Diary of a Dancer
10:00 PM – Party Castle – Wed 27 Jun 79
The inevitable panic reaction has set in – am I out of
my friggin MIND? But it’s my battle and I’m dealing with it. I hear myself
saying WAY too much around him as if tempting him to find something to
be disgusted by and to reject me – why can’t I just shut up and enjoy this?
Because I can’t believe he really loves the real me – we haven’t seen
each other in 10 years. I plunge gratified into the dizzying sensory
experiences – he is very sexual and willing to talk about it – everything
he says turns me so ON. Heavenly night of ecstatic sex. Trying to
go SLOW, not empty out my bag of tricks all at once. I resent my own
anxieties and my fear of being vulnerable. Here at work I wrote a poem
about our past – The Duel. Will I ever be able to show him?
I even like his snobbishness – he’s more elitist
I guess you’d say. He assumes we’re “up there” – and it’s others job to
qualify, to climb up to “our level”! That’s so refreshing after Usher Glayne’s
weirdness! He just takes it for granted we’re in a class by ourselves; special
people trying to do special things. And our tastes are so similar. He doesn’t
plan to stay in Kentucky – wants to live in New England with its fall, its
woodstoves and frozen lakes. I can barely comprehend such confidence
much less contain it. Imagine being free forever from the fear that the
party’s happening elsewhere. We ARE the party.
I said I felt safe with him – he said he wasn’t sure
that was justified – looked at me like a beast longing to rend, but restraining
itself. Wild frissons! He must be horrified by how fast things are going –
I have never met a man who wouldn’t be. But he’s driving this train. Told
me he’s been so celibate lately – very upfront discussing his discouraging
relationship with a virginal anorexic perfectionist frightened by everything
who compensates by torturing herself and all the people around her. In a
flash I realized, that’s exactly what Devon is also.
Toss says he feels “stormed” by me –dizzied – by who
and what I am, the summit of my “magnificence”. Wow! Such flattery very
scary. How can he possibly mean it? Yet he seems so honest, so open.
What will he do when he finds out I am human after all – a creature of mud
and sludge like everyone else?
Reading Margaret Drabble’s The Needle’s Eye –
not so good as The Waterfall – beginning to be turned off by her towers
of verbiage. My own life is so much more interesting. Good phone con-
versations with Toss – I am beginning to trust him. When I told him what
I do for a living he was totally unfazed. “I knew you couldn’t get that body
walking!” Tomorrow we explore Annapolis.
Party Castle 12:05 am 2 July 79
Wrote D an angry farewell poem.
“HOW DID YOU MEET?”
You saw me naked
I saw you too close- up.
You hovered, teaching
Between the green glimpses.
You drank vodka,
I drank wormwood.
You cut mountains down to size;
I’d no idea that one could take such charge of space.
Now I’m a toad-dweller,
Nostrils pierced by thorns I
Fall face-first into every hole;
You were the king the ghost pines saluted.
How you dove and danced!
Speeding through your love-drunk universe, you
Infected me with your own whiteness
Dizziness, till all my blood drained out.
You challenged God;
I was the echo following after.
Yet here I am after all this time
And nothing promised remains of you.
Or, “Good luck with Sleeping Beauty’s castle!” That’s what he gets for
messing with my heart. Can’t show anyone – most certainly not him –
and it isn’t really finished – and I don’t think it ever will be. But thank
God for diaries. Diaries can be told anything.
Reading Secrets in the Family – it is so superb
I am going to buy copies for all my sisters. Looking forward to discussing
it with Toss. I’m beginning to miss him now – he’s so deep and interesting
to be around – so alive on many more levels than anyone else – challenging
all my levels. Falling in love – happy, crazy.
Thurs 11:05 – Plush Palace – 5 July 79
Back at The Plush – its catch as catch can in my
present situation. I am alienating managers left and right. But I am happy
crazy and who cares?
Because on the third of July Toss asked me to
marry him and I said yes! Here’s how it happened. On Monday night
we ate white clam linguini and crenshaw melon while listening to Keith
Jarrett’s Koln Concert – then – came together in delicious, soul-freeing
sex; two perfectly matched combatants recognizing each other not just
from childhood and youth but school and dreams. He was eager to learn
how I could best be pleased – so I surrendered to the inevitable. Fireworks!
He left me sleeping there in the AM – I heard thumping
downstairs but I know he has roommates so didn’t think anything of it –
when he came back for lunch he discovered the door broken in and my
purse missing. Keys, wallet, everything. I had to call into work – had to
call a locksmith to give me keys to my car.
Toss doesn’t know what else they stole because he
doesn’t know what else is supposed to be in this house – called his
roommates. They came, police came. So we spent a day of intense
babbling and the worst kinds of petty annoyances – but none of it mattered
because he was there. In fact, I welcomed it; it was an extra opportunity to be together.
At one point I said, you know, you’re everything I’ve
ever wanted in a man. He said, if I believed that, I’d ask you to marry
me. I said, if you did I’d say yes. So he said, “Do you want to get married?”
I said, “I think so,” and there it was! He said I’m the only woman he
has ever wanted to marry much less asked. We even chose the
children’s names – there are going to be two of them – a boy and a
girl of course; one named after Reed and one a combination of our
addresses! Had to call Aunt Frederica to give her the good news because
she’s the one who had to give the hospital permission to stitch me up
ten years ago after our first unfortunate night together! (She was drunk
of course.) Toss asked me to come back to Kentucky for his last year
of law school. I “shouldn’t miss this part of his life.” Dogs too, natch –
we are a package deal.
He has a house he’s rehabbing that has so many
rooms it is known as the Hilton. When I said I would come that was
more important to him than our engagement even. He says I can file f
or divorce in Kentucky’s understanding Commonwealth. He ordered
a case of Moet Chandon, saying now we have to drive up the coast and
tell everybody. I am a little scared to tell my parents – this suddenness
might only seem another strike against me. We told Avril and Maureen
– they just stared – obviously thinking we both have lost our minds –
it will take them awhile to believe in it. I told Avril about Kentucky –
she says she can handle the house; she can always rent out my
room to a college student if she feels pinched. I want to leave some
money with her – at least $1000 – had the brilliant idea to sell my car.
Wouldn’t want to be impoverished in Kentucky and I don’t want to
be on “retainer” from T.
Last night I read Toss The Duel and his eyes
filled with tears! He said the only flaw he sees in this arrangement
is that one of us must surely predecease the other! Could it really
happen? Could we grow old together? Could it be that I will never
make love to another person? Wrote a short note to Bruce,
telling him I will definitely be needing a divorce, sooner, rather
than later. Now I am trying to write a short note to D; but honestly,
what is there to say? Summing up our relationship seems only
to dismiss it. He has already fallen far, far back into the past. Toss is my future.
The Duel
Europe without you
Was a funeral feast.
I recall the procession of your letters
Far better than
The stream of luckless suitors
Trying to distract me.
Virgins aren’t distractible.
Your seductive missives stalked me.
Your fatal ploy was that nude photo
Adam lonely in his garden.
I came right home.
I well recall the ceremonies
Of that night!
Your shyness
My perfume
Our ignorance
Wild and hard
A riderless horse.
I did cry out as the candles burned.
I swear there were some moments when
We actually saw each other.
But if this magic sword cuts both ways
Why was I the only bleeder?
They peeled me off
And dropped me down a mile
Of antiseptic hallway –
A princess in a bucket.
It could have ended there
But at your school I haunted you
A chilly-breasted demon.
My daytime incarnation seemed mature:
I fooled everyone;
We chatted as you prepared the skin.
I bit down hard and
Tasted only
Suture wire.
You wrote and broke off
Our association.
Years groaned by
Like convicts chained
We served our terms with no time off
For bad behavior.
Lust had luster,
Excrement was ecstasy.
The castaways the whirlwind
Flung upon the sand
Were calm, polite
We knew our way around. But
That look you gave me!
Our unborn children shivered
In their sausage skins
Fully aware
Their time had come.
The tale was done
The frog-mask
Shivered off
We saw:
The you of you
The me of me –
Masks
Unmirrored
Scars
Unscored
Virgins not but
Innocence
Restored.
Alysse Aallyn 