by Mark Frost
July 10, 5 A.M.
I am in a small cave overlooking a small river in the northern portion of the state. I have sat alone for some twelve hours now without moving, lost in mind-clearing techniques. At the back of the cave a small set of deep-red eyes has been watching me for many hours. I do not know what kind of creature it is. My mind is fresh from the many hours of deep meditation. Have a strong sense that I was once in this cave before, huddled over an open fire, wearing animal skins, and cooking a small goat. Believe the red eyes belong to a very large bat.
July 12, 7 A.M.
I was correct, it was a large bat - make that an enormous bat. Am heading back to town.
August 1, 2 P.M.
Have mailed all my Nixon buttons back to the White House.
August 15, 9 A.M.
Given the general lack in government to perform in an admirable and honest manner, I am leaning toward a career in the private sector. Should note, however, that I am not sure who it is that one should talk to and how you find the private sector.
August 30, 2 P.M.
Dad called today and told me that I was going to have a little brother or sister. Am speechless.
September 10, 9 P.M.
Dad called me today and told me that I was not going to have a little brother or sister. Said he found out that he has become sterile. Says that I can have my old room back, but that I would have to clean the clay off the floor by myself.
Charlotte has run off with a photographer. She said they were going to call the baby after my father. Am going over tomorrow to see how Dad is coping with the loss. He said he was fine and that I should throw the coffee mug Charlotte made for me out the goddamn window. I think he may need some time.
September 11, 10 P.M.
Am with Dad. As best as I can remember, we started drinking sometime around noon. He seems much happier since he passed out. Am quite sure that I am about to throw up.
* * *
The tapes for the next nine months were destroyed in a fire that started when an electric blanket ignited.
* * *
June 9, 1975 8 A.M.
Had a small problem with electricity. Lost all tapes for the previous nine months, two pairs of shoes, one suit, four ties, and a length of rope. Otherwise all is well. Will try to summarize the lost period in as short a way as possible.
Dad is much better. Charlotte gave birth to a boy on the day the divorce came through. I was fit and well for most of that period except for one bout of melancholia lasting five days in March due in large part to my inability to find that one person with whom I would like to share a life.
Will miss very much the tape Howard and his girlfriend made of themselves making love as Nixon gave his resignation speech. It is a moment in history that I would have liked to have in my collection.
June 20, 9 A.M.
Am attempting to discover how long an individual can function normally without urinating while consuming a normal amount of liquid. Will now drink six ounces of hot coffee.
10 A.M.
All systems normal. Drinking six more ounces of coffee.
11 A.M.
No impairment. Consumed six more ounces.
12 P.M.
Detected a slight sense of fullness during my Medieval Epics class. Reluctantly drank six more ounces.
1 P.M.
Had a great deal of trouble concentrating in my psych class on stress and bodily disease. Am passing on liquid for the next hour.
2 P.M.
Seem to have reached a plateau.
3 P.M.
Believe I have seen the mountaintop and am careening down its slopes.
4 P.M.
Debate grows as to whether I am functioning normally. I unfortunately am also thirsty. Consuming six more ounces.
5 P.M.
Everywhere I go I seem to be seeing drinking fountains.
6 P.M.
Will attempt one more hour.
7 P.M.
I strangely feel much better. Consumed a large glass of milk.
7:08 P.M.
I think I have a problem.
7:10 P.M.
Urination lasted a full two minutes. Can safely say that they were the two most satisfying minutes I have ever spent in my short life. If it were not for the pain inflicted on oneself to reach the ten-hour mark, I would highly recommend it as a substitute for sex.
July 1, 6 P.M.
Believe I may have been premature in my suggestion that urination may be a good substitute for sex. Met a Bryn Mawr student today who knows more about coffee than any individual I have ever met. I drank two cups of Colombian roast and she had one cup of a Guatemalan blend. Never realized the oils were such an important component of a truly superior brew. We plan on coffee again tomorrow after her class on Shame and Mother. Have high hopes that Lena may be what I've been looking for.
July 2, 9 P.M.
Met Lena after class for coffee. Tried several new blends, then went for a long walk that ended when she told me that she was very much interested in seeing me again, but that I would have to understand that she had taken a vow of celibacy, and that she would and could not break that vow until she came to terms with her mother.
I told her that I understood, but that I also thought very few people ever come to terms with their mothers, and that there was no telling what one could miss in the meantime. We then finished off the afternoon with a cup of strong Cuban coffee, a discussion of her Fear and Anxiety class, and a very passionate kiss that seemed to make her feel guilty.
Don't know what to do.
July 19, 1 A.M.
Can't sleep. Want very much to make love to Lena. Convinced I am a ticking bomb that could detonate at any moment. Am not sure what atrocities her mother is guilty of but feel very strongly that a war crimes trial would be too good for her.
July 24, 11 P.M.
Had high hopes when Lena told me she had had a breakthrough. Unfortunately it was about her father and not her mother.
August 3, 9 P.M.
Felt for certain that Lena and I were on our way to something after she made a model of her mother hanging up laundry and ran over it with her Volkswagen. Things got very passionate immediately following the hit-and-run but Lena soon broke down in despair and renewed her pledge of celibacy.
August 15, 5 P.M.
Have finished summer session, and against my better judgment have agreed to accompany Lena on a visit to her parents in Hershey. We leave at dawn.
August 16, 6 A.M.
The trail of tears begins.
August 16, 11 P.M.
Have been assigned to the hideaway couch in Lena's brother Todd's room. Had a very good ham for dinner and talked a great deal about trout fishing with her father, Bill. Never in my life have I met as charming a woman as Lena's mother, Joan. Smart, beautiful, intelligent.
It was just as I was coming in to bed when Lena told me that her mother had slept with the only boyfriend she had ever had the courage to introduce to her parents, and that I should be very careful not to get up and go to the bathroom during the night because that was when it happened last time.
Looks like my urination experiment is going to come in handy. Wonder what Joan meant when she said she would see me later.
August 17, 2 A.M.
Hear footsteps in the hall . . . moving this way . . . oh, no.
August 17, 4 A.M.
The events of the past few hours are only now beginning to sink into my consciousness. Where the line between reality and fantasy is drawn is today not as clear as it was yesterday at this time. At approximately 2 A.M. I detected the sound of footsteps in the hall outside my room. For several minutes they walked up and down the hallway outside my door, giving me the impression that the walker was deep in thought and was attempting to come to some kind of a decision.
At 2:02 A.M. a decision was made, and someone slipped a key into my door and opened it. What follows is the audio fragment of what happened next. Mine is the first voice heard.
/> "Hello?"
"Dale, it's me, Joan."
"Joan?"
"I thought we should talk."
"Good idea."
"Mind if I sit down?"
The precise cause and nature of the fire that erupted in the garage at that exact moment is still under investigation by the fire marshal. I do seem to remember hearing a small pop, though that may have been one of the springs on the bed as Joan sat down and smiled.
One can only imagine the extent of the disaster that was avoided at that moment. It is a shame that more houses are not equipped with the kind of fire prevention equipment and emergency plan that the Frasers have in theirs. In three quick minutes the flames were extinguished, the fire department called, and my bed evacuated without incident by both myself and Joan.
I have decided it would be safer in a number of respects to spend the remaining hours of darkness locked in the car away from any possible inflammatory sources.
August 17, 9 P.M.
We arrived safely, if not without incident, back at Haverford. After a breakfast of very crisp bacon and toast we said our good-byes to Lena's parents. Lena told her mother how sorry she was that so many of her best clothes had been lost in the flames.
It is difficult to describe the feeling that comes over an individual when he discovers that his girlfriend is an arsonist. While I admit to having had some suspicions at the time of the blaze, one is never quite prepared for meeting this kind of truth head-on. I believe it was Holmes who said that truth is often arrived at by two roads pointing in very different directions.
It was shortly after we left the city limits of Hershey that the strong odor of gasoline began to fill the car. Fearing an explosion, I pulled to the side of the road to investigate. It was at that precise moment the roads to arson and celibacy reached their destination.
"I'm ready," said Lena.
I inquired as to what she was ready for, and she responded by saying that she was ready to return to the sexual world. I then inquired as to whether she was making a general statement about a world view or if she was speaking specifically about this moment in time.
"Now," she responded. "Right now."
It was then that I realized her clothes were the source of the gasoline. Only with a great deal of luck did the frantic events of the next several minutes not set them and us ablaze. What I remember is fragmentary at best. I seem to recollect getting my foot stuck on the car horn. The seat back on the driver's side broke. The parking brake slipped and Lena experienced her first orgasm in many years as the car plunged down a small embankment toward a herd of what I now can identify as Angus beef cattle.
Neither Lena nor the car came to a halt until a very large, nearsighted bull put one of his horns through our radiator. The discussion that followed with the owner of the bull about our presence in his field touched on such diverse topics as fat percentage in hamburger, gravity, fence-post digging, and workmanship in American cars which we all agreed had declined in quality over the last several years. The remainder of the drive home after repairing the radiator was uneventful, though Lena did mention a desire to find a nice warm fireplace that we could make love in front of. A thought I find both exciting and more than a little dangerous.
August 20, 2 A.M.
Got a call from Lena's mother telling me that Lena has voluntarily checked into a hospital to undergo psychiatric evaluation.
August 22, 4 P.M.
Visited Lena today. She seemed cheerful, happy, and for the most part normal. We talked for about thirty minutes about a wide variety of topics. Would have felt much better about the visit if she could have remembered who I was.
September 1, 5 P.M.
Lena was released from the hospital today. Saw her for a brief moment as she got into her parents' car. She now seems to think that I am her brother Todd. I do not understand what it is about the choices I have made with women but they all seem to have been disasters. All I can do now is pray that Lena returns to the vital person that I once knew and that I experience a greater degree of luck in my relationships than I have had up to present.
September 15, 3 A.M.
Have come to the conclusion that I am suffering from a form of curse that I remember seeing in certain suffering individuals on my travels after high school. Am quite aware that the Western mind will not allow itself to believe in anything outside the world of fact. But I am now convinced that the many disastrous relationships I have experienced have not been a result of chance. I must seek out a healer.
October 1, 8 P.M.
Do not think the Catholics quite have a handle on what my problem may be. Spent several hours with a priest, who suggested that I was suffering from an extreme form of guilt brought on by impure thoughts. His solution was that I convert to Catholicism and subscribe to the parish newspaper for $16.50 a month. I asked him if there might be a less expensive solution to my problem, and he said salvation was much like real estate, that if I wanted a cheap piece of property that would not hold its value over the long term, I should talk to the Protestants.
October 9, 7 P.M.
Sought out the Protestants. Their newspaper cost $17.00 a month and they accused the Catholics of using cheap paper. Found no answers.
October 15, 1 A.M.
I Found an Islamic holy man who said that I should have come to him first because there was nothing he could do for me after I've been exposed to the Catholics and Protestants.
October 30, 4 A.M.
Spent most of the night with a Sioux Indian holy man. When I told him of my problem, he burst into laughter. Said that was the best joke he had heard in weeks, and that I reminded him of a horse his brother had had as a child that was so afraid of breaking a leg in a gopher hole that it would walk only on roads and that it got hit by a truck. Believe I feel much better, though I'm not entirely sure why.
December 5, 6 P.M.
Three severed fingers were found in the biology building this morning. They appear to belong to a man, probably engaged in manual labor given the hair, calluses, and dirt under the fingernails. Was able to examine them for a number of minutes before the police arrived to handle the investigation.
Chapter 4
"Dale and I went down to this job fair at the civic center. I think it was on a Saturday because I remember waking up in a church the next morning. As I remember, I went to most of the electronics firms that had booths because I had dropped a hit of acid and they had these really great-looking displays with all these wires and lights.
"I think it was one of those times when Dale was searching for something he could really lock into. School had ceased to be a challenge. Women never quite worked out. I think seeing the FBI booth sparked something in him that had been kindling for a long time.
"What I've never been able to figure out about that evening was how I ended up enlisting in the army."
Howard Teller
College friend
Capt., U.S. Army
December 18, 2 A.M.
Have a feeling Howard has made a big mistake. Don't think he understood what those radar screens he was looking at were really about.
As I'm sitting here in my room, I find that a fire has been rekindled in me that was lost over the past several years. Spent over an hour with a special agent at the FBI booth. His name is Windom Earle, a man of uncommon intelligence. After talking with him I now believe I may have been looking to understand evil intellectually as a substitute for confronting it head-on.
December 20, 7 P.M.
Howard very depressed. Told his parents that he has enlisted in the army and they cut off paying his expenses for school. Tomorrow I head home for a quiet Christmas with Dad.
December 25, 11 P.M.
Received a letter from Lena. She has married her high school sweetheart in Hershey. Apologized for her lack of balance over the months we were together but said she was much better now that the doctors have her dosages correct.
Am going to attempt to look up several of the members of
the 24th Street gang that stole my tape recorder when I was thirteen as a way of tracking their development. Have located the first individual working at a garage not far from their old hangout. Will visit him tomorrow.
