The Plant

March 23, 1981

My call to Ruth was an utter disaster. Why I should be sitting here and writing about it when I don't even want to think about it defies reason. Perversity upon perversity. Actually, I do know-I have some dim idea that if I write it down it will lose some of its power over me... so let me by all means confess, but the less said, the better.

Have I written here that I cry very easily? I think so, but I haven't the heart to actually look back and see. Well, I cried. Maybe that says it all. Or maybe it doesn't. I guess it doesn't. I had spent the day-the last two or three days, actually-telling myself that I would not a.) cry, or b.) beg her to come back. I ended up doing c.) both. I've had a lot of gruff locker room chats with myself over the last couple of days (and mostly sleepless nights) on the subject of Pride. As in, “Even after everything else is gone, a man's got his Pride.” I would draw some lonely comfort from this thought and fantasize myself as Paul Newman-that scene in Cool Hand Luke where he sits in his cell after his mother's death, playing his banjo and crying soundlessly. Heart-rending, but cool, definitely cool.

Well, my cool lasted just about four minutes after hearing her voice and having a sudden total remembrance of Ruthsomething like an imagistic tattoo. What I'm saying is that I didn't know how gone she was until I heard her say “Hello? John?”-just those two words-and had this searing 360 degree memory of Ruth-God, how here she was when she was here!

Even after everything else is gone, a man's got his Pride? Samson might have had similar sentiments about his hair.

Anyway, I cried and I begged and after a little while she cried and in the end she had to hang up to get rid of me. Or maybe the odious Toby-I never heard him but am somehow sure he was in the room with her; I could almost smell his Brut cologne-picked the phone out of her hand and did her hanging up for her. So they could discuss his love-ring, or their June wedding, or perhaps so he could mingle his tears with hers. Bitter-bitter-I know. But I've discovered that even after Pride has gone, a man's got his Bitterness.

Did I discover anything else this evening? Yes, I think so. That it is over-genuinely and completely over. Will this stop me from calling her again and debasing myself even further (if that is possible)? I don't know. I hope so-God, I do. And there's always the possibility that she'll change her phone number. In fact, I think that's even a probability, given tonight's festivities.

So what is there for me now? Work, I guess-work, work, and more work. I'm tunneling my way steadily into the logjam of manuscripts in the mailroom-unsolicited scripts which were never returned, for one reason or another (after all, it says right in the boiler-plate that we accept no responsibility for such orphan children). I don't really expect to find the next Flowers in the Attic in there, or a budding John Saul or Rosemary Rogers, but if Roger was wrong about that, he was sublimely right about something much more important-the work is keeping me sane.

Pride... then Bitterness... then Work.

Oh, fuck it. I'm going to go out, buy myself a bottle of bourbon, and get shitty-ass drunk. This is John Kenton, signing off and going for the long bomb.