JOURNAL ENTRY, MAY 1965: According to Nina, who reached me through Grete, the Supreme Court hadn’t ruled on whether the photographs were obscene but on whether the state of New York had the right to decide this for itself. That this had something to do with “contemporary community standards” wasn’t helpful, because by that time I was having trouble understanding Nina, my anger having reduced her words to gibberish. Squirrel, I’ve never been so irate, which surprised me, because I’d convinced myself that no matter the verdict, I wouldn’t care! Only now that we’ve lost do I realize how much I wanted to win. For the past three months I’ve been imagining you at MoMA, standing proudly beside Samantha’s tattoo and Tea party and Mommy is sick, the way you did at the Lacuna. I’m ashamed by my foolishness and at the same time furious that what had passed for hope was foolishness all along.

In my disappointment I wasn’t very nice to Nina, but her timing couldn’t have been worse. Without stopping to breathe, she suggested we bring the photographs to a place she’d found with the “community standards” to accept what South Brooklyn wouldn’t: a San Francisco art gallery that had shown a series of welded sculptures suggesting various sexual positions. Squirrel, I said words to Nina I hadn’t said since I’d been in labor at Bellevue. If Deb had overheard me insulting California, there might have been fences to mend; but I think even Deb would have understood, in ways that Nina never will, why I won’t give our photographs to some seedy gallery just to see if we can “get away with it” somewhere else. This journey has broken my heart and robbed you of your innocence, but at least it’s now a journey that is done.

88. Sidewalk salesman, New York, 1965

The old man with his carefully trimmed beard and his wooden tray of paintbrushes, matchboxes, razors, and playing cards stands at the corner like a Ghost of Christmas Future version of the young businessman with smooth, clean-shaven cheeks and creased trousers who strides past as if the street peddler is a lamppost. It’s so easy to imagine an earlier time when the old guy’s vest was unstained and his wool fedora was undented, when his unbent body and younger, yet-to-be-defeated eyes breezed past a previous generation of broken-down man in a prior iteration of tattered suit.

For a week after the Supreme Court’s verdict, I was afraid someone would thumbtack a clipping to my classroom’s current-events bulletin board, but everyone was more interested in the Gemini space mission. At home, I managed to dodge Lillian’s attempts to talk about what had happened—Lillian: They’re beautiful photographs no matter what anyone says. Me: Uh-huh. Lillian: But we don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to. Me: Uh-huh—and in this way became convinced that, as Jane, I’d outgrown the power of those pictures to hurt me.