BEGINS BOOK ONE:

March 22nd Another first for me. My first world ending. My first crack at life without a man telling me what to do. And my first journal. I said Journal Sandy said diary and looked at me like I was crazy. Why should it be diary? Why do we get hung up on things like that? I guess I know that reason. The other girls say these are for the children. I have no man. I see Candace with Mike or Patty with Ronnie, and I think that is rare. I’ve never known love like that, not for any man anyway. I got married because I was expected to get married. I remember my mother saying, “You think I don’t know, but I know. You think I don’t see, but I see.” Of course I denied it. But my mother knew. She told me it was hard enough to be Puerto Rican, everything was against us, but Puerto Rican and a lesbian? No. She wouldn’t stand for it. She knew. So I married and I hated it. And that was about all that there was to it. Hate. Despair. Depression… All parts of hate. Hate from others. Hate for self. Hate. But, now the world has ended and everything is possible. Would I have a child? I would sleep with a man like Mike or Ronnie to have a child. But I won’t ever again take a man to be my lover. It’s funny but I feel so free. It’s also funny but I wonder about Sandy. She looks at me sometimes. I’ve seen her. I haven’t caught her, you know, as in let her know that I know she’s looking. But, I may… Probably will… The only thing is, she has this dream. She wants to live in the middle of nowhere. I don’t want to live in the middle of nowhere. But, I told myself not long ago that I would wait here for my husband. I told myself that and I intended tio do it. Well, that changed. I’m leaving, so, maybe I’ll live where my feet take me. Maybe I’ll just live and let life take care of itself… I wonder who said that? I wonder if it matters? I don’t think so as long as I believe it. I could have love. Where I live and what I do would become secondary to that. I guess this must be a shock or will be a shock, or will it? Ism it only my own sensibilities of what is taboo, what life is that my mother installed in me that makes me think someone who read this would be shocked? I think so. I think other people do as they please. I think they live their lives and I haven’t been living my life at all. I would just like to be held the way I’ve sen others held, or hold. I would just like to be made love to withn the passion I’ve heard between Mike and Candace, or Janet and Rob, Patty and Ronnie. So, I think about it. And I see Sandy looking at me and I think I’ll have to take the chance and catch her. Maybe it will make us both happy… March 25th We made it, which is the really big news for all of us, we’ve made it. I don’t know where we are going. I don’t think anyone else does either but we are free of living under siege. It was such a good plan. If he was free and I liked men I would go for Mike. He’s not your typical man. I see the way he treats Candace. Of course Candace is the type of woman who would not take any other sort of man… Or woman? I think so. But it’s not just Candace but all women he treats that way. He treats men the same way. He has natural abilities when it comes to people. He is a leader. Anyway, the plan worked perfectly. In other news, we are not together like I had hoped. I had written that I had finally talked to Sandy but she denied everything. Seemed really embarrassed. So was I. I thought maybe I was wrong, and I guessed I must have been, but that’s the way the world is. Sometimes we are wrong. What I saw may have been only curiosity, something else, I told myself. But, it turns out I was right the first time. I’m getting ahead of myself. When she shot me down I was upset, but I went with it, what else could I do? But, they say there is a reason for everything and three nights ago I found out why. I met Molly. Molly was one of the women that escaped from those men. She had a really bad time with them, went through some bad things, but that didn’t influence who she is, or what she is. She is still herself in other words; the other part of that explanation went much deeper. She wanted me to know that she had always been attracted to women, not men, that nothing they did to her changed her from some other woman into the one I was meeting. It was important to her for me to understand that. I guess it was important to me too. She says she has known who she was since junior high. It was amazing to me to meet someone with that kind of confidence. We were talking about real things, heart and mind things, within just a few minuets. She and Susan had just not clicked. They like each other but not on that level. But Susan knows who she is too and has for a long while. I feel like I am the only one who had to take the long way around to finding out that I am who I am, or admitting to myself who I am… I guess there is a big difference in those two statements. I was hiding out for so long. Living in this little city. My life was so structured. I was married to a man, for God’s sake. Molly was something else. Is something else. The next morning, at breakfast, she caught me looking and that was that. We were sitting outside talking a little while later and she just kissed me. Stopped all of my words and nearly stopped my heart too. And then she smiled and I kissed her back. Sandy came out of the cave a few minuets later, saw us and she just knew. I could tell by the way she looked at us. She was so mad at me. I felt guilty too, but she had said no. She had said that I was mistaken, wrong, about her. So, not a good way to find out that I was right. Sandy had lived in her shell longer than I had. In the end we talked it out. We’re okay. We worked it out. Molly and I are together. It was just that fast, and it’s good. I feel like I’ve never felt. And we’re free now too. And, last, my heart is lighter. I saw Susan and Sandy talking and laughing together all night tonight. It made me feel better. I think everyone has seen Molly and me together, but as of tonight we are actually together, as in living together, as in partners, as in sleeping together. I’m not going to waste any more of my life. I won’t say love. Love takes time. But it is so close that it may as well be…

BEGINS BOOK TWO