"Earlier today I talked with the woman I know in Virginia. I locked the door to my office, turned on the camera in the computer, and took my clothes off for her. She told me to turn around and I did. Then I sat naked at the computer and typed. It was ridiculous. I also spent the day preparing for class. If I can keep teaching I’ll be fine. Not really, but I’ll have enough money to make it for a little while. The classes are ending in a couple of weeks and I have nothing new scheduled. If I agree to move to some small town that needs a professor I can get on the tenure path. I could buy a house and teach people how to write. I’ll have to sleep with my students then. Away from the big city it would be my only option. But that’s not really open to me. It’s not really what I want to do. Which is what got me on this track to begin with, arranging interviews with murderers, hoping to make sense of somebody else’s crime. There’s a woman missing. Her husband says he didn’t kill her. There’s a man who says he’s killed eight people but won’t say who they are. There are so many unanswered questions. It’s been a long time since I knew what I wanted, since I had something to strive toward. I keep floating, head poking above the waves, waiting for a purpose to arrive like a boat in the middle of the ocean.
I never did meet anyone like Josie again. Women like Josie don’t make it to their 30s without getting married. If you’re going to meet someone like that you’re going to meet her in your early 20s. And if you’re like me, that’s going to be a time when you’re making your living selling drugs out of your freezer, living in a squat a bullet away from Cabrini Green. You’ll have to represent something, like the other side of the tracks, but safe. Someone who, when the time comes, when the party is over, she can turn around and guide to a place where life is a little more predictable. But when the party was over I didn’t want to turn around. I didn’t want to go to law school or get a real job or love only one person forever though in many ways she was the most lovable person I was ever going to meet. It didn’t matter. I had to test my dissatisfaction. She had gone east so I went west. I got a job in a ski resort, bartending on top of a mountain. I learned how to board, and disappeared in the snow.
That was another time. I have been in San Francisco nine years. I’m suffering side effects from the Adderall. There are always side effects. Insomnia, loss of appetite, headaches, obsession, erratic decision-making. Inconsistency. I took my pill early in the day but I am still awake and full of thoughts. So I lie in bed with the windows open, glad to be alone. It’s the middle of the week. I haven’t been sleeping and I’m missing appointments. My nails are bitten down and bleeding. All I can do is document it all and see where it leads me. I’m taking my meds and the world will be a different place for a while.
I have a self-published book I wrote when I was with Josie, and another book of unpublished poems. I never show them to anyone. The poems are so full of anger. Anger at Josie for being better than me, for always having the upper hand. For loving her family and being loved by them in return. For being someone who got over things and not recognizing that I was a person who didn’t get over anything. But I read that book and those poems and I see something else. I see who I was then. This is who I am now."
- Excerpts from The Adderall Diaries, by Stephen Elliott
