Mon. 23 Jan 67
Matt had to leave the dance early – his leg bothered him – I got a message to go up to faculty play rehearsal and who should be there but Aiken Billings! He is so big and old and handsome! I fell into his arms! He thinks he’s too fat but I like every little bit. I am concerned about letting a man of that size lie on top of you! You’d have to do it standing up!
I hung on his every word and every breath. He asked what my perfume was, I answered “Silk of Intimate.” Put it over my whole body! He says it’s the best he ever smelled. We sat on the balcony watching the faculty practice their play – I told him all of their little quirks & weaknesses, really made him laugh. Brice has a big part but he is not very good – he knew we were laughing at him. He has to kiss Miss Pampiono the Spanish teacher and Mr. Ensleigh the director made him do it again and again! All the student crewmembers shot me envious looks (prestige!)
Aiken spent the night in Brice’s room and I sat next to him at breakfast. They had my favorite (last night’s dinner rolls covered with white icing) but I couldn’t eat because of the maleness Aiken exuded from every pore. I thought I would faint just looking at his big thighs. What must he look like naked? The Lincoln Memorial or something! Brice’s date turned out to be Miss Pampiono – she has a nice figure but pop-eyes and is very quiet. Brice tried to draw her out about the red light districts of Madrid but she refused to be drawn. I went upstairs to put on my short orange dress with the patterned white stockings.
We spent a LONG time at the market buying the steaks – half a cow per person – Aiken is fussy about food. He showed me how he prepares them – rubbing them with mustard and basil and banging them with forks. He seemed to think I might want to take over but I told him I hate cooking and would rather explore his apt. It’s on St. Mark’s place with a lot of bay windows and high ceilings.
Over dinner he confessed his desire to conduct the Boston Pops but somewhere in life he took a wrong turn and is now getting a PhD in political science. We started with vichyssoise and then the steaks with peas, mushrooms, salad and eight or nine glasses of Almaden. I’ve been drinking that stuff since I was 8 – it doesn’t affect me. Miss Pampiono insisted on doing the dishes so we let her.
Aiken insisted on playing Ella Fitzgerald who is just awful. I must get him a Paul Revere & the Raiders album – something you can dance to. Miss Pampiono and Brice danced and Aiken extended a limp hand to me but I said I was too bloated and he gratefully told me all about Exeter.
Miss Pampiono and Brice went to make out on Aiken’s bed – right in front of me! I can’t believe it! I could blackmail her big time. But I’m glad she did it because she certainly can’t say anything about me.
I sat on Brice’s lap in the window and he did give me one devastating kiss. He told me to grow out my bangs! What is this thing men have for redesigning women’s hair I can’t imagine. I told him I’d think about it. Pulled back all my hair from my face but he said I looked like a “bomb victim”. He smokes filterless cigarettes and calls the others “tampax tips”.
I warned him the music was undanceable but he picked me up and whirled me around and around! No boy at school could do that, believe me. (Maybe Crow.)
Finally he threw me down on the couch and got on top of me! He was hard in a minute! I was starting to get a little worried – my First Time with the Spanish teacher moaning and sobbing to the speech coach across the room? Aiken kept telling me I had beautiful eyes while I subtly tried to disentangle my legs. The sweat was pouring off him. Finally he lit a cigarette all shaky-handed. I was relieved and ordered coffee. I had a feeling Brice was trying to take off Miss Pampiono’s dress across the room and she was trying to keep it on. Aiken said he’s been afraid to kiss me – I said “Did you think I didn’t know how?” he said, No, the age thing – and how he was dying to meet my Father!!! A bedraggled Miss Pampiono accepted a cup of coffee. Brice stood up and made a long speech from Thornton Wilder: “There is a land of the living and a land of the dead and the bridge is love. The only survival, the only meaning.”
So I put my hand over my heart and chimed in, “To thine own self be true.”
End of date. Forty-five minutes to get back to school!
Sun AM Brice met me at breakfast and said Aiken “likes” me and feels the Age Thing can be conquered. When I’m eighty-five he’ll be ninety-four! Pink cloud.
Meal per with Aynsley fascinating and I am going to write a short story about it. Pewter Hill is gorgeous – old stone house in a big snowy park – and the grandmother has some elderly relative dying upstairs – moaning weirdly throughout lunch!! There was a nurse in a dress who looked like a man. Ghost story?
Tues 24 Jan 67
Sofy came up to me today and said, “I don’t want to take the wind out of your sails but you’ve been acting like a SNOT ever since you snared that Big, Handsome Older Man!”
I’m in too good a mood to care. What she really means is I’ve Taken Myself Out of the Running and it makes the others gnash their teeth.
Made a Serious Inventory of my Face. I may not be conventionally beautiful but I’m not conventionally ugly either. A dimple in your chin many hearts will you win. So there.
Tried hard to write a poem about my emotions using thesaurus but the more I worked on it the more seemed I was smoothing a bedspread over an unmade bed. Have to admit I’m flying blind as a poet. Damn. Maybe Reed will write one for me. I get out my thesaurus.
A-limp along the battlements they come
Tenants of Byzantium
The pimply priest, the queasy horde
The Queen’s son
Anoint the holy sores
The king’s ache; the king’s men
The bones assemble and attend
Re-joint the shills; once shrill
Now shillingless.
The ague becomes the age.
Squires of skulls webbed tightly in
Mummydom.
Incorporeal now
In reticulum.
I think I’m pretty lucky to have Aiken. He’s very sensitive which you’d never know looking at his big luggly face. My favorite vision: Aiken puffing on a cigarette, eyes closed, intoning a passage from fave author Thomas Wolfe. Aaaah…I should avoid falling in love since there’s no guarantee he’ll join me there.
One thing’s for certain – he’s destroyed my datelife for a while. How can any of these spindly kindergartners compare to him?
Well, I have wasted all my study hall drinking Gunpowder and writing sideways. Time to do something constructive like Letters to Family and Setting Hair.
Wed Jan 25 – 67
Brice says he will be seeing Aiken at a mixer for Southeast Asia students do I want to send him “my regards”. I said sure. “I’d rather send him me.”
So what’s he doing at a Southeast Asia mixer? Connected to his degree or that Storm Center in his pants? Dark thoughts. Collapsing air castles.
Sun Jan 29 – 67
Really unsatisfactory Philly weekend with Aynsley and her visiting Claudia. Saw Fellini’s 81/2 and 10:30 PM Summer. Claudia’s boyfriend is a very unprepossessing vegetarian who plays the guitar. Feel Claudia – Swarthmore grad – has just “given up”. The second movie at least had one good sex scene. They transposed pictures over it but you could tell what was going on. Pretty serious eyestrain however. Afterwards the boyfriend wanted to play all Dylan’s songs about what bums women are so I conscientiously objected by going to bed.
Mon 30 Jan 67
Wrote a great story for RoachFace’s class entitled Run With the Fox. It’s too good for her. A girl is fleeing but you don’t find out who she is or why – just her physical reactions till she gets safe. This is a test RoachBottom is bound to fail. (Whereby failing ME.) Still I can’t resist – I like best the stories that make you a detective in someone else’s life. Maybe she’ll like it. She gave me an A on “Tree of Angels” about peasants who execute a priest for chopping down a tree they pray to. It was offbeat but it did have a ”we-them” thing she could feel smug about.
Tues 31 Jan 67
Just finished Eliz Gray Vining’s Take Heed of Loving Me. Much preferred Wife to Milton by Robt Graves. It’s a better book. But now I have plenty of evidence on what bad news it is to marry a genius. They’re selfish and they keep peculiar hours. Who will put up with MY selfishness and MY peculiar hours?
Starting to get impatient with Aiken for using Brice as a go-between. Too Shakespearean! Brice’s natural oiliness coats everything he touches. Aiken hasn’t called me once so for all I know Brice is making everything up. According to him A wants to invite me to a movie. I try to play it cool but it’s hard with no one to practice on.
Why not this weekend? Oh Aiken’s going to Princeton. Where he will presumably drink and fool around while I pine in this benighted teenybopper school.
Thurs 2 Feb 67
Hair smells like smoke, as if it is haunted! Unbelievably sex-starved tonight. Hanging out the window singing a dear little children’s rhyme: Here comes the candle to light you to bed AND HERE COMES THE CHOPPER TO CHOP OFF YOUR HEAD!”. Childhood such a time of innocence. Aynsley makes me close the window. See how I am constrained by the coldblooded conventionality of others.
Brice called me BEFORE BREAKFAST to say Aiken had to rush down to S. Carolina where his father had a heart attack! Apparently his father is REALLY OLD – had Aiken when he was 70!
4 Feb 67
Asked Brice flat out why he likes me so much. He said because I am “deliciously cynical”. I was very surprised! I am raw and red and tender on the inside (like a good steak.) HE is the “cynical” one! (Hypocritical too.) He really likes me because I badmouth his Place of Employment. I am Well Informed simply because I read so much.
Today felt like spring. Couldn’t resist playing around with Reed Hambro even though he’s so young. He keeps sending the most interesting KOBS. I wanted to see what he was made of so decoyed him into a classroom after dinner but I couldn’t even get my arms around him because HE WOULDN’T STOP TALKING. I am willing to go nine-tenths of the way but at that point I subside before the Law of My Ancestors.
When I came upstairs Aynsley asked if I’d been making out. “Because your mouth is all smashed.” From sheer desire!
If I get too focused on Reed there is always the danger Brice will find out and tell Aiken. The magazines are all for Honesty saying that its healthier. It may be healthier but privacy is yummier.
Worked out mathematically:
Either I will see Aiken or I won’t. Either he will encourage me or he won’t. Either I will get hot with Reed or I won’t.
Alysse Aallyn 
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