It seems I am a really awful person. Pushy, aggressive, demanding, always wanting everything to be clear, worked out, resolved. Also I have bad table manners: I was the first to put out my chopsticks at Brilliant’s when the food was served. My enthusiasms, my expectation that others will follow me, lead people to do so against their will: apparently I phrase suggestions in a way that brooks no refusal. When I said ‘Let’s go to the nude beach on Sunday’, my manner made him say, ‘All right’ instead of what he really felt which was ‘Maybe’. Growing more pathetic, dismal and contemptible every minute, I tried to explain my feeling that there is a link between my ‘enthusiasms’ and the bluff that’s needed to be a writer. No, no—many writers are quite introverted. I will have to tone myself down. I couldn’t help crying. Silent sobs, with a lot of tears running out. I despised myself for giving way to a spasm of self-pity. I wish I could bawl out loud, get some voice into it and howl.