Gossip (unmailed letter: UML), October 6, 2007

I would appreciate it if you would refrain from discussing things I have discussed with you with your friends, your family, and your boyfriend unless I have okay'd it. Most everything I told you I was trying to tell you privately, and it didn't work in any way. I have learned from dealing with your group indirectly: beginning with your telling me that sex is required if a man & woman are alone in a room together yet not allowed in dating. This goes back to the blind dates you sent me on & up to the present w/ the date my mother asked to stay at a hotel. Either way, you try to set moral rules for your friends and for the community without thinking of reality. Sex is never required. As someone who claims now to have had sex with only three men in her entire lifetime, you may not realize what other women have had to go through with men. Furthermore, unpaid caregiving of men with serious illnesses is a hardship unlike any other, one you have so far never experienced and may never experience; even paid caregiving of men with serious illnesses has not happened to you, and may not happen since you were married short-term to someone without illnesses and have refused to marry your boyfriend. Other things: it does your friends little good to try to persuade them to go out drinking with you. It shows that you are not interested in their safety. You are popular, but you accomplish this without actually being kind to your friend's secrets. I protect you, your friends and their secrets. Perhaps your friends should start to think of me as their other friend.