Steve gone, and I alone in the hotel room. He’s at an interview. . . .I made a point today of going to the Georgetown campus chapel and praying as devoutly as I could for a sign to light my way, for help, for wisdom to discern, for new doors to open. Somehow I thought as I prayed of some utopian “high” place—a place ringed by hills, with meadows and orchards and gray stone buildings, a place to write. Fantasy, I fear—a sheer fantasy. But some place I could wish to find, to settle in with my books and plans to write, before my life is over. . . .
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Just returned from supper. Seated behind me an obnoxious Baltimore family. Pater familias told a joke re: how a class in Virginia was asked recently who said, “Four score and seven years ago.” The only student to raise her hand was a Japanese exchange student, who said Lincoln, then gave the date. Teacher scolded the class and turned to the blackboard, and a boy yells, “F—k the Japs.” Teacher turns to ask, “Who said that?” Boy yells, Harry S. Truman, 1945.”
A conversation ensued re: how we had to bomb Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Then it gets to the recent convention of conservatives in D.C. The family was apparently there. Mater familias quotes with approval Oliver North, who said we must take this country back from the homoerotic ethic and return it to its Judaeo-Christian ethical roots.
Bombing the Japs? Insulting gays with impunity—since this loud conversation took place in a restaurant in a mixed neighborhood, where the Blade is available in the restaurant lobby? These boors, and their relatives across the land, who are legion, represent the Judaeo-Christian ethic? They proceeded to laugh re: how the first child can come anytime, the rest nine months at a time, so it’s not transgression of sexual norms in general that disturbs them.
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