Date: Wednesday, 10/15/69

Charles, Tony and I were hanging out at the apartment tonight. I don’t usually pay attention to the things they talk about—sports, bands, drugs, sports, politics, sports. Charles and I have a completely different repertoire of topics.

Tony, to me, is a mental midget. I never talk to him about anything except to ask him to pass the salt or help me carry the groceries up the stairs.

He and Charles worked on their stage set assignment tonight on the big table in the living room. I was doing the dishes and cleaning up the kitchen after our dinner.

Tony asked Charles why he didn’t act anymore. I forgot that Charles had dropped out of the theater program and became a political science major when he returned to the College. He kept his hand in the game, as he put it, by taking scene building classes. He enjoys helping with the production of the plays but not the acting.

Charles took a long time to answer Tony. I thought he might never have an answer to the question. I sure was eager to hear the answer though. It surprised me.

“I had a hard enough time knowing who I was or am most days so that going on the stage to be someone else and then to have to find me for the rest of the day became too upsetting. It began to undermine my whole personality. You know?”

He turned those spotlight blue eyes onto Tony. Tony shook his head in total understanding of what Charles said. That surprised me too.

Maybe Tony wasn’t the mental midget I thought he was. Turns out, he’s Tony, buddy for life. I witnessed a moment between the two of them that I rarely get to see. I understood from that exchange why Tony was always around. For me, too, their exchange gave me more insight into who Charles is.

After Tony left, we went to bed. Now I am up because of what happened in the bedroom. Not the sex part, but the questions Charles asked me.

He had two requests as he held me in his arms after we made love. The first one was if I would go with him to Washington, DC for an anti-war march in the middle of November. The second question was would I please come with him to his parents’ house for Thanksgiving.

The last request made more sense to me than the first one. But both requests made me roll over and away from him. Not because I was angry as he thought at first but because I fell into a hole at that moment that I hadn’t known I wanted to fall into.

When I listened to him talking with Tony, part of me wondered where I fit into his life. I didn’t yet have the courage to ask that question. Now there was an answer to the question I couldn’t ask.

Mr. Charles Foster Payne became a much larger presence to me as we talked in bed. His size didn’t increase so much as his importance in my life now emerged to be greater than I had known. I felt tricked into loving him and told him so.

I screamed at him, “You’ve tricked me into loving you! You’ve made me need to be here with you. I know you CFP. You are a magician, aren’t you? It doesn’t matter what effect you have on my equilibrium, does it?”

He thought I was joking, play acting to show him how pleased I was. I let him think that.

I don’t know why I should go with him to the march. Why would his family be interested in meeting me?

I write to my parents every week, but I never mention Charles. How could his parents know about me?

How can we stay with his parents, at their house? Then they’ll know that we sleep together, won’t they?

I can’t believe this is happening. It’s too fast.

I told him finally that I needed time to decide if I could go to DC or New York City. I’ve never been to either place before.

I don’t know what to do. Why is this so difficult? It is keeping me up most of the night while he sleeps without a care in the world.