July 23, 1999.

Yesterday I became mildly obsessed with hearing "Gigantic" by the Pixies. (Yeah, I know, Kim Deal and her dick fixation, so what. We don't label AC/DC with a pussy fixation, although it's even more applicable.) I didn't get to hear it (Pixie-less campus, this), but Rex did let me play 20 seconds of "I Wanna Be Your Dog," so I was happy.

On the topic of Kim Deal and her alleged cock-obsession...I have a tendency to say inappropriate things about songs. For example: last year when the Boy & I had begun dating, he mentioned the Waits song, "I Can't Wait to Get Off Work And See My Baby" as a romantic statement about seeing me. And of course I couldn't avoid saying that the song is about masturbation. I mean, it is...but I still don't know why I felt the need to say that at that moment. I'm just a big geek.

I've mentioned my body image problems before I believe. Well, they've been pretty much continuous, even if I don't make a point of mentioning it. I mean, how interesting is it for you? "My meditation teacher is a flake and I feel fat." "Allergia is being more polite to me and I hate the shape of my face." And so on.

I think that problem is that my fellow counselors are a disproportionately attractive group. Most are super skinny and all have a good wardrobe. There are also 4 girls for every guy, so I see a lot of tiny waists in a day. Not to mention the matchstick highschoolers, with their tanktops & painted on jeans. Let's see how they look after the freshman 15.

Bitter bitter bitter.

It's like being in highschool again, but in highschool I dressed in black t-shirts and jeans and told the world to take a flying fuck. I think that when I return to "civilization," it'll be a lot easier to keep my spirits up. I hope so...it's a crappy way to live & I should know better.

On a fresher topic, I'm really pleased with the way Allergia is responding to me at this point in the week. Yesterday morning I asked her to brush her teeth, and she said, "what's the point, they're just going to get dirty again?"

"Because we don't get a chance to brush them after breakfast. Wait. You mean you haven't brushed your teeth any morning this week?" Headshake. "Allergia, brush your teeth."

I was very pleased with this episode, because she was telling me things that carried a risk of punishment. She trusts me a lot more than at the beginning of the week. I think that part of the reason is that I don't say anything unless I want it done. My sense of authority has gotten a lot better this month: I'm confident enough to see things followed through instead of retreating. I know, that sounds suspiciously like the part in Mein Kampf when Hitler was a camp counselor, but I'm rarely unreasonable. I think.

To get back to Allergia, I'm also making progress in her table manners. Yesterday she had tuna & noodles for dinner, and in the first five minutes she only got half of the food to her mouth. It was disgusting, even more than her usual savage ways (there's a special urgency to the problem when she starts wearing tuna fish.) In the course of the meal I taught her what I called "an Italian trick" - namely, winding pasta & using a spoon to catch debris between the plate & the lip. And she took to it. She fucking took to it! I felt like Anne Sullivan after the first word sunk into Helen Keller's equally savage little brain. I know how grandiose such comparisons are, and I apologize in advance to every indignant response. But that's how I felt, in some small measure. No matter how you slice it, breaking through to a kid is an enormous rush and it invites rhetoric...at least to the person breaking through.