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2001-11-09 | 9:52 a.m.

It's Friday morning and I haven't called my mother. I haven't called anyone. I never call to say hi, remember? Anyway, I went over there after our big phone fight (I had to, my son had taken his nap there) and we sat and talked. After all that crying and screaming I could barely keep my eyes open and focused, but she didn't seem to mind. It was enough that I was sitting there and not yelling.

Later I thought of something that made me feel a little better. I was being childish, though to myself this time, and thinking that I ought to express my disregard for one of THEIR friends and see how they liked it. Figure out someone one of them really likes, whom I don't like, and then tell them about it! I was all fired up, right? Then I realized the problem: there is no such person. Because they don't like anybody. My sister only has one friend left, basically, and they rarely see each other and my sister bad-mouths her as often as not. My mother has one neighbor friend, whom she complains about incessantly, and three good-as-gold friends who, importantly, all live more than three hours away.

Then I started thinking, geez, there's a lot of people I like. Really, genuinely like. I'm not even talking about people who like me, just people I like. For all my faults, I'm capable of liking other people. I may not be a shining example of friendship, but neither am I full of antagonism and bile. And if anybody is keeping count, without even trying I have more friends than all of them (mother, sister, niece) combined. Not everybody thinks I'm insufferable. On the phone, my Mom asked me how I could doubt her love for me. I said I didn't doubt it: "I know you love me, but I think I get on your nerves." She didn't disagree.

So anyway, a D'land friend suggests that I get evaluated for depression. Though I tend to think of my depressions as situational, not clinical, I respect her opinion so I may give it a shot. I guess I should call a therapist, but I don't know how to find a good one. Where I live, a lot of the therapists put those little fish symbols in their telephone book ads. But I don't want to be treated by a fishtian.

One time, Jeffrey Moussaief Masson came to speak at my sexual history seminar. At the end, he mentioned that he had a friend who was an anti-pornography activist who had been seeing a therapist for years. She was talking about battling the Southland Corp., which owns all the 7-Eleven stores, probably trying to get them to stop displaying Playboy magazine in full view. The therapist suddenly burst out, "I read Playboy magazine! I LIKE Playboy magazine!" She realized that all those years of therapy had been wasted. This man didn't understand or respect her and didn't want to. I've always remembered that story, though I am not an anti-pornography activist. However, I HAVE been somewhat anti-therapy in my day. I believe that most therapists are almost completely unqualified to assess other people. I've mellowed on the subject a bit, but I still think that no more than 10 percent of therapists are competent.

And of course, you know that Masson is now married to Catherine MacKinnon, though he wasn't at the time, and she is probably the most famous anti-pornography activist in the country, outside of Andrea Dworkin. Who, to judge by her recent work, could really desperately use a better therapist.

Here is a shameful confession for you (I ought to have a few; it is a diary, after all). Dworkin includes so many pornographic excerpts in her anti-pornography books that I successfully masturbated to one of them. Isn't that terrible? I bet I'm not the only one, either.

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