Fucking people’s husbands is for people from Ivy League colleges who read too much John O’Hara.

He’s the only person I know who still considers swimming in the Pacific Ocean at Venice Beach fun. I haven’t been swimming in that water since my friend Bob-the-Surfer came down with the same leukemia a group of lifeguards from that area died of. The bay we have here that looks so beautiful is a deadly black swan after all.

Whatever my personality might be, I had no idea, and as far as I was concerned, if I wasn’t on Ritalin at least, my reply to the world was “no one is home.” Ritalin was my personality.

By the time dawn came and I was nearly finished with his book, I was in love with him. And I was in love with his book, which I felt I could have written myself. Which is one of the troubles with writing; people who love your writing already think they’re you. They think if they sat down and wrote, it would be your book. Exactly what I thought abou

All I took was speed, painkillers like Percodan and Demerol for fun, and painkillers like codeine and Fioranol for cramps. And I never took downers, except if anyone happened to have any Quaaludes or Mogodons. Oh, and LSD or mushrooms or mescaline if it was a nice day. As far as I was concerned, since I didn’t smoke cigarettes, this made me a fine

Joan Didion, who knew how to wear clothes, was too brilliant and great for anyone to write like and too skinny and sultry to look like. I thought if I couldn’t be Joan, then I’d have to be dowdy and/or crazy, like Virginia Woolf. Of course, there was always Colette, but then she was French—not living in L.A.—and even she scared men.

dowdy

I was overwhelmed by the feeling that there was something I could have done—some more flash and charming way I could have been, that would have sprinkled magic dust on her and kept her from letting Wolf in the front door.

once I began to make sure only sweetness and light got a foot in the door, men who were horrible ceased to thrill me as they once had,