12-11-00 7:36 PM M

I'm at Los Angeles Community Adult School class at LA High, room 264. My students are taking their final exam. I have a cold. I've had it since Saturday morning. Rochelle went out this afternoon to meet with her personal trainer. She was gone over two hours and the baby got hungry. I warmed some formula for her, but she didn't seem to like it much. When Rochelle came home, she asked me how I was feeling, just like she does every two to ten minutes. "I have a cold," I said. I don't know what else I should have said, but she said, "You know, some day when we get a divorce, it's going to be because of your smart-ass remarks." Divorce? I said nothing, but there was plenty I could have said. Maybe she was trying to be funny. Still, it holds a match awfully close to the fuse on the powder keg. We are ammonia and bleach. I am a mongoose in a viper pit. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It just makes me look at all I do for her and see the imbalance, the inequality, in what she does for me. Ugh. Asking for fucking diamonds. How do I feel? I feel fucking outraged. And sure, she can use the D-word because, who will get fucked? Maybe I won't buy a house. Women think it's their duty in life to exploit men for their own gain. Hos pose nude and the feminists all scream that the women are being exploited, but it's man's desire that women exploit. What do the feminists say when a woman lives off a man's work? When she divorces him and takes half of what he's earned? I'm such a fucking idiot. Out of the frying pan, into the fire. I so desperately wanted to escape Shirelle's bullshit that I married the first blowjob (actually, the second) to come along because it seemed like a foolproof way to be permanently free of Shirelle. "Foolproof" is the wrong word. Couldn't be any more wrong. Stop-gap. Just plug the hole with whatever might fit. Ugh.

When I'm done here, I'll read some more Leaves of Grass. Or should I read that Writers, Inc. handbook on the shelf in here?