Powder Mill Rd Thurs 19 Oct 78
Still balancing thank God. Had lunch with dancer
Yvonne – she said she still wakes up having screaming nightmares about Warren (he was killed in a car accident. Faced smashed in by a coke bottle he was drinking at the time. He bled to death.) At least I don’t have those worries. I sleep like a baby. Worked on costumes.
Waiting for Avril to go with me to Interiors. Reread my stuff. Think there’s a great deal to be said for the short, short novel.
Maybe encapsulate them into short stories? But no money there.
I remain unappreciated because of refusal to hook up with some “movement”. Drown rejected. Started dividing the novel into geographical locations – Hooks Lane, Paradise Road. Would make good short stories.
11:30 PM
Awful, awful night. Dancing badly, shoes broke. Rushed
out and bought another pair in my break. Pasties fell off – carpet tape of inferior quality or possibly I sweat too much.
12:15 PM Oct 23
Sitting by phone feeling illogical joy. Wonderful date with Buck – restaurant with lots of wood and Tiffany lamps – just a pleasant, free-flowing conversation. No sex at the end – hug and kiss in doorway. “May I call you?’ I told him yes – invited him to be my date Nov 5 at Shadonna’s wedding. He said he would.
Fri 27 Oct 78
Concord, Mass – the grave of Nathan Bond.
Seems a good place to write – sitting on a gravestone in the sunlight.
So, what was last night like? I arrive to the theology college and another student goes up to get Devon – I overhear him say “There’s a very good looking girl here to see you and I mean very good looking.” Hecame down looking so different with a new silky beard – exclaimed over and over again about my gorgeousness. We went up to his room and were making out on his narrow plank of a bed when the radio played Ambrosia –
– How much I feel. Too much for me! Started to cry and lost a lens!
Now Devon thinks I’m a psycho – which I am. Luckily (for him) and sadly for me psychos are his specialty. Wish he wasn’t so unctuous about it.
When he attacked me with those eyes I had to get myself a drink – broke out in shivers and hives – thought I must black out. He was talking in general ways about what he wants out of life – he seems to be expressing fear he can’t find someone better than me. I did my best to get him back to specifics – even saying a woman can’t propose to a man (Well she could,
But if she proposed to this man she’s never hold him.)
Obviously, he loves me. That question answered. But there are bigger questions. But as much as I deserve love? Seems like not. He’s incapable of making the kind of statement I need him to make. He wants to get a clinical psychology degree and he hinted that I wouldn’t be such a disaster as wife to a psychologist. (Flattering?)
I told him he has a fear of “emotional success” and he agreed. He astonished me by making passionate love to me – I didn’t have to do a thing (other than wear my short pink gauze peasant blouse and the denim gauchos that show my bellybutton) – he couldn’t get my clothes off fast enough. Very satisfying – wasn’t an inch of my body he didn’t kiss – including my heels. I told him my heels had never been kissed before – so he kissed them again – also sought out all the other unkissed places. I do feel satisfied for at least a century. We went out to a Greek restaurant for dinner, then to see The Deer Hunter. Powerful movie. Crazy, just like life. Christopher Walken lovely.
Drove to Concord in pouring rain. Inn is no Night
at the Plaza – more like Early Hardy Boys. Read Violet Clay before falling asleep. Dinner tonight with my cousin Tory – pumping him about Hill School experiences to use in Paradise Road. Buy some wine for tonight and celebrate my own existence.
G’s place – NYC – Central Park West – 30 Oct 78
Why do I do this to myself – visit Genevieve?
I just realized the mirror in her hall is a fat mirror. I did eat a lot of
junk food on this trip but I don’t believe I look this bad. On top of that,
Genevieve’s life is a fat mirror to my life – that’s the truth. We just saw Chabrol’s Violette – we both have a pash for him – but agreed this is not his best – plus the only Chabrol we know of with absolutely no romantic elements. It’s probably something I will end up thinking about a lot – and rewriting in my head – so maybe it’s Ok after all. Wrote a poem for Devon
– Practice Cuts.
Practice Cuts
The dead gush cruelly after dying;
High time to change
Get religion
Have yogic visions
See god
Be a nun
Be a self worth knowing.
Time is gunning for me
Arthritic fingers
Scrabbling at my dreams
Playing old tunes
scratchier, less sensitive.
I’m a body in search of a car wreck
Crime scene consubstantial;
The old deus ex machina
Disaster;
Blood is so good
At erasing uncertainty
Bringing back
A taste for life.
Reduce me, silence
To the essential bones
Of my non essential self
Fortify some other ego
Mine’s tired;
Peel from my eyes the thickened skin of grief
Unstop my ears from the dust of
My own consequence
Free my feet from judging splinters
Life passes from my like a fever in which
I cry out and cry out and yet
No sound is made.
Out
Like the tide
Cauterize
The woof-warp pattern
So plain that even I can see it.
Teach me not to envy
The gulls their mirrored flight
Unmeasured unlike my own
Reduce me to
Unbending bones of my
Essential self
Dark sister;
She;
The soul I was
Before
I became me.
Can’t turn it into a presentable poem – yet – however, it did make me feel better writing it. I guess I don’t like being Devon’s flirtation with damnation. Writing really is the best revenge.
Plush Palace – Thurs 2 Nov 78 8:30 PM
GiGi’s last night onstage. She is very down. Charlie is making her quit because “no wife of mine blah-blah-blah.” Eddy says she’ll be back: can’t find these perks in any other job. I am dancing well.
Apparently, no one but me realizes how fat I’ve gotten.
Both a good and a bad day today. Worked hard on Gift and Drown – sending out query letters – took pkgs to post office –
only to be told a MS has to be bound to go mss rate. I made them look it up in the manual so I won’t have to go through this again.
They treated me like this must be personal – I’m
trying to “catch” them in mistakes – forgetting I’m the customer entitled to service who doesn’t want to pay extra for no reason at all. And the book spells out what services I get – in case they forget. Apology letter from Tory: his girlfriend “out of line” to be so jealous during our paella dinner. She did seem strange but since she’s an artist I didn’t question. I respond with a short note saying I think my questions were just too personal for her ears so I really cannot blame her.
Reading Edmund Wilson’s life like watching a slow-motion car wreck – horrible man.
Alysse Aallyn 
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