Mon. Sept 21 – 64
A protective life regulated by bells. We come up the stairs at days’ end singing, hockey sticks over our shoulders like the dwarves in Snow White. Friends, bathrobes, curlers, bathing suits hang everywhere. You are Not Alone.
You go into your room and kick off your hockey shoes so forcefully the spikes damage the wall and throw yourself full-length on the bed even though you have only 15 mins to get pretty for dinner. Your roommate is laughing and throwing socks about. Life is good. Yet somehow I am wary of this idyll.
Tues Sept 22 – 64
I wish I was beautiful. It would make my life so much easier. But no, I have the Nose of the Aallyns, and the Jaw of the MauMau.
Writing under the sheets ONCE AGAIN by flashlight. This would mean a deten if caught which involves cleaning flowerpots down at the greenhouse. It could be worse. Boys have to shovel manure, which explains their smell. Many are the benefits of the female sex.
The smell of laundry soap is strong under here. Not that the sheets are clean – heavens no – they are stained with apple juice and blood. A brain-damaged girl got me in the ankle with her hockey stick.
Got my first KOB tonight so of course I have to memorialize it. A boy in my art class named Bob. I don’t know about Bob. I’m not sure he’s got what it takes. He’s too nice. Oh where will I find the boy f my dreams? My eyes wander over the Senior Class.
Left my razor kit at home and my legs are a hairy mess. Plus I wear kneesocks constantly and the rubber bands are cutting off my circulation. And my skin shows signs of becoming volcanic ground on a rich diet of creamed chicken and scalloped potatoes. Run for the boats, men, the Angry Goddess is about to explode!
At dinner I sit next to a very cute boy named Phil although he’s at least an inch shorter than me.
Got an interesting book out of the library about Anne Boleyn. Those Tudors certainly knew how to live. Well, enough of burning the midnight battery. See you in the AM.
Thurs. Sept 24. 1964
Rewriting Agnes Strickland, Lives of the Queens of England. She has her ideas, I have mine.
ISABELLA OF VALOIS – Unprepossessing, ye thinks? Look closer: this little chickadee is padded like a football player. Life was very rough and tumble in those days. Her face is all greased up and her ears seem to be missing. She married Richard II when she was eight and had no idea what was in store. Later he either was murdered or committed suicide so he wouldn’t be murdered.
JOANNA OF NAVARRE – Things are getting worse. Two fungus growths on either side of this head. She is wearing one of the new French bras but she still has to hold up her chest. When the French captured her, they gave her right back. Can you blame them?
KATHERINE OF VALOIS – Isabella’s sister but you’d never know it. She’s a dead ringer for Ringo Starr. No chest, a potbelly, and when they called her “Katherine the Fair” they were being sarcastic. Still, Henry V was madly in love with her. Maybe he was kidding.
MARGARET OF ANJOU – Maggie also well padded for the games, but content to take life as a bystander. From the expression on her face you can tell her team is not winning. She was a goalie in the Wars of the Roses.
ELIZABETH WOODVILLE – Her head is wrapped in mosquito netting and she is sucking on a lemon. Your guess is as good as mine what she was up to.
ANNE OF WARWICK – More sport, Old English Style. In one hand she holds a hockey stick, in the other, the ball.
ELIZABETH OF YOURK – An amateur magician. Saying, “Nothing up my sleeves, nothing up my socks.” I’d watch those sleeves, though.
KATHERINE OF ARAGON – Pictured holding a dead bouquet of flowers to symbolize her husbands whom she beat at wrestling. First one died, second one divorced her.
More anon!
Sun. Sept 27 – 64
Madness reigns! I’ve been behaving strangely for the past three days. Ah me. It is just too much that I have not been invited to the fall dance, and girls can’t invite boys here. Still there’s six days left. I will be disappointed if I don’t get KOBS from six boys all madly in love with me and threatening to throw themselves into the lake with one mighty splash. I can dream, can’t I?
Saturday was Night Problems – a strange affair where they blindfold girls & boys, put them in trucks and dump them in the woods couple by couple and make them find their way home. I was dumped off with Art the Wolf who made no moves on me but very practically suggested we follow the railroad tracks to the school! There was plenty of moon. We were the first ones back and won the box of cookies (which I gave him because I hate ginger snaps.)
Thurs Oct 1 - 64
Guess what, I’m in the infirmary. Lovesick or Night Problems? When first I entered Nostrils the nurse thought I was faking. But I had a real temperature all right! The doctor says I have SPOTS on my tonsils! (Lovespots.) Dr. Jax is one of those smooth mass-production doctors who advertise things on TV. Probably an incipient sex maniac.
Nostrils went snoopily through my bag asking what my Noxzema is for and confiscating my chocolate covered cherries (they were getting old.) Her nostrils really are amazing. You could pick her out of a crowd. She asked if Felix Krull, Confessions of a Confidence Man is a novel of sex and violence! I’m reading it but I don’t like it. Sometimes I read Vanity Fair (vey good! – Nostrils had heard of that one) and sometimes Nero Wolfe.
There are two boys in the Boys’ Section and I can talk to them over the swing door but I can’t see them! I’m going to write them both KOBS. Nostrils says I’ll be here till Sun which means I’m down for the count at the dance. These male sickos will have to be my dates.
Wed Oct 7 - 64
Life is so full. My whole being is just one big question mark. While waiting here to be fulfilled I am actually living. Reading Violet Brooke’s The Prisoners of the Tower. That’s what we are – prisoners of the tower. But at least it’s a co-ed tower.
I am introduced to the Art of Shiking – which is Being where you are Not supposed to Be. “Off bounds”. It has many sophisticated ramifications such as jumping from window to window, even running between the chimneys on the roof playing Viet Cong Vs French Resistance. Or it could just mean meeting boys in Central after dark!
Alysse Aallyn 
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