Another one of those crazy "I'm all fucked up" letters - from me to him - I HOPE I didn't send these, but have a nasty feeling that he did not entirely escape the horrid self-negating tirades with which I plagued the husbands I actually did marry.

As I later figured out - I fought the fight I should have had with my father using them as substitutes - and this went on until sometime in my mid-thirties. By that time, I was divorcing the second husband, but I don't think I actually found a center for myself until 10 years later. Even now, I have those moments - but I banish them rather quickly. Life goes on.

Here, I hint that perhaps there is reason for him to be jealous, and talk about a trip I made to the University of Illinois and then on down to the Southern Illinois University with my roommate and two of her friends. Two guy friends. I tell him that I am very tired of "love in the front seat of a car," which was what, except for our time in Louisville, we were condemned to by our times - but I may also have been hinting at that trip, when I made out with one of Anne's friends in the front seat of the car on the way down south.

Did I feel guilty about that? Yes, I did. Did I want to do it? No, not really. What made me do it? Constant need for male approval and affirmation that I was sexually attractive. Did I feel good afterwards?

No.

Still planning the Thanksgiving getaway - a bus schedule from Ft. Knox to Louisville.

I have little to say about it - no great insights, no more memories - but as it happens, I read a review in yesterday's paper about a book called "On Chesil Beach," by Ian McEwan.

"'They were young, educated, and both virgins on this, their wedding night, and they lived in a time when a conversation about sexual difficulties was plainly impossible.'

"The year was 1962..."

We weren't virgins - exactly - but "conversation about sexual difficulties was plainly impossible." I gather from the letters that we enjoyed ourselves immensely in bed, but I know now that I was in it for the acceptance, for the validation it gave me that, skinny as I was, I was still sexually exciting to somebody. That somebody loved me.

I know that I would not learn to fully enjoy myself for another 15 years or more.

The review ends with a poem by Philip Larkin:

"Sexual intercourse began
In nineteen sixty-three
(which was rather late for me) -

...

Up till then there'd only been
A sort of bargaining,
A wrangle for a ring,
A shame that started at sixteen
And spread to everything."

Ok, this is much better. It is before Thanksgiving - still looking forward to Louisville - not so much the dark side.

A cultural note: It's 1962. We were not married, but we were planning to spend the weekend together in a hotel. In 1962, unless you were in a dive of some sort, this is hard to do. The letter is full of all kinds of ruses and strategems for getting away with it. From registering under a false single name (I picked "Laura Wyndham" of all things. I don't know why I didn't turn out to be a romance writer! But "Barbara Bates - which was my maiden name - simply wasn't my cup of tea. As a small child, in my father's grocery store in Badger, Iowa, before he took up making concrete steps in Decatur, Illinois, I used to steal dates from the barrel[yes, there was a date barrel - this was the 40's] and there was a little chant that went around the local kiddom - "Barbara Bates is full of dates." - Finally - that confession is out in the open! Oh, the humiliation!)

Anyway - it's either Laura Wyndham - obviously a refugee from some remote castle in England somewhere - or I register under his name and we say we're married. I go into this thing about different identities or realities for three pages of detail. At some point I mention that I used to work in a motel, so "I know what the personnel notice." I don't remember working in a motel.

I'm looking forward to turning 20 in "three months and 13 days," but apparently still feel 18. "Gee, honey, you're 22. You seem so old."

Today he'd look like a puppy.