The Diary

The diary

I was in big trouble, and I was really in for it. Its 1958 and I’m home from school because I’m sick with a cold and fever. I was in my bedroom that I share with my older brother who would soon be getting married. It’s early evening and my mother has just left for the luncheonette to begin her night shift and my father is on his way home. Suddenly I hear my sister scream out my name. She is 6 years older, and at 17 she is very pretty but still a bitch to me. She’s getting softer and a bit nicer in her later teen-age years, not as mean to me as she was when I was younger, but still not a joy to be around. I get out of my sick bed pushing aside my drawing pad, my Hardy Boy books and film magazines and go into the kitchen where she is standing and in her hand she is holding her pink diary. “What is this Ira? Did you do this? Wait until Daddy gets home.’ My brother is just getting home from work and she thrusts the diary into his face. “Take a look at this, see what the little brat has done.” My brother who is 22 and my hero looks at it, shrugs his head and says to her” You’re always trying to get him in trouble, always trying to hurt him”. “Hurt him, she screams, I’ll kill him, just look at what he did, he broke into my diary and wrote all these filthy words and drawings all over it.” It’s disgusting, and just wait until Daddy sees it. “Did you do this Ira. Did you write these dirty words, and drawings?” She asked. Well did you?” Well of course I did it. I thought to myself. You fucking bitch, I hate you so much that this was how I could show my anger and hatred towards you. I broke open your diary and wrote every curse word my little 11 year old self knew and I knew quite a few. I also drew big dicks and cunts all over the pages, and scribbled pornographic drawings on the photos of you and your boyfriends that were laid in the book, yes I did it, and as God is my witness I would do it all over again if I had the chance. “No of course not I didn’t do it” I lied with a straight face.” Well then who did this” she screamed. I had to think fast, I still was feverish, and it was hard to get my thoughts straight. Who could I blame? My uncle Natie? No don’t be stupid. I know I’ll blame a friend, but what friend. I couldn’t blame Howie, he probably didn’t even know what most of the words meant, and he couldn’t draw a straight line, let alone a hard dick or a dripping pussy and besides he lived next door, and I had no doubt that my sister would be ringing his bell in a second if I told her he did it. No it had to be a distant friend, never seen. “It was my friend Ritchie I screamed” I felt like Bonita Granville the monster child who rats and tells lies on her friends in the movie “These Three” that my mom and me had just watched on the Late show the other week. “Ritchie, who is Ritchie?” My sister asked. She was so mad that she was actually turning red with anger. “He’s in my class and he came over a few weeks ago, and found your diary, and did the dirty with it.” “What crap” she bellowed. “How did he find it, and what were you doing in my room.?” I felt real bad, not for what I had done, but because I had got caught. And how did my eleven-year-old mind ever think that I would get away with it. I mean eventually she would open the damn book and see the words and the drawings. Well the doody was about to hit the fan, as my father had his key in the lock and was home. He was dressed in his white restaurant drag with Oscar’s Luncheonette written in blue script across the shirt. Not a happy man under the best of circumstances, he turned white when my sister showed him the diary. “Did you do this?” he asked. “No I told her that I didn’t, my friend Ritchie did” He was towering over me, and had murder in his eyes. I really thought he was going to hit me, but he knew that if he did, my mother would be home in a flash with clenched fists pounding his head and body. Actually he never had hit me, but in later years when I was 18 or 19 we would come to blows but at this time he didn’t have to use violence to intimate or punish me. Just his presence in my life was punishment enough. Between him and my sister my young life was hell enough. They were my concentration camp. My Auschwitz, my Dachau. My sister sat down at the table and started to erase my artwork. “Do you want me to help you”? I asked. “No.” My father went in the living room to watch TV. My brother got ready to go see his girlfriend and future wife, and I crept back into my bedroom and my sickness. “Well in time I thought all would be forgotten, maybe in a few months or years.” Yeah right.