March 24, 1964

Darling -

     The surest way for me to get mail from you seems to be for me to threaten to snap your spine or otherwise make some horrible nag.  The minute I sealed last night's letter ( almost ), I received 3 letters from you.  I want to say one more thing about that Frances episode and then I'll drop it.  I am ready to be friends with her again anytime.  I really do like her.  Don't blame yourself for telling me about what she said.  I've heard enough of her vitreous vindictiveness so that I was not shocked by it.  Neither was I hurt by it.  I was annoyed.  But even that reaction lasted only a few minutes - until I analyzed her behavior clinically.  The reason why I said, "Fuck her" even after I had analyzed her behavior was that suddenly I was sick of being Gulliver looking from the mountaintop at all those innumerable Goddamn Lilliputions.  I'd like just once to be tried by a jury of my peers.  You are right when you say that I am capable of being hurt - but not more than "once" a very long time ago.  Now she is capable only of annoying me.  That is not bravado - it is true.  In all fairness to Frances, I hurt her first.  Deeply and irrevocably.  It is a wonder that any semblance of friendship still exists between us.  Perhaps it no longer does.  I'm too tired of her Typhoo to care.

      If you ever did hurt me Sally, I would know it was unintentional.  I think a comprehensive care study of inveterate liars would probably show that many of them are people who are aware of the sensitivities of other people and lie to spare them.  Really cruel people seldom lie - they take too much pleasure from causing unpleasantness.  And anyway there is only one area in the world in which I am capable of being hurt by you and that is by being rejected by you in a callous manner.  It wouldn't even hurt me if you were to tell me that you were in love with someone else - not permanently hurt me I mean, as long as you did it in the right way.  What ever that means.

     Don't ever apologize about your vocabulary darling, you express yourself beautifully in your letters.  You are the only person I know who does have a decent vocabulary outside of Bro.  You're also one of the few people I write to without hesitating before I use a certain word.  I have never found your vocabulary to be lacking at all.
    
I laughed very hard at your description of people who say they don't want to drive then never speak to you again because you wouldn't let them drive.  The world is rampant with people who never seem to have listened to their own conversations.  Forgive the disloyalty to my own sex, but irrelevancies (usually used as final proof of an argument) are the unmatchable forte of the female mind.  God knows I don't know why.  But I stopped arguing or even discussing things with most women a very long time ago.  I had to laugh though when you painted such a well-known portrait of the female mind.  My roommate last year and my blessed mother are the gold medal holders in that pattern of argument.  It is so frustrating that I want dearly to backhand them across the mouth because certainly no rational approach would effect any result short of further tearing of my hair.  I would like to take this opportunity of saying that driving is an ordeal for me.  I do it when I have to, or when the other person is tired, but in much the same spirit as I help my mother with the laundry.  I will drive cheerfully when you get tired.  Please don't over tire yourself to spare me, but rest assured that I will never stop speaking to you because you wouldn't let me.  In fact, every day that passes on that trip that has no seen me behind the driver's wheel will be a cause for self-congratulation.  If I ever stop talking to you at the end of the day because you wouldn't let me drive, you may crack every one of my cervical vertebrae in half.  Anyway, even if I liked to drive, I would just ask you to let me.  If I ever get mad at you seriously enough to stop talking to you for hours, you can rest assured that the cause was something more serious than that you wouldn't let me use your roller skates.  I'll just crack your back open and take your roller skates when I want them.

     I must bring up one little thing about egregious gregariousness.  When I first get out of this hole here to a place where there are many raccoons I react in the same manner (and for the same reason) as one who has been in solitary confinement for 22 years.  For instance, if you met me in Hawaii I'll probably be crazy to hit all the bars with Gene, Marian and you the second I got off the plane.  I have this reaction only because the length of time I've spent being the only member of my species over here.  After 2 or 3 days I would calm down.  Other than that brief period it will always be 50 -50 between us.  Tell me if this offends you.

Love  C. 
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                          

March 23, 1964

Dear Sally,

     As you can see by flipping over to the flaps, your cretin girl friend can't keep her mind on anything and began this letter on the wrong side.  I have come to the conclusion today that I have never really given one good shit about anybody in my life before you.  Or if I have ever been in love before, it lasted 5 minutes.  I think this because today I have been visited every once in a while by the panicky thought that I am being unfair to you in wanting to take the extra few weeks in the Pacific this summer.  It must be love because were it anyone else I have ever thought I was in love with, the only visitations I would be having would be grave misgivings that  I hadn't lied sufficiently enough to be convincing.  You know I'm getting so much better about that that I have even improved with other people.  It's absolutely amazing how much easier it is to tell the truth.  However, I think to apply this to some one with whom one is emotionally involved would still be a difficult thing for me because I am ready to grant that others do not care what you say, they are unlikely to cause a scene unless they are nuts.  But once some one has a hook in you they seem to think this gives them a right to nag.  Oh, who cares? 

     Anyway, I just wanted you to know that I am still discovering things about life in general and me in particular which I doubt I would have discovered without you.  Maybe, now that you have opened the door for me there is even a modicum of hope for maturity that after 33 years of emotional arrestation, even I may be on the road to emotional normalcy.

     I have had a very interesting day today.  I have spoken not a word of English except to Saggam, and even that name is Farsi.  The school janitor and I cleaned out some of the closets together.  He doesn't speak one Molly-hopping word of English so my abominable Farsi got a real workout.  I didn't realize until Dorothy came down here to play for our operetta that I throw a tremendous amount of little words in French into my Farsi conversations.  She studied at a conservatory of music in Paris for a year (slap her face) because she at one time intended to  become a concert pianist.  She lived with a family there and consequently speaks French like a Frenchman (with a Tennessee accent), I hasten to assure her everytime she corrects my French.  I say whole sentences of tear-inspiring Farsi, it's so beautiful, but for some inexplicable reason I am wont to say "et" for "and" or maintenant for "now".  Actually, in most cases, such as the latter, the word in Farsi is easier than the word in French.  And I don't even realize that I'm doing it.  However, Miss "Two-tuffy-two" admits that she has the same trouble.  I'm glad.  She got the above name the other night in the Abadan bar when we were doing our little pianist-director farce for everyone.  There were 3 Englishmen sitting at the table with us and one is quite a good pianist himself.  Dorothy was in the midst of a, I must admit even though I am the butt of it, very funny story about a song from the Mikado that I really had the timing screwed up on.  So she told Peet-ah the story and he said quite admonishingly to Dorothy …"Why didn't you sit Caroline (I haven't heard my name pronounced correctly since I left the USA) down and teach her the way all the great British conductors count--two, tuffy-two, tuffy-two".  Well, by the time I envisioned Sir Malcolm Sargeant conducting the Royal Philharmonic Orchestrqa in Triston Und Isolde by counting "two-tuffy-two's" to himself, I was beyond another serious thought ever.  In fact, everybody at the table screamed with laughter.  Even Dorothy who had never had such a workout in her life as she had that night trying to follow Sir Malcolm Copeland's conducting.  I guess she deserved some kind of Pulitzer prize for indefatigable concentration that night.  There was one minute in that operetta that I would gladly give $1000 to have had recorded though.  The 8-year old (stet) dramatic soprano came running out on stage for her great melodramatic aria (stet) about 16 pages too soon.  Dorothy, in one of her truly delighted moments that night, quickly flipped the 16 pages and whispered  "Let's go on".  "Like hell", I said a bit too loudly.  "I taught all that music and by Christ they're going to sing it".  So with that, I calmy flipped her score back to the right place and walked up to the stage, stopped everything, and told Della to go back off and listen for her cue.  Preferrably, the correct one this time.  I then walked back to the piano and we started from where we had left off.  All this took place within a very few seconds you must understand.  Dorothy was very bitter but launched off anyway into the next thundering 12-finger arpegio which only God could describe the result of:  If she played one note in it right, I'd be very surprised.  Talk about Jonathan Edwards.  Christ.  She finished and put her head for one split second against the score and laughed.  Well naturally that broke me up too and for just maybe 3 seconds we laughed very loudly then immediately recovered ourselves and continued the operetta.  Afterward, we were sitting in the bar here at the Golf Club where the production was given.  There was a huge crowd of parents there and one was reading aloud the notice of a trio which was to appear later in the week.  The man reading aloud the notice of a trio which was to appear later in the week.  The man reading the notice got as far as pianist and soprano" then faltered.  His wife popped right out disdainful of him because he couldn't pronounce a simple word like cellist!  I'm not kidding.  Dorothy turned to me without blinking an eye and said "It's a relief anyway to know tht no one in the audience was capable of hearing any of my unfortunate apergios"  It was a very funny night.

     I see I am facing the start of my letter upside down.  That is very disconcerting so I'll close after one little nag.  You're going to have a disconcerting so I'll close after.  You're going to have a dison  
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 March 13, 1964

Good evening darling -

     Our  storm here has finally subsided but the heat is still coming on strong.  I have spent today hunting for curtain material for the operetta in the bazaar.  We finally found some cheap shit and Emily and I have been sewing it by hand like frantic slaves.  Still have a long way to go but I'm sure we'll make it on time.  I took a break to forward my house mothering by making some applesauce and baking a cake.  When it cools, I'm going to put some mother's fucking chocolate icing on it. 

     Saggam is writhing in contrition with a smarting ass under Emily's bed at the moment.  We just had a little scene about what (if indeed anyone), was going to eat out of garbage pails.  As is usual with that molly hopper, she received one dire threat in the form of a sharp "no" and the newspaper pounded on the object  - I turned around one second later and she was doing it again.  My mother would have been proud of me could she have heard me screaming wrathfully at the top of my lungs "God damn kids turn right around and defy me !"  as I reached for the newspaper, Saggam got 2 good ones before running for cover.  That little bastard.

     Well, I got away another month with only the mild nagger cramps.  I wish I knew what made the difference.  Christ I'd never stop doing whatever it was.  Tomorrow launches the last week of school in this semester.  During the 2 week holiday I'm going to try to accustom Saggam to the leash.  As it is she just lies down and refuses to move when I put it on her.  You can see her Middle Eastern ancestry coming out in her in that reacation.  She offers no fight, no resistance, no attempt to free herself - she just lies down.  I attempted to entice her with pieces of meat and that worked to some extent, but at best she will take only a few steps, then down she goes again.  The book definitely says to be patient and not attempt force as all dogs fear the restriction no matter what their reactions, it's some form of fear.  Saggam tried to run once in that leash and realized she couldn't and then just plopped her fat ass down with the "OK, you win, Sister, but look at all the good it's going to do you."  During the vacation, I'll have time to really put the screws on her.  She long ago found out that if she can just out wait me, she's got it knocked.  The pig.

     Darling do you realize that I am within a couple of weeks of hearing from the SUI English Department.  I really won't be too disappointed if I don't get an appointment because I have enough money to go through on my own financially if I take it easy, but it would be a big morale booster to get something "offa them" as Sheila would say (referring to how much money she can screw any poor man out of.  The trouble with me is that I cannot do office work.  I neither have the necessary skills, nor do I know how to spell well enough !.  You'd be surprised what a drawback that is.  I once held a job in the editorial department of a magazine but it was primarily as a re-writer, not once did I find anything spelled wrong.  (I'll bet that doesn't surprise you.)  My job required a college degree in
English (or related fields) and the job consisted only of re-writing scientific articles, checking facts, etc. and generally making sense out of the most embroiled sentences and paragraphs one human ever laid eyes on.  For some reason no one ever suggested that I correct any misspelled words.  I'm glad.  Anyway, I brought that up because if I ever have to get a part-time job, it has to be as a waitress or latrine cleaner because I can't do secretarial work.  So if I didn't have a little money of my own, or a university appointment, I'd be faced with "Hamburger John's" again.  I'm really too old for that nonsense.

     I'm looking forward to getting some mail tomorrow.  I'm going to have to miss 3 nights of writing to you because of this operetta but I'll make it up by writing several long letters during the coming holidays.  In fact while I've got the leash on Saggam and she's refusing to budge, I can probably whip off a novel or two.  We'll see who can wait longer by Christ.  "No stinking kid is going to make a misery out of my life"  Guess who the quote honors?

     Well darling, I'm going to whip off some chocolate frosting now so Emily can devour the whole thing when she comes home tonight and lose 5 pounds on it while I watch and gain 20.

     I love you sweetheart.

          Carolyn

    March 6, 1964

Good evening world -

     It is 8:30 p.m. in Agha Jari a ce moment ci, and as I am house mother for March, (one down, one to go - that's Emily I'm referring to), I must show a little enthusiasm as  my dear mother would say, and bake something.  Therefore I looked in my recipe book and found a red devil's cake mixture.  It has the fewest number of ingredients that we can't get, so I have decided on that.  The good old faithful sun blazed into the low 90's today.  This does not portend well for April, May and June let me tell you.  Two more weeks of school and the 2nd term shall have finished.  I find that very exciting as that is just about the 2/3rds mark in this particular vale of  tears.

     I am trying to  think of something light hearted to say in face of the fact that the last 4 days have seen me mail-less.  My natural tendency in these situations is to look for someone to nag but I promised the doctor I wouldn't do that anymore.  I am even more bitter than ever about not receiving that letter from you now that you tell me there was gum in it.   On my last day here, I am going to walk into the mail office here, slap every face in it, and without saying a word, walk out to my waiting taxi  and drive to the airport.

     I want you to be on the look out for March 16th.  On that auspicious day, my remaining sentence reaches 100 days.  I shall finally have attained the last of the 3-place numbers.  Yes, sometimes life does have some more jolly aspects to it.

                                Five million hours later !

     Fuck the Red Devil Cake.  It took me 1 1/2 hours just to mix the ingredients !  Of course it's not entirely the fault of the recipe.  I guess they didn't count on folks who have to start by mixing the powdered milk, then making it sour, or folks who have to make their own chocolate (cocoa and butter melted together).  Jesus, maybe I'll apply for a job at General Mills when I return.  I wish you could see our kitchen.  Yestgerday afternoon Mohamid came screaming and wailing for the day off.  Plus today which is his ordinary day off so no one has done the dishes for 2 days.  I just completed the devastation with this cake crap.  Poor Mo.  I confidently expect to see him jump from the roof onto his camel a la Douglas Fairbanks and ride off across the desert to  wherever it is that Arabs ride when they see too much  work piled up for them to do.  That Molly Hopper better get back here soon.  He promised to return this afternoon and didn't.  I hate people who take advantage of other folks.  Oh, so what?

     I spent 10 hours today transposing the entire finale to that fucking Mikado.  I had to do it or continue to  watch the purple faces with bulging eyes of children valiantly struggling for a note out of the range of Joan Sutherland, let alone 3rd graders.  Ah, what I go through just to have something to do.  I occasionally bite off more than I can chew.  The bitch of course is the sudden necessity to put this farce on 6 weeks ahead of time.  I must say it has made the last few weeks run past me almost too fast for theatrical excellence but boy will things come to a crashing stop when this is over (March 17).

     There is no drinkable water within 5,000 miles of us because that bastard Arab didn't come back when he was supposed to.  By Christ, the south had it's Jim Crow and Agha Jari is fast producing an Arab Jim Crow in me.  I envy Simon La Gree his whip at this point.  It's not funny when you're dying for a drink of water and you were just nice enough to give your water boy the day off and you open the refrigerator door and find not one ounce of water.  That is not a tragedy to anyone not living in a place where the ice water begins with filling the tea kettle, boiling it for one hour, then cooling it, filling the water bottles and letting it get cold.  The process involves about 5 hours.  Thanks a lot Mo.

     I hope your math course has straightened itself out at least somewhat now.  I know it's a bastard to have a course that makes you panicky all the time.  Never will I ever be able to explain how much I'm looking forward to coming home and living with you.  If there is any creator of this universe, She will make the time remaining go by quickly.  I am amazed really at how fast these past few weeks have gone, so I guess I shouldn't complain if the next 15 1/2 kind of drag.  I must keep reminding myyself that there were once 45 1/2.  Constant attention to life's little positives has got many a good person through.  One of the phrases on a crossword puzzle I was doing earlier said "A Raccoon's Cousin".  What the hell is that?

     Darling, I'm sorry this letter hasn't been more cheery or interesting but we both know we'll make up for it this summer with lots of  conversation and relaxation together.  Please let me know if you sent away for that furniture buying brochure.

     I love you

    C
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                     

 March 3, 1964

Dear Sally -

     Poor Emily wasn't skinny enough!  Last night at 3 a.m.,  she was rushed to the hospital with acute food poisoning.  It was just one of those freakish miracles that saved me from getting it too, as we usually both eat together and therefore get the same things.  The only thing in the past 48 hours that she has eaten that I didn't was some baloney.  We had it for lunch yesterday but there was some left over meat loaf from the night before and I ate that rather than baloney.  Poor Emily devoured the baloney because we are able to get it only infrequently.  She was literally carried out on a stretcher,  screaming and writhing and  vomiting in every  direction.  I have never seen anyone in such mortal agony.  I honestly thought she was going to die.  That poor little girl doesn't deserve that.  She is much better today and came home from the hospital because there weren't  enough beds in this one and she didn't want to be transferred by camel to the other hospital some 20 miles from here.  I threw the rest of that million dollar baloney out.  I expect  to see 25 dead cats lined up by the garbage pail in the morning.

        I still have not received the letter with the gum from you.  But I still have not received other little things like my December bank statement, etc.  Things go along smoothly in the mail department for weeks on end, then suddenly the inexplicable hiatus in magazines, or bank statements.  Christ knows what happens to them.  Perhaps they go down in plane crashes or something.  I don't know.

     I'm really beginning to get panicky about the operetta now.  Only 2 more weeks exactly and on the boards it goes.  Boy, will that audience be playing "Here we come, ready or not" with us.

     I'll never be able to tell you completely, how much I appreciate your reassurances about whatever it happens to be at the moment, that I need reassurance in.  I got your letter today in which you assured me about never making love "just for me."  It's awesome how you seem to know just how to reassure me.  It's also wonderful.

     Don't worry about the recent references  to sex that your letters have contained.  My eyes have misted over a few times and I've lost all mental continuity and awareness, but it really hasn't caused any undo physical hardship that wasn't already present.  A few statements like it not being polite to  talk with one's mouth full have left me in the same condition the little African boy and his pet tiger were in at the end of the original black Sambo story.  Did you read that story when you were a kid?  Little Black Sambo was chasing his tiger around in circles in the hot African sun and they began to run faster and faster and faster until they finally disappeared and all that was left was a yellow puddle with brown and black stripes across it.  I don't know why, but that story fascinated me at age 4 or so.  Anyway, when I read your very  sexy letter,  all that was left where I had been standing was a fat brownish puddle with gold streaks  across it (she tints her hair, you know).

     While on the subject of things not to worry about, please be assured that I sincerely mean it when I say there is nothing else.  Believe me there isn't.  Also, believe me when I say I would tell you were there.  I can understand your wondering because I do myself.  That is, I am very aware that you have as yet to tell me anything I do that gets on your nerves, or that you find you could not adjust to.  I can hope you'd tell me, for the same reasons that you ask me to tell you anything further.  I believe that the greatest percentage of my faults probably lies in my unfortunate propensity for arrogance.  Anyway it's the most often criticized one.  I believe my arrogance is simply hostility.  Out of all the possible ways extant in which to express  hostility, people who have never lacked self confidence sometimes display hostility in arrogance.  In my world as a child, self confidence was the only alternative to non-existence.  You know the old, "it's alright if nobody loves you, I love you" that one sometimes plays with oneself.  But I can well imagine that my autobiography has been received by you so many times that not one second of the story is missing, so I will go on to other things now.

     For instance, 16 weeks from tomorrow,  I kiss Southern Iran, and the Middle East  good-bye forever.

     There's a happy thought.  I might tell you also, that in the past I've never had any problems with crossword  puzzles but I'm having a mother of a time with that book you sent me.  I suddenly realized why tonight I've never worked them without an excellent speller roaming around the house somewhere.  You can't imagine how incalculably fucked up I can get a crossword  puzzle with that little cross I bear in spelling.  Emily is almost as bad except that she possesses  that enviable quality of being able to select the right spelling out of several wrong ones.  However for the most part someone else has to hit on the right one for her.  I on the other hand can stare at both "sweet and sweat" for hours and never be able to tell you which one (if either) is related to  sugar.  As a teacher, I'm a fraud. 

     Please write darling.

     I love you.

     Don't worry about anything.

     Love

     Carolyn
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                       

   February 29, 1964

Hello darling -

     Dig that date !  Tomorrow is March 1st !  I expect that March will fly by as my operetta goes on March 17, and from March 18th at 2:30 p.m. we are off until April 4th.  I'm going to spend a few days in Abadan with fat Nina then return to good old Agha jari for the rest of the vacation.  Jesus.  It looks as though this molly hopping year might even pass eventually.  It makes me feel as though it will anyway because report cards come out again on March 18th.  We give them out 3 times a year, so this must mean we are a short way from being 2/3rds over. 

     Another teacher threw in the towel as of March 18th.  They don't go for that too much, when you pull that on them for some unbelievable reason.  I guess I told you my resignation was accepted "with regret" and that they are paying me through August 18th, which I adore at these prices.  As of a few days ago, I am the proud possessor of $2500 in my two savings accounts.  Too bad this isn't a decent job - the pay isn't hard to take at all.  But I've really had it with children.  I've had 7 years of them, and Christ that's enough.  I'm sick to death of children.  Did I tell you that I can't get distemper shots for Miss Greentree here?  I hope to Allah she doesn't get it before I can get her to the USA and the shots for it.

     If I send her home, I'll send her as late as possible in June so that she won't be on your neck too long before I get there, and also so that she won't be without her fat mother for too long.  I don't know Sally.  Listen, my gorgeous darling, if I come home this summer and find you completely transformed by all this attention from men into a thorough girl, I'll clean up the joint.  Now I suppose I'll have to change into a boy!  Naturally my kids couldn't do anything right.

     I'm sure you'll be happy to know that I have been in the best of health for the past few days.  The temperature has climbed to the low 80's now - in preparation for the longest, hottest, mothering last 14 weeks that anyone could face, I'll wager.  Mother of God protect us from April 1st on.  Incidentally, if you have any questions or moot points you would like a lengthy discussion of an intellectual nature, please submit them before April 1st.  forget human intelligence (mine at least) when the temperature zooms over the 100 mark which it does here quite nicely by April 1st thank you.

     By May, it's in the 120's as a daily average.  Then we get the 130's.  Then you can really forget Carolyn until June 25th when she lands her fat carcass in Europe.  Sixteen and 1/2 weeks to go until then my skinny beloved.  It was once 44 !  That means that 4/11 of the time remains.  That (to folks who write thin master's theses in arithmetic) - is slightly under 1/3.

     You might find it interesting from the view point of medical history that I have a case of the wiggles that would vie successfully with any dog in heat.  Have you ever seen anyone with severe wiggle-itise try the only humane thing and fail at it?  Until you have, you may keep your comparisons to yourself, Missy.

     In about one more month, I can begin to plan my trip home!  Summer schedules come out around April 1st - at least the airlines do.  I'm going to try for a London to Chicago flight.  I don't know whether there be such a thing but they have them from Copenhagen to Dallas, London to Las Angeles etc.  Maybe there is a London to Chicago flight.  I hope so.  That would save hours in that fucking Idlewild waiting for a Chicago flight.  Jesus, I wish I could go Agha Jari - Iowa City but I'm afraid both places come under Talulah Bankhead:  wonderful category of "Places known only to God and Rand McNally.  Well say a little prayer for Persian Gulf Desert inhabitants as the brief winter period draws to a close.  You'll be happy to know that March 21st brings in the year 1343 to the Islamic world.  That makes it about right.  They are just about exactly 621 years behind the western world.  (Had I written that on a postcard, I could have beaten this letter home.)

     OK, so sit down and write your fat pen pal a letter this minute.  She's very lonesome - wants to do it with one tall grey haired skinny girl__, boy___ (check one).

     I love you darling,

    Carolyn
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                               . 

  February 27, 1964

     Oh you great big screaming, hulking, beautiful, magnificent, gorgeous creature!  I got your present yesterday afternoon!  You darling!  I'm wildly in love with you.  Wildly!  Wildly, I say.  You couldn't possibly have sent me anything more desirable lest it be Sally Ruth (pretty girl) O'Brien.  Pardon me darling but I would laugh myself unto death if a big stomping butch were to stalk you in your present beautiful condition.  Now I suppose I've created some kind of Frankenstein's monster and every handsome one in the world will come up to me in bars and knock elbows into my ribs and say "Hey buddy, do you mind if I dance with your girl?"  I'll cry.  I suppose I told you that that actually happened to me with Ginny one night.  Oh, the incalculable bitters.  That's all I get, I suppose.

     I have never seen anything arrive with better timing.  It was Wednesday around 4 p.m.  That you will remember is the beginning of the Moslem weekend and although I have an English class at 5:00-6:30 Wednesday, there is still the 2:30-5:00 period in which heech kari prevails (nothing to do).  So now I have something which will last awhile.  You're Miss Endsville.  I had the sexiest dream about you last night.  Sally, I want to re-impress what I have already said about that.  Our future together is important enough to me to return your intelligent handling of my requests by doing the same with yours.  I cannot see that one week in Europe cannot be borne through without looking for sex.  I realize now the real importance of this to you; Therefore, I couldn't enjoy a brief sexual encounter in Europe during that period when I know what a difference not doing it would make to you and therefore to us.  Actually, I have survived the worst part of it, timewise, and I know that it will not represent a great sacrifice on my part.  Even if it did represent a great sacrifice it will still come under the heading of a sacrifice made to insure one's own future happiness.  In that light, I would have to be a cretin not to see the advantages of passing up a one night stand now in return for the proper start any relationship worth having has to get off to.  And anyway darling, just the way in which you asked me, the way in which you were so unselfish and un-self centered as to eventually conclude that it would be alright if I did, made me realize (if I hadn't before) that it was not your ego asking me but your love for me.  It all proved irresistible and besides you didn't blink an eye when I made a rather presumptuous request of you a little while ago.  Anything I can do to insure our getting off on the right foot this summer, is something I want to do.  I gladly and with all my heart, honor your request that I wait for you in every sense of the word.  Christ, these things are difficult enough to make-work without willfully doing something that would make it even more difficult.  I love you very much Sally for telling me how much this would mean to you.  Far from being presumptuous, it is in a way almost your duty (pardon the presumption of that word)- to tell me because withholding things like that can make all the rest of the work I would put into the success of our relationship a waste of effort.  I am all too aware of how something can eat away inside a person - even the person who is trying to allow something not to make any difference.  I also promise you from the bottom of my heart that I would never sink so low as to have a one night stand and then not tell you about it in the "name of our love."  That's just cowardly.  I promise you that it won't happen.  If I break the promise that is bad enough - I won't compound the evil by lying about it.  That's a promise I won't break.

     I am so panicky about the "Mikado" that I have called a 4-hour rehearsal for the 1st act this afternoon.  Then next weekend I'll call a 4-hour rehearsal of the 2nd act.  The following weekend I'll call a 4-hour rehearsal for the whole operetta.  I now have a 9-year old boy playing the lead.  The French boy just didn't work out so Georges and I are going (really) to translate the entire operetta into French and give it again, in French, in late May or so.  This solves my heech kari problem for the rest of the 3rd term.  Pretty good, what?

     I had to take an awfully firm step with Saggam today.  It almost broke me apart, but it had to be done.  She is a Persian sheep dog (they are about medium poodle size).  And they unfortunately have been bred through generations to snap at the heels of moving objects.  Well, Sara at age 4 months had begun to show the signs of this.  The poor thing was only doing what her ancestors have been bred for generations to do, but it's the last thing to pull on me, who has been terrified of dogs for generations.  Well, I went by the book for days, calling sharply "NO!" when she did it.  Nothing worked.  Not even the follow-up of the daily news across the ass.  Today I think I won the battle, but only by means of nauseating brutality.  She runs like hell toward you then takes a swipe at your bare ankle with bared teeth.  It not only scares me when she does it, but it hurts.  So I went outside with her with my trusty rolled-up daily news and the next time she did it, I caught her full force while she was running, just after the ankle slash right squarely across the face.  In fact, it was so hard that she was knocked off her feet.  Fancy a giant, catching you full force across the face with a rolled up newspaper.  It wouldn't do any damage, but it would sting like hell.  I'm here to tell you she didn't do it again.  Maybe she'll forget the lesson and do it tomorrow - but she seems to remember things learned through the teaching aid of the daily newspaper.  She doesn't eat shoes any more or shit in the house, so maybe she got the picture today about slashing folk's ankles with bared fangs, but it falls short of endearment.  That cute little trick may endear her breed to Arab Shepherds but it falls short of endearment to lovely girl raccoons.  If it didn't teach her today, she'll get it again tomorrow I'm afraid.

     I love you Sally.

     Carolyn