I didn't respond to your phone call last summer because I was very much into my IBM PC and just wasn't very hot on the subject of dinosaurs. In fact my dino hobby has gone into something of a decline, though it's there in the background (along with tons of dinosaurabilia). But I also never wanted our relationship to degenerate into "hobby sharing". Not that there isn't a place for that, but our relationship became something much more than that very quickly, and I didn't want to settle for less than the best. Do you remember the short story "Flowers for Algernon" by Daniel Keyes? Our relationship has been somewhat like that. Once you've reached a high plateau, nothing less than the best seems worthwhile. It's despressing, in fact. That's how I feel about us. That's why I don't feel like saying much about most of the news you've mentioned concerning your hobbies, your truck, Mitchell's new job and the rest. I want our relationship to be at a very high level of intellectual stimulation, even if it only amounts to one or two letters a year.

Of course I'm not disapointed in you for "being happy". But simply stating that you are gives us nothing left to talk about than the weather. Talking about personal problems is harder (though you've tried pretty hard) because it demands a commonality of vocabulary that even today has not been established between us. But it's what I do best, and what you miss the most, so why should we settle for less?

Oh, yeah — your marriage. I'd heard about that from Richie Holmes about a week before it happened. We had a good laugh. Look, let's face it, marriage is one of those cultural carry-overs from the Pleistocene which would be charming were it not so dangerous to otherwise rational people. Tax and insurance advantages are an okay reason for doing it, which is why gay people should be allowed to play the altar game too, but to Mitchell it means more than that. For him it's a magical amulet, and that means that to some degree he's going to relinquish the real responsibility of relating to you for the false security of his new lucky charm. I encourage heterosexuals to marry when it seems to be the fastest way to prove to them how empty their relationship was to begin with, but with you I can be more honest. Just forget Mitchell's fantasies and keep him on his toes about the reality of your needs. If you stay together the marriage won't have done much damage. If you break up, you may some day view it as having helped one or both of you to come to your senses. Either way, it's nothing to worry about — which is why I haven't worried about it.

As for hoping that you and Mitchell can "make it", well that's just the feminine version of the masculine let's-get-married nonsense we've already discredited. Thinking about "making it some day" is one of the worst thing you can do to your head. You've already made it with Mitchell as much as you probably ever will. There is no pie in the sky. It's all happening now. I'm not saying that things couldn't get better, but they won't ever come together with the kind of completeness that "making it" implies. Ever.

I'm glad to hear that you still love me, though I'll be damned if I know what it means. I don't think real love is very fullfilling unless you can be a part of the other person's life. I think what you call love is more like matinee idol worship, but thanks anyway. I'll take what I can get.

You're right: I don't think about you from week to week. But knowing you got me to believe that maybe somewhere out there somebody WOULD like to seriously love me, and in a subliminal way I guess I've kind of been looking. I try to meets lots more people outside the Center than I did in the first five years after breaking up with Bill. A lot of people like to flirt — I've learned that at least. It's kind of fun in the moment, but when they learn I'm after more than that, that's the end of it. The thing I thought I saw in you was the ability to stand up to me, to my demands, and not leave me just because I was difficult. I'd like to find that sort of constancy again. (Did you know that that's what 19th century poets meant by "constant" and why so many girls were named Constance?) I can scare off more people in an afternoon than industrial strength roach repellent.

Like you, I'm not very happy when I don't have a sex life. I haven't been able to find it in an honest way, though. I don't want to become promiscuous, and jerking off doesn't really seem to do it for me either. I see Judy every few months, and we don't try very hard any more to desexualize, but it's too few and far between to mean much. Basically I'm trying to take parental care of her till she gets out of her psychiatric residency. She likes to make snide remarks to the psychiatrists and they like to give her dirty looks back. What a waste of talent. Actually, she's thinking of dropping out of psychiatry and just becoming a diet quack. That would be a more honest way to earn a buck.

Paul is still alive, and the Center is plodding along as usual though I can't say that anybody there is very interested in me. I've been routing some short consulting jobs to Chris since he's had an IBM/PC for about a year too. I'd like to get him loose from Met as soon as possible. He's much too good for them. The two of us spent last weekend at the American Association for the Advancement of Science's annual convention, held right here in Manhattan. Very stimulating, but much of it was over our heads just enough to be fatiguing. We're about as close as hyper-independent masculines can be. It comes and goes. He just split up with Phil, though, which probably is good news. It's made him more interested in being my friend.

I finally put together issue #3 of the Ninth Street Center Journal, enclosed. Also enclosed is a software proposal I did for the Philadelphia Academy of Natural Sciences. They're very excited about it but still trying to figure out how to fund it after all these months. Won't they be surprised when I tell them I'm no longer in the software business.