The Secret Diary of Laura Palmer (8 page)

On the way out of the woods, I was nearly killed as an owl swooped down out of nowhere. I could feel the power in his wings as he shot by me. I thought of the Log Lady. Something she has said:

"Many things are not what they seem."

This used to seem frightening to me. This place, the slightest thought of touching myself, and teasing myself, frightened me. No more. No, this place I visited is not what it seemed. I see now that it is a place of darkness, but I love it.
I welcome it
. I will not fight it, even when it slips deep inside and cuts me. I have found light and pleasure inside this horror. I am not done with my plan.

I'll be back, BOB. I'll be back to open and close around you like you thought I never would. I'll be back.

Laura

August 3,1986

Dear Diary,

Just to fill you in, I did spend the rest of the day with Troy at the stables. Being around him relaxed me, and I went home later that evening feeling very strong, very new inside. I did not entertain any thoughts of being bad, or wrong, by doing this. I was going to stop being hurt and taunted by this man. A man I know only by his first name. I do not know where he lives, or where he comes from. But I will get him back. There's no fun in a game of torture if the victim is screaming for more.

That was almost two weeks ago... no, maybe a week. I am very deep in concentration lately. Seeing Bobby Briggs is fun. He is anywhere I want him to be, with anything I want him to bring. Just yesterday, I decided he had waited too long to be with me the way he wanted. I, too, was tired of the process of petting and going home feeling like a cork had been stuck inside me, that it had trapped everything I so wished to let go. But I had to let him think I was the fourteen-year-old I appear to be...

Mom and Dad left for the entire afternoon, and I told them I'd be out for almost as long as they would be, but that I wanted to help with supper that night, so I would be home no later than six-thirty. Mom's face shined at the sound of such words. I have to keep my parents happy. I have to keep loving them, like their little girl should. I have to support what I have not chosen, but have, quite simply, been given. Two lives.
Two very different lives.

The naughtier Laura had a date with Bobby Briggs in Low Town. He said he knew of an abandoned barn out where no one would find us. I liked the idea that I would have him alone someplace where I could go kinda crazy on him. I was nervous, for a bit, because I suddenly realized that this was not the BOB I hated, but the young Bobby who swaggered up to smiling Laura Palmer and asked if she would be his. No matter, I'd play him like he needed me to. I knew he was aware that I had never made love with a boy before... I knew it would be different with someone who took care... I knew it might pull me back to thirteen years old, when I learned to love a man's hands in a stream late at night and cried because he was gone so soon afterward. I couldn't let that come up. I knew I had to be strong. I could have BOB watching me right now... at any moment. I couldn't fall in love... certainly not out loud.

Bobby was charming and I could tell he was nervous because he couldn't get his words out very well, and the blanket he brought on the back of his bike wasn't opening as he tried, diligently, to spread it.

This made him very nervous, because I was balancing a bottle of vodka, a small one for two, and a marijuana cigarette (some smoke) in between my fingers, and I didn't have as good a grasp as I would have liked, and I had to fall to my knees to avoid breaking anything.

He felt very bad, but I turned it around so that he had been more of a hero than a dunce. He was neither, but I allowed him to lift me to my feet and steady me with his arms. I could think only of how I just wanted to take a drink and do some smoke so I could relax. Things come much easier for me when I am loose, and feeling confident. One of the reasons I most enjoy Bobby is that he can get me smoke anytime I want ... he can have a friend buy us alcohol, anytime I want. I like the way that feels, that kind of devotion. I enjoy the way he moves, little tiny waves inside him, when I lean in close and say, "I can't wait, but let's take our time." His immediate smile and his readiness to let me take over first.

I, after all, was for the first time beginning a sexual experience with interest, and affection. A little control of my own. I knew he would take over, once he felt I'd let him. But for now, if he was to keep bringing me little treats all the time, I wanted him to feel it was worth it... that he hadn't chosen a dead fish, like I promised I would never be.

An hour later, after taking my time with his lips, and occasionally feeding him the smoke, or vodka, I was ready, and I told him to lie back and imagine whatever he wished. I told him to build a dream inside his head, and to let his imagination follow me. It was just for him, we both knew that. I put him, hard, into my mouth, and had a picture in my head of BOB's hand as he did himself... as he put my hand on it... and then I was back in the barn. I slowed it down, found the rhythm he liked, and I kept my tongue moving inside and I went up and down him, following the noises he made, the whines... listening with delicacy, making sure I kept him where he wanted to be. This time was not about teasing him in and out of his pleasure. He came the way I dream men do.. with suddenness after a long internal climb, sitting upright with a look of amazement and awe... gratification. A smile.

We spent another hour or so buried in each other, until it had to happen and he slipped inside. I opened my eyes and saw him as his eyes fell closed. I forced the memory of wanting this... away. Feeling like that would be so easy, and yet, I could not become weak.

We moved together, and I found it easier to handle, easier to really enjoy, with my eyes closed. I could move with him, roll around to the top, place his hands where I love to feel them. He is so good to me, without any words. I wanted him to know how wonderful it felt, locked there inside, never wanting to leave, just wanting more and more of me! We rolled and pushed and pulled at each other and came apart hours later, when it was impossible that we do more.

I felt truly satisfied, like years of taunting and emotional pulling and pushing had been set free. The steel bar I imagined holding me upright was
flexing,
turning to flesh, and melting. The tension and the anxiousness I felt for so long, about how it would be when someone really wanted me. Not because they wanted me to weep or to die slowly of a sadness I could not name. Someone who cared how it felt to me, wanted to make sure it was nice. I felt like I should feel, like all girls should feel... but I could not forget that there were other worlds to think of. Other moments. Rude awakenings at the darkest hours of night. A man in my window, smiling... offering a challenge by waving a black glove. I lay there wondering if he would come soon, or if by my simply deciding he no longer frightened me, he was somehow eliminated.

I couldn't rely on dreams like that. And suddenly, there was a terrible problem. A terrible and sad problem that I had to face without the emotion I so wanted to give! From Bobby's mouth came, slowly, small words of love, then confessions. Soon after, promises of loyalty and happiness forever.

Laura, Laura, I can't let you hear this. Just watch his lips move, do not listen, I told myself, over and over. But Bobby meant it. He was, after all, the boy who had admired me for years, who had tugged on my ponytails for as long as I wore them, and soon after made a point to pass me at least once a day in the hallways at school, or to catch my eye in class. Smile, as if it were an unexpected sight.

I knew he had planned this. But the Laura who loved him back, the young girl who so desperately hoped he would come after her, when the time was right, cannot come out to play. She is inside resting. Deep inside, cradled in the braver half. The one that finds this Bobby boy satisfying, yes, but not interesting beyond that. There is no strength in him... no challenge. I'll keep him with me, save him for her, when it is safe for her to come back. But these words of love are too real, too innocent. This boy, so young, is merely a messenger to the Laura that is living here now.

I was forced to do something cruel. Something that would make him, perhaps, rethink the entire idea of Laura. He had to see her as something he never thought existed. I had to laugh at him. Hard. Laugh until his eyes lost their light. I had to shoot him down, couldn't let him be so appealing to the same young Laura that BOB wants. The one I'm sure he's waiting for. To save myself, I had to laugh in the face of a boy, who now may never be so honest again.

I had to do it! Why does it hurt so badly to protect myself? Where was this love when I was on my knees begging for it? Dammit. I know I hurt him... I hope someday he will understand why. I would never crush someone the way I was crushed. Had I been the one laughed at, I don't know that I would ever stand as straight again-never approach someone with even the smallest compliment, because the memory of laughter would still ring in my ears.

I am ashamed and confused again by the things that happen to me. Is this a trick that BOB is playing on me? Another test? Ruining my chance at love with the right boy, by forcing me to humiliate him, the way I have been and have now turned cold and bitter because of its scars? ... Will Bobby pick himself up and see that I did not mean it? Or have I been tricked into spoiling a romance I could have been protected by at least during the day?

What does life want from me? What have I done, and what do I do now?! I only wanted to stop the pain, not to begin spreading it myself.

I'm thinking... I'm thinking. Everything that had to be done has been done. If this is something BOB did, then it will only cause him an amazing victory if I show any regret... any... remorse. I cannot care. I must believe Bobby will come back, tail wagging. If he does not, I shall master the whistle he responds to. Let the boy earn my attention outside the barn lust, outside the kisses I give out only when I feel like it, never just because. I'll become a professional at not feeling anything.

I'll find a way to do it. I can't give up. I don't even believe half the time that what I'm living is real. I am lost. Lost. But a stronger, more manipulating Laura is rearing her head, and opening herself to threats and games played only in the dark.

When I find out who he is, I'll make him known to everyone!

To a New Strength, Laura

August 3,1986

Dear Diary,

It is a little after ten P.M. on the evening of the disaster with Bobby Briggs. I am surprised to say that he phoned not fifteen minutes ago, and ... somehow, in a mass of words that were sounding more rehearsed than heartfelt, he apologized for being too quick to recite such oaths of love when maybe I didn't find that attractive in a boy. That maybe I wanted someone who had to be broken a bit, before it all came out. ... He told me he meant what he had said, but was wrong to say it so quickly.

The whole thing sounded like it had been picked word for word out of the dictionary or thesaurus, and I couldn't help but wish for a moment that I was dead. Here he is apologizing for something I, and I'm certain girls everywhere, even outside of the Peaks, dream of hearing a boy say. He's chosen his words carefully, tried to prove he is still, hours after his orgasm, in love. Another miracle ... and what do I do? I am forced to keep silent on the phone, to stifle words of love, from my own heart, simply out of the fear that this is all part of a grand scheme to drive me, no brakes in the fast lane, down the road of insanity.

I am trapped inside a part of me I hate. A hard, masculine part of myself that has surfaced to fight, after small memories and scars come out of me with a suddenness that is sobering as well as horrifying-and I fight to save the Laura I wish I could be again. The one everyone thinks is still around. Me in a sundress, hair in the wind, and a smile engraved into my cheeks by the sharp fear that a man may visit me at any moment this evening and try to kill me.

L

August 4,1986

3:30 A.M.

Dear Diary,

It comes to me now that I have decided to play along. After repeating it to myself for ages it seems, I finally feel a sense of resolve with my joining him for the sole purpose of battle. To join the darkness, and perhaps cling to the bit of light remaining inside me, and use it as the strength it should always have been.

Ah, the fairness of life. That special moment when a hand flies up whether visible or verbal, screaming, STOP, she is dying! This child is dying without a safety feature everyone else seems to wrestle with, as if it were an inconvenience.

I searched carefully and have found a space inside me that says that it is almost too late, mine are not the eyes of a girl fifteen, but the eyes of someone who has been afraid to look around herself and to question the simplest of things. My mind, it continues, is not the mind of a young girl who imagines life to be a series of warm sweaters, while the cold spell passes by.

It warns me that the mind in which I live belongs to someone who knows too much of life and how it ends most often without warning. How it deals us blows, dares us to dream when in fact there is no use. Manages to leave out that there is a plan etched in the planet for me. This mind knows.

The reality that there is no choosing a day's events, or even a moment's when before you've even opened your eyes to see light for the very first time, someone of a great evil and stealth chooses you. Spins a bottle of sorts and giggles at the power in a simple game of selection.

Laura

August 6,1986

4:47 A.M.

Dear Diary,

I cannot let myself sleep because I have to see BOB when he comes through the window. I have to be ready.

I have thought a great deal about my life. I am aging without my own permission. I believe when he comes to take me, I will either leave home and return harmed although satisfied by the brutal death of an enemy, or I will never return. And in death admit silently I knew not of my visitor's strength nor of his will.

For now I am half-numb, half-raw. A girl who still manages to rise each morning and exit the place I lately must be reminded is called home. As if nothing were less noticeable than the trail of blood left behind me as I go.