annanotbob2's Diaryland Diary ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Jen My therapy homework this week is to explore in writing meaningful connections I've made with people. I'm not at all sure about this but I've set my timer for ten minutes and I'm going to start with Jen W. I don't usually name people but most of my friends have name beginning with J so fuck it. I met Jen when we both started sixth form (16-18 years). I'd been at the grammar school, she'd been somewhere else - can't remember now, but she was in all three of the A Level groups I was doing - English French and History. I can't remember why or how we drifted from that into being bosom buddies, but we did. She was little and freckly with big soft curly hair and she had a stammer (or a stutter, can never remember which is which) that she'd use sometimes in class to hide the fact that she'd not been listening - she could front it out, appearing to struggle to spit a word out for longer than the teacher could bear to witness it, always, I imagine, half sure that she was taking the piss but not having enough certainty to risk fucking it up. She was clever and she was inter4ested in things - we talked urgently about stuff - Germaine Greer's The Female Eunuch had just been published - we read it and talked about that - I remember neither of us being keen on tasing our menstrual blood or holding a mirror between our legs to see what we looked like 'down there'. Her mum was always friendly and they had an easy relationship that astonished me = they could banter - I hate that fucking word now but that's what they did - bounced ideas and words around in the kitchen - their beautiful kitchen - I remember that. She was the one I went with to the school fancy dress party - we changed our minds about going at the last minute and cobbled together costumes out of white sheets and pillow cases over our heads, with slits cut to see out of - yes, I can't bring myself to even write the initials - the letters tat come after JJJ - I honestly had never heard of them - can she not have either? We walked through the town, along the busy main road down to the school with people staring at us in a way that surprised me. Why was there a connection? I'm not sure. I liked her and we laughed together a lot. She must have seen that I was clever when I didn't see it myself - we stayed friends all through the two years of sixth form. We didn't want to be the way we perceived the other girls to be - dreary, concerned about make-up and keeping their clothes clean and being fucking nice all the time. Jen put this into action - she went to college and became a journalist whereas I took loads of drugs and became promiscuous. I can't quite connect with the feelings I had about her then - what it felt like to be with her - and I'm not sure if that's down to my having been disconnected from my feelings then or just that it was so long ago. 1970-72. 12:15 a.m. - 10.08.23 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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