Friday, March 14, 1997: By now you should know what happens on Fridays. Temp job. I have actually been on this one all week. It was at a management consulting firm in Midtown. My favorite kind. But it was casual Friday, so I was allowed to wear jeans. I did a heightened version of word processing. I was still typing, but I was typing "graphically interesting" pages to be used in a presentation of some kind. I don't really care what kind. Anyway, I'm typing away when this woman who sits next to me leaned over and started talking to me. She told me that at lunch she had seen a pigeon on the street with half a head. It was still alive, but in very bad shape. She felt sorry for it and told me that she felt she could make it better. She wanted to take it home. I said that I doubted it would still be there when she left at 5. She said she put it in a box at lunch for safekeeping. "Where is it now?" I asked, not really wanting to know the answer. "Under my desk," she replied, and went back to typing. There's a box with a half-headed pigeon in it sitting not four feet from me. Great. Saturday, March 15, 1997: Went to the Poetry Club. Wasn't going to perform, but I just couldn't watch what was onstage. I read selections from my book I'M COMPLETELY OVER YOU: A WORK IN PROGRESS, and it went over big. I think the men in my audiences are alternately threatened and turned on by me and my work. I got approached by a lot of men afterward. Here are some of the things they said to me: Sunday, March 16, 1997 My sister Hope's wedding shower was this afternoon. Seemed to go pretty well. I had asked everyone to dress up like a different time of day or night and bring a present that related to that time. Some women came in nightgowns, some in robes, sweats, exercise clothes, business suits and little black evening dresses. Each of them was wearing a tag that had a time of day/night written on it, a time that corresponded to their outfits. I wore jeans and a t-shirt. My time was "4 a.m." I'm an artist. Everything was going fine until Alicia (my younger sister's friend from work) asked me out loud, across the room, in front of everybody, while my sister was opening a present, "So, Anita, what's going on in your love life? Any wedding bells ringing for you? Are you and that guy...what was his name...Michael, Matthew, Marvin...going to go for it?" "His name is Mitchell," I replied icily. "Oh, that's right, Mitchell. So are you getting ready to follow in your younger sister's footsteps?" My sister tried unsuccessfully to intervene...but I stopped her. "We broke up, Alicia. Mitchell and I broke up." Alicia seemed appropriately sympathetic...for a minute. "Oh, I'm so sorry to hear that." And then: "And didn't you just turn 30?" (What circle of Hell have I entered?) "Yes, Alicia, I did just turn 30." "And you're not dating anyone?" "No, Alicia, I'm not dating anyone." "Wow. That's got to be tough. Ooooh, Hope, is that from Victoria's Secret? I love that..." I'm going to have to kill Alicia. Soon.

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