Dear Diary 01

Instead, I turned the page. In an obviously more mature handwriting, which I recognized as mine, but a few years older than the one used for address and BD entries, there were lists upon lists upon lists. Just as in my early teenage years I had been obsessed with addresses, which later on turned into compulsion to make extensive notes on things that I felt I needed to buy, read, research, record, and see. Also, there were lists of things I did – again, mainly books I have read and movies I have seen. 

I have obviously just finished and been impressed with Philip Jose Farmer’s ‘Riverworld Novels Series’ and had planned to dig into Tolkien next. I have devoured volumes of Jean Plaidy books and was getting ready to read Victoria Holt afterwards – I cringed. Loving Stephen King, I have hoped that Clive Barker would turn out to be just as good if not better. Each title of the book that I had read had a little check mark next to it. I suspect that different colors used were some sort of color code, which would reveal of how good or bad I thought the story was, but I can’t remember the details of its legend now. The list of my favorite songs reads like a compilation of 80s music – Human League, Spandau Ballet, Soft Cell, Alison Moyet, and Eurythmics. Notably, American music was not very dear to my heart. Skipping over a few more pages of books, music and movies, which by now have revealed that my taste in written, sang and filmed art had been quite poor, I stumbled upon yet another list. This one made me shudder and then giggle. 

A list of baby names. Despite the fact that even as early as my late teens I had decided that I didn’t want any kids – and have to proudly point out that this had been one of the very few things in life I had avoided to change my mind about – there were two full pages of boy and girl names. Saffron, Siobhan, Sinead, Taraya, Tamara, Tiyana and Tahar – apparently very impressed by the names beginning in S or T; Maya, Farida, Farrah, Zala, Masika, Khepri, Anat, Matuya followed those, and the list went on and on. I was not even certain if they were all real names found in a book, or whether they were just a fruit of my imagination. I was not interested to put myself through the same torture with the list of boys’ names. 

I flipped a few pages. Recipes – did I really believe I could learn the simple and yet complicated art of cooking? Most of the recipes had an accompanying marginal note of “difficult”. 

I went forward. I stumbled upon a complete list of English kings and queens from 1250 AD to the present time. I vaguely remembered a paper that I had worked on for weeks regarding the subject. 

I skipped on. My own makeshift vocabulary of words that I came across when reading and didn’t understand, their meanings and examples in sentences carefully jotted next to them. One of them being saturnine, a word that had a nice ring to my ear, even though its meaning was less than cheerful. 

I went forward. Another list of books, this one for the curriculum requirement. Dostoyevski, Tolstoy, Steinbeck, Hemingway, Wilde and Joyce. No wonder I was ‘saturnine’ during my teenage years. 

I vaguely remembered that there should have been something more inside my book, something very personal and hopefully after all these years amusing to read. Where was it, though? 

I kept flipping the pages, two, three, ten, twenty at the time. The book was more voluminous that I had expected. It seemed like I had acquired a mass of computer data information and wrote it down for future reference. 

Then, I remembered what I used to do when writing secret things down. I closed the diary and with the back cover facing me, turned it upside down. Now I opened it again and bingo. Here was what I had been looking for. My clandestine life, hidden from my family and usually from most of my friends, too. 

To an untrained eye, the writings were a complete nonsense. To a person with passion for puzzles it would have been instantly clear that this was written in a code. My own – not hard to break, should someone take time and effort to do so. Certainly not interesting enough to my sisters who were nosy, constantly snooping around, yet too lazy to attempt the deciphering.

Even I couldn’t read it smoothly any longer. I paused for a moment, seriously considering whether I had time to do this. I was supposed to be cleaning out the patio room in an attempt to get things ready for the weekend. However, this was too much of a temptation. 

I placed the book on an old coffee table and walked to the kitchen to fix myself a cup of hot chocolate and find a pen. I would need to write it all down if I wanted to be able to read it again. Now at least I understood that Mike had never read it. He wouldn’t have the time or energy to do a complicated task of code breaking, no matter how interested in my life before him. 

I returned with a mug of hot chocolate, can of soda and plate of sandwiches with their crusts cut off, exactly as I liked them. I had completely given up on any kind of work in the patio storage for the day. The task that I was about to undertake would devour most of the day; hopefully, I’d be able to finish before Mike came home from work. 

Sheba, my longhaired grey cat brushed against my leg and quietly meowed, requesting to be given some attention. “Come on, pretty girl.” I said, picking her up and pressing a loud smooch on her beautiful head. “You can stay, but I need a promise that you won’t tell on me. This is just between us girls, eh?” I looked deep into her intoxicating green eyes and as if answering, she purred softly. “Alright, then.” I said, opening my dear diary. 

I ripped out a clean sheet of paper and wrote down an entire alphabet. Underneath, I wrote another set, this time moving the first letter three spaces to the left, which is how I constructed my code. The letters read:

A B C D E F G

x y z a b c d

For each A in a word I used X, for B letter Y and so on. Like I said, nothing to prove me a genius, yet clever enough to keep my secrets to secretive. 

The first page was titled ARHB – October 1985. I didn’t need to de-code that one. I knew exactly what it meant. It was about Duke, the guy I lost my virginity to. October 1985 was when it happened. 

For a moment I seriously considered abandoning the project of prying into my past. Was it wise to do so? Then, I though: ‘too late to turn back now’. My curiosity had been aroused and I wanted to relive the moments of my firsts.

I took a sip of hot chocolate and dug into work. It had taken a good hour to finish the first diary entry, but after a couple of paragraphs I refreshed my memory on the code that I was almost able to read it without a problem, just as I used to, almost twenty years ago.