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06.20.03 - 9:44 p.m. this is driving me crazy in the morning when i wake up i am someone i go to work and i am someone else and someone else and someone else and i am sure that I am ME. Im sure that there are some things about ME that are just ME but everyday i feel like i meet myself and everyday i feel as if i know less and less. Do you know what i mean? With justin for instance. He doesnt know a stranger. His house is a hole. He smokes so so much and knows the difference between an ounce and i dont. Hes great with children and his hair is a mess, in a good way but nonetheless. He doesnt have a car. Or a phone. And, you know, hes black. And me. Straight from school to school to school. No boyfriends, good parents, completely rational. Always, always on the straight and narrow. This is really the first time in my life that i have met people that havent been to college. My car is rational, i am never dirty, my skin glows. I have no tattoos my hair is crazy but in a way that makes my moms friends whisper, "your little girl is so pretty." Nothing about me is alarming or shocking or unpredictable. I am an open book to those around me and i cant understand when they say "See, you did it the right way..." when it seems ive done nothing at all. Not going to college wasnt an option. I have lived my life by the book that my neighborhood gave me but i have little interest in that neighborhood now. I feel like a traitor. I feel adopted. But even as i say this i blend into this town of millionaires on the mountain. With justin i fight feeling superior. I hate writing that but i do. The people he knows are dirty, they have children but no husband, theyve never been to school. And at times, when were together, i feel protective. Wanting to give up 24 years of being on the narrow but scared to death as well. And his serious eyes. Not begging or cajoling, but interested because i have made him that way, "You might as well park and come on in." And in a way, in a big way, i wanted nothing more. But seven miles away is a big house with all the lights on and parents packing the suv for a trip to the beach house and his smell stays on me and i am running out of excuses. I guess i met him at a bad time. A part of me, the part that is making all the trouble, is wanting to park and make my way past books and boxes and clothes into his room with the christmas lights into something that has never been my life. Into something that i am knee deep in but dont know the feeling of. I wish that i could, and in ways i wish that i did. I wouldnt be sitting here. I would be in that bed being kissed where no ones thought to kiss me before. We never talked about the last hookup. We talked around it and the option of a repeat was all over the place. And all of that tension in the eyes and in the hands; in the lips. Its not out of either of our systems. I thought it might be which was part of the reason i wanted it to happen the first time. Not kissing him is like holding my breath for too long. I cant think of much else and its hard to act natural. The conversation is difficult because i dont know who he thinks he is talking to. I dont know who i am when im with him. If i could of hooked up with him again without all of the awkward getting down to business part and without the prolonged hugging at the end part, i might have. Its his wanting to know me better that stresses me out. Because i dont know what to tell him in general, much less about US. Right now there is little in my head but complete ambivalence and i feel a little bad dragging him into it and then leaving him alone on a friday night with a hard on. I know all my girlfriends say to never feel bad about what you do with guys but i do feel bad because it was me that put him in that situation and it was me that has been there a thousand times before. Spending whole days with boys i was in love with hoping they would love me back, hoping they would kiss me. And it always sucked so bad going home to myself. And i dont know what hooking up told him, but i didnt-in any way-want him to stop kissing me and i dont know why he did. I know there is only so far he could go knowing i was a virgin but he sat back and looked at me, watched me, i think he was waiting for me to say something that would explain something and what i said instead was "i really want you to keep kissing me." And he did. I wanted anything in the world besides trying to think of something smart or lucid to offer to him. I feel like every guy ive hated for not having his shit together enough to tell me how he felt. And now i understand those people. And now i understand what they meant when they said, "you dont understand kate, youre always so together," because i have never felt less sure of myself. And there are just all the trappings of growing up rich and not knowing it. Things that make me out to be snobby. And maybe i am snobby only because i dont understand what its like not to have a phone. When i catch our reflection i am every upper class 24 year old. Tall, confident, like the world owes me something. Like i was raised to ask and to expect nothing but to receive more than i asked in return. I was grown in that petri dish. Do you understand? I was raised in a place where the underlying message was, "We are Better." And while i would never attest to that, while i would never incorporate that mentality i see this girl with the nice clothes and i see justin. And hes wonderful and original and smart. But he was raised by his grandmother on a baptist bible camp for underpriveleged black youth. I see us walking together and we look so strange. And part of me hates that, "What is she doing with him" is what we scream walking side by side. And "what is he doing with her" is what we scream side by side, depending on who is watching. And it sounds like rich girl slumming and i want it to be nothing in the world like that but i dont know how to change what i am. These wealthy doctors wives from my neighborhood who come into the salon are rude to me because im just the receptionist until they realize that i am so and so's daughter, that they have known my family well before i was born. That i took ballet lesssons with their daughters, that we all had dinner at the Club together; remember that time? Elizabeth's Birthday? She took you for a ride in the BMW we bought her for her 16th birthday? They are rude to me until they remember that we are cut from the same cloth. What would they think if they saw me holding justin's hand? If they could see his house? These are the things i cant stand to admit. And these are the things that have me here instead of in his arms. And he held me, the whole time, like none of this mattered. While he was kissing me he held me to him, so tightly, like i was something important. He did everything i could have asked him for and asked nothing in return. No pressure, i was never scared, i trusted him even, and it was the most exhilirating thing. I wish i could explain. I dont have much to compare it to. I thought it was nice with tim but i didnt realize how selfish he was with his body until justin. How quick moving and stealthy tim was. It was mind boggling with the old man; confusing and scary and out of control. John was a blank in time, a missed stitch. With justin, the fault lay entirely with me. My own fears and prejudices and slefishness put him back in his house and it led me to my car, waving, but wanting-really-nothing more than to stay with him. Wanting not much more than for him to hold on to me so that just for a few minutes i didnt have to think. And i think i am using him to make thinking easier. I am using the way he holds me to make it so that i dont have to confront what i am doing on the inside. I am pattering myself after his behaviour, hoping i can pull of nonchalance and sexual awareness; hoping i can seem easy and relaxed. But i didnt want to use him. I dont want to use him. And as much as i wanted him, and as tempted as i am to make him fall in love with me (and i am, i do it all the time) at the same time i dont want to get into something that i dont understand. And i dont trust myself. I guess that is much of it. And im worrying too much about it, that is the other half. But i cant proceed. I cant figure out what i want. Well, i know what i want but its not fair. What i want is to use his body and leave before i have to explain anything to him and worse off, before i have to explain anything to myself. And i am trying to follow my heart, but i dont trust it. Not like this. A week at the beach with no smokes, and now, no ass. This time away from the situation will be hard. It will be hanging over my head. I tend to want to figure everything out now. This time away will be hard but maybe it will help me gain some perspective. But i will miss him, i think, and that is terrifying and strange. I am way too pent up to be 24. I dont know if this whole virginity idea was a good one. Part of me thinks getting laid is the answer or i think its the answer that people would give me. I dont know what the answer is, but i do know that i will miss his arms. I do know that. � 
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