Excerpt from Johnny’s Diary
November 1973
Dear Diary:
It has been more than seven years since I met Manya on that brilliant fall day in New Haven; it seems like yesterday. Oddly, I haven’t made and kept many friends who are women; yet Manya and I have stayed friends over the years. I can’t count the number of times I’ve visited with Sol and Marci in Brooklyn; or the number of times I’ve consoled her with her troubles with Kosta, his infidelities, his inability to commit. He is like a brother; she is like a sister. They were always the perfect couple; in spite of the breakups and separations, they always came back together again. They were a family to me. Then, one day, she finally said stop and meant it. I had to hold both their hands.
A couple of months ago I accompanied her to the abortion clinic in the Village. That was tough. Some new boyfriend named Hugh, and I didn’t want to hear about him. Worse, she didn’t tell him and isn’t going to. Or so she told me when she came by last night with her laundry (for me to take up the five flights of her Bank Street apartment: one of my most treasured tasks). We sat together on the couch, and chatted while watching Gene Kelly and Fred Astaire on my little TV on the coffee table. Our arms were touching and suddenly I felt breathless, my heart pounding. This can’t be happening; it’s taboo or something. I jumped up from the couch and, as I came around the coffee table, I hit the corner, hard, with my shin. I could feel the blood trickling down the inside of the sock and pooling in the shoe. That was close.
Excerpt from Manya’s Diary
November 1973
Dear Diary:
I went to see Johnny late this afternoon. I picked up my laundry as usual and crossed the street to his apartment. The music from the Riviera Café was already pulsating through the walls and the floors. He buzzed me in and I walked upstairs, leaving my laundry-cart in the entryway. God, I seem to remember every detail. I don’t know how to interpret his reaction to Hugh and my stupid, juvenile pregnancy…And the abortion? Who else could accompany me to the clinic, but dear Johnny. I’ll never forget the day I first saw him in that crummy dorm room in New Haven. For a brief moment, then, I felt something pass between us. I still remember. But it passed and for seven years he has been watching my struggles with Kosta. Not that I haven’t nursed Johnny through all his girlfriends, Carol being just the latest.
We sat and watched an old Kelly and Astaire dance routine on Johnny’s tiny TV as the daylight faded outside, when I felt a warm, dry prickliness on my arm. Johnny suddenly jumped up and ran around the table, banging it, and saying that we had to get my laundry home before it became too late. Too late for what? I thought, startled, as we headed hurriedly down the stairs to the street. I asked him knowingly if his mother had called today. He laughed, shaking his foot.
