what are fair sources for stories?

---

I revised “this is your life” this morning without noting that there because the reality expressed yesterday was right. But there was a flippancy in yesterday’s beginning and sentimentalism near the end that I should have avoided. I wrote it yesterday suddenly, while reading a review of the fictionist Ann Beattie, who’d been a college dorm mate of Bonnie, my “sister” who’d been in love with Ann (not lesbian) and who (by my urging) seduced and won Katherine, 1974 (before Ann became a New Yorker darling). We were supposed to become a ménage. Thirty-seven years later, Katherine and Bonnie are still together: in a little ol’ house on a little ol’ cul-de-sac in Lexington. Their neighborhood has its own Yahoo! Group for block parties, gardening tips, and whatnot.

---

this is your life

---

November, 2009, my long-alienated partner of 24 years, Janna (a psychotherapist)—from whom I’d been more or less separated for 15 months—killed herself soon after discovering I’d fallen in love the year before with a woman in my department, Terese, who reincarnated a love decades ago, when I was 27. I expect one would react like “You must be joking”: Psychotherapists are the persons who prevent suicides. Janna had a veritable village in San Francisco of persons who loved her, including professional colleagues who were dear friends—and me.

arousal

---

Waking “late” (8 am), coffee, time with my toys awhile, then I go out for a newspaper (an excuse to get some exercise. I’ll subscribe when I retire, no longer picking up the Chronicle for $0.50 at the BART station….). Foggy day, but a fine one.

I’m exactly where I want to be: International Café nearby; Caffè Strada a few more minutes away. The entire university: perfect resort for the inquiring mind; perfect landscape for variable paths of early-morning reverie. Two blocks from me: tennis courts and swimming pool, hills to hike.

This guy who dresses like a nerd each day for the department burns those clothes in his mind each weekend.

---