Date: Saturday, 9/20/69

I’m at Charles’ apartment. We had sex last night and he is still asleep. I couldn’t sleep anymore. It was fantastic. I am so happy but inside me I hear these little voices going on and on about what will Mama and Pops think. That’s what woke me up, this worry.

What confuses me, though, is I wasn’t raised with any imposition of a specific moral code. Yet, these voices in my head make it sound as if I were.

My parents never told me not to do something because it was morally wrong. Not once did they say like the other kids’ parents did—you can’t do this, don’t do this.

I liked Mama and Pops so much for not behaving like that. So why do I feel so guilty about sleeping with Charles? Why does this guilt feel like it could come between Charles and me?

Every cell in my body loved having sex with him. The part that isn’t physical is having a harder time accepting that I’m not a virgin anymore.

It can’t be because we aren’t married. I’ve never thought about sex and marriage at all.

If I don’t let the guilt take over, I know I could fall in love with Charles.

Last night, Charles and I saw “Brief Encounter.” Charles thought it was a silly romantic film. Perhaps. To me, it was so poignant—that’s the word—poignant. I couldn’t find it last night when we came back to his place and started talking about the film. I tried to explain to him how having to live a lie can be both painful and necessary.

It’s like when I read Mama’s letters to Pops from when they were first dating. I know that I never should have read them. I learned things I didn’t want to know. Mama’s gushy pleading with Pops, for example, to be honest with her and tell her why he would be so upset for no reason at all, at least for no reason she could understand, made me watch them more closely after that. I understood how Mama could have been frightened by Pops and wonder if he was the right man for her.

Now, that I am away, she writes to me about wanting to return to that golden time when they first fell in love and I can’t say anything. My most honest response to her is that I understand how something can be wonderful and awful at the same time.

I understand Mama. She thinks I don’t or that I’m upset about her telling me how my being away is such a good thing for her and Pops. I’m not upset. It’s just that I wish she weren’t involved with making Pops out to be someone he never was. If she could be a little more realistic, I would feel comfortable asking her for some help with what’s going on in my life.

For the first time, I want some motherly advice about sex. I sure as hell don’t want to get pregnant. I must be like my Pops and think that for me too having a kid would destroy everything I’m working towards now. Wow. I’ve never thought about those letters like this before. I never saw me struggling with the same things that got my Pops so worried and then into trouble. I don’t want to be like my Pops.

No wonder I can’t sleep tonight.

Did I ever think about becoming pregnant before tonight? Oh Scags. What world have you walked into?

In “Brief Encounter,” a married woman, Laura, meets a married doctor, Alec, at a train station. They fall in love. In this movie too, love is seen as something different from what I want love to be. I mean that just the way I wrote it here. I want this time with Charles to be wonderful and fun and tender. I don’t want all that pain and worry and fear and guilt.

Yet, here I am starting out that way and we have only slept with each other once.

Charles and I had a heated argument last night about that movie. I couldn’t get him to see my point. Instead of going over and over the same thing with me, he made me get up off the couch and follow him into his bedroom. By moving into that room, we finally could be loving with each other. It was really beautiful. I know what a banal thing that is to say, but having never slept with anyone before, it was like getting inside my body in such a new way that made running seem pointless. In bed with Charles, I experienced all the parts of my body without having to worry at all about getting injured or pushing myself too hard. It wasn’t about my body either but about the two of us having bodies. I never realized that was what sex was like. I have to think about this more so I can describe it better.

I think I’m also afraid that just as easily as I am beginning to fall in love with Charles, I could just as easily fall out of love with him. It’s not him I don’t trust, but me.

These are among the things I’d like to talk to Mama about. The myriad things that are happening that I don’t understand and make me question what I’m walking into. I require balance in my life and this is certainly about to take that away.

I want to tell Mama about how I rolled over in bed the other night and almost fell out of it, because I was grabbing to hold onto Charles but he wasn’t there. I caught myself and didn’t fall flat onto the floor. I want her to tell me why these things are happening to me.

Mama could tell me why falling in love is so troubling while being fun too. Why must everything turn into a trial? Am I being tested to see if I am good enough to love someone? Did she feel that way when she met Pops?

Okay. I hear Charles getting out of bed. I’m going to stop writing now.

More later. I promise.