03/04/01

I headed out to the farm for a while early this morning looking for the dog again. No luck at all. I started to wander out into Purgatory Swamp, but started to sink in to the mud and got scared that I might get stuck and perish in the cold, so I gave up the search and fled. I’m not sure he’s still with us.

Came back to Percy’s, tracked mud into the house. He sure loved that. He said he didn’t know what happened to me and called the police.

Percy said Phebe called. He made a note for me on a sticky pad: Phebe called at 7, says she not behind the plot to kill you. She can change your bandages if you’d like.

Police came by, ended up talking to me about Porch Rot. I get the sense they regard Hiram at the chief suspect in the arson, especially since he disappeared right afterward.

I’m just trying to figure out why the man would want you dead, the investigator says, something seems missing from the picture.

We’ll he’s jealous, I say as my heart starts to palpitate, I’ve got it all still, and he’s lost everything. That’s why he wants me dead.

Because you have it all? The investigator asks dubiously.

Well, because I still have the farm, he’s jealous, is what I’m trying to say.

I’ve been anxious as can be since then. Claustrophobic too, being cooped up inside all day. Plenty of books here, but I haven’t been in the frame of mind to read. You step outside around here and instantly you have to deal with people. This pretty college student who lives next door made the comment, so if you’re here now with Percy, what’s the deal with Gary then?

Gary who? I ask.

Oh, never mind! she says like she let slip out some terrible secret There I go again!

I didn’t want to read too much into things, but then I noticed Percy’s got potpourri all over the damn house! And scented candles!

So I think to myself, Percy----my brother-in-law, my late sister’s husband, the man I’m cohabiting with--- is gay????

And then I think more on it and say to myself, but you kinda already knew that, didn’t you? Like for a long time now?

Percy’s says It’s all right to browse through my books but please just remember to put them back where you found them. . .and by the way it would be great if you put the toilet seat down after you’re done peeing. . .and by the way it would be great if you made sure the rim got wiped down too. . .you know, before you put the seat down again. . .

What that picture of Percy, Clara and Andy Warhol from 1975 is doing hanging sideways in his kitchen, I have no idea. . .And I can’t bring myself to ask. . . Good thing it’s not like that one of Warhol and John Lennon with their hands on each other’s peckers with Yoko sitting right beside them. Now something like that would not be good to hang sideways in the kitchen at all.

Finally I found a videotape of Spalding Gray’s Swimming to Cambodia. Enjoyed watching that over and over again to kill time. Pretty amazing really that a whole movie could be made with a guy just sitting there with a glass of water, pulling story after story out of his ass on camera.

I was just going to stupidly write: Maybe that’s what I should do some day---tell the story of everything that’s happened to me.