January 10, 1987
Dear Diary,
I tried to talk to Dad at breakfast and he just sat there twitching, like he doesn’t have time for any extra thoughts. Doesn’t have time for the fucking suicide dreams his own daughter is having. Neither one of my parents will talk to me…What is this? Some kind of dream?
Dad took off all of his clothes and shouted, “it’s a dream…fucking relax, would you? …So your mother saw photos of you licking the little privates of other women. It appeared in these photos that you were enjoying yourself. Is this true?”
I’ve never been more afraid than I am this very minute.
I didn’t even realize I was sleeping when that was written…was I?
Shit, this is too weird. Just a little too weird.
Was BOB here? Was BOB inside…
I won’t even think it.
L
December 14, 1986
Diary…
I dreamed about BOB last night. Not a real nice dream at all, a little sick in my opinion because I have so much hatred for the way he spoiled me, made me feel ugly and bad for wanting love or affection. He ruined all of my pride and self-esteem for the longest time…I could only be pretty and sweet, because pretty and sweet was easy…good grades even better. No one wanted me…I wouldn’t even let on that I knew what sex was.
He did ruin me, didn’t he? I mean, in the dream he came to the window at Leo’s and saw me. I was a nastier scene in the dream than it was last night in reality. He kept showing this image of me again and again.
And then he was standing by the tree and he said, YOU WOULDN’T HAVE BEEN ABLE TO DO ANY OF THAT IF IT WEREN’T FOR ME.
I told him he was wrong. I told him I learned all that he saw when I was alone, so that I could do something to make myself feel good and be able to heal the wounds that he made.
He said, OH YEAH, THEN WHY DO YOU WANT LEO TO TIE YOU UP, MAYBE EAT YOU THAT WAY, MAKE YOU A SLAVE…I KNOW YOU WANT IT…JUST THE WAY I TAUGHT YOU, LITTLE BITCH. I SAW YOU WITH THE WAND, PLAYING WITH YOURSELF…YOU WERE THINKING OF BAD BOY LEO, NOT BOBBY LITTLE BOY WHO WEEPS AFTER HE GETS FUCKED BY A LITTLE SLUT LIKE YOU.
…
And I woke up. Ashamed. Horrified. Guilty. And I imagined him suddenly, right before me at the edge of my bed.
YOU FORGOT, LAURA, I KNOW EVERYTHING, SEE EVERYTHING, GO ANYWHERE I WANT…I COULD TELL YOU MORE ABOUT WHAT YOU THINK ARE SECRETS THAN YOU COULD TELL YOURSELF! YOU LET YOUR GUARD DOWN, DIDN’T YOU, LET ME HAVE A NICE VACATION FROM THAT STENCH OF YOURS…THEN YOU HAD TO CALL ME BACK… RANCID LITTLE BITCH! YOU’RE PRETTY MEAN TO ME SOMETIMES WHEN YOU WRITE, AREN’T YOU! WE’LL HAVE TO FIX THAT. MAKE YOU LOVE ME LIKE YOU USED TO. I REMEMBER THAT… SOON YOU WILL TOO.
And then he disappeared. I need to do something that is right and good, TODAY!
Who in the fuck is he and why does he hate me so much?
I want to die, and to forget everything else. i can’t take it anymore! I begin to feel good and then someone makes me feel that I’m dirty. Then someone kisses me just right and I feel wanted and excited all over again.
I need to know if what I’m doing is right. I can’t let BOB be the one who taught me to wish to be tied up sometimes.
I don’t ever want to be hurt. I never have. I only want to play the games where I have to say dirty things sometimes, not mean things like BOB thinks, and if I am punished I am punished with sex, not pain.
BOB is not who puts these ideas in my head. I won’t let him be the one. These are my private thoughts. I’m afraid I’ll never make it in and out of another sexual experience, ever, without being afraid he will come and tell everyone lies about me.
If someone who loves me reads this years from now, please try not to hate me. i only feel the way I feel. I don’t hurt anyone else, and I don’t want to. I try every day to be better and more the way I think the world wants to see a girl like me.
But I am Laura. I am sad. God, I’m sad again! Why! I miss laughter and a day where time is spent with my friends who don’t care what I think of late at night. They don’t hate me for sometimes dreaming late at night, with my hand buried between my legs, ashamed, and of how I wish that my other hand would simply pull the trigger.
BOB, I forbid you to come to me ever again, in dreams or in reality. You are not welcome! I HATE YOU.
I feel so alone, Laura
October 4, 1986
I spent the night at the most outrageous party ever, and Mom sat quietly at home, imagining me wrapped in the words of a good book, sinking softly into a blanket on the grass. I’ll need to make sure Troy gets a ride tonight…somehow…shit. I hadn’t thought of him until now…I hope Zippy doesn’t phone to suggest he take Troy out…damn. I’ll be right back. i’m going to ring the stables right away.
….
So! Bobby had borrowed his uncle’s truck for the night and, as long as we stayed off the 21, we weren’t running the risk of getting pulled over…Bobby without a license…me no sleep, and an enormous lie, in my book, to my parents…? Can you imagine?
Off we went, music playing surprisingly loud and clear for the age of the truck…it made me feel like it all worked. The way the trees were blowing, the speed of the truck, the music, my nerves as I began to undress into my birthday gift, sent via AIR MAIL from cousin Maddy. Did I even tell you, I talked to her for almost an hour last week? Well, this dress is to die for, skin tight, and it came with an insert in the breast area that allowed you, if you so desired, to lift your breasts upwards, instead of leaving them flat the way some dresses do. Bobby nearly killed us when he missed a tree by a quarter inch. He said it would have been worth it to die, with my eyes “transfixed on a bosom as sweet as yours.” Doesn’t that sound like a country song or something…transfixed on a bosom as sweet as yours…?
Bobby took me off to the side of the truck before we went into the house. He kissed me, and then said it was important that I knew that Leo, from a straw’s distance, is a great guy, funny and can hold his own in a chat. Then he shook his head in a drastic “N.O.” I wanted to know what the hell that meant, I mean what if I did what he said N.O. to? Bobby turned around just when we got in the doorway, and he said, “tonight it’s not important, I’m pretty sure you’ll hang with me…just don’t ever fuck the guy. He’s into some weird shit, that Leo, man…” I nodded and was suddenly, unmistakably intrigued by the phrase, “weird shit” and its sexual context. Bobby went to grab me a beer, I guess, and Leo came up to me. Shit…it was there, right away.
Both of us knew it, and he said, “Laura Palmer…how ‘bout that? Last time I saw you, old Dwayne Milford was giving you a plaque or something…some prize you won…?” I had to interrupt him -
“Finest Performance/Five Consecutive Years.”
he asked if I had proof of performance quality, and i assured him proof was in abundance but I was about to fall asleep and die of thirst at the same time. He called to Bobby, which I was grateful for, seeing as how I was entering a bedroom, post warning and all.
(Hang on, I gotta do a couple lines…I’m coming down and I’m about to tell you some incredible stuff - hang on.) So I’m in this room with Leo and Bobby, and just as we’re about to pass the straw, the door to a bathroom opens. A bathroom off the bedroom…and Ronnette Pulaski walked out of it, looking like she had given up junk food, and had started taking pretty good care of everything on her body except her nose. She was pretty high, and just by the way Leo nodded his head toward her and said a quick hey led me to believe this was a regular kind of thing.
you want to hear something freaky…It didn’t become completely clear to me until now, but when I went down to the spot BOB takes me…and I was saying that sometimes I smelled my panties and wanted to put my face between the legs of a girl and taste her…(God, sometimes it feels right to say, other times I can’t)? Well I had actually just for that moment thought of Ronnette, just because she was the only girl aside from Donna that I had seen naked…we were in an assembly together about two years ago, maybe more, and we were the only two costume changes in the middle of the program we changed clothes…and kind of smiled at one another. I guess I was attracted to her somehow…by the way her eyes appeared sad, but cold. I liked her body…anyway, it was strange to see her there. I have no idea what she thinks of me…I doubt it’s wise to ask. All I need are rumors buzzing around that Ronnette and I are “seeing” each other every chance we get. Mom would have to be sent to the Haywards’, if not the hospital itself, and Dad, he’d most likely think we were talking about a new game…an extension of kick the can, maybe? Who cares…!!!
God, I am so high, i can’t stop writing like a thousand words a minute. I hope for your sake that this is legible, because, Lord knows, I am in no space to slow down. This is the drug I have been waiting for all of my life! I eel strong, confident, sexy, intelligent, pretty fuckin’ cool, I have to say, and not one person last night made mention of my age. I can hold my fuckin’ own…I could feel the vibes when we walked in. I knew it was going to be one of those, Bobby was right, parties. Fucking crazy stuff going on in the corner or something. Leo was watching with basically 100 percent concentration, so Bobby and I had to go see.
Man, there was this chick, lying with her skirt pulled up, and she was betting that no one could get her off…and if they did, it was a hundred big ones. She was asking five to give it a shot. Now remember, I had been at the party for a fair amount of time, and I was pretty fixed up as far as being sedated and wired simultaneously…I looked around at everyone, and i must have been showing it all across my face, because Bobby pulled me back a bit by the arm, and I said I wanted to try it, if it didn’t make him too uncomfortable, and he just looked at me like there was no changing my mind now anyway…so…I don’t think he thought I would ever even consider such things…
I asked if I could speak privately in her ear…before making a decision, and she said she’d love to hear my voice up close…so I leaned in, and I said I’m going to make you feel real good…that hundred bucks is already spent…
I looked up for a moment, and i asked if she was relaxed. She said she was already getting a strange feeling that I knew what I was doing…I made her move a little on the couch, and I kissed her, just a soft kiss, on her lips…
Before I had even touched her she wanted me to know her name…I told her I’d call her what she needed to hear. She was beginning to get me pretty hot, which I didn’t think would happen but it helped, because the feelings just worked together, just clicked.
I opened her and I told her she was pretty, did she know that? She nodded. I told her I couldn’t hear what she had said…She said YES! I smiled…”Yes, what?” I said…”I didn’t hear you…”
She took a long breath and she brought her fingers to her mouth, and the guys behind her started going, “Yeah.” I heard someone in the back drop his glass, and he said, “shit man, this girl is getting her to do it…she’s even asking for it, man…”
I knew she wanted to say things she wasn’t. I made sure she had to ask, yell something…I knew she wanted to hear that…for the men in the room to hear it. I told her everyone was looking at her. I told her they all could feel and taste it with their eyes…some men moved their fingers to let out the heat in their hands. i knew it was happening for her, I just had to keep her safe…she wanted it bad, and I told her she was beautiful. Boom! She was grabbing at me…pulling my hair…calling, “Laura, Laura…God, the way you make me feel…!”
This big guy was trying to squeeze his way in, and I told him to back off a minute…he was bent out of shape, but then watched how desperately the girl needed just a moment to herself.
She took me by the hair and she said, “I haven’t been able to do that for almost two years…I’d like to see you back here, if I haven’t scared you off already.”
It dawned on me that it was an appropriate time to mention that I felt like I was coming down a little, maybe from the sugar kisses…. This guy came up to me, and he looked at me, straight in the eye.
“Little one.” He waited. ”I just had to come look at you, see your skin and all.” He smiled. ”I never saw so many guys go from looking at her like she was nothing to wishing they were you.”
I told him I was glad he liked it…I didn’t mean to break up the party, the way I did….I have a hard time believing I did it…I guess I’m sorta out of my mind….I guess they left because I went a little…
He laughed and said, “No one’s going anywhere except outside on the lawn with a picture of you floating through their heads…. They’ll be back soon as they all empty out.”
The woman finally made it up off the couch and came and kissed my chest, where the dress cut low at the neck…
She wanted me to know she felt she owed me one if we ever crossed paths again…
Leo let me know that I made his party, guys will be talking for awhile about this…. Talk about a weird way to meet people…
I’m going to have to visit Leo soon and see how many of my thoughts strike him…Maybe he’ll do some of those weird things that Bobby warned me about…I’ll bet I freaked Bobby out tonight anyway…I can’t understand what got into me, but I wanted it…I wanted to try and there it was.
I don’t care how high I am or how high I was…it felt good doing all of it. You can bet I’ll do it again.
Laura
October 3, 1986
Dear Diary,
I don’t know where to begin! I returned home the following afternoon, without a single gripe from the watchdogs, Mom and Dad. I was halfway down the side of the house when I realized I was heading way out of upper town, to a party filled with people at least six to ten years my senior…and I was thinking I’d be back by sunrise? Never! Not to mention that Bobby had some “go fast” for me somewhere…at least I thought that to be the situation before we arrived at Leo’s…I’m guilty of the understatement of the year with that one.
But anyway, I must first brag about the tangled web I did weave, and how not a stitch was out of place or questioned when I arrived back hoe at nearly six p.m the following day! Need I say, I have now crossed over into a dimension of intense sleep deprivation? Three days and four nights…and taking into consideration the treat I was given as a door prize before leaving, I could be up until next month, painlessly dropping pound after pound…(six and a half since the last day I slept). I find that no matter what drug, if any, I have inside me, the less I sleep, the less I eat.
The note said something simple and to the point. Skip it if it bores you, but I guess I gained a sense of satisfaction and joy out of pulling the wool over the “folks’” (as Bobby says) eyes. Mom, it is just about five a.m. and I have tried again and again to get back to sleep. After almost two solid hours of fair tries, I was suddenly reminded of the clearing I spent the other afternoon in. Troy so enjoyed the grazing there, and I think a blanket and a book will set the stage for the distance I guess i need to feel. Not from you, Mom! I could hear you taking that personally, but don’t. I just mean away from people. Just a few hours with my pony, Troy, and maybe a nap over Nancy Drew or something? Please don’t worry, I’ll call before six if I’m not already home by then.
Love, Laura
October 1, 1986
Dear Diary,
I’m sorry I haven’t written, but so much has happened. Tonight as I began to undress for bed Bobby Briggs came to my window. A beautiful, dreamy sight that sent me reeling. He says there is a party we couldn’t miss out at the end of Sparkwood. A friend of his, Leo - who I think I’ve heard of before in the air of gossip that I often hunt down - is throwing a party. I warned him, I had only thought seriously of curling up with him, and confessed that I was missing more sleep than I need to be sociable.
He promised me there would be no problem in the alertness department, as he had a new treat for me to try that sometimes negates the need for sleep entirely.
I’m out the window, Diary. Shhhh!
I’ll tell all the moment I return. I’m hiding you…beware of BOB…he is sometimes tardy.
Laura
P.S. It just struck me that BOB’s name is a warning in itself…
BEWARE
OF
BOB
September 11, 1986, 2:20 a.m.
Dear Diary,
I cannot tell you how much it upsets me that I am no threat to him.
He is too safe with the idea that he will always gain entrance to my home and exit painlessly and without sound. In the dark he knows he will find a grip around my wrist strong enough to silence me, and to carry me, like a child drags a doll, to a place where he knows no one will find me. He knows this because the place is miles from any source of light other than that which pours sometimes, so clearly in my memory, from his lips and eyes - the very light stolen from within me. The girl who, ever since she can remember, made a patient effort to tolerate, and keep secret the very man who wishes to steal her innocence, never allowing her to mature, never permitting the joys of maturity. The time this little girl has dreamed of ever since she knew how to skip, and run, and smile at even the slightest breeze, the way it tickled her so. Unselfishly, she gave and gave of herself, emptying the delicate basket inside her, of her soul.
I hope to call him to my window soon. I fear he is waiting for me to tire of these all-night writing sessions. These moments where I lapse in and out of the part of me who plans to open the window this time and give my hand willingly. The part of me that doubts anything really exists at all and that therefore there is nothing at all to fear outside that window, and so am willing to venture to the usual spot, without struggle. I who swears a noise or powerful slap at the back of the head will not cause even the slightest change in footsteps. The part of me that has rehearsed its cries for more and more incisions, more insertions, more insults and threats, and has planned to continue them until his appetite, before insatiable, grows smaller. The animal frozen solid in front of his shotgun barrel, begging to fill that space on his wall.
Remove the thrill. Program yourself. There will be pain, but none worse than before. Hold tight on the image of home and of bed and of the warm smell of him as you rinse and rinse and rinse. home awaits you as it always has.
Play with him as he plays with you. Accept that you are bad and dirty and cheap and should be thrown to the wolves as scrap meat, and must never bear children, for who knows the faces they would be locked behind from birth until death…Remember to ignore. Leave an opening large enough inside to take on his body weight in hatred and methods of reduction that only apply to the emotional portions of oneself, the most vital and irreplaceable of all.
Believe that he is only intrigued by the fear he breeds, the lack of interest you display in life when he leaves you back at your home. How he pretends to ring the doorbell, mocks you, your life, your hopes, your most private insecurities, watches as you struggle with the sense that you are unworthy to even enter the house in which you took your first steps, feel as he watches you catch a tear before it has left your eye - look for him and he is gone.
As if it were a religion, I have chanted inspirations to myself, for days now I have whined and taunted, and almost wished him to arrive, and he has not. I have an incredible headache from trying to think of his weaknesses, when in fact, I couldn’t begin to know them. Perhaps I am wrong altogether about his lust only for the fear in his particular victim…I must say honestly, i am tired of making light of the situation and believe that if I do not sleep soon, I shall begin seeing BOB everywhere. This, need I mention, would not be good for me at present.
I am lonely here, and find myself thinking about Bobby, who I know would hold me in his arms the way I can’t imagine anyone else doing.
Be careful, Laura
September 10, 1986
Dear Diary,
Enclosed please find my mind and its memory. As well, a characteristic the enemy lack in excess - conscience. ”Guilt” is simply a word he uses to silence me. He has no regard for mortality, no concern for danger.
How could such an intruder fear death, or the possibility of imprisonment, and still manage to come so consistently up the side of my home, using my window as if it were familiar to him?
He mocks me entering dressed in the clothes of one who could be a best friend. A neighbor. A traveling salesman who casually invites himself in, goes as far as to request coffee, regular, before dissolving into the daydream he sometimes is?
Does he expect to sit down and chat before taking the house’s only child from her room and treating her like an experiment?
I am either dreaming him to life, and slowly killing myself, or he has told my parents of his visits and has offered, in return for their own safety, that these visits will continue without possibility of interruption. They would simply go unnoticed. Junk mail, somewhere in the house. I imagine that they would have to hear me as I am led out. Is it possible they do not care?
L
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.
I do not doubt that BOB is aware of my every movement. That this horror who calls himself a man sits up high when the sun shines or perhaps curls up below. No matter. He watches me with eyes that burrow inside, seeing each speck of doubt, sensing each palpitation of my heart when a boy passes, each embrace from a mother who knows nothing of how far away her daughter’s bedroom has become.
I try each day to memorize the face that looks back at me n the mirror. I hold tight to it. I imagine I’ll be in flight when I compare it to my remains that I often dream soon will be found.
I have such an anger and an urge to charge at the sky, to call the wind a liar for never showing itself. An urge to scream at the two who allowed my birth. Cries for help to anyone who will hear them. To scream into the street that there is a lack of miracles in Mother Nature herself. Her divinity is a lie.
In a forest of trees again and again, I have been brought down. Surgery of a strange and indescribable nature takes place. Blood is let. This Mother Nature has not done away with this evil, nor has it opened its wood to allow a scream to escape. Instead, it cradles this man and keeps him safe from discovery, safe from daylight. He knows the planet will not betray him. This light will come, and stay, leave only to return on schedule. He has a promise. The universe’s habit, conveniently requiring a twelve-hour fix of the two extremes.
His time is the evening, the hour during which rescue is least possible, and when most with pure hopes and dreams and memories of swinging on swing sets are fast asleep. Their eyes moving quickly under their lids. Seeing nothing.
Never is there a noise that stirs even those who sleep in the next room. Never does the world lean a bit for me, cast a vote, and cause an eye to open…see the man…see the way his eyes are frozen in the image of my face in a scream. No explanation for WHY he has chosen me, or even if he has a final plan.
I can only wait. Hold my tired eyes open with the energy of a dare. A fight to see who in fact is the darkest. Who, when forced to see the other side, will in fact survive?
I sit awaiting his arrival, kept awake by the notion that I shall grow accustomed to the dark far easier than he to the light.
Laura
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 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
