An Editorial Note; this is a work in progress
Diary Span: 1990s–2020s
These are extracts from my private diaries, written across various stages of my adult life. They document the ordinary, extraordinary, intimate, mundane and occasionally absurd business of being a woman.
I never wrote them with an audience in mind, nor with the intention of publishing them one day. I wrote them for myself, about my life as I experienced and understood it at the time.
The entries are reproduced as originally written, retaining their language, spelling, grammar, profanity, sexual explicitness and occasional incoherence. Where necessary, names and identifying details have been changed to protect the privacy of others.
The entries have been selected to reflect the range of experiences, encounters and emotions recorded throughout the diaries. Some have been omitted to protect the privacy of others. What remains is necessarily a selection rather than a complete record of my private life.
I have deliberately chosen not to provide retrospective commentary, explanations or interpretations. I have no desire to correct the woman who wrote these entries, justify her decisions or impose upon her the knowledge and perspectives I have acquired since.
Nor do I wish to turn every sexual encounter into a lesson, every relationship into a revelation or every private thought into something of greater significance.
Some entries are funny. Some are vulgar. Some are tender, contradictory, embarrassing or entirely unremarkable. They are not meant to construct a coherent narrative of my life or present a particular version of myself.
There is, of course, something inherently contradictory about making private writing public. Publication changes the relationship between the writer, her words and those who encounter them. What was once written without an audience becomes something to read, interpret and judge.
That tension is part of this project.
Women's private lives, particularly their sexual lives, have long been subjected to public scrutiny, moral judgement and demands for explanation. I am not particularly interested in satisfying those demands.
These diaries are not confessions. They are not evidence offered in my defence. They are not invitations to judge whether I was a good woman, a bad woman, a feminist or a fool.
They are simply things I wrote. And sometimes, that is enough.
Fragments from my diaries
Notes from night with XXX
French playboy, he said (in French) his cum tastes like
honey. Very sexy, very confident, very arrogant, sexual god, except for the denim jeans & denim jacket.
