"DEEPLY SUNK LOVE YOU SOMETHING TERRIBLE."*

Picked up and re-read my copy of Dorothy Parker: What Fresh Hell Is This?, Marion Meade's excellent bio during my sickness. It was, as always, a salve. I've always been a Dorothy fan and sometimes in my darkest hours, I worry we are destined to be the same person- full of snotty sayings, skilled at rooting out the worst drunken turnip off the truck to have damaging affairs with, never writing the things of some depth we dream of creating yet managing to amuse with pithy one-offs, and having a wee bit of an issue with the gin. Anyway, in my deliriousness I noted some passages which I will now re-type as I am up late.

-The bad time passed away fairly quickly, but it shook her confidence. She had imagined herself strong again, since she had been able to write so much that year. She worried that her periods of creativity were going to be nothing more than intervals between suicide attempts.

-Instead, she continued to place her faith in Scotch. Any substance that made her feel good was as velvet to her-- and Scotch had the further advantage of being portable.

-In Sunset Gun Dorothy included a concise poem..."Two-Volume Novel":

The sun's gone dim, and
The moon's turned black;
For I loved him, and
He didn't love back.

She dedicated Sunset Gun to John, but the situation remained as unsatisfactory as ever. She was not prepared to send him packing, nor could she accept him as he was. Her emotional dependece on him was contrasted by the autonomy she exhibited in other areas of her life.

-Daily she prayed, "Dear God, please make me stop writing like a woman. For Jesus Christ's sake, amen."

* transcript of telegraph sent from Parker to her beloved Benchley.