7PM – Sat 23 July 77
Devon and I went for a long walk today, had a great
talk. He told me all about his passionate relationship with
English girl – asking “Do you really want to know?” I did – I managed to
be very hands off. Said he’d written her “lyrical love-letters” and
she is saving money to come to US at Christmas.
Bit of a downer to find other people have split
minds like me. I told him a little about Ryder and even more about my husband. I had to hope he wouldn’t see it “retaliation” for what he’d told me. (R would have.) Fantasies can be ugly if they prevent you from experiencing reality.
We hugged – he left – I know he thinks I’m too
“intense”. I was stupid enough to read him my peach poem. On
the other hand, if a guy can’t handle my poetry where am I? R only likes poems he knows are about him.
Wrote a whiny letter to Avril (who usually can handle
whiny letters). Good today – bike, swimming, plus my walk with D. Long letter to Mom and Dad.
Reading Stella Gibbons’ Cold Comfort Farm –
can’t stay grumpy – laughing too hard. Settling into my spaceship –
my own body – first day of the rest of my life. Listening to wonderfully crazy modern opera on the radio.
Sun 24 July 77
4PM
Wrote 4 pages of A Demon Roused. Horribly
dissatisfied. Patricia Highsmith on the suspense novel no damn
help at all. Everything I’ve ever written pure dunder written by a
dunderhead. Restrained myself from calling Ryder to yell at him.
Face facts. Left DC June 4. This coming
month has to be gotten through. Feel I my “breakdown” I suffered last spring was a crisis of identity. Attacked by the writing thing
(no money, no approval, no relationships) attacked by the relationship thing (R too critical, wanting to “change” me.) Starving myself. Long mad midnight walks rampaging thru Chevy Chase with dogs. The ENDLESS Devon situation only explicable when seen in this light.
(He’s TOO good looking – too much fantasy.)
Now about my book. New beginning ALL wrong and
I couldn’t figure out why. The characters seem alive.
- First Person Difficult. My husband always said
- omniscient narrator no longer possible, making
- me want to do it. However, I have to admit you
- need to be somebody – an extra character and that’s a
- bigger pain in the neck.
2) Scene Problematic. I’ve GOT to get these people out of England.
It’s artificial. How about if I don’t say where it is? Will the specificity cops come after me?
3) Format (Suspense novel) rough because I have to be
the one who knows what’s going on and I want to write my first draft in a narcoleptic state. Means I have to be happy making a huge ness with a million
false starts and then write the thing ALL OVER when I know what’s going on.
But I feel time running out on me. Goddam it.
I should be happy to explore. Why all this pressure? Two novels unaccepted, why write a fourth? Am I deliberately trying to drive myself to the
brink of insanity? Also I HATE Sunday because the pool is packed, no stores are open, and there’s no mail.
Devon and his roommates Blair & Brian drop by and I
struggle to appear sane. Hard for me.
6PM
Called R. to yell at him. He wasn’t there – thank GOD.
Maybe I just want to punish him. He certainly deserves it.
1:30 PM Mon 25 July 77
Dark night of the soul finally over. Very athletic today –
feel deliciously tired. Decide I should go back to Washington no
matter what. My choices are my choices. My happiness can’t be dependent on how people treat me. I plan to use my time to become powerful – to be the person I’m supposed to be. In the drugstore line I was reading up on the showbiz personalities – nobody interesting before 30 and I have a few years yet.
Forget about weight – just follow & learn to love
“virtuous routine”. (I’m a size seven – that’s pretty good.) Today it
POURED rain – night baseball Devon wanted to attend out of the
question. He suggested we switch to a movie when he called this am.
Still feel stilted with him unfortunately.
Assault on library. Planning to ransack the place.
Leafed through Helen Hayes (poor woman); enjoying Thurber’s
My World and Welcome To It .
Tues. 26 July 77 9:40 AM
Sitting on stonewall in full sunlight in my black bikini
waiting for pool to open. Swim and sunbathe till ll:30 when mail comes.
After 7 pm I can return – that way I miss the crowds.
Exercise, coffee, 3 glasses water. The Regime.
I’m down to $4. Embarrassing to be taken out last night
by Devon & his roommates. (We saw Star Wars. Childish, but they were into it.) Sent letter to Mom & D asking for stock certificates. They
won’t like it.
Dinner should have been nice but barbecue very messy.
Wore my tightest jeans and my pink French “Trés chic” t-shirt. Devon surprised me by talking on and on about how beautiful I am. Started to get stoked – in fact I was horny as hell. I would have taken the three seminary students on if I could have avoided the interpersonal madness that would result. They all have beautifully athletic bodies. But I’m starting to get a feeling that if I just sit in my deer blind a bit longer Devon will come to me.
Every now and then I get a bad “Ryder – flashback”, like some synaptic slipup. What will I think of this years from now? Mirror images ache, then fade.
Cold Comfort Farm exactly 100 pages too long (but I
think most books are). Take a long hot Jean Nate bubble bath and read The Thornbirds.
2:30 PM Wed July 27 – 77
Masturbation is the better part of valor. Don’t make
decisions ruled by sex. Bike ride combined with cold shower doesn’t work.
Must husband my wattage (joke). Too bad sex is
such a fast way to get to know someone.
First draft of Demon so far bony and spare. Neatly
boxed “components” = “write your own novel”. Trying to exterminate “dead” patches. Wish I had done this with The Mass at St. Secaire –
but in those days I was in the “throw in everything you think of and
take it out later” school. I like constructing this awkward armature better. Lean and mean superior to flagellate and winnow.
Will I ever let Ryder see my new body, my new confidence?
He will hang on for dear life and I don’t want that. I want to go back to dancing but Ryder prefers I have neither security NOR money.) Think I’ll look for a sublet – easier to impress a private owner than a credit union.
I prefer living alone. Painstaking cultivation of intense privacy in the midst of a crowd has always been my forte.
Mom and Dad called – acting all worried. Apologizing
for giving Ryder my number. I put on a good show of being completely ”over” him but I can see they don’t want me moving back to Washington and prefer Mrs. Duvall’s ski chalet option. (My cynical side tells me it’s just cheaper.) I act like I have connections to the literary life in DC and they don’t know any better.
Thornbirds is teaching me the great unpleasantness of
what publishers define as “a good read”. Contrary to my previous belief unfortunately the Victorian period has not ended. Forced to skip the war, potted history and scenery descriptions just to keep going.
7:30 PM Finished Thornbirds. Neither Dane’s death nor Justine’s love affair rang true for me. Uh oh. Danger signs. My taste thoroughly out of kilter with the market.
Couldn’t swim – 3,000 spectators at some sort of race
in the pool. So went to library – checked out twelve books – bio, history murder mysteries. Alec Waugh, Somerset Maugham, Vyvyan Holland, –
Hugh Walpole. Evelyn Waugh, of course. At this very moment R is
doing his very last show of 7:30 Live. Will they have a party or wake?
Probably go out drinking at the Shalimar, try to pick up dancers he can hector and assault. Time for me to go walking and see how the other (99%) live.
HOT PROWL
Don’t wake up.
I surveil by night
Your chiseled torso
Slacken with exhaustion.
Touching things that once
You touched,
Listing to your apnea –
I turn away before you turn.
Making peace with all my choices.
It’s worth everything;
Winning in divorce a
Hard-won superpower:
Invisibility
2:45 PM Thurs 28 July 77
Loving myself today. I am very tan. Hair strawberry
blond and my stretchmarks look like silk moiré. Any sense of inadequacy must be pounced upon and shored up – work like a beaver at his dam.
No worries, few fears. Daddy sent $ which I deposit in my acct. Since I can’t cash a check anywhere I eat what’s here; pickled beets and plain grits. Gallons of water to even it all out. Shake the old body out after 26 years.
Decide two people create love – I refuse to do it alone.
Reading Ford Madox Ford and grooving on his Violet versus Elsie
problems. Schadenfreude. Years later poor Elsie says, “I should have ignored everybody and divorced him.” Alas, Ford is a self-centered fool.
Not a simpatico character. However the period is a favorite with me. Mail hideously dull. Nothing from Harcourt. Will my “Westerns” editor have thenerve to turn down an author they’ve got 105,000 copies of? Yes. They’re all a bunch of weenies, frankly. Bike ride.
8:45 PM Finished article for the McManus mag about
Shadowe – “Island in Common” – 750 words – sent it off with letter.
Mission accomplished. Thinking of substituting a night ride for my walk.
Triggers fewer yearnings.
Ford’s moved to the US and I’m at the end of my tether with him. Tried
reading Jane Novak’s Razor Edge of Balance on V. Woolf – but she’s no threat –
– Lingo Academico virtually impenetrable.
Loved reading Fowles on the Fr Lt’s Woman – even though he has a “tin ear” about the Victorians – their “failure” to depict “a man and woman in bed together” ! (How about My Secret Life!!!) He’s the real thing all right even though he launched 1st draft without any research. (It shows.)
I’m going to stop freaking out about how little I know London.
Full of joy & life & strength & immortality & pep. Now thinking fondly of DC. Resist the impulse to call myself a turkey for even MENTIONING living together to R. (I said in my phone message I had to have a house for dogs.)
I can see him crying over his beer at the strip club. Insisting his wussdom is independence. I feel and look mighty thin – but refuse the temptation to weigh
myself. Size seven is good enough. Took my walk looking indulgently at couples with children thinking, “This too is within my reach.”
Mail full of dull rejections NO interest or acceptances. But the UNITY MITFORD I’d ordered came which I’m reading now. Must write about sisters someday. It’s a trip.
11:12 AM Sat 30 Jul 77
Going out tonight with Devon to see Annie Hall, that laff riot he hasn’t seen. This is one of the things I love about life – it’s so unpredictable! Give these guys space to stew they will eventually DO something. We had a nice phone conversation. I can tell he has “traumatized” himself by thinking he “lured” me fruitlessly here. I tell him hardly, I’m writing 8 p. a day (of course it will all have to be thrown out) getting a tan and reading piles of books. (All true.) Too cold & overcast today for pool though and now its raining.
Starting to get a feeling D and I will end up in bed.
It’s inevitable. How I crave that tight young flesh…Bet you $5. Will
wear my faded cerise linen jumpsuit, high heels and Nefertiti necklace.
Stoking!
4:15 PM Sun 31 July 77 Deck
Devon found Annie Hall so painful it took awhile for him to speak. I was surprised but patient. I couldn’t have dreamed up a movie more likely to focus all our reservations. The scene where Annie tells Alvy she misses him made me think of poor Ryder – the separate fragile uniqueness of each human soul – and I could tell Devon was “feeling” his memories too.
We sneaked a pizza (a whole pizza) into the theatre
so we could come right back here for wine and coffee and more wine –
took three hours to get to the point of making love.
In a fairly daring move D opened the buttons of my jumpsuit and stroked my stomach pulling down first one shoulder and then another to play with my breasts. Lovely feeling our bodies surge together. He’s good with his hands and has the most sensitive nipples of any man I’ve been with. At last I suggested we go to bed – the couch was really too uncomfortable. D went down on me – his body is the most gorgeous since the history of time – mountains, valleys, crevasses
– it’s like rock climbing making love to this man. He insisted on coming outside me which startled me somewhat, but after asking about my “protection” (IUD) fortunately abandoned this technique the second time.
He looks at me in a funny way like he wants to say
something but he doesn’t say it. I tried to tell him I’ve learned so much from our 5 year friendship – he seemed unable to take it in. He obviously fears the future and his memory is so bad – after the terrors of his childhood he thinks the whole past is all bad news. It’s like he’s afraid to remember ANYTHING. That would be the worst thing for a writer.
You dare not fear the past. Rhythms can’t evolve from longing alone.
We woke up, grapenuts & coffee, went swimming, sat on deck, watched tennis on TV. Every time I changed clothes he said “the sight of you naked turns me on” and we made love again.
Tomorrow is the first of August – whole new beginning.
Try to see myself at 33, with a lawn and a bra and a trash compactor.
Freedom is key. No mail. Reading Geo Woodcock’s critical study of Orwell.
6:45 PM Dark as night and pouring rain. Obsessing
about D’s body – can’t get it out of my mind and our 22 hours together.
Welcome obsessions; R’s slate cleared. Did I use him? Is he “Brand X?”
Thinking of all the things I wish I’d said to Devon. He’s so intellectual yet so impermeable. Strange delicate kisses – as impossible to get inside his mouth as his mind. Loud thunder, lightning.
Alysse Aallyn 
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