn't relish the idea of letting it be known that Plath had in 1958 -- after he'd won the attention of W.H. Auden, Stephen Spender and Marianne Moore with his first book -- entered their poems in jingles contests run by food companies: "the dole pineapple & heinz ketchup contests close this week, but the French's mustard, fruit-blended oatmeal & slenderella & Libby-tomato juice contests don't close till the end of May. We stand to win five cars, two weeks in Paris, a year's free food, and innumerable iceboxes & refrigerators and all our debts paid. Glory glory." Some of the 1982 cuts were simply Plath's caustic sniping and thinly disguised jealousies -- there is a wonderfully sulky account of a lunch with fellow poets, drooling unattractive babies, and spilled tea that ends "Too much salt in a fruit salad. We ate, grumpily, and left."

I am not beautiful right now. I just got a tetanus vaccine. The department of public health did not tell that a huge, sombrero-shaped lump of flesh vividly specked with blood was going to appear on the site of the vaccine. It looks really disgusting. I was planning to go out in a short-sleeved dress on Sat. However, I look like a victim of some bizzare skin cancer. The CDC informs that me that "a palpable nodule...may be felt for several weeks after injection of the substance..." FUCK!

"papable nodules" aside, Isolde, I closed on my house today. I am The Woodsman. Son Z graduates Saturday, I work all week, and maybe weedwack on Sat am, pack my books, and go to Aruba on Friday 6/9/00 for two plus weeks of teaching. Then I come home on the 25th and move to the woods that week, in between seeing clients. Can't wait to get that "settled" feeling, nodules aside. Hope yours goes away by the time my bank account recovers. Beauty is only a splinter deep, they say. Or a bloody bump high.

You know, all this stuff has not seemed to help. And yesterday, I got an hour lecture from my mom about not taking my prozac, and how that is affecting my attitude. But to tell you the truth, it is not the lack of the meds that makes the difference, it is the whole being around my family. I see now, that if I were not around my family in those years, I would probably not been put in the situations that I was, and then, in turn, not been put on prozac. Rhi, I totaly understand what you said about a beautiful person being ugly, and I am not sure if I have ever said here or not, but that is the exact situation I am in with my so-called best friend. She is a model, and she is my cousin too, and no one can tell, because we look nothing alike, (not that I know too many cousins who look like twins or anything). Anyway, I said this the other day on the boards, a guy asked me if she was my lover, and I said "No, she is my cousin", he stared at me blankly. I said "yeah, we look nothing alike" he said, "yeah, I know, she is beautiful" I did not cry, or react in any way, I just pushed it down, inside of me, the way I have been doing since 7th grade. And now, I have lost Michael after about 2 years, because of this beauty issue. I know this is petty, but it was the final straw in the shit I was taking from him. Anyway, I asked him if he thought I was beautiful, and he said "in your own way" I was confused, and asked him what way that was, he said you just have something about you, and I know that he was referring to the fact that I am (was?) beautiful on the inside. So I could not stop there, because I wanted the full truth, so I would not be fooled by him, and marry him without figuring this out...no, he did not ask me to marry him..yet, but he said he was planning on it. (yeah, that spoiled the suprize) Anyway, I asked him if I was beautiful compared to others, and he used this terrible comparison "Between you and Winonna Ryder, I would choose her" I got sort of upset, but he wouldn't let it stop...so for now, we are no longer in contact. Thanx for the time you guys spent repling, but I am still hideous..

get off the prozac now rhi why can't we see those pictures sem took? why can't we see the sweet cake in the kitchen that we smell in the living room? you can send me leaves i can send you rockstar polaroids..........can't you just graces us for a moment with a picture? why why why ........ besides, sem is not a good liar and he is obviously being quite sincere ooops i dropped my email address

Nothing wrong with a little Prozac. Helped me through a rough time, and now I'm just peachy.

I strongly disagree with Semillama about the -- shall we say -- *quality* of the photographs. He is hereby forbidden to show them to anyone. (And I mean it. Got that?) Plus, I like it that no one knows what I look like and vice versa. There's a lot of freedom in that. (But thanks, Sem, for sending me the CD etc. My brother and I were listening to it while painting his room, and we liked what we heard.) (And thanks, y'all, for your kind words.)

i know what you looked like when you were little. when people send me their MAILART, they will know too.

you should Never ask a question unless you Really want to know the answer. the women in Playboy were really pretty. When I gave the magazine back to Ishmael we were talking about how good looking the centerfold was (it was from October/99) and how a lot of the girls in there were so great looking. he reminded me that they're airbrushed, which I'd forgotten about. When I looked at the magazine I was torn between attraction and jealousy, but now I feel better having been reminded that they're not as perfect as they seem. the fiction was about some guy going out with conjoined twins. it wasn't very good.

It got a little smaller. I am relieved. I'm glad to hear the sale is moving smoothly, Dougie.

hey, sem, was it you who said you're a katherine dunn fan? I talked to her last night. yesterday was crazy and beautiful, and I felt jubilant. I woke up in seattle very early. I drove up there thursday night and stayed at a friend's house because I had a job interview friday morning. I think the interviews went really well. I will be surprised if they don't offer me the job. but I've been surprised before. then I drove back to portland and listened to pavement on the cd player in my parents' jetta. the sun was shining and sometimes I turned on the a/c. yesterday may have been the first sunny day of the summer in the northwest. the sky was still blue -- it hasn't smogged up yet, which it will. the vistas from the office where I interviewed highlighted seattle's natural majesty, which is fully apparent only on those rare sunny smog-free days. and I felt that special joy of being downtown but not working on a business day. I loved the drive back to portland. I was all alone and happy and successful and I looked pretty in the rear-view mirror and I still had the whole evening to look forward to. portland is writ on a much smaller scale. everything is boxed in between the hills. there is no big water; the mountains here only dot the landscape. but I always love returning to it, coming back down south from the high and mighty city. this weekend is the first weekend of the rose festival. waterfront park is packed with carnival rides, and it's a rare year that opening night wasn't muddy and cold. last night was warm and light and everyone who packed tight into sports bars, jumping around and yelling the blazers on to victory over the l.a. lakers. I went out wearing my tight little strappy betsey johnson dress because the print is of red roses, and I wore my dark red silk chiffon wrap over my shoulders. I wore fishnet stockings and ribbony satin shoes and pretty spring makeup with dark red shiny lips. my hair was still curled a little from the job interview and I kept on my sunglasses because it was still light out, still light and bright until nine o'clock at night. I picked up the brand-new portland weekly, the mercury, and read it at the bar, and the hundred guys all crowded in there only bothered me during the commercials. I wished I hadn't read it because I had been so excited, I expected so much from it, but it wasn't at all substantive. all day I cast a warm, pretty light wherever I went and I expected everything to glow for me. the paper, which I have been waiting for for months, didn't. I will look at it again, and I hope I like it better. then in the last quarter, blazers ahead by 9 or 11 maybe, I left to go meet my friend. my hands, which had been calm and steady before and during all the job interviews earlier, had been shaking at the bar. this means I still like him. goddamn it. "you look very diaphanous," he said. I love you, I thought. fuck you, I thought. jerk. asshole. darling. bands. a party. me and him and a friend of ours and a friend of his walked up the street to the party, the portland mercury first-issue celebration. it was in an old ballroom with crystal chandeliers and a bouncy wooden floor. the blazers had won. I talked to his friend about what that meant for us. “it means you will be victorious tonight,” I told him. “it means thousands of chicks all over portland are going to get laid tonight. I don’t know if it means I’ll get the job because it would mean victory for me, a portlander, but it would also mean that portland and I would lose each other because I would have to move to seattle.” as soon as we walked in the party, we all saw people we couldn’t wait to talk to, and we dispersed. one of my friends wanted to talk to the mercury’s arts editor, whom he has been emailing but hadn’t met, and the woman who books shows for the all-ages club where all the good bands play, and another found the mercury art director and writer/illustrator for some comic or zine or something called, I think, craphound, and I saw katherine dunn. she was sitting by herself at a table and I already had four quick drinks in me, so I had no trouble going up and acting like we were old friends. but she is very, very, very nice and seemed to like that a fan had approached her. “I interviewed you in seattle a long, long time ago,” I told her. she didn’t remember me, and that was fine. I talked about philip roth (what else?) and she talked about the cia. she said she hadn’t read “the human stain” because she didn’t want to be influenced by other writers right now. I asked about her new book, and she said maybe in the spring, maybe. I should have asked her if harry anderson (the “night court” guy) has any plans to actually do anything with his movie rights to “geek love,” but I forgot. I got some free beer and said some dumb things to some other people and watched sort of jealously as my friend talked to other attractive, prettily dressed women. on the way back to the show I stopped some traffic and received some comments, and our friend asked me if I always got that much attention. “yes,” I said. “I can’t help it.” “yeah,” my special friend said. “like draping yourself in red sheer silk has nothing to do with it.” then we all went to a show and saw bands and I sat in the very back with him and we had a version of the aren’t-you-glad-we’re-still-friends conversation. except it was so loud we had to yell in each others’ ears. I was so excited and happy to see him, and I didn’t feel at all indignant, and I just wanted to talk and talk and talk. yeah, I was drunk, I had many beers and many margaritas and cosmopolitans, but I wasn’t incoherent or particularly sloppy. “it sucks to be a woman,” I said, crossing my legs so he could better see the texture of the fishnets and so my heel would hit him. “why?” he asked. “because you don’t like having all the power?” I giggled. I wanted to tell him that my relationships with men were never pure. they’re always tainted with concupiscence. it was too loud, though. I spoke words slowly into his ear. one time when it was his turn to talk to me instead of saying anything he just put his face in my hair and started biting my ear. it was good and right and I didn’t get mad at all.

I've been told that I shouldn't write to him. I should withhold myself. yes. I agreed. but then I go and send him this -- I was so happy to see you. I realize now that I was also excited to see you because I talked a lot. it’s too bad it was so loud and we didn’t have any time and you were tired and preoccupied because we probably could have had the best-ever (in the whole world, I mean) I’m-really-glad-we’re-still-friends conversation. it wouldn’t have been about that, but that’s what it would have meant. if you especially care what I think (which I’m not sure you do and not sure you have any reason to), I need you to know some things. right this second it occurs to me that ... saying nice things is so much harder than telling everyone what’s wrong. god. I am all about pointing out the flaws. I want to be a copy editor because I am so fucking intellectually lazy. all I want to do is look for errors. this is not something I’ve thought about until right now, this paragraph. I must not be introspective at all. because that is so obvious that I can’t believe I really haven’t thought about it until now, 2000. you know, that’s really why I’m so very boringly obsessed on looking pretty. because that’s all there is. being physically attractive is all-important when you have nothing to say. I wish I could obtain joy from it, though. (though I do sort of get off on XXXX’s having the hots for me, but that is bad of me.) the other justification of why I like to look nicer than what most people would consider necessary is that I’m never going to go unnoticed (how thrilling that would be!), so I may as well work it. I also wanted to say something else about XXXX. my question to him about whether he thought I was pretty was topical (that word makes me think of ointment). I wasn’t just harassing him. just so you know. I think he was asking me how I felt about getting so much attention or saying how he couldn’t believe how different I am now from back when I wore my clothes like a coat hanger or something. after he told me he thought I was (and said it in exactly, perfectly the right way) and said he couldn’t ever tell his girlfriend, I started making some case for his keeping her. he said he didn’t know if he could. I told him that if they inspired each other to do things like publishing books, then they should stay together. for the common good. christ, I was feeling really idealistic yesterday. all day long I just wanted to cast the prettiest light on everything and watch it all glow. I wanted to believe crazy, happy things about the whole world. seattle and portland were both beautiful. I had a great time at all three interviews. I wasn’t nervous at all (I didn’t realize I’d been caught in a lie until the drive home, oh well). I don’t think my coming across as naïve lessened the chances of my getting the job. I think I charmed XXX – we talked about prague and philip roth and art deco and our friend XXXX. I wish I hadn’t looked at the mercury yesterday. you heard it in my voice on the phone – I was really excited about having a new paper in town. I need to look it over again, but I thought that with so much lead time, the first issue would be more substantive. there was a theme here. I was going to talk about you. I was going to talk about how much I appreciate good but how hard it is for me to describe it. about the other conversation I had with XXXX last weekend, the one that may have precipitated the one he had with you. we talked about the similarity of our friendships with you -- how daunting is our admiration for your work. we can’t compete. XXXX is very brave to do it anyway. I bet I will like his writing more as he continues. I can’t even try. that you think I am prettier than you are is not much of a consolation (you have no idea how much that word means to me) when I think about how you’re much more clever. this should be a spoken conversation. I don’t have time right now to write this all out. I keep wanting to say other things, complete asides, like I want to talk about stephen king with you for a second, I want to tell you about my conversation with katherine dunn last night and how we talked about salon and the cia. but I have to do things today, things that make me glad there is nothing going on in my life so I can go to the library and search for a little article about country time lemonade from a 1983 new yorker (to impress someone). I want to tell you what you want to hear, what I had intended to say, about what a great fan of yours I am. I want to have an ecstasy-like talk. I want to let you know how much I appreciate your friendship, how important it is to me even without your face in my hair, although, christ, that still feels so fucking great and so right, and, (these things should really be parenthetical, but they’re just not) funny, I wasn’t nervous at all about all those job interviews in seattle yesterday, but at the bar before XXXX when I was about to go and meet you, my hands shook, god, that’s dumb. wait, another aside I want to discuss right now. about reviews of books and movies. I’ve been reading a lot. I read some of the new york times and salon and the new yorker and the new york review of books and the nyt book review and the stranger and willamette week and even amazon.com, and what I want to know is if it’s ok for all the reviews to say the same things. everyone said the same exact things about the hamlet movie. I feel like I’ve already seen it. maybe it’s significant that all these smart people from all over the country came to a consensus about this work. I guess normal people don’t read eight reviews of the same movie so they don’t notice this. I should try to tell you how much I like your work. I guess I assume you know. or maybe I don’t want you to know. anyway, I don’t know how to talk about stuff I like. it’s too hard. you have a magnificent talent for it. you said you don’t think I care (that I hurt you when I say mean things?). I don’t think I even know that I could hurt you. I think you couldn’t care less about me so anything I say is wholly irrelevant. if I’ve said nothing about what you’ve done recently it’s because I’m intellectually lazy (or maybe just a dumb bitch), not because I didn’t like the work. I remember telling you I liked [...] I also meant to tell you that I thought what you said about [...] was really funny (if I were feeling mean-spirited, I would ask at this point, “did you steal it?”). last night I had more to say about why it sucks to be a woman. because you don’t like to have all the power, you asked. that was also funny. no. because no relationship with a man can ever be pure. this book, all the roth books, about wanting to be free from what all you were specifically born into, about wanting to just be considered an individual, well, woman is the ultimate other. I’m not sure if I ever got to my point and told you the things I thought you needed to know. we should talk sometime.

Hey, cyst, you were in eastern Europe last year, right? I'm asking because my sister just got a fellowship to study in the Ukraine and she's trying to find people to interview and story ideas for while she's there..

she should do a story on the mailorder bride business in kiev. that's the kind of shit everyone likes to read about.

I think I was the one who liked Katherine Dunn. At least I was the one who was excited when you said you'd interviewed her.

oh, is there anything you want me to ask her next time I see her? I wish I had a transcript of this long interview I did with her about 10 years ago. I had it on the web for a while but it got lost. I heard there are companies that have archived lots and lots of the web and you can pay them to look for old stuff for you. is that true? if I stay in portland, I will have to start writing for the mercury because I can't continue to do nothing I'm proud of. her boyfriend writes for them, so I'm sure I'll see her again. antigone - I know lots of journalists in kiev. what is your sister studying? I can hook her up with people there. let me know.

did she write geek love? i loved that book.

'tainted with concupiscence' gets my vote. "Call the roller of big cigers, The muscular one, and bid him whip In kitchen cups consupiscent curds. Let the wenchs dawdle in such dress As they are used to wear, and let the boys Bring flowers in last month's newspapers." .....--The Emperor of Ice Cream, Wallace Stevens,1922 Right on.

the "s" should be a "c" dammit. So much for proofreading

yeah, she wrote "geek love." in the '80s she had a great q&a column in willamette week. she's been writing about boxing for online magazines, and she's working on her "cut man" book. she might write for the mercury once in a while, she said. my asshole former paramour friend didn't know who I was talking to, and later he said something dumb and mean about how old she was or something, and I told him the little blonde he'd been chatting up was hot but was she ever nominated for a national book award. I went to powell's today and dropped $40 on philip roth books. "so it's a roth day today?" the cashier asked me. "every day is a roth day," I said. I wore a short and shimmery sleeveless red-violet dress, and as soon as I got out of the car some woman told me, "that's a really lovely dress you have on." then about 30 seconds later some guy told me I had amazing legs. only one wolf whistle, which was a bit disappointing. but as I was walking up to the library, some guy got off his bike and walked beside me and asked if it was ok for him to "take a lingering look." "why won't you tell me your name?" he asked. "I could make something up if you'd like," I said. "you should tell me your name," he said. "because I'm a great fan of beauty." I couldn't think of anything to say to that so I just ignored him and headed for the microfilm.

I wasn't the only one who knew friday was special. this is the start of a sports column from today's oregonian: it was a day of sunshine that came up roses by chuck colpepper then there was that day in early june, a friday without apparent flaw when portland looked like the prettiest place on earth, mt. hood sat over there at arm's length like some glorious dessert and the trail blazers tore through l.a. like vicious gossip. when a city in blinding sun seemed to have got out of bed on the right side. ... by the end of the day, he was one happy newspaper columnist and the first nba title in 23 years looked visible on the horizon, in lakers coach phil jackson's words when considering what might happen sunday: "who knows?" that's the beauty of it: nobody. for another day, nobody knows. it's great when nobody knows. ----------------------------------------- these first days of sun in the northwest are both delirious and dreamy. we've been waiting so long. oregon summer days and nights are all magic and charm and splendor and auspice. the pretty young girls finally take off all that denim and wool, and strangers talk to each other on the street. I can't believe this is only the start. I need more of this.

I like Geek Love, but perhaps not as much as Margret. Sorry, folks, the photos will never see the light of day, unless Rhiannon rhicants. Well, someone will seee them someday in a photo album, but probably not any of you. Probably a good thing, since I look pretty shabby in those shots. No offense to your friend, Rhi, but I really bet I could take a better photo of you. Speaking of photos, I finally finished the roll that has been in my nice camera for a year. I can't wait to see what the hell is on the first half. The second half is all pictures from the Soudan Mine in Northern Minnesota, which I toured on Friday. Great tour, go take it if you happen to be around Ely, MN. My kittie is sitting on my lap, which she never does when I am on the computer. I believe she missed me.

I was referring to the quality of my face, not to Lorraine's photography skills. She is, in fact, a very good photographer. And no picture with me in it (over the age of 8) ever sees the inside of a photo album.

These two will. I think you have a very high quality face. If anyone is going to complain about their face, it should be me, the definition of unremarkably plain, but I don't. Half the time I don't even try to cover it up with a beard.

failed to be interesting. to: that guy I'm obsessed with [...] I met a guy. I asked him what he was reading. it was a library book about armenia. he used to live in hungary and he's spent time in croatia and lithuania and mexico and poland. today he gave me a copy of his zine. I'm pretty sure he likes me. I don't especially like the zine. I bet he was hoping I would. but when I was reading it I thought he would make a good boyfriend. he seems very sweet. he's tall and skinny and smart and he says funny things and he reminds me of m, and, god, I hope I move soon, really really soon. I told him I would send him a few stories, so I looked for things I could show him that weren't awful. and when I was looking through some of the crap I've written, I came across a sentence that stuck in my head. I tried to find it again later but couldn't. I had described something or someone as "the least appropriate and therefore the most attractive." that's close to a line you later told me about philip roth. I think you said something about the way he looks at things are "the bleakest and therefore the most attractive." and that has really stuck with me. I have wanted to use it. I am glad I may have inspired it. if I used it, would I be not stealing it but giving it back to you (who took it from me)? or maybe everyone has been saying things like that all along. very likely. maybe I'll look up "and therefore the most attractive" on the web. I love the internet. maybe we should collaborate on something someday. would you ever want to work with anyone else? I was reminded during "sunset blvd." this weekend that sometimes people can do that. except would we be more like him and betty or him and norma? altavista returns only 14 urls for "and therefore the most attractive." fourteen is not a lot. An important point to be made is that the Western Art aesthetic is the one with the backing of the music business, and the media, and therefore the most attractive to musicians and singers with a self-conscious artistic aspiration to creative and financial success. In Mithraism, the most virile of Oriental cults and therefore the most attractive to the Roman soldiery, the conception of the sympathy of God and man was prominent. It is not necessary to assume this, but it is the boldest hypothesis we can advance without being contradicted by Nature, and therefore the most attractive one. I've written 1,500 words on philip roth. I'm not close to done. but it's crap so it doesn't matter. I could fill a mercury-sized paper with my insipid ramblings about "the human stain." the mercury doesn't even have a books section. their 18-24 audience couldn't care less anyway, I'm sure.