Dear DisGUSting Gus:
No Valentine for Kim? What a turd! Let me put a NEW word in your vocabulary: ROMANCE! Take a look out your window. Do you see the ocean? Well thats how BIG your ego IS! All I ever hear is ME ME ME out of you. What about Kim's feelings? Why can't you put her first for a change? Let Kim talk! I wanna hear Kim's story! I think she deserves a big fat gold piece of jewelry for putting up with you. You're funny, and I enjoy reading your journal, but in the love department (by love I mean feelings, NOT SEX) you're a big ZERO!

PAM

This is something Kim wrote in response to something Nancy Firedrake sent to my mailing list.

Nancy, I am writing to you today because I need to express myself in this caddy ring of writer's intellects. Firstly, I admire you and I have no negative feelings toward you. I even feel close to you for some reason. As Gus has expressed I too believe you are an amazingly talented, intelligent, and sensitive writer. The type of woman other women can look up to.

The pain that I am feeling today is so intense. I have never felt so taken for granted, slayed, and then displayed for all to observe. I can't even write to Gus about how I feel. I am actually an extremely loving, caring, creative soul. When I met Gus I really did fall in love. I had no idea he would be writing about our interactions. I didn't meet him online as you did. I met him in the honest fresh air of non-cyberspace. The space where I did not believe big brother to be lurking. I now feel eaten up, spit out, and pissed on. I think it is so ironic that Gus, who claims to value privacy so dearly, ejaculates his whole life on the internet. Kim the antagonist, controlling girlfriend, blah blah blah. Our life is so incredibly different than how he portrays it. He outright lies at times. For example, there was no waded up toilet paper in the fridge. I have no idea why he concocts these things.

I know I have faults. I grew up an only child with an abusive mother. I have insecurities that manifest in jealousy. I am willing to work on these types of issues. If one is truly in love as Gus tells me he is, then two people should try to work together. LIfe is too short for such pettiness. How can I ever trust him?

I just realized for the first time I won't be able to ever trust him. He is completely addicted to his online "self promotion," which is bloodthirsty in tone. I'm not sure if you degrade your husband as he degrades me. Most likely not. Gus is living a lie. He reminds me of the Wizard in The W of Oz. Just don't pull the curtain back too quickly.

I realize that you have a wonderful relationship with him and I do not want to diminish that. I wish I had the relationship that you have, editor, confidante, etc. . .You truly know the breadth of his intellect. But just imagine for a moment living with him day to day. At first you would be two powerful artistic souls joining forces, quite romantic. But then the nature of the beast would manifest. You too would become an antagonist. He can't step outside it. He needs it to promote himself, to define himself. Anyone who has ever spent any duration with him ends up being exhausted by his antics.

The fact that there is a whole mailing list that is getting informaton about my life makes me sick. My so called partner that tells me he loves me every night is shitting on me religiously. Concealing. Lying.

Nancy, I apologize for this long winded email. Please post my feelings to this community that I feel so involved with yet alienated from. The Gus and I will be friends from here on out. I have my dignity as a human being that I need to embrace. The scattered abuse through my life pales in comparison to this type of betrayal. I welcome any advice. KBstarr (yes ugh) @aol.com

With fondness, Kim

Finally, this is Kim's tale of her trip yesterday to the astrologer, among other things:

February 23, 1999 A Trip to the Astrologer (otherwise known as Kim's first journal entry)

Upset about my recent affairs with The Gus, I went to the neighborhood astrologer for insight. Timothy was the person I was to meet with. He greeted me at the colorful carved wood doors in front of his office. He was a handsome man, slightly scruffy with beautiful green eyes, a weathered wool cap sat perched on his head. I got the impression that he had a long history with the oracle in Ocean Beach. A teacher among teachers.

His cozy office had that pleasant ramshackled look. The sun filtered in shining the needed accents on his array of crystals and metallic dragon miniatures. Books on magic were piled up in the corner. A small sitting area with three chairs and a small wooden table sat juxtaposed in a front of the window. A large desk and a computer, faced the sitting area. "Please sit down", he said.

"When and where were you born?" Six, thirty, seventy, at four forty, in Wyandotte, Michigan. From that informaton, he printed out my natal chart on the computer. He then came and sat a close but comfortable distance opposite me. There was just a small wooden table and the tarot deck between us. Before I shuffled the deck, marked Brotherhood of Light, he looked at my physical form. He asked if it was ok to work on the pain in my pelvic area. Shit, I wasn't expecting this type of insight.

Taking you back in time, I was diagnosed with endometriosis and treated with surgery three times for endometriosis back in 92 ' 93'. It still gives me pain but on a brighter note, has given me cosmic understanding. My umbilical cord was enshrouded in tissue and discovered in surgery. What this all means I do not know but the surgeon had never seen anything like it.

After the delicate procedure of separating the tarot deck, my reading began. My session was to only last 20 minutes. At the end of the session I looked up to see I had been in Timothy's office for two hours. The tarot revealed a card of eight swords. Timothy said this card in other decks shows the eight swords penetrating into the human form. "Do you have heartache?", he asked. Oh yes, my heart is quite broken up, which the cards plainly revealed. "What is your question", asked Timothy. My main question was about my relationship with The Gus and where it was going. But I spaced out and began to daydream . . . It has come to me recently that The Gus lives in a glass box. A box that I love to peer into, I grasp for him, but then I am tricked, soon to be punished by his words. My mere presence slicing into his quest for immortality.

The astologer, Timothy, pulls me back into the space of his office. His green eyes shining brightly alongside the midday sun. "Do you want help from the oracles, or not?" "What is your question," he asks again. I suppose my question is do The Gus and I have a chance to survive into the millineum? The time when the nature of most human relationships will be questioned. What our the chances for our survival in this time?

Looking deeply into Timothy's eyes we create energy and speed moving into space/time with a thrust and then boom. The oracles reveal themself. "You certainly have a cosmic connection," he say's. We met like two planets colliding, I thought. "I see that."

Timothy believes that some of our tension is that unconciously I am craving children. This is completely understandable since I am almost a triple Cancer sign at the height of my child rearing years, 28. Yet I am an individualist, despite what you have read, who sabotages relationships because I too am afraid of commitment. The other tension that sets me back in relationships is the fear of being abandoned, which was ignited in my adolescence. Timothy looked up at the clock, "gotta go," he said. "It has been most enjoyable, Kim". He aked if I wanted to come back to see him Friday at 7. Ok, see you then.

Kim's Turn to Rant

When The Gus returned home from work, I was lying in the bathtub. The feeling in the air was that we needed to talk. I put on my robe and after he checked his email we had a chat in the living room. I told him of my visit to Timothy. I could tell he thought it was ridiculous and was calculating how he would relate it to his micro mob of readers. Most likely another one of my frivolities.

I told him that I thought we had a month to figure out what was going on in our relationship. This appeared to do three things; free him, dissapoint him, and scare him. In his mind, he loves me but needs to assert his freedom on a continual basis, without conflict. If I read his journal without being emotionally involved, I would think he was a totally cool,unconventional, hard ass type. Not to mention a technological genius, evocative painter, and effortless writer. A spokesperson for our slacker generation. A fighter for individualism, freedom, creativity. But knowing him as I do there is a downside to this protagonistist's fight. That is the need to vicitimize and polarize his characters. It is a real crutch for him actually. He almost needs to vicitimize to write. Someone who values personal freedom and privacy so dearly hacks me and displays me for all to see. Uncool and weak.

After his pitter patter on the computer we climbed in bed together. I waiting for his touch, and he was afraid to touch me. But soon he did.

He made love to me for longer than usual looking deep into my eyes. I lie there wondering how to believe in this man. Will he ever be able to open his heart? Will he always keep himself under lock and key? In our passionate union his eyes revealed a longing to connect. But there is still hesitation. His online words a background in the frame; cutting, biting, still waiting to lurk even amidst such passion.

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