Skin

I’m reading Dorothy Allison’s book Skin and
thinking—I don’t even know what I’m afraid of. Or, I’m
afraid of finding out what I’m afraid of. Thinking, I
always told myself the things I think about in bed in
dark in night under safe piles of comforters and
plush toys aren’t me, aren’t any part of me, mean
nothing about me, but if they don’t then the
fact that I so adamantly deny them surely does.
Am I afraid of being told, again, I’m sick? It’s
not anything I’m unused to hearing. I push things
deliberately. What no one wants to admit to knowing is
that all the perversions I joke about are not
anything I haven’t actually thought about. I
want to write books that will let other people
know they are not the only ones, that they can stop
obsessing over their bizarrities and move on to
other things. And then I want to write books
celebrating everything. And then? Probably I can’t do these
things well until I can accept myself more/better.
Maybe it would help?


02.19.00
12.04.03