Kathy to Hilary, July 17, 1971 cont., Tehran, Iran You sound awfully busy--I don’t think I’d be able to take five hours of math. Whew. What are you doing with the $10 a week you earn? Every day I load the dishwasher and fold clothes. Wowee. Mom fired our old maid, and she’s using me instead of getting a new one.
Last Tuesday the Genmish wives and I ate lunch at a restaurant up in the mountains. It’s cooler up there. The tables were big, short legged platforms over a stream. Very rustic, the wives kept saying. I ordered an omelet that looked like someone had thrown up in a bowl, very watery. So I “accidentally” dropped it into the creek. I floated half a watermelon down the stream. It sailed beautifully over a waterfall and then its fate afterward I know not. I assume by the peeved expression of the people below us that their dangling feet caught the watermelon. All the wives seemed to be cool toward Mrs. M, a prodigal who ran off to Afghanistan for awhile. She regailed my mother with the pleasures of smoking hash in a water pipe with Afghan nomads. I was fascinated.
Picnic in the mountains 
Really! I’m ashamed of you for your desire to be the loved one of a snot-nosed preppie and all it entails. (Or do you?) We were talking over my fate. It was everyone’s pleasure to think that I’ll marry rich. Father dearest said the easiest way is to marry a millionaire. Besides the fact that I won’t get married (or you can come to my wedding next year, shot-gun) I wouldn’t, just to give HIM money. Then I suggested marrying someone like Mick Jagger (I know, I know, it’s too late) but that was not acceptable--of course! Maybe I’ll marry Ringo Starr--remember my grief over his marriage? No, I’m definately going to be a biochemist or a writer and die at 24 so my work will be appreciated more. “Ah, such a pity, to die so young before all her great potential was fulfilled. Alas!”
Did you know I am currently writing the Great American Novel? It’s all of 82 sex, violence, and drug filled pages long. Oh my, it’s really disgusting--very trite, but I have to start someplace. Very Girl Meets Boy, Someone Dies, Girl Meets another Boy, and I’m not sure what happens next because I’m not writing it in any coherent order. Now I’m at Someone Dies--hm, remind you of some famous novel you’ve read recently? It’s in first person, and naturally the heroine is of the type I get caught up writing about--you know the sort, I think. You can tell how much I like the silly thing, talking so much about it. Reading the beginning already embarresses me--I can’t think about that horror I wrote in 6th grade about the ponies without dying. Also, the “epic poem”! And read it in front of the class. Horrors! Thank god I’ll never see any of them again!
As for all the guys hanging around you--you know it seems to me you kiss a guy or something. Well, I think about it all night and the rest of the weekend, mentally masticating it, thinking more would be nice. So at school or wherever you feel like your practically married to the SOB. And of course he hasn’t been thinking the same thing. So what I’m saying isn’t DON’T but DON’T EXPECT TOO MUCH.
I don’t know what to say about your 25-year-old friend--I tend to hide under chairs and not answer telephones when I don’t want to see somebody. I don’t know how to solve your saying you are ill at ease with people, because I have exactly one friend here, and that doesn’t qualify me for knowing what to do in certain social situations. I mean, you don’t want to be one of those overtly friendly people, and GOD FORBID, popular??? If you do that’s ok, to each his own. If you feel cowardly, at least you’re not foolhardy like some people I know (ahem).
Oh what a screwy world. I don’t know what to suggest. Maybe you should feel a joy in discovering the soul of every new person you meet. Study psychology [!], become a Jesus freak, take a trip to London on the low fares. Next year at new schools should be rejuvenating for both of us. I find that going to one school too long is stultifying. At the moment I’m enrolled at TAS but have paid tuition to Iranzamin, which I am not enrolled at. Nice mess. Just think of all the people yet for you to meet at W & L.
I am enclosing some very ghastly pictures--DO NOT BURN.
6:21:20 AM 
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