Dear Diary 1977

Dear Diary

The morning began as the others did, with a jolt from a dream that left my body slick with sweat and another, more telling moisture. I woke with a gasp, my nightgown clinging to my breasts and stomach, the fabric between my legs soaked through. I did not move for several minutes, staring at the ceiling of my bedroom in the sprawling manor. The silence of the mansion, usually a comfort, felt oppressive today. It was a silence that allowed the echoes of my dreams to resonate, images of flesh and motion that made my cheeks burn even in the solitude of my room. I threw back the covers and stood up, the cool air on my damp skin causing me to shiver. I felt a strange duality within me, a war between revulsion and a dark, burgeoning curiosity that I dared not examine too closely.

Then I remembered, I had a meeting with Kristy. I had not seen her since we walked across the stage at high school graduation. I had not heard her voice in ten years. I had not looked into her eyes since we hugged in the parking lot and promised to stay in touch. We both knew we would not. Life moved forward. College took us in different directions. I did not blame her. I did not blame myself. We were young. We were busy. We were not as close as we once had been. Our friendship had healed after our falling out, but it had never returned to the depth it once held. It had become polite and warm, but not intimate. I remembered that clearly. I remembered the way we smiled at each other during those last months. I remembered the way we avoided certain topics. I remembered the way we both tried to pretend that everything was fine. It was fine. It simply was not close.

I sat at the edge of the bed and let my feet rest on the floor. The wood felt cool. I took a deep breath and tried to steady myself. I felt excited. I felt nervous. I felt curious. I felt a strange mixture of emotions that I could not fully separate. I had agreed to meet her because I wanted to know who she had become. I wanted to know if she had changed. I wanted to know if I had changed. I wanted to know if we could talk without the weight of the past pressing between us. I wanted to know if we could laugh again. I wanted to know if we could sit across from each other and feel comfortable. I wanted to know if she remembered the same things I remembered. I wanted to know if she had missed me. I wanted to know if she had thought about me at all.

I stood and walked to the window. The morning light had grown stronger. The sky looked pale and soft. I opened the curtains and let the brightness fill the room. The mansion felt less heavy when the sun reached inside. I’ve been here for almost three months. My parents died four years ago. I was too busy in France to come home back then. I still felt strange writing that sentence. I still felt strange thinking about it. Their absence had become a part of my daily life, but it had not become easier. The house reminded me of them in every corner. I grew up here and walked through these halls as a child. I used to run down the stairs on Christmas mornings. I used to sit at the dining table with them during long conversations. I had listened to their voices echo through the rooms. Now the house belonged to me. I kept it clean. I kept it organized. I kept it quiet. I did not know if that was what they would have wanted. I only knew that it was what I could manage.

I dressed slowly. I chose a simple outfit. I did not want to look like I had tried too hard. I did not want to look careless either. I wanted to look like myself. I brushed my hair and tied it back. I looked at my reflection and tried to imagine how Kristy would see me. I wondered if she would think I looked older. I wondered if she would think I looked tired. I wondered if she would think I looked the same. I wondered if she would recognize me immediately. I wondered if I would recognize her. I wondered if she had changed her hair. I wondered if she had changed her style. I wondered if she had changed her smile. I wondered if she had changed at all.

I grabbed my keys and walked downstairs. The house felt large as I moved through it. The staircase curved gently. The walls held framed photographs that I had not taken down. I passed the living room and glanced at the piano. I had not played it in years. I walked through the foyer and opened the front door. The air outside felt crisp. The sky had brightened. The driveway stretched out before me. My car waited at the end. I locked the door behind me and walked toward the car. I felt a small flutter in my chest. I felt excited. I knew it was also something else. I could not name it.

I got into the car and started the engine. The sound broke the quiet of the morning. I backed out of the driveway and turned onto the road. The neighborhood looked familiar. I drove on these streets many times. I had walked on them as a teenager. I had ridden my bike along these sidewalks. I had talked with friends under the streetlights. I used to live a different life here. I felt that life press against me as I drove. I felt the weight of memory. I felt the weight of time.

I turned onto the main road and headed toward the city. The traffic was light. The sun rose higher. The sky turned a deeper shade of blue. I passed the grocery store where my mother used to shop. I passed the park where my father taught me how to ride a bike. I passed the library where I studied during high school. I passed the old movie theater where Kristy and I had gone on Friday nights. I remembered the way we used to sit in the back row. I remembered the way we whispered to each other during the previews. I remembered the way we laughed at the same jokes. I remembered the way we shared popcorn. I remembered the way we felt comfortable together. I wondered if she remembered those nights. I wondered if she thought about them at all.

The closer I got to the city, the more my excitement grew. I felt a small knot of nerves in my stomach, but it did not overwhelm me. It felt like the kind of nervousness that comes before something good. I had not felt that in a long time. I have spent the past few years dealing with grief, responsibility, and the quiet routines of adulthood. I had not allowed myself many moments of anticipation. I had not allowed myself many moments of joy. I felt grateful for this one.

I reached the city limits and merged into heavier traffic. The buildings rose around me. The sidewalks filled with people. The noise increased. I felt the energy of the city. I had missed this feeling. I have lived in quieter places during the past few years. I had spent most of my time in the rural parts of France. I had not ventured into the city often. I felt a sense of renewal as I drove through the streets. I felt a sense of possibility. I felt a sense of connection to the world again.

I found a parking garage near Union Square and pulled inside. I parked on the third level. I turned off the engine and sat for a moment. I took a deep breath. I felt my heart beat a little faster. I felt the anticipation rise again. I opened the door and stepped out. The air inside the garage felt cool. I walked toward the elevator and pressed the button. The elevator arrived quickly. I stepped inside and pressed the button for the ground floor. The elevator doors closed. I watched the numbers change as I descended. I felt a small tremor of excitement in my hands. I clasped them together to steady myself.

I stepped out of the parking garage and felt the shift in atmosphere immediately. The air outside carried the layered scent of the city. I smelled roasted coffee from a nearby cart. I smelled car exhaust drifting from the street. I smelled the faint sweetness of a bakery that must have opened early. The sounds of traffic and conversation blended into a steady hum. I paused for a moment to take it in. I had missed this energy. I had missed the way the city felt alive even when I felt quiet inside.

I walked toward the sidewalk and joined the flow of people moving through Union Square. The sun had risen high enough to cast long, bright reflections across the windows of the surrounding buildings. The light felt warm on my face. I looked around and tried to absorb every detail. I wanted to remember this moment. I wanted to remember how it felt to return to a place that had once been familiar.

A bus painted in the iconic red and orange of the Muni line hissed to a stop at the curb. Its broad side was a canvas for a movie advertisement. It was for a new comedy I thought something light and innocuous. The poster featured the film's star a handsome actor leaning against a vintage sports car with a charmingly goofy grin. He held a bucket of popcorn aloft as if offering it to the city itself. The title was splashed across the bottom in bubbly yellow letters. I looked at it, but I did not really see it. My eyes were focused yet my mind was a million miles away adrift in the strange currents that had been pulling at me lately.

Then the image began to change. It was not a sudden shift like a light being switched on. It was a slow insidious bleed like ink dropped into clear water. The actor's grin did not vanish. It warped. The charming amusement in his eyes curdled into something predatory something cold and triumphant. His hand was lowered by the one holding the popcorn bucket. The bucket itself seemed to melt its red cardboard softening drooping then dissolving into nothing. His fingers curled into a tight fist.

I blinked a small involuntary flutter of my eyelids. When they opened again the man was gone. In his place stood a woman. Her head was tilted back at a grotesque unnatural angle her throat a long pale column stretched tight. Her eyes wide and unblinking were fixed on a point in the sky above the bus but they saw nothing. They were glassy, vacant the eyes of a doll. A large black hand was tangled in her hair the fingers twisted brutally into the roots holding her head in that painful immobilizing position.

The transformation was seamless and horrifyingly complete. The vibrant colors of the original advertisement had been leached away replaced by a stark almost clinical palette of flesh and shadow. The sunny background of the movie set had darkened into an indistinct windowless room. The woman's mouth was no longer smiling. It was a wide gaping wound stretched around a thick erect black cock that pistoned relentlessly in and out. The hand in her hair guided the motion pulling her down forcing her to take the full brutal length with every violent thrust.

I could see the physics of the act with a clarity that felt obscene. I could see the bulge in the white woman's slender neck the distention of her throat with every deep penetration. I could see the way her saliva mixed with the man's sperm dripping from her chin in thick opaque strings. The man's face was in shadow, but I could feel his presence a palpable aura of dominant cruel pleasure. The woman's face was a mask of torment. Tears streamed from her wide staring eyes tracing clean paths through the foundation on her cheeks. Her nostrils were flared struggling for air. The muscles in her neck stood out like cords straining against the invasion.

The sound of the city faded away. The preachings of the homeless man, the clang of the cable car, the chatter of the pedestrians on the sidewalk. It all receded into a dull meaningless hum. The only sounds that existed were the ones playing in my mind. The wet rhythmic gagging. The man's guttural grunts of exertion. The woman's choked desperate whimpers. The sounds were so vivid so immediate that I found myself swallowing my own throat constricting in a sympathetic response.

A wave of nausea rose in my stomach hot and acidic. I wanted to look away. Every fiber of my being screamed at me to turn my head to run to close my eyes and erase the image from my mind. But I could not. My gaze was locked onto the side of the bus my feet rooted to the pavement. It was as if I were a spectator at some horrific private show compelled to watch against my will.

Then came the betrayal. Deep within my body a separate more insidious reality was taking hold. A warmth bloomed in my lower belly a slow spreading heat that was both shameful and undeniable. A heavy liquid ache settled between my thighs. I felt a sudden acute awareness of the seam of my jeans pressing against me the fabric becoming an abrasive unwelcome reminder of my own body's treacherous response. My nipples sensitive beneath the lace of my bra and the cotton of my blouse tightened into hard painful points.

The disgust was immediate a bitter taste in my mouth. My mind recoiled from the image from the violence the degradation of the sheer inhumanity of what I was witnessing. But my body my wretched traitorous body responded with a primal undeniable pulse of arousal. The contradiction was a physical agony a civil war being waged within my own skin. How could this be happening? How could I be so repulsed and so horribly undeniably aroused at the same time? What is wrong with me?

The bus with its animated images of horror hissed and pulled away from the curb merging back into the river of traffic. The images remained frozen in my mind's eye a photograph of depravity that I could not seem to discard. I stood there motionless long after the bus had disappeared around the corner. The sounds of the city rushed back in louder and more jarring than before. A man jostled me as he passed muttering an apology. The scent of roasted nuts suddenly seemed heavy and sickeningly sweet.

I continued walking. The crowd shifted around me. People carried shopping bags. People held coffee cups. People talked to their companions. I felt a sense of movement that pushed me forward. I looked up at a billboard that towered above the square. It displayed an advertisement for a luxury watch brand. The image showed a closeup of a silver watch resting on a marble surface. The face of the watch gleamed in the sunlight. The advertisement felt cold and polished. It reminded me of the mansion. It reminded me of the way the house felt too large and too quiet. It reminded me of the way I had tried to keep everything in order after my parents died. I felt a small ache in my chest. I pushed the thought aside. I wanted to focus on the present. I wanted to focus on the excitement I felt about seeing Kristy again.

The polished marble surface of the advertisement began to shimmer. The gleaming silver watch started to lose its form. The sharp edges softened. The meticulous details of the clock face blurred and ran together like wet paint. The cold, metallic sheen dissolved into a warm, living texture of skin. The transformation was silent and absolute. The world around me faded into a muffled hum. The bustling square, the chatter of the crowd, the scent of roasted chestnuts from a street vendor's cart. All of it receded until only the billboard existed.

The image on the billboard was no longer a static picture. It was moving. It was a film. A young Japanese woman filled the screen. She was beautiful, with flawless skin and hair as black as a raven's wing. Her beauty was ethereal, almost painful to behold. She was not posing. She was struggling. Her wrists were bound above her head with thick, rough rope that bit into her delicate skin. She was suspended, her toes barely brushing the floor of a dimly lit room. Her body was naked, vulnerable, and arched in a silent scream. Her mouth was open, but no sound came out at first. Then, a thin, reedy wail escaped her lips. It was a sound of pure terror.

"Help me," she screamed.

Her voice was high and thin, cracking with desperation.

"Somebody, please help me." She screamed.

A figure moved into the frame. It was a silhouette, broad and imposing, holding something long and thin. The figure raised its arm. A whip cracked through the air. The sound was sharp, explosive, echoing in the sudden silence of my mind. The tip of the whip coiled around the woman's left breast. A thin red line appeared instantly on her pale skin. Her body convulsed. Her scream was no longer a plea for help. It was a raw, animalistic shriek of agony

The whip fell again. And again. It was a rhythmic, merciless assault. Each lash left its mark, a crimson signature on her perfect flesh. Her breasts, once objects of beauty, were now canvases of pain. They swelled and reddened under the brutal punishment. Her screams became a continuous, guttural sound, a symphony of suffering that vibrated through me. I could feel the impact of each blow in my own body, a phantom sting that made my muscles clench. I could smell the coppery scent of blood in the air, though I knew it was only in my head. My own breath hitched in my throat, a silent gasp of shared agony.

Then the scene changed. It was not a gradual fade. It was a brutal, jarring cut. The woman was no longer suspended. She was on a bed, on her hands and knees. Her face was pressed into a pillow, muffling her sobs. Her back was a roadmap of red welts. Two men were with her. They were large, muscular, their skin pale in contrast to hers. One man positioned behind her, he was on his knees, the other was underneath her. Their faces were grim masks of determination and lust. The woman was begging. Her voice was muffled by the pillow, but the words were clear.

The men ignored her pleas. The first man, the one directly behind her, positioned himself at her entrance. He gripped her hips with his large hands, his fingers digging into her flesh. He thrust forward, his thick, white cock forcing its way into her anus. The woman's body went rigid. A muffled scream tore from her throat. I could see the tight ring of muscle stretching, straining to accommodate the brutal invasion. Her entire body shuddered with the trauma of the penetration.

Before she could even begin to process the violation, the second man moved. His body fitting into the space between her trembling thighs. He guided his own erect penis toward her vagina. With a single, powerful thrust, he entered her. The woman was now being penetrated in both of her lower orifices simultaneously. She was trapped between them, impaled on their flesh, a vessel for their brutal pleasure.

The men began to move. Their rhythm was harsh, uncoordinated, a pounding assault on her body. They thrust into her alternately, then together, their hips slapping against her flesh with sickening, wet sounds. The woman's body was a puppet, jerked and contorted by their violent motions. Her muffled sobs filled the silence of my mind. Her hands were clenched into fists, her knuckles white. Her back was arched in a painful curve, a testament to the overwhelming sensations flooding her body.

"No more!" She screamed.

I stood frozen on the sidewalk, my eyes locked onto the billboard, a prisoner of the horrific spectacle. The world around me had ceased to exist. There was only the visions, the sounds, the sickening, compelling violence. A strange sensation washed over me, a dark, shameful warmth that spread through my veins. My body was responding. The disgust was immediate, a bitter taste in my mouth, but it was mingled with a terrifying, undeniable pulse of arousal. The sound of a horn blared, loud and insistent, shattering the silence of my personal hell.

"HONK!"

The sound was so real, so jarring, that it physically shook me. I blinked, my eyes refocusing on the world around me. The billboard was just a billboard again. The silver watch rested on the marble surface, its face gleaming in the sunlight. The beautiful Japanese woman was gone. The men, the whip, the violence. It was all gone. I was standing on a crowded sidewalk in downtown San Francisco. A taxi was idling at the curb, its driver gesturing impatiently at me.