There it was again, the tightening in my chest—the fear of what the night might bring, closing in around me, tunneling my vision, squeezing my throat.
I’d taken the train to Brooklyn. I’d followed the instructions from the little encrypted messaging app. I’d walked out into the middle of nowhere, past the Navy Yards, under the BQE, turning when I got to an enormous self-storage facility.
I probably sound a bit dramatic. Social situations always came with some measure of anxiety for me. Meeting the Secret Readers, though, and knowing they knew so much about me, tended to be the worst.
When I got to an empty block of factories, I leaned against a streetlamp and concentrated on breathing. It was only the excitement that let me keep the fear in check. I concentrated on my needs until my pounding heart relented.
I looked at my phone again. The password to the messenger app was long, but I’d memorized it. Encrypted messages, burner phones, and even code words whispered through slits in doors. Things I never thought I could handle, but somehow I figured them all out, eventually. Curiosity trumped all of my shortcomings and failings and fear, eventually. Sometimes I just had to stop and wait for the anxiety to pass.
The little map started to make sense. Landmarks instead of street names and numbers. Less chance of someone figuring out where we were meeting. The secrecy was important, certainly, though sometimes it seemed a little much. What we were doing wasn’t strictly illegal. However, I tried not to think about where people got the diaries.
Maybe I should back up.
The Secret Readers started out as an online thing. A forum where people traded pictures and scans of diaries—all kinds of diaries and journals. From teenagers, from adults, from death row inmates, from nuns, from people in asylums, from everywhere.
The New York group was a splinter of that forum and was by invitation only and vigorously moderated. There were only twenty or thirty active members at any time. The New York group were not just an online entity, they had in-person readings.
The whole online thing was just a means to an end for me, anyhow. I never much enjoyed text chats and discussion threads. I just wanted the secrets. I wanted those inner narratives. I wanted to see the yellowed paper and touch the scratched-up covers. I wanted to smell them.
That got me walking again, looking for a very particular landmark. The directions said, “Monkey with a hat.” Turning around in a circle, I saw another old factory building, but this one had faded paint on the brick façade. Some kind of mechanic, the information mostly faded, but a smiling chimp with a blue baseball hat pointed to the sky with a wrench.
I walked to that building. There was a flier taped to the door. “NYSR Journalism Study Group, Fifth Floor, Studio 58b.”
It was a long walk up the five flights of stairs, and I stopped to catch my breath when I got to the fourth floor. When I got to the fifth, I pushed open the large door that was propped half-open with a two-by-four. I found myself in a long empty hallway that was the same gray as the stairway, floor to ceiling.
I passed doors. Some were marked with simple placards noting “Jay Bird’s Tattoos,” and “New Urban Photography,” some completely anonymous, and still others elaborately covered with colorful signs, artwork, posters, and bumper stickers. Marijuana leaves, peace signs, graffiti.
Studio 58b was the last door at the end of the hall. The door was painted a muted rust red with a small hand-painted sign on a piece of cardboard that said: “By appointment only.” I heard some talking inside. I considered knocking, but decided just to enter.
There was a rush of fresh night air, incense, and the smell of wine. It took my eyes a moment to adjust to all the colors. The studio was surprisingly large, with a tall ceiling. Three of the studio’s walls were covered in bolts of gold, orange, and red fabric. The south wall was made entirely of windows, split into perhaps forty square panes, framed in chipped green painted metal. Many of the windows were open. The view was of the desolate industrial buildings around us and, in the distance, a tiny Manhattan skyline.
There were seven people in the studio. They all looked at me when I entered but turned back to what they were doing a moment later. Somewhat chaotic avant-garde jazz played lightly from unseen speakers.
In the center of the room were four rows of folding chairs, five per row. In front of the chairs was a battered and scraped-up wooden lectern draped with more gold and terracotta-colored fabric, which gave it the look of an altar. That look was emphasized by the two large candles atop it. It was obviously the place where people would read.
Two of the seven people in the room were sitting in folding chairs waiting, and five conversed around a table laden with food and drink. There were small but elaborately laid out cheese plates, sweating bottles of prosecco, jugs of water, and a few assorted bottles of whiskey.
Since the readings moved around quite a bit, there were often very different atmospheres and tones to each gathering. The last place was a somewhat sterile white-walled gallery with hummus, carrots, and a box of white wine. Before that, it was a community center basement, with an ancient coffee urn and donuts.
The group did a pretty good job of weeding out the truly scary, but the shared fetish of the group meant everyone had some level of creepiness. It was something I had to accept quickly when socializing with the New York group. Of the seven people in the room, I knew four by name, two by face, one was a stranger.
Tom from Jersey. In his late fifties, tall, balding, eyes that were far too intense, he had a low growl of a voice. There was a stoutness to him that frightened me a little, like some kind of old sideshow strong man. He liked journals of closeted men, which were not the rarest, but weren’t that common.
Gordon was small and thin and wore very cheap black suits that made him look like a child at a funeral, though he was in his forties. He liked affairs, especially if he could get some pieces from both parties. His needs seemed complicated and exhausting to me.
Margot was the oldest of us, fragile and impeccably dressed. An Upper West Side dame, in pearls and giant broaches. She liked guilt, mourning, and misfortune. She liked stuff about class and money, neither of which interested me.
Finally, there was Goldberg. I never knew his first name, though it was debatable if any of us used our real names. I went by Elle, but that wasn’t my name. In his late thirties, he had a large expressive mouth and wore nothing but tweed. I didn’t like him, though I couldn’t pinpoint why. Perhaps it was because he liked the same things I liked; forbidden relationships. Those who pined for teachers or married friends or cousins. Diaries about secret taboo desires.
The stranger was pretty, petite, in her late twenties, my age. She wore paint-splattered black overalls, and it seemed like she wasn’t wearing anything under them. Every move she made gave small electric glimpses of the sides of her breasts. I guessed she was the owner of the studio. I was drawn to her immediately.
I like somewhat masculine women and effeminate men, usually. Perhaps I nestled between the two identities, born a woman, but doing my best to dress like Oscar Wilde. Or I would if I had the money. Okay, on a good day, it was more of an Annie Hall impersonation.
I nodded at those who nodded at me as I picked at the cheeses and olives, pouring myself a small but merciful glass of whiskey. It seemed like we were waiting for a few more people. In the meantime, I took a seat and tried once more to steady my racing heart.
As I sat, I felt in my pocket for the book I had brought. I swallowed, hoping my luck would continue and I wouldn’t have to read. Still, I would do what I had to. I was willing to do a lot for my obsession.
As I sat, the eagerness for some new secret, some new glimpse into a life, was beating back the fear and the anxiety. I smiled to myself. Need conquered all, if we let it.
As for my obsession, it started in a very common way. The first diary I ever read was one I’m sure many people have read. It’s often the only diary anyone ever reads; The Diary of Anne Frank.
Sad, wise, informative, historical, but not scintillating by any stretch of the imagination. Still, something about it struck me. Something clicked. Reading someone’s personal writing. Reading words not meant to be shared. It captured my imagination.
Then at around fifteen, I found Anaïs Nin, who had published many volumes of her diaries. Diaries about living in Paris and New York, and Cuba. Diaries of an artist and an adulteress. I bought a few of them at a time, usually from used bookstores. I stole a few from the library. I read them over and over again, reveling in her secret life.
It was when I had run out of her words that I reached out, looking for more.
Autobiographies did nothing for me. It had to be written without the author knowing it would be published. There were a few books available in the mainstream that hit my buttons, but I always wanted more. I always wanted secret things, things no one else could read.
Eventually, I started going to yard sales and estate sales. I searched eBay. I found rumors of the Dark Web, but I wasn’t savvy enough to really investigate those rumors, and eventually, I found The Secret Readers.
There were levels to the forum, and I had to comment and post and make myself known for almost a year before I got invited to the deeper threads. It took two years until I got invited to the New York forum.
In the forums, I met members of the Secret Readers, like Goldberg. It took six months of posting until I was invited to my first reading. I’d been to six meetings since then, about one a month, and thankfully I had never had to get up to read.
There were many rules in the group. One of them was that no one asked where people got the diaries. There was certainly gossip, rumors, stories of holy grail finds in yard sales, illicit deals, and even whispers of theft.
Another rule was that everyone had to attend a meeting ready to read. Each meeting started with a roll call and then a random selection of readers. Once, it was fortune cookies. Once, everyone drew a tarot card. Once, someone rolled some strange multi-sided dice.
Looking around, I saw that there was a large spherical brass cage at the end of the buffet table. In it were white balls for Bingo.
I had never had much luck finding diaries, which was one of the reasons the Secret Readers were so important to me. Still, I knew I might have to read, so I brought the only thing I could think to bring–my own teenage diary.
It was not one of my five pink childhood diaries with their little heart-shaped locks. Nor was it one of the three purple diaries with shining gold engraved stars that I wrote in through middle school and early high school. I brought one of the four black leather-bound volumes I wrote in during the end of high school and the start of college.
I had it in the big pocket of my oversized black slacks, and occasionally I touched my pocket to make sure it was still there—the comforting rectangle of memories. I hoped I wouldn’t have to use it, I wouldn’t have to share it, but if I did, it would be a small price to pay.
Each reading I had been to was aesthetically very different, but emotionally similar. The big secret in my life, the thing it was difficult to even explain, was all around me in those reading rooms. The thing I hid from the world was out in the open. In fact, I often felt like the least deviant person in the room during the readings.
There was such an overwhelming sense of freedom and belonging. Knowing I wasn’t alone in my desires. Seeing the desperation in the eyes of others that I thought only existed in the mirror.
Malloy and Levi came in together. Two handsomely disheveled men in their twenties, one dark-skinned with a Caribbean patois, the other a high-cheekboned Filipino. They always traveled together and didn’t seem to have particular themes to their readings. They just liked secrets.
Harp followed soon after, our de facto leader, though we had other leaders in the time I’d been in the group. Harp was tall, vaguely Eastern European, and androgynous. As usual, they wore an off-white suit, looking a bit like Bowie in his Pale White Duke phase. They spoke very little, but seemed to command rooms when they did.
Some others trickled in. I knew I must have met them online, but I couldn’t put screen names to real faces. When there were fifteen of us, Harp went up to the lectern and cleared their throat.
“Under your seats, you will find a card with a number,” they said just loud enough to be heard by all. There were murmurs and chairs scraping as we all got our cards—mine said eleven.
“Our host has offered to do us the honor,” they said, motioning to the overall-wearing painter. She curtsied, which might have looked awkward if someone less charming did it.
She turned the handle on the bingo cage, and the room was filled with the sound of clattering wooden balls. When the clattering stopped, she reached in and pulled out three balls.
“Four, eleven, and nine,” she said simply. She had a New England accent, perhaps Maine. My stomach silently dropped. My hands were instantly sweaty. For a moment, I couldn’t hear.
I saw the other two hold up their cards, so I did the same. It wavered in the air as my hand shook. Goldberg, a woman I didn’t know, and me. Goldberg turned and smiled at me. Anger tried to swell but was no match for the fear.
“If there are no comments from the group, I invite Mr. Goldberg up to read first,” Harp said, nodding to him and then taking a seat in the front row.
Goldberg was in brown and yellow herringbone tweed. His suit looked old, but not shabby, just well worn, possibly vintage. His hair was salt and pepper. His shirt was a light blue, and his tie was navy.
He brought up a tiny but thick notebook. It was hardcover, bound in red fabric. The corners were bent. It looked like it had been roughed up, maybe even found in the garbage.
He cleared his throat and looked over the crowd from the pulpit. I wondered if it was only my imagination telling me his gaze hovered on me before he opened the book.
Goldberg read.
*June 29th – I’m grateful to be in the back seat alone. We ended up being too many people even for the station wagon, so we took three cars. So here we are, driving back upstate for the summer.*
*The Morgensterns will be at their cabin next door, and so our two families will have joint cookouts and so on, as usual. I’m dreading Lisa Morgenstern’s arrival, but apparently, we’ll have a few weeks before she gets there to annoy me.*
*In a shocking turn of events, cousin Anthony is coming with us. It’s Anthony now that he is in college. He dreads Tony, apparently, as much as I hate Mikey. It’s bad enough we can’t pick our names, must they give us nicknames as well?*
*July 2nd – A constant tension has been laid over the big summer house like a fog. It’s everywhere, touching everything. I feel it from the moment I wake up until I fall asleep. I feel it most acutely when I’m in bed but also when we are all in the big parlor together.*
*Summer in the Hudson Valley is calm, warm, and humid, but the big house is kept cool. Every morning, Dad reads his paper, Mom reads her romance novels, Peggy knits, the boys play with their toy trains on the floor, and I sit as far from Cousin Anthony as I can.*
*He is very good at not getting caught watching me, but I feel his eyes on my bare legs, on my neck, on my body. I sit by the window, writing in this diary, and he examines me from across the room. Sometimes I wonder if he knows I’m gay. Other times it seems absurd that he wouldn’t know. I never really know what I look like to people. In the mirror, it’s obvious. In my father’s eyes, it’s impossible.*
*I feel like there has always been this shadow between us, Anthony, and me. His two faces, the one he puts on for everyone else and the one he shows me, secretly, over his shoulder.*
*Nothing has ever happened. We’ve never talked about it. But it’s always been there. Now that I’m eighteen and he’s twenty-two, it somehow seems more straightforward. Somehow it feels darker, more threatening, and simultaneously more real, more possible.*
*I hate it. And I hate that it is comforting. Like no matter how ugly I feel or how much of an outcast, there is this dark shadow that wants me, in whatever possessive perverted way.*
*I remember when I first figured out my body, at night, in bed. It wasn’t the hunky jock boys at school I thought about or even the preppy popular ones. It wasn’t someone in drama. It wasn’t even movie stars. It was always ugly people. It was mean people. Even if I tried to jerk off thinking about Tom Cruise, the fantasy would shift, and he would become a distorted shadow figure.*
*Scarred faces and big hairy hands. Tall cruel men who reach out to cover my mouth. Anthony, with his face drawn down, looking at me through his thick eyelashes, smiling at my discomfort. He wasn’t ugly on the outside, but his insides made me squirm.*
*July 5th – Last night, before the fireworks, with the sweetness of the margarita I stole swimming in my mouth, I met Anthony’s gaze with a wink instead of an eye roll. I thought he would be surprised, but he wasn’t. He was aggressive.*
*With the younger boys splashing in the pool and my parents busy with Gin Rummy, we found ourselves at the other end of the backyard following the little stone path to the tool shed.*
*He came up from behind me and pushed me against the small wooden shed. His bare chest against my bare back. I put my hands on the warm wood, the flaking paint. I didn’t look back.*
*“Tell me to stop,” he whispered in my ear, his hands on my bare stomach. I wore nothing but my swim trunks. I didn’t tell him to stop.*
*His fingers were greedy for my skin, my chest, slipping under my wet swimsuit. He let out little growls when he touched me. My body itched for his strong hands, and his eager attention.*
*There were a few new first times to check off my list. I don’t know how to celebrate them. I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to do while he knelt in front of me, so I rested my hands on his head, in his hair. It felt like swimming in hot water.*
*After all of the various doings, we walked back as if nothing had happened. I felt the smile on my face when we were back with everyone else. It was so strange that no one noticed my blush because my face felt like it was on fire.*
*Then, this morning he was gone without a word. My father told me over bacon and eggs that Anthony was up with the sun and on the first train back to the city.*
*I walked to the beach with my hurt. He texted me later that I was “too pretty” and that he “couldn’t control himself around me.” It was the first time anyone had ever called me pretty. There is something potent in that word, far beyond handsome. That made it easy to romanticize the loss of him. It made me feel like a siren. It made me feel like a treasure men might die for. I liked that.*
*Back at the big house, I moped and read poetry and contemplated what to do with another two weeks.*
*The Morgensterns will be here soon, and with them, the torture of Lisa’s endless prattling. Still, her brother will be here too, and I haven’t seen him for three years. He’s been at college, like me, and I wonder if it did to him what it did to Anthony. Perhaps the tool shed will need another visit. Perhaps I’ll become the slut of the little summer village up here.*
*The gardeners and townies can all take a turn after I run through my cousins and the older brothers of my friends. I’m horrible, but at least I can make myself laugh. Time for a swim.*
With that, Goldberg closed the book. There was scattered, somewhat awkward applause. Looking around, I saw some red cheeks and some crossed legs. Our host got up for water. I wanted some as well, but couldn’t get my legs to move.
As always, it pressed my buttons in a way that made me mute and unable to move. Gears were turning in my head. The bit about fantasies, ugly faces, and mean people. So on the nose for me, it could have been a page from my own diary. I thought about the phrase “too pretty,” the uncontrollable desire of men. The frightening potency of an older man. How it was repulsive and alluring.
“It made me feel like a siren. It made me feel like a treasure men might die for.”
I closed my eyes briefly and let the thrill fill me. All those secrets. All those details. That last bit, that dirty bit. Potent.
“Sebastian,” Harp said from their seat, and I turned to see a woman I had never met get up to read next. She was tall with light brown skin, liberally peppered with freckles. Her hair was a short black and gray afro.
She stood in front of the group with the confidence of someone used to speaking in public. She had a small crooked grin.
Sebastian read.
*I see him once a year. Well, sometimes we bump into each other around the city, but really I only see him once a year on purpose. Every year on my birthday. It’s a very special day, sacred and frightening. There aren’t many things I consider sacred in this world. Honestly, there aren’t many things I consider truly frightening, either. I’ve seen too much. Still, every birthday, I risk my life as a tradition. As a sacrament.*
*He’s a horrible person, Benjamin. I know that. He’s hurt people I know, people I love. It’s part of the reason I go out of my way not to engage with him the rest of the year. It’s also the reason I see him that day. He’s the only one who I can do it with, and I need someone there.*
*I get a room for us at the Chelsea Hotel. It’s a pain in the ass to book, but worth it. We need the chaotic energy of that place. We need the ghosts and the memories.*
*We meet at the bar across the street. I buy him his bourbon. We catch up in a very perfunctory way. I don’t really want to know about his life, and honestly, I don’t want to tell him about mine. Eventually, I ask if he has “it,” and he gives me a crooked cocky smile and nods.*
*We go back to the room, and for one time a year, that one day I see him, I revisit another old friend.*
*He has his lucky spoon with him and cooks in the bathroom. Powder swirling in water, bubbling, and that very particular smell. Light, almost vinegary. I tie myself off and wait. He smiles at me as he prepares my shot.*
*I know I’ll get sick. The fact that he usually doesn’t tells me it’s not as infrequent an act for him. The pleasure waves are tidal, crashing with memories of another life. The pull of it. The desperation that once ruled everything in my world. The singular gravitational center of my universe. That Black Hole I somehow escaped. The purity of the pleasure is always startling.*
*Every birthday I spend in that hotel. Where the muses haunt every bathroom, and I tempt fate. Just to see. Just to fuck with myself. Just to revisit an old friend who is an asshole in the place where poets and rockstars and gods have done the same thing a thousand times before us.*
*And for a while, I talk to him like he is actually still my friend. He’s good at being on drugs in a way a lot of other people aren’t. We hold each other sometimes. We help each other get through it. Then we sleep.*
*Then in the morning, the spell is over. His banter is back to being annoying, and I pay for his coffee and bagel and escape as quickly as possible. I go back to my life, but every year it does something to me. It centers me. It makes sure I don’t get too big-headed or cocky or maybe even too jaded.*
*It’s stupid, but I think of la petite mort. Every birthday, I will not settle for the little death. I want to touch something bigger, something stronger, something genuinely deadly.*
*Then I spend a year happy that I lived through it, never sure if I’ll go through it again.*
She closed the book. The room was silent. The energy was so dramatically different from the first reading that no one seemed to know how to process it.
I stayed in the moment as long as I could. The images of the story in my head. The darkness. The fear. The smell. The desperation. As much as I wanted to enjoy the way the story swirled complexly in my head, the knowledge that I would have to read next was there, like a train in the distance. Its approach undeniable, inescapable.
Sebastian sat, and I knew I should stand, but once more, my legs didn’t seem to function.
“Elle?” I heard Harp ask, as if from a great distance. There was a beat. I swallowed. Somehow I was standing, walking sideways to get past the other chairs, my legs jelly. Then I was at the podium.
My hand went to my pocket, slipped in, felt the hard corner of my diary. I took it out and placed it on the podium. It opened to where I had placed a bookmark. The bookmark was from The Strand. I felt very numb and cold.
I read.
*September 30th – I have a hundred prospective lovers at this college, and all I can think of are the ones I can’t have. The ones I shouldn’t have. The problem is I think I could have them if I really tried—my untested powers of seduction.*
*It seems like the mere suggestion of taboo is enough to get me started. An RA isn’t strictly off limits, but Meredith, with her lanyard-butch charm, makes me blush just passing her in the halls.*
*I’ve come thinking of her warning me about being too loud. Covering my mouth. Tell me all the rules I’m breaking. Telling me she can smell the pot I’m hiding under my mattress. Telling me she knows I sneak out to go clubbing. Telling me I’m a bad girl and she’s going to spank me until I’m obedient.*
*She’s good fantasy fodder, because the idea of professors is too intense to even play with. I try desperately not to think of them that way. If I let my mind play with them too much, I won’t be able to look at them in class without blushing.*
*I wonder how they do it. All that attention pointed at them all day. Most of them don’t even seem to notice. That makes it worse for me, because I just want them more. The colder they are, the better. The meaner, the more exacting, the more grumpy and curmudgeonly.*
*The chipper ones are useless to me. Make me earn it. Make me work for it. I want to be the one who makes them break their rules.*
*I listen to the gossip. There is always someone fucking a professor. I can live vicariously. It doesn’t make me jealous. If they did it with someone else, I didn’t want them. I had to be the one who pushed them over the edge. I had to be the one who made them break the rules.*
*October 10th – It’s finally getting cold, and it makes the world electric and real. The summer is a fog, and everything is soggy and limp. In the crisp autumn air, my brain just works better.*
*In statistics, I made a list of all the ways sex could be forbidden. I made a list of people it would be inappropriate to fuck. I numbered that list. Tonight when I get home, I’m going to roll dice and force myself to masturbate thinking of whoever matches the number—emotional Russian roulette.*
*October 12th – I’m alone in my dorm room, and my heart is racing, and I don’t know what to do with my hands. Dr. Carlson’s hand was on my knee one hour ago. A completely inappropriate place for his hand to be. A completely inappropriate thing to have happened.*
*I went to his office because he wrote a note to do so on one of my papers. I was nervous I had done something wrong, forgotten some requirement for class. I was scared I was failing. When I got to his office, he just looked at me and told me to close the door and have a seat.*
*On his desk was my list. Eighteen names on a piece of graph paper. “People It Would Be Very Very Wrong To Fuck,” was written on top of it. His name was number twelve, just under my step-sister and just above my best friend’s boyfriend.*
*Dr. Carlson got up and picked up the list, bringing it over to me. He sat down next to me and handed it to me. “I don’t know if I should be flattered or insulted. Is it a good list to be on or a bad one?” He chuckled, putting his hand on my bare knee, my skirt riding up a little as I sat up straighter. His pinky moved up slightly, moving up my inner thigh. My legs opened instinctively.*
*He laughed as he stood up. I felt humiliated by my desire, which, in many ways, was ideal for me. I saw him straighten his trousers, similarly affected.*
*“Please be more careful with your personal writings. Someone else on that list, like your roommate, might not be as understanding,” he said, going back behind his desk and sitting down.*
*I don’t even remember leaving. It was like I blacked out. It was like time dilated. I just remember being back in my dorm room, locking the bathroom door, and furiously getting myself off.*
I was numb as I finished. My ears were ringing. I found my seat and was dimly aware of scattered applause. I groped around for my glass of whiskey and downed it, looking vaguely at the table and wondering when my legs would work enough for me to get another.
When my eyes were able to focus again, I sighed at the sight of Goldberg, holding a full cup of whiskey out for me. “You seemed like you needed it,” he said with a little chuckle.
I took it, though I loathed him even more after his reading connected with me so profoundly. For some reason, the thought of him enjoying the bit of my life I shared made me uncomfortable in a new and profound way.
Looking around, I saw the usual post-reading mingling. In some ways, it was even better than the reading. People were able to touch and leaf through the diaries that had been read. People mingled and talked about our shared “hobby.” I swallowed, wondering who might want to examine mine. Examine me.
Goldberg waited for me to look at him again. I realized he would be the first, of course. I took the book out of my pocket again and handed it to him, trying hard to be detached, to dissociate enough to look like I didn’t care. He was so intent on looking at the book, I doubt he even noticed my grimace.
There was a common rote checklist we did when looking at a diary. Like watch dealers or antiquers or any other hobbyist/fetishist. Look at the spine, go over the covers with your fingers, open the book, and see if there are any inscriptions or notations. Any dates, any names, any clues.
Goldberg, like many others, was obsessed with locks. Almost all of the little locks on diaries were simple and mostly cosmetic. Still, many collectors liked to keep them intact, and make replicas of the original keys.
I had blacked out my name in my diary. I had left the date. I had gone over that book page by page a hundred times and ripped out any entries that had any personal facts. I’d crossed out a few names. I’d sanitized it of details, but left all of the truths.
He nodded sagely at the numbers. His fingers traced ballpoint pen drawings of crows and bare-limbed trees. He found the bookmark I had left and read over the entries I had just read. Then he looked up at me.
His whisper was low and conspiratorial. “I’ll give five hundred,” he said, looking around, knowing it was uncouth to talk about a purchase at a reading. I simply shook my head, no.
“I can’t go any higher than seven,” he said, paging through to the end.
“It’s not for sale. I don’t have a large collection. This is one of my only pieces,” I said, stumbling a little over the lie. He looked at me. He might have thought my hesitation was some negotiation tactic. He nodded, almost impressed.
“Perhaps a rental or a trade? One month with mine for a month with yours? And a c-note to sweeten the deal?”
I swallowed and closed my eyes, and took a deep breath. “I don’t want to make a deal with you, Goldberg. I don’t like you,” I said, the words making me cold and strong.
His back straightened. He closed the book and held it out to me. “Fine. Bitch,” he said, almost under his breath.
Others came to see my book, but I was less uncomfortable with their attention. I didn’t look at any of the other diaries. Goldberg’s was the only one I wanted to see, but that was ruined. I had another whiskey and then another, only to remember how little I had eaten that day.
As the evening went on, the vibe changed. People paired off. Partaking in our secret activity made many of us amorous. Malloy and Levi made out against a wall.
The host, in her artfully paint splattered clothes, watched everyone with cool amusement. Her eyes fell on me, and I felt a little flutter. If I wasn’t in a panic spiral, I would happily do whatever she told me to do. Unfortunately, I felt like I was going to throw up.
I considered that I may have really fucked things up for myself. Pissing off Goldberg might get me banned or uninvited from the next reading. He was one of the most prolific posters.
When he returned to me all smiles, holding his coat and briefcase, I wondered if it was to twist the dagger. He put his things down next to me, awkwardly, and straightened his tie.
“Sorry if I was pushy. No hard feelings. I always enjoy your insight on the forum. Good to see you, Elle,” he said, and I gave him a tight-lipped smile.
“It’s fine,” I said and hated myself for it. He grinned with his eyes.
“Take my memory and leave, you bastard,” I thought.
He put on his coat, picked up his things, and left.
I got my coat, almost falling over as I stood up. The room swam, but it felt good. It made the anxiety dull and distant. I said goodbye to no one. I carefully walked down five flights and then walked five blocks and got a taxi from an app on my phone. Technically we weren’t supposed to, but I couldn’t even wrap my head around trying to find the subway.
It wasn’t until I got home that I realized my diary was gone.
End