2:30 PM Dunkin Donuts, Eelsboro, Maine Fri. 26 Aug 77
Here I am again verging on home: have I changed? I like myself better,
I think I can say that. Thurs night was a big success. Devon came in with an IMMENSE bottle of white wine – he either needs it for himself or he’s trying to turn me into an alcoholic (with my full cooperation.) The clam and noodle thing I invented was quite good but he wasn’t ready to eat till nine and we didn’t get to bed till midnight where he revealed a sexually savage side to his nature that has been previously unseen. So maybe he was nerving himself. (I loved it). We finished the housecleaning and were off to the airport by 11.
Fairly silent in the car, though he was tender. When I
mentioned he might come down to DC he said he didn’t think there was much of a possibility – so now I’m worrying that I’ve been pushed ontoBad Girl Island while he pines for Pure Young Innocent English girl with who he would NEVER do those enjoyably awful things. (She’s 21!!!! He knew her 24 hrs!!!) I shouldn’t be silly. I really can’t ever “lose” him. I think he loves me and everything else is just scar tissue. Devastating airport goodbye – he asked me to “write soon”. I’m probably lucky he loves me as much as he does. I was looking damn good if I do so say so myself in backless red halter top and tight, tight jeans. I do want him to remember me as beautiful.
11:30 AM Sat 27 Aug 77
Gobsmacked! Mom & Dad are on Ryder’s side!!! They
HATE him! In other words, they will defend anybody rather than me. They say of course R “behaves badly” if I am having an “affair” (don’t you love the archaic term?)
with Devon! I say he doesn’t even know about Devon, plus we weren’t exclusive BY HIS CHOICE plus we were BROKEN UP. But everything still seems to be my fault. Incredibly, they think I am not SUFFERING ENOUGH. Here are people who have lectured me all my life to find any excuse for other people’s bad behavior – life has surely injured them somehow. They didn’t have Advantages! According to them I am the only human being alive who doesn’t get an excuse – I should just “be different”.
How, asks mom, can I meet “suitable young men” while dancing?
Suitable young men! (They like Marc Kramer who’s a complete horndog and a political troglodyte. But at least he can afford me!) Am I living in a Trollope novel? I am so annoyed I don’t want to accept their hospitality but I really don’t want to rent a room in the House of the Damned aka
Burnside Inn. which doesn’t take dogs – who wept to see me again like children – then immediately got over it.
Dad’s a very restless retiree I must say but don’t ask me what to advise. I’m too ignorant. My advice to everyone is “write”;
Naturalists say, “Be alone in nature” and religious people say “Find God.”
Reading Vol I. V. Woolf’s diary (so different from A Writer’s Diary)
Hitting the gin. Mom thinks I’m taking “bad” advice from messed up writers – “modeling” myself on failures and suicides – (Dad calls them “degenerates”) – because it’s “cool”. That’s why I need the gin. I need the gin the first minute I wake up. Must try not to be such a limp limpet. Told Mom if R calls at night not to come get me.
Sun 9:30 AM 28 Aug 77
Mom washing windows. God – I think I am supposed to offer help but I Refuse. I need to get the hell out of here. Mom says I can’t add my laundry to hers 9she sends it out)but have to go to the laundromat in town.
So the Battle is On. I’ll just go around smelling bad so there. Mom and Dad are sailing down the Inland Waterway but not till Oct. Have a horrible feeling I’m not out of the woods on this Ryder thing. Maybe I can get established in Washington without him knowing. If I go back to him I will despise myself. Keep Devon in secret as my lucky talisman.
9;45 PM
Drunk, fat and exhausted. Parents had cocktail party
inviting Island Poet. (Published in The New Yorker.) Tried to give her the rundown on my summer but it sounds a complete waste – “Wrote half of a no-good book, got my other book rejected”. Of course my summer doesn’t sound like anything with the sex & love left out!!! Am I trapped at the end of a cul de sac? No; there is something there. I just can’t
find it yet.
Dad said he’s sure my life provides a lot of stories, but
maybe what I need is a PhD in Eng Lit! Mom’s reaction to that is rigid disapproval. (He’ll never make that mistake again.) To explore the boundaries of one’s soul is Selfish. One Lives to Serve (or to Claim one is Serving. So, if you’re too stupid to know you’re selfish its win-win for the small-minded!)
Tried to read The Clocks but its Agatha Christie’s
worst. Absolutely meaningless. Poor Virginia Woolf going through a very bad, painful period. Obviously sick, recording only weather & food.
Now theorists act like she was “mental” not liking to look at herself but
Vita Sackville-West felt the same way. Couldn’t look in a mirror, wouldn’t buy evening dresses or go to parties! (And she was on the sexual prowl, unlike poor VW.) I think their era was actually worse about beauty than we are – they gave it a “magic” “classical” quality so it was very much restricted. We see more beauty – and in weird places.
Otherwise how explain Leslie Caron? Jeanne Moreau? Charlotte Rampling?
Hardly classic beauties but wonderfully, rightfully worshipped as goddesses. I see hope for all of us.
8:00 AM Mon 29 Aug 77
It’s real Agatha Christie weather – fog so dense you
can’t see the water. Nevertheless the ferry’s running – Mom took
Dad down. I’m feeling successful, sober and sane. I’m doing exactly what I want and will find my own way. I’m determined to be happy and not develop some kind of “rejection phobia.” Not knock out the props of
my own happiness. Accept the fact that my pride has been hardest hit.
PHANTOMS
The ghost awaits his chance
Inside us all
Revenge de-bodies –
Anticipates the dark
Impatience ill-concealed to
Grasp our foot
Beneath the turning of the stair
Reveal a face as blank as
Nightmare whose
Icy, seaweed coils entwine mistrust
Around our throats
Suppress our breath
While we dead live.
4:20 PM Letter from the Folger Shakespeare Library
inviting me to read Oct 13! Mom was impressed. 20 mins pays
$50! I’ve hit the big time! Wish I’d known this when Island Poet
asking me why I don’t just kill myself and get it over with. M & D
very flush with money right now. Got their $$ back
from NY State bankruptcy but Dad always in a panic that we’ll figure out how rich he is.)
9:00 PM Called Shoulders. He said dogs will be all right for a couple of days but he’s being evicted at the end of Sept! Too bad!
Such a nice house. (And in Chevy Chase!) So I’m spared kennel
fees for 2 days at least. Ryder must be back at work (if he still has a job).
Reading old NY Times Book Reviews in front of a roaring fire.
Dishwashing break – I said I’d do them. Pick up Agatha Christie afterwards –
– the preferred reading for “shock cases”. (She was a shock case herself.
Absent in the Spring is very fine).
Island 10 PM Monday night, 5 Sept 77
In bed in the Barnacle drinking coffee, eating bread
with honey. Delicious solitude. Can’t go to the Main House because Genevieve’s friends from Boston are there – they no sooner arrived for this Fantasy vacation than they decided they need a divorce. Fortunately, they are quiet about it. The one thing they can’t deal with is their dog –
tomorrow I have to drive him to the ferry. Oh well. I’ve been enraptured by this delicious solitude – beachcombing is very healing. I guess I am just a solitary sort – don’t really care for people at all, I fear. Last night a bad dream about Ryder – treating me cruelly and me, paralyzed. In the daytime – in my conscious mode – I remember everything good about him, his lips mouth and fingers – his constant air of playfulness.
The way we fit perfectly together like interlocking puzzle pieces
– nice that he was short – my mirror opposite, only male. My lost twin.
But nature abhors a balance, apparently.
Must remind myself how he had to try to turn it to his
advantage, throwing the whole system off and spinning my world into
frozen space. Now he doesn’t know where I am (although he might suspect.) No phone in this building thank God.
Tomorrow goodbye Maine – back to DC to house-hunt.
M & D have been good about not dragging me to things – enjoyed the Smythes sculpture show – parties not so much. Parties seem like
“consensus building events” where I’m fated to be perennially on the outs. Ford Madox Ford made some kind of statement about how
people have to achieve a level of “ordinariness” to be “successful” –
I can’t remember the exact quote. Plus I lack the patience to look it up.
Ryder felt I despised him intellectually, which of course, I did.
I don’t think of myself as stratified, but he is and when you’re with a stratified person, you become so. Sometimes I am in mourning for the part of me that died. I wish I could get my letters back – but they were only love-letters. Must seem now like the ravings of an insane person.
Well, there’s no reason to see him again. I think the casual relationship is beyond me. I hope in the future I’ll be careful of men going mach one across the sexual barrier. I’ve got to stop looking at sex as a vitamin requiring periodic intravenous doses.
Alysse Aallyn 
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