Thursday, 30 Nov. 1967
I am doing a bunch of special projects – Harold Pinter, American Foreign Policy and Konrad Lorenz. Probably ought to be a way to blend these so I can write the same paper for each. How about a play about the Vietnam War performed by ducks?
Toiling on my poetry. Sneaking into the Tower at night to write poetry in black magic marker on the inside of the bathroom stalls. Something “cultural” to look at. (Mostly Millay and Frost but some John Lennon. Plus my Plumly poem sans attribution.) Krissy says everyone knows it’s me because my handwriting is so distinctive.
Verb-Corseted
The French teacher sweeps
The cherry blossoms from the tennis court
(As she would like to sweep the cherries)
French them soundly beneath
Spiked shoes; printing red marks
Like kisses
On their half-grown thighs
While headmistress
Cello-breasted
Measures with her thumb
The Bath Wife’s heft;
Polishes graffiti carved upon her
Coffin in Chaucerian High English
And the girls,
Nun – white
Nun – blue
Soar above the soccer fields
Foul-mouthed angels
High on fetal wings;
Anticipated ecstasy locked in narrow hope chests
Ripened on amphetamines
Free love
Bad dreams.
1 Dec 67
Cheering letter from penpal Dell Rynehardt, the one who saw me at the Stratford play and asked for an introduction because I was so beautiful! Reading Territorial Imperative and On Aggression. Interesting. So glad to find a valid argument against the conditioned reflex.
Worry that I’m prostituting my mind in this place; Plumly Academy for Losers. My teachers may be well-meaning but they are trying to drag me down the wrong road. Their “good intentions” are dangerous for me. Reading Knut Hamsun’s Growth of the Soil for my “non American novel”. Good to be a senior: these days I do nothing but read which is all I ever did anyway.
Nothing human is alien to me, says Terence. Doesn’t need to be human from my point of view. Fri. study hall, I’m in the library studying for test on the Constitution. Can’t wait for THAT to be over. Casey and I off to dinner at Pewter Hill.
Wed 6 Dec 67
Back at Plumly. Bad birthday – me, Mom & Avril all endlessly menstruating. Auntie Beulah creaking like a shutter in a gusty wind, probably jealous that she can’t menstruate too. I admired Mom’s bracelet and she took it off and handed it to me in an annoyed way! I don’t want it like that!
Now I’m so high strung and bitchy these days it’s a wonder anyone can stand me. I bite my nails, claw my face, pick my hair and my hands shake. I trip over furniture. How will I make it till June? Prognosis: grim. I was SO looking forward to that Pewter Hill dinner, then missed two buses trying to get back to school. Mom kind but irritated underneath; I shot myself to pieces with mental recriminations.
Received two bad shocks; first; Brice Harbreath will be along on our Christmas ski vacation. Ugh. His lewdness & diseased morality seep a constant vicious poison and since he talks a good line about “freedom vs license” M & D don’t realize it. It’s one of those things where you can’t expose him without making yourself look bad. I know he will cling to me like a limpet. Ugh! That laugh! I shiver at the thought. And he dumps ME for being “sexually inadequate” because I wouldn’t take it for granted that all dates should end with a hand job! Ugh, ugh, ugh. “Frigid,” my foot!
Second shock; Mom offered me skis for my birthday and I said I didn’t need them. But when I reconsidered and said I thought new skis would be nice she snapped at me that I don’t need them! I thought it was my choice but guess not! “We’ll rent,” says Mom, “Or you can borrow from Devon.”
Devon the ski coach! That would be great. Put me on the wrong track with him from the start; I was counting on him to protect me from Brice. Hell. The real joke is I’m the only member of this family who can actually ski! (Owing solely to Devon.)
Thurs. 7 Dec 67
Six girls received the same KOB last night – only difference is name printed in block letters on the outside. Inside in crayon: DOESN’T IT SEEM RATHER FOOLISH TO LET YOUR PRIDE BRING YOU DOWN?” One glance and I knew it was Shawn Kobler. Proved it to Casey from his writing sample in my notebook. Everyone else thinks it refers to the Christmas dance; the demand that the guys dress up, buy flowers and act decent. I think the others are camouflage and I am the real target.
He has a point, but I’m not admitting it, because sometimes pride is all there is. Was dozing through meeting when Shawn spoke up at the end about how emotion embarrasses everyone. People worry about “self-revelation.” That was brave! But I’m not going to the dance without a date and just “meeting” him there. I would rather go with a guy I DON’T LIKE. So there.
Reading The Man Who Was Thursday, which should definitely be called The Man Who Was Sunday.
Wed. 13 Dec 1967
Ate like a wolf at dinner – like a COVEN of wolves. What is to be done? Flirt with Blair Manteo till I saw Shawn staring at me. Decided to send him an “anonymous KOB” saying “Doesn’t it seem rather foolish to send anonymous KOBs?” Serves him right. But he already confessed to Aynsley so it would be beating a dead boyfriend.
D & M in Vietnam and I’ve heard nothing for 2 weeks. I SUPPOSE they’re all right. Just read the most appalling Newsweek – all they get out of Dr Zhivago, Bonnie & Clyde and Darling is the cut of the clothes.
Casey studying by the window. We were caught for Late Lights so have to study downstairs in the Monkey Cage. Discomfort (no tea) but plenty of company. This is a very Disrespectful Senior Class. Either that or it is unrealistic to expect ANYBODY to finish ANYTHING by 10 PM. Off to Girls’ Locker (to pee) I trip over Bob Burke & Susie Thomas all over the floor (and all over each other.) There may be snow on the ground but it’s spring in our hearts!
On my way back I trip over Renda Swayne & Bill Johnson Doing the Likewise.
It’s enough to drive one into the Girls’ Parlor to watch TV with the Uglies and the Morally Fucked Up Council Robots.
I know what I want for Christmas. Print of Breughel’s Hunters in the Snow. As soon as the bell rings Casey and I are making soup.
Tues. 19 Dec 67 – Pewter Hill
Advanced state of 20th cent rot clearly observable on Johnny Carson show. I give up and come upstairs. Told Dad I’m thinking I want to be an actress but worry I’m not pretty enough. He says, “Judith Anderson is an actress!”
Have you SEEN Judith Anderson? I have – (MacBeth.) Suicide is preferable. Thanks a lot, Dad!
THINGS ACCOMPLISHED IN THE LAST 3 DAYS:
1) Read Helen Bevington’s When Found Make a Verse of
2) Taught Avril 3 French Christmas carols
3) Took Phinney on 20 walks, brushed him, cleaned up 900 messes
4) Washed every dish I could not talk my way out of
5) Slept & ate continuously
Something’s got to give!
Fri 29 Dec 67 just after midnight – Pinkham Notch NH
Past, present & future all mingle. Driving home from a party with Devon Duvall – he keeps kissing my hands. Can’t kiss mouths because we are laughing too hard.
“Goddam it” I say and he says,
“What kind of pillow talk is that?”
The kind you have with someone who already has a girlfriend. (or 6.)
Luckily skiing is good for sexual frustration.
Mon. 1 Jan 68
My sex life has nowhere to go but up. My dreams have been INCREDIBLE!! Writhe & pant all night. Reading Achilles His Armor in between doses of The Decline & Fall of Practically Everybody. Wonder if my life will ever be a joke someday to somebody. Left the New Year’s Eve party (Brice kept asking if I was a virgin); faced the fact there would be neither sex or champagne to be had; donned my golden caftan and cleaned my room.
Ever been climbing stairs and you suddenly noticed what your body was doing and you couldn’t do it anymore? That’s what happened to me at the mountaintop, feeling cold and tired and hungry and I thought, what if I suddenly forget how to ski? Devon says beginners have to be taught not to sit on their heels – now the new racing theory is to sit on your heels, so NOBODY knows how to ski. And I don’t like things that work only when you DON’T think about them.
Wed 3 Jan 68 1:10 AM
Nietzsche was surely right when he said of all the treasures life unearths, self-knowledge is the last. I am nowhere near it. Find other people a whole lot easier to understand. Mother speaks of auditions and my liver freezes but I was the one who suggested it! Do I want to be endlessly “inspected”? Seems so repulsive. Plus I hate hassle and Plumly is working my last nerve. Do I want to bothered while laboriously constructing my house of cards? Imposserous. Maybe I should join the Peace Corps or lock myself in a room and Write a Novel.
Somerset Maugham says only a writer is truly free and this book shows me how it can be done. As soon as I touch it I’m flushed back into the maelstrom and lost again.
Philosophically I am closest to Hindu. (Dr. Gilmour says I’m a mystic.) That right there separates me hopelessly from Devon who was raised a Hysterical Christian so now has a bad case of Borderline Religious Disorder. He says I’m a Pantheist which is NOT technically true since I believe in the supernatural. Metaphysics are the ONLY physics I have time for.
According to everybody I project confidence, which shows how blind everybody is. Avril told me she sees me rich & famous and herself a housewife married to a 9-5er. (She’s only 13.) She insists she has no talent, which I told her is UTTER BUNK. It’s the other way around: anything seen that young is a flashing pan for sure. Thurber obviously can’t draw and Basil Rathbone obviously can’t act but look at them!
The challenge always is to deepen the imagination.
Plumly Home for Incurables Mon 8 Jan 68
School station wagon met me at Paoli and I was back in jail in time for Vespers. We all bow our heads and I pray to Sredni Vashtar The Magnificent . She answers my prayer; I get an excellent letter from Devon saying how much he misses me! This boy shows promise! And another from penpal Dave saying he can’t find anyone as beautiful as me. Heheheh. He sounds so lovelorn you’d never guess he hasn’t seen me for four years! What a nut! I’m just friendly, I’m not actually encouraging him. Let’s hope he’s not some kind of a serial killer. Help!
In my jail cell complete with high chipped blue walls, iron bedstead and junk bureau I write a story called A Very Private Invasion. Spent a lot of time on it but now I can’t show it to anyone or use it for anything. It’s a fantasy about Devon and me after he gets killed by an avalanche (Heheheh.) It’s always a mistake to cross us writers.
Reading Unicorn can’t figure out why they rave about Iris Murdoch so. Hackneyed plot. Horribly afraid “they” would tell me “That’s the point! Isn’t it a gas!” It’s a gothic so I suppose I should be pleased. Still, literary criticism feels like a moving target.
Sat next to Master Gwill in meeting but didn’t have anything to say to him after. He’s so weird. What is he? Man? Woman? Floating hair? God only knows. Miss Cluny telling the whole junior class how REVOLTED she is by the IDEA of sex! And she’s like twenty-five! Should we be under the instruction of these mentally disabled people?
Casey playing Francoise Hardy. The minute she went to the Tower to take a shower I put on good old honest Stones.
Tues. 9 Jan 68
Last Fr I slept from 7;30 to ll:15 AM! I was so tired I wrote “combinining” instead of “combining” on my poster! Slept through dinner and study hall – Casey covered for me with Wienand. Wienand unscary these days – she has troubles of her own. Senior class pretty certain she left Miss Womrath (who has a broken leg) stuck in the dumbwaiter behind Senior Stairs for an hour and a half. On purpose! As who would not, if given half a chance?
Have to finish my five posters and do some French sentences but bed still looks inviting – as inviting as Plumly sheets will ever be when you’ve forgotten to pick up your laundry two weeks in a row.
College boards an oppressive seal upon my future. Seems a grubby deal with the affluent race. Couldn’t I go to Geneva instead? You know, where there are snows, storms & sailboats? Blame my father for teaching me to be a noncooperator with life and blame Chocolates for Breakfast for teaching me to be a noncooperator with my dad. A little reading is a dangerous thing and a LOT of reading is profoundly liberating. Someday I will be dead and everything I touched and loved will be dead. What will college boards matter then? I’d rather have a boxed set of “Complete Works” so I’d better get started. I love the smell of ink.
Finished Huxley’s Crome Yellow. A charming antique.
Tues. 16 Jan 68
Rather afraid of Colette. She is praised for her “humanity” but her impassivity doesn’t seem especially “human” to me. So the “corpse” of society has maggots! According to her, all relations between the sexes a disaster. Where is the perfect love of Joseph for Sidonie, of Sidonie for baby Sidonie? In her memoirs Colette’s more honest. I guess sometimes life doesn’t satisfy us by being as horrible as it has a right to be. Some salmon make it up the stream.
Fatally shocked Mrs. Liveright by telling her I don’t want to take college boards because I only want to apply to theatre schools. Thought she’s die right there. Now I have to prepare auditions – ugh – 5 pieces in all, 3 contemp & 2 classical. Wonder if they’ll let me be a man in Pinter’s The Caretaker. I don’t think it matters what sex he is.
Lovely letter from Devon worrying about whether we are soulmates! He’s always certain he’s missing some bus or other. I love his letters. Sweet, but confounding.
Thurs 18 Jan 68
Still shuddering from the spell of Colette. Chained to her mother’s fireside she heard the horses coming for her down the echoing road…what is the mystery? What is the secret? I try to get at it by writing a story, Death of a Great Actress. She basically wastes her deathbed trying to please her audience with one last show. Can’t submit it to any class so showed it to Toss Sheffield editor of the lit mag, ProSem. He says No. Why not a Real story about Real things like cows in a field? Shows me horrible photos of bums & train tracks. Says that’s art. I’m aghast. Is he reacting to being kicked off the Religious Life committee for his suggestion that a school bus parked sideways at a drive-in would be a Religious Outing? (He says he’s had his best orgasms – so far – in a school bus. Yet maintains he is a virgin.) Curses be upon them; their little gods are blind. The sooner I blow this dive the better.
Casey & I going into King of Prussia to see Genevieve and shop on Saturday. I will wear my new fur hat & muff and buy a poster of The Rolling Stones. Anything to break the ennui. In the evening, the faculty play, Importance of Being Earnest. I tried to talk senior play committee into Strindberg’s Dream Play; Shawn voted me down! He is still angry about that dance in the marble tunnels under the school where the eyes of glass-caged birds stare us down. There I dared to dance with Blair: girls meant to be “strictly monogamous” here. (Boys are a different story.) Shawn says out loud I only want to be an actress so my “beauty” will be admired. Find a way to turn THAT into an insult!
Casey comes in wet and panting from swimming, says her senior project’s been approved. Hope mine will be.
Sat 20 Jan 68
Give me the earth! Give me the world! Will there ever be a book in which I am born on the first page and die on the last? Where if I wanted to know what will happen to me I can just read ahead? Rattling back in the station wagon I was stupid with desire.
Alysse Aallyn 
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