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2001-01-10 I miss Martha Stewart at 9 AM�I miss the reason to get up, amid much else. Working at home, I miss the times I�d find my morning�s inspiration in her strong, blunt-nailed hands, always working�I miss the way I�d sometimes even have to catch my breath, so powerfully was I inspired.
Now my days are filled entirely with the �NFL Murder Trial� of Rae Carruth, which I play non-stop on Court TV behind me while I sit at my computer and do my work and e-mail it back to the city and engage in all the other nonsense I do. Today, during my frequent breaks on this dull-ish day, with testimony done and closing arguments not until tomorrow, I fell to embellishing a daydream about being falsely arrested and imprisoned for the brutal murder of my long-ago ex-girlfriend Liat. Although this daydream�in which I exhibit saintly jailhouse behavior, grow alarmingly thin in the face, and am stabbed (by the real killer�s crack-addicted pawn) but live�is little more than an excuse to fantasize about displaying the true beauty of my personality through the interviews I�ll give on Court TV, I have also been aware of it as a private tale about the guilt I feel for not staying in better touch with Liat over the past few years.
Guilt, as well as other lingering hard feelings. The case against me in the daydream is drawn almost entirely from the testimony of witnesses (our mutual lesbian friends and a selection of newcomers, their lovers and others, all gathered at a weekend house party in Provincetown one summer soon, when I have become successful), every one of whom mentions to the police the viciously critical tone in which Liat will have addressed me in the hours before her death�this is plausible�and my defense is that I didn�t let it bother me, that I rose above, and went to bed, alone (of course)�that I forgave (of course)�and rose at dawn to bicycle to town for bagels, and never saw a thing.
Since this sporadic daydream first appeared inside my head last year, I�ve never been too clear about the real murderer or motive�I�d settled on a greasy-haired drifter, life insurance, and an obscurely powerful Eastern Massachusetts lesbian political cabal behind the works. As I say, the point was the fantasy interviews, jailhouse with Clara, post-trial with Nancy and Rikki and June. But today, when I set to embellishing, I finally got it�Liat�s killer is another woman in the house that weekend, and her motive is her jealousy of me. I have cracked the case wide open�framed, for writing well.
Now I hope that tomorrow I may start a new and more pleasant daydream.