JOURNAL EXCERPT: May 29, Mon. 1978 at 9:50 PM

"The date Fri. night that T. set me up with didn't work out. T. said C., the girl I was supposed to be with, was being a bitch about the whole thing. I agree, but what can I say? C. is seeing an ex-preacher or maybe he still is a preacher, who's wife is a lesbian, so C. fucks him. The guy was possibly going to drop by the bar we were at, which was ridiculous because C. was supposed to be with me. I kind of ignored her most of the time she was there, because I had a bad impression of her before I ever met her. C. left and T., D., Todd's date and I went to another bar to play backgammon. I felt totally out of place, but fortunately, I was too drunk to worry about it. T. and D. were displaying signs of affection while I was sitting there like some kind of fool. As it turns out, T. may move in with D., who's 24, while T. is only 20. D. might try and set me up with someone next, but somehow I don't think so. I'm tired of being set up. So much for that."

MANHOOD REDO: I've never really understood dating, probably because I'm reluctant to play the role expected of my gender. And I'm not referring to some 1950s-60s scenario where you rush out of the car to open her door. The show "Mad Men" on AMC seems to suggest that those platitudes and pleasantries were largely superficial, spiked with an undercurrent of misogyny and betrayal - at least in the world of ad men.

When I was in high school, R., a junior when I was a senior, came running out of the school to tell me and a few other guys that he'd told L., a cheerleader in his class he was going out with and someone I went out with a year later, that he "loved" her. It was clear that he only said it for "effect," meaning he didn't really love her; he wanted her to think that he loved her so that she would be enamoured with him. His statement to her befuddled me. At 18, I knew I didn't know what the hell it meant to love someone, was pretty sure he didn't know, and had no idea how long it would take for me to know.

Abby and I never really dated in any official sense. There's a stigma against romantic involvement between friends - too much like a brother/sister relationship, not enough fire, I suppose. But friendship's always been at the base of our connection. I just like hanging out with her. We do that a lot.

JOURNAL EXCERPT: May 5, Fri. 1978

"I am at work, standing by the ramp. J. B., the only woman country truck driver, walks up to me. I didn't feel like talking to anyone.

"'Hey, Pat,' she says. 'I was gonna bring you some paperbacks tonight, but I forgot about 'em.'

"I think I said, 'Really?'

"'I went into my bedroom to get 'em, and I forgot what I went in there foar when I got there. There was these paperbacks on the dresser.'

"I couldn't think of anything to say.

"W. W., another truck driver, said, 'I'm glad to see I'm not the only one that does that.'

"'I don't do it all the time, ' J. says. 'But I went in there and forgot what I went in there foar. I'll bring 'em sometime.'

"I still couldn't think of anything to say.

"She walks off."

MANHOOD REDO: This excerpt seems like a follow up to the previous one where I tried to tape country truck drivers talking on the Avalanche Journal newspaper dock without them knowing it, only instead of recording on a cassette, I'm recording the conversation on paper from memory. Like a number of journal entries, this one's a little embarrassing to read, partly because of the "foar," which appears twice and sticks out like a sore thumb. It more than anything else takes the dialogue in a direction I would avoid now, playing as it does on the stereotypes of hillbilly dialect that signal a lack of education. In my memory J. was just about as nice as could be, always thinking of others, as this excerpt suggests, and yet what I wrote seems to carry some unspoken disdain for her. Replace the "foar" with "for" and I think you have dialogue that's more internally consistent and coherent - and less judgmental.

Not only do I think the above journal excerpt has to do with the insecurities of my own newly found desire to be "educated" (I had dropped out of college after the second year and reapplied for admission to Texas Tech University just a little over a week before I wrote down the conversation), it probably had something to do with the fact that J. was the only female country truck driver. She worked in a very masculine world and held her own, but to my my twenty-something self she always seemed a little out of place, providing me with another reason to dismiss her.

I never bothered to find out why she was working on the grave yard shift driving miles and miles by herself most nights of the week delivering bundles of newspapers to small towns in the region around Lubbock.

My loss.