Wed Aug 25 – 65
M & D up sailing at six, we girls slept like hogs till 9. Loafed in the sack discussing M’s wedding.
“I want a small wedding.”
“You’ll never get it under 50 people,” I said.
“You can all be bridesmaids! Gayle is maid of honor.”
“I hope our dresses are full-length!” (me)
“Avril will be flower girl,” suggests Genevieve.
Now Merrill is threatening to get married BEFORE the actual ceremony because otherwise she’ll be too nervous! Yeah! She might fall in love with SOMEBODY ELSE and then what I think but don’t say.
Reached Long Point, Canada by lunch. Half mile to shore, G and I certain we could swim it so we plunged in, Avril trailing us in the dinghy. It was gorgeous, water clear but green, not blue like Mediterranean. Bottom pure pale sand. Not actually tired when I reached shore but proud – boat looked so far away! Glorious sand beach, big light house. G found a dead seagull that hadn’t been dead very long so we got a good look at this magnificent bird. Close up they are so beautiful. No clue what killed it – did not look sick. We gave it a nice burial (it was so heavy I was surprised it could fly.) I recited Millay – I never miss a chance to be poetical, just part of Alysse’s Beachside Morgue Service. Avril cried. Byron’s my favorite (strange since 19th cent makes me want to scream) but couldn’t recall any of his stuff. 1Jane Austen my favorite hist period. ) Could I have used his quote about Napoleon? What must be the madness of thy memory? I particularly love Don Juan. Also I like Keats. Frost is good but with him you don’t have to think.
Back at the boat we had lunch and set sail for Berwell. Long, lazy afternoon.. I’ve finished all my books – heavy into spy literature – also poisoned chocolates case which I didn’t like as much as I thought I would. I thought it was Mrs Bendix all along. Also Anya Seton’s Katherine. “Eve of Destruction” playing on the radio. Great. I need several hours alone with the author of this song in order to straighten him out. I refuse to believe politics is anything but temporary madness.
Thurs Aug 26 – 65
Harshly awakened by pots, kettles & cans falling to the floor. Boat rocking wildly and me, in the lower starboard bunk, got entangled in my sleeping bag and almost thrown into the bilge. Then my roll-in bed slammed into the wall as far as it would go with me in it! Knives flying – I was in fear for my life!
“This ketchup bottle almost hit my FACE” said Merrill. I rescued diary from floor and tried to lock it in books cupboard while books fell on my head. I heard the sound of the motor as M & D tried to straighten the boat. Avril was actually thrown out on the floor under a cascade of bottles. If you really thought about it you’d get seasick. Put on a lumberjack shirt – no time for bra and climbed above to see Port Stanley heaving into view. Fat white gulls sitting on the black coal. Port Stanley itself looks like it was erected overnight for a Hitchcock film and will be pulled down next day. We had a lot of trouble docking. A cheerful idiot in a yachting cap kept offering directions that turned out to be wrong. Once docked a customs officer came aboard and stamped around. We were still cleaning up. Dad said we looked like “a laundry scow.” The customs man kept a cigarette in his mouth while the ash grew long and longer. Had to ask us the date. After he left we put up the awning and ate lunch, then went ashore looking very conspicuous. The natives seem harmless. I bought 2 books – Nicholas Blake & Phyllis Whitney.
Mom found a good bakery so we are all in the cockpit munching cookies. Tough t-bone steaks for dinner with plenty of onions, then cards.
News: that Johnson again. Married men no longer exempt.
Wed. Sept 1, 65 2:40 AM
Lie awake wondering why I want to be an actress. My reasons are all wrong. I simply want to be Somebody Else. Wouk’s Morningstar currently driving me up a tree. I refute his assumption that if you’re young, talented, beautiful you’re bound to make it. I have hit upon a Plan of Action. Genevieve thinks I should go to a WORK CAMP next summer. I need to find some non-exploitative training so I can enter RADA age 18. First goal: save $100 out of my allowance. (That’ll be hell. Out of $30/month!)
Next summer I will be sixteen and can WORK so maybe I should do that. Genevieve says you can just go into the Inn and get a job. THEN THERE’S THAT MINNESOTA PROG I WAS TOO young for, Maybe should go there. I don’t want to be so parasitical. Genevieve says London will be s expensive as Wellesley! People advise me to try writing short stories but I’m not there yet – still learning – and I don’t want to rush things. 3:40 AM! I surprise myself sometimes.
Thurs. June 9 – 66
Yahoo! Summer is officially here and I am FREE! Mom & Dad aren’t coming till tomorrow night so I have noting to do but take walks, pack, and try to avoid Blair who is becoming a little much for me. He moves with such incredible slowness and he has to have all my ideas exhaustively explained to him. He likes to read Ezra Pound’s poetry out loud while I lie under a tree with my eyes shut. Since this is the only thing we share I’m afraid to tell him I just don’t like Ezra Pound. I don’t think he can stomach Millay. Oh dear. While he talks my inner music plays Let’s Get Lost on a Country Road by the Kit Kats and We Gotta Get Out of This Place by the Animals. Speaks to our condition as they say. Merrill’s wedding June 16 – we have nightmarishly ugly bridesmaid dresses to wear – Mom had them made by some disabled woman she took pity on. We are the ones deserving of pity for having to wear the damn things.
Mon Jun 27 – 66
Here I am at the University of Minnesota! I’ve hit the big time! I would not be writing at all but we are in the basement because of a tornado warning. Ah, the joys of the Midwest. Just us theatre students and a bunch of nuns who wear funny underwear and caps with strings. You wouldn’t think there would be an order of theatre nuns would you! Well there are! They are called the Franciscans and I must say they are making the idea of the convent look attractive. (Not the clothes though. But there is talk of fixing those.) They even have a swimming pool which Chassie my roommate and I sneak into – naked – in the middle of the night.
A fat one named Sister Glory is praying out loud. They told us to bring “something valuable on our way down so of course I brought you! Next time I will bring a blanket and pillows (the floor is very hard.) Writing hard too because whatever I put down is played back in my brain very discouragingly.
I am studying Acting One, Fencing, Makeup and Fencing. I love theatre people! (even uns.)But we don’t spend nearly as much time on those as on building theatre sets – obviously we are Slave Labor. This is even worse because the slaves didn’t pay to work. So far the only thing I’ve learned is how to mix “dope” to stiffen unbleached muslin into walls. This will take me far in life.
As usual my intellectual life is alive. Reading The Carpetbaggers in which sex warps into hate (Beales!) Turgenev’s Hunting Sketches (adore!) and The Prince, which is sort of a drag. I am Mrs. Smith in The Bald Soprano. The director asked us when our periods are due before casting. (He is very superstitious.)
Fri. July 22 – 66
The fact that I am still a virgin’s not my fault. I am sitting in the coach of a New York Central Train headed (eventually) for Philadelphia – because there is an airline strike. I am headed to Charlaix to meet up with family aboard The Gryphon. It will be a long, laborious journey, which is good because I have had a monumental hangover (my first!) for three days. I am eating liverwurst & onions to keep away the sailors (it’s working.)
I was dating this fantastic college student named Trey (Très très)! I was too absorbed even to write about him! He has the most glorious bod – how I wish I had a picture – and is very tan. Runs around Minneapolis St Paul in a little loincloth & flip-flops. He’s covered all over with a glittery platinum fuzz. Alas he was just as interested in my roommate Georgy as he was in me but she was not interested in him. (Thank God.) He’s six feet six and has to wear coke bottle glasses but since I can’t really see as far as his face that doesn’t matter. He took me to see The Skin of Our Teeth at the Guthrie – fabulous.
(A sailor sits beside me. He grins. I grin. Blast of onionated liver. He departs.)
Trey gave a going away party for me at his house (parents away.) It’s a teensy little garage way out in the suburbs I’m surprised humans can fit in there. But it has a big back yard. I wore a bikini , sundress & sunglasses and brought my Village Fugs album – they loved it. Trey opened up the booze cabinet and started mixing whiskey sours while 4,000 of his closest friends trooped past scrutinizing and then ignoring me.
Finally I announced I had to be going. (Early train!) He told me he would drive me. I said he didn’t have to – I could get some actor to do it – he said – “I want to” gazing deeply into my eyes. That gave us more time (all night!) together. Unfortunately. I was handling the whiskey sours, it was the Purple Jesus that did me in. Jesus! Never again! Nothing purple EVER! Trey went out cruising around for supplies leaving me alone with Leechy Friend who mixed me this awful drink and I was too drunk to turn it down. I threw up all over Leechy Friend who kept patting me and saying “Don’t worry, this happens all the time.” (Around HIM!) Trey came home and was quite upset by my condition. He got me a sleeping bag and put me to bed in his parent’ room.
Later on I hear this noise like someone coming to bed with me.
“Trey?”
“No.”
It was the Leechy Friend! I tried to escape from him but got stuck in the crevice between the twin beds and was still too drunk to escape! I yelled “Trey!” and didn’t my hero appear to rescue me! Minus his loincloth. I begged him to stay. He knew I was a virgin but he said, “There’s a lot of other things we can do” and there were. I had several “seizures” and I think he did too. If I had any criticism it would be that his penis is a little skinny- and ribbed – like a dog penis. But still! A night to remember! Life is no fun if there’s no one to play it with!
Alysse Aallyn 
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