2 PM 15 Feb 79 – Thurs
Sleeting out. Feeling restless the way I do before I write
a new book. Hauled out Bride & Wolves for a rewrite – tremendously impressed with my own talent! Development always was my problem (as in life). Greene’s Human has an odd, unfinished feel. Reviews did not prepare me for it in the least. I think they reviewed Greene rather than his book. More impressed by Margot Ruddock’s letter to Yeats in Ah, Sweet Dancer (which could be retitled Dirty Old Man.) She compares the “fickleness” of men to the fickleness of God! Can’t blame her if God insists on being male. Read Howatch’s Call In the Night as a purgative. Going to see Country Wife tonight at U. Of Md. Usher sent me strange Valentine collage of Playboy photos, couples kissing, etc. Avril says “I give up on him. It’ll be a miracle if he can ever say what he wants.”
Starlight Sat 18 Feb 79 – 11:10 AM Waiting for my bangs to curl at the start of a double. Had a nightmare where Devon performed marriage ceremony between me and some other guy! Right up to the end I kept thinking he was going to “rescue” me. Naturally he did not. “Psychic” about him as usual I got a letter saying he’s busy with this year’s Ladies Ski Team meaning he’s got 12 girls passionately in love with him and he plans to take his time to savor the field. Vengeful poem results:
Cloverleaf Some roads lead nowhere; They’re my favorites. I held my breath while You drew my face in Blinding strokes and Creamed my mouth with curling lines Destroyed one picture; then another. Left at dawn while I Ran downstairs in circles, calling Raging, spending Nights without you, No blue thigh to guard My sleeping heart while yours looks out To gauge the coming storm. Now I’m trapped in cloverleaves Sentenced to school figures By endless angry judges. Every face I paint is yours; balked by An enervating past Of unlived lives. Open up the chilly ruffles Of my breasts To beauty; yours and mine and your Strange spine’s; A body so much lighter Than the mountain that you loved The course you learned Much better than you learned me. Overconfident that you’ll come back I float across the powdered snow; In bird-winged silence all-enveloping Unless I’m Lost and frozen like my heart?
2 PM – Jervaze came in! Ducked away momentarily
from his fiancée. Glad he didn’t bring her in as I am having my period and feeling particularly fat and grumpy. My poor body’s been unloved for a month now and is falling to pieces. Still it was an enormous pleasure to see him. Someone for whom I apparently remain The Holy Grail.
Tues. 6:45 PM 20 Feb 79 Struggling against a vast undifferentiated depression. Going to treat it with diet and meditation. Reading Tapie’s Richelieu and Louis XIII. History a great cure for all who feel unlucky. Even being an aristo was no picnic. Avril accepted for both of us to go to Aunt Frederica’s party on the shore where she’s rented a house. Hitchman’s bio of Dorothy Sayers very bad book. Sayers wasn’t “in love” with Lord Peter, she was him! Will-to-power and dream logic. Trying to “bind” her two halves together when she made him marry Harriet. Had to re-read Sayers’ wonderful Unnatural Death (my favorite) to get the taste out of my mouth. Ah. Such pleasure. Painting till I’m exhausted then long walks with dogs through pretty Queens’ Chapel Manor. Haven’t seen a neighborhood this satisfying since Chevy Chase.
Starlight Wed 21 Feb 79 – 11:45 AM Going through a phase where work feels like being beaten. Think it’s because no one is caring for my body. Will warmer weather turn the tide? I love my house but Marc Kramer is wrong – home ownership NOT the cure-all promised. The only difference I can see is I can no longer mess around financially. Nose permanently to grindstone. Reading John Dickson Carr’s Blind Barber. It is so awful. Why does anyone like him? Pass my time sewing red rhinestone buttons to my pink satin blouse. Yesterday clutch cable snapped – pedal became a dummy. Fortunately I was right NEXT to a gas station. Had to take a taxi home. Financial nightmare – more doubles to get my car out of hock? Turns out it’s not expensive. A. gives me ride to work, Eddy gives me ride to car. Leaning heavily on inner life. Efforts to live “outwardly” all seemingly result in hideous failure. Shopping list: pasties, carpet tape, stockings, cotton balls, liquid plumber, string bikini.
Sat. 24 Feb 79 Devon turned 30 today. Great house party at bungalow Aunt F rented on Mulberry Island. Interesting artist named Stockley there with an exciting mind but unworkable body. Fun to talk to though. He wears a hard hat and welds. Avril asked out by handsome redhead named John. Fingers crossed. Jervaze called to say he broke off his engagement. Uh oh. Macmillan says my novel “not their cup of tea”. Very sneery.
Starlight Fri 2 Mar 79 – 2 PM Bought a pair of yellow overalls to write in. Hadn’t realized how thin I’ve gotten – I look fantastic. House (closing) magically lifts depression when it cost $900 less than I expected. I was fully ready to write these nice people a rubber check – Thank God that’s not necessary. Instead of wasting away in debtor’s prison, I get to compare myself to Sylvia Plath. What if in a panic, I married a party boy who fails to love T he Real Me? Wait, I did that. But I didn’t stay to wrestle with him and now I’m free. Could be much, much worse. Hang in there and go it alone. See it as a strength. Trying to apply for grants. There’s an art form all by itself. Avril’s redhead working out nicely. I don’t like his comments about his mother though. Is satisfactory sex possible with men who hate their mothers? Could be massive Red Flag.
12:35 PM Tues Mar 6 – 79 Sit down to chat with diary over lunch – can’t eat because scolding letter from agent gave me a stomachache. Didn’t I know it was unethical to allow several agents to consider me at the same time? I do see it’s a very beneficial for the agents to drag this process out so they end up doing all the choosing and not you. But since she’s the one I want I can’t say so. Play dumb, promise to Be Good in Future and throw my affairs entirely into her hands and let her speak for me. Silence frees the artist from “servile bondage to the world”, says Sontag. Letter from Devon saying he really respects me for buying a house (the opposite of what Mom thought would happen. He says it makes me more interesting. Or he’s just less scared I will show up on his doorstep.) Also he says “it’s been a bad ski season” and asking particularly about the men in my life, closing, ”I love you Alysse. Our relationship is the most important thing to me.” Whew! What are the odds that every girl on that team would turn out to be a lesbian? Or were they fooled by his aura of untouchable purity? Most girls would consider it a challenge but some lack the three hours necessary to defrost him. Still, they’re all out of their minds not to give him a whirl I must admit. Interesting how very much we each fear the other’s loss.
11PM Starlight Wed 7 Mar 79 Very down night. Only $70 so far. Need $600 to keep my bills current. Bryony wailing because the state took her children away. Sometimes seems like the pain of the helpless is smothering the world. Tony’s the bouncer tonight and he’s all for letting the men stick their bills down the girls’ G-strings! No thank you. Wait till Gentleman Randy hears about this. Reading a bad German mystery – the mystery being why he wrote it, how it got published and why I’m reading it. Fantasizing celebrating spring by getting all my hair cut off. Hmmm. Jean Seberg? Could be sexy. Wish I’d brought Kafka’s Letters. Making huge floor pillows for my housewarming party. Longing to sink into classical music & bubble bath, followed by Oleg Cassini sheets & cup of diet cocoa. Having my own house really is a dream come true.
Mon 20 Feb 79 – 12:20 AM Such a depressing party I got drunk just to be “out” of it. Avril & Ben making out in a corner all evening. Usher brought me books and a bird of paradise flower, Stockley gave me a beautifully framed tiny drawing of crustaceans but then cancelled that by attempting to corner me all evening. He covers up the soul he doesn’t believe in with a repellant fleshy brutality – life is kill and conquer – eat or be eaten. Honestly, now I’m scared of him. Afraid to even argue with him for fear of launching something irreversible. Luckily, he next fastened his lasers on Yvonne. Poor Yvonne. Save yourself, I should say. Plan to ask Paz to schedule me for just two nights. On a self-dare, I sent my poem about Rossetti’s model to Usher.
LIZZIE SIDDALL: The Woeful Victory
Be still or I can’t paint you. It is evening and I almost recognized you. Who are you Fair one? Your mouth is stuffed With poppy hair Fate coils between your breasts Like snakes. But Your tongue’s torn out. You must be the echo of my thoughts.
(I am the motionless cradle.)
Your flesh takes fire from my setting sun. Can you free me, O Lady of the Sundial? My eyes are growing dim.
(Perfect love’s not found this side of heaven.)
I shall paint you vermilion Butcher nightingales and use their tongues for brushes Melting foil & verdigris To the tune of Canterbury bells. Stay awhile, Fair one. I almost thought you spoke.
(I am the face that rises from the pool to drag the drinker deep.)
I will bury you in manuscripts, I will Visit when there’s time. Someday We might marry, but I am not whole, dear lady. I am not myself. Who are You?
Boston to Rockland shuttle 11:45 AM Fri Dec 22
Thank God I brought this diary in my purse. Bad flight
feels like Week 7 of the flu and I need something to take my mind off stomach. Love people-watching at the Downeast Gate – there’s a novel in that all by itself. This flight goes straight up the coast. Avril is sleeping in the co-pilot’s seat – let’s hope she doesn’t have to assume the controls. She is trying to get a march on the insomnia she always gets around parents. We just missed Genevieve and Brett – they put 2 planes on this flight and they must be on the other one.
Christmas Day
Enmeshed in a family that’s not even close to changing
age old patterns. Listening to Christmas music by the Oberlin Choir and roasting chestnuts. As always, food preparations take a disproportionate amount of time – one might as well just surrender and become a restaurant prep chef. Family “scene” caused this time by me – I objected to Dad making the two older daughters executors – I guess that makes me and A “executees”? He says you can’t have four executors. A likely story. Well I felt I had to lodge a formal protest but of course it didn’t change a thing.
Plush Palace – midnight – Fri 29 Dec 78
Merrill and Julian came to watch me dance. I think
they were interested. Don The Lawyer came and sat at their table – he behaved himself. Good evening for tips. Don asked me out Wed – I explained I have a lot of demands on my time – just about to double my working schedule to buy this damn house – so it doesn’t look good. He passed that test by taking this news calmly. Having a sister makes me a Real Person at least.
Catching up on dancers – Jerrilee’s pregnant, Fatima’s new boyfriend is obviously an ethnic gangster. (Armenian I’m guessing.) Jerrilee tried dancing at a club in DC where the girls “make lots of money” but just in tips – they have no salary. Rotten. I need extra hours but won’t audition there – prefer the protections offered by The Great Commonwealth of Virginia.
Plush Palace – 7:30 PM Tues 2 Jan 79
Horrifying letter from Scott Meredith demanding money
to read my novel. His form letter didn’t acknowledge mine in which I said I was already the author of one book but went on and on about “unpublished writers new to the business.” They obviously didn’t even read my letter. My father said, “Maybe he knows what he’s doing since he’s Norman Mailer’s agent” but I wrote back and said non merci. Auditioned at The Country Fair – they offered me $100 each three x a week. Call for my schedule. So that’s set. They have a good stage plus a barre and a pole. Haven’t seen a barre since Shalimar.
Zachary unfortunately back from New York and in a mood to party. Claims to have provided drugs to SNL. Reads my novel and says it’s not commercial enough. I’m sure he’s right, which doesn’t cheer me up at all. Says it’s too brief – needs development which is also probably true. Trying to write a poem about funerals called Treading Pasture. Bad, bad, bad. Reading Tillie Olsen’s Silences and that’s not cheering me up either.
Party Castle 11:15 AM Mon 8 Jan 79
I think I like this place better than Plush Palace or
Country Fair. The dancers are totally uninterested in their jobs – they are all busy being college students, musicians and models – they rush in, rush out, spend their time studying and on the phone and offering me cash to finish their sets. Fine with me. It’s very restful not having to make friends. I called J’s brother – he’s due Thurs. Probably the worst thing about this place is the commute – I need to take Rock Creek Parkway and sometimes it goes one way and sometimes it goes the other way. An unwary person could end up in a head-on collision.
The stage is way better than Plush Palace but the dressing room far worse – a miniature chamber behind the potato bins – très très très Colette. With me tonight are Phoebe, ex-stewardess with a degree in languages and Tasha, very silent black fashion model. She is gorgeous. Costumes are not big here – the idea is to wear one g-string all night – pasties small as possible. Contac really works – has totally drained my sinuses but also made me very thirsty – I am drinking gallons of water which I am afraid will make me visibly sweat. (Then pasties slide off and the woman from the Alcohol & Tobacco Task Force rushes forth with ticket.) Got my MS back from Scott Meredith. Zachary came to see me dance in the new club. We had a tender moment on how tough and insensitive the world is – he is having a bitching time with his new band – wants to go solo but feels that will never get anywhere. The truth is it’s tough to go it alone. Everybody thinks Gift is “unfinished’ – which – horrors – means I have to do more. The dog to her vomit. Absolutely NOT fun.
I want to start something totally, totally new. I suppose tolerating all this barfing and re-barfing is what separates the sheep from the goats – but which do I want to be? Sheep? Goat? Spare me the “fun” of wandering around blindfold trying to imagine what you are touching followed by the Inevitable Disillusionment of taking it off and seeing you’re locked in the Same Old Basement.
I think Buck has found another girlfriend. I am rather relieved to be let so painlessly off the hook – of course I miss the great parts of our relationship. It was starting to get unmanageable along with everything else. At least with Zachary I can level with him about my life. Tonight’s reading: Margaret Millar whether I like her or not – and I don’t like her.
Ordered a book on depression through the mail. Need all the help I can get. GiGi came in tonight – probably to gloat over my exhausted dancing. Even people who love it inevitably do too much. She’s enjoying being a trophy wife. She says.
Tues 16 Jan 79
A call from the real estate agent – we can move into
the Queens’ Chapel Road house Feb 1 if we want to because that’s when they’ll be out. We’d only have to pay them one-month rent. A and I looked at each other and immediately said “yes”! Woohoo! Rushed off to Wendy’s for celebration dinner – note we chose a cheap place. It will be that way from now on. Called Mom and Dad in Trinidad to tell them. Dad sounded very dejected and gloomy like we are completely crazy and certain to be old maids on his tab forever now.
Sunday Zachary and I went to Ellicott City. We were coming out of Cocoa Lane (he paid) when we met an old friend of Zachary’s
Corio – singer for the Bills Blues Band. Gorgeous. I stuttered and quivered like an infant. I may have to do something about this powerful attraction. He gave me his card. Avril listens to call-in shows all the time and she says women are sick of being penalized for making the first move. Men say they “want it” but usually that’s an absolute lie. So how can I make this guy think he’s making the first move? Puzzler. Z needed to score some dope so we parted company. Corio is playing Childe Harold’s next month so maybe I will see him there.
Plush Palace 11:15 PM Two doubles in two days. My father’s right, I’m off my head. Can’t keep doing this to myself. Drive from one club to the other in full makeup wearing only a gold lamé cover-up in rush hour traffic. God knows what the drivers think I do for a living but I can imagine. Ronnie says Jervaze was in asking for me! Alvera dancing tonight – she says I’m her favorite person to dance with. Sigh. Feels like home. Famous poet – Usher Glayne – came in tonight – I recognized him from party at the Folger Shakespeare Library (we both read). Shyly introduced myself. He gave me his card told me to send him something. Who would expect to see a beautiful man like this in a sleazy trap like the Plush Palace? Send him my Heloise & Abelard poem.
HELOISE TO ABELARD: “FROM THE FLAME TO THE FLAME”
Master, my Brother; Father Confessor; my all – Before you see a nun Abbess in fact – antiphon of grace enclosing Octaves of silence. I had rather be your whore. Slut, jade, poule – What sweets! I relished those words as I craved the Blows you struck like kisses. Five, like Christ’s wounds. I counted them.
No midwife cut my cord but You delivered me. Satan wormed your root; left Me whole but Empty. I’m still cinque-cut while You’re a smooth stockade. I “mistook” the veil – Impetuously as you stole me – Masquerading, copying the night We stole from uncle’s house In holy guise.
This veil is Jason’s wedding dress – It cannot be removed. It burns my flesh, these cerements Cremate me. You denied me thrice, False Peter Though I crawl to Bethany to earn One word. Master, cousin, lover – slave – We are bound. This grave is not so silent as you are.
Yes, I’ve chatted up the dead I’m closer to you than that tattoo you wear As if it became you. When you die I’ll be the fire that quickens In your veins – the centime on your eyes The empty scabbard left Along your thigh Your last escaping sigh – I.
Reading Crazy Sundays about Fitzgerald in Hollywood.
Ten days till we move into new house. Need sleep badly. Maybe buy Quaalude from Maureen.
Castle – Fri Jan 26- 79 –5:30 PM
Halfway through my double – pacing myself – still
feel fine. Reading Published in Paris. Obnoxious guy in tonight calls himself Spewey Suckman – says he knows Zachary. No I do not wish to spend my evening chatting – but he does tip well. Discovered that my phone’s been accidentally unplugged for days so I fantasize about all these men – Jervaze, Usher Glayne, Zachary, Don trying to reach me. Maureen very excited about moving in with us – A and I each get 2 bedrooms (a bedroom and a study) and she gets one (but it’s a big one). She and I will have to share a bathroom upstairs (there’s two on the first floor) but we’ll survive. Just had the most fascinating conversation about sex with Roulette.
If I hadn’t drunk two glasses of wine I’d understand it better, but if I hadn’t drunk two glasses of wine I wouldn’t be having it in the first place. She says her son’s penis is so huge she got embarrassed at his wrestling match. She also wants to discuss the clitorises of bisexual females – she’s convinced they’re bigger. I really couldn’t say.
Jervaze is getting married – that’s the latest – his brother set it up – so he brought in the bottle of wine and we’re all taking swigs. That’s my excuse for drinking on the job. “Long-time girlfriend from Alabama.” I suppose this is my fault for being so discouraging about him living with me. We are just at different stages, I guess. I wished him well. Cross him off my list (sigh.) Feel this leaves my sexual eggs bouncing around in a single basket – very unsafe place for them, in my experience. Avril and I toured our house. I hadn’t fully appreciated the yucky white paneling but the carpets are good and the place is spotlessly clean. Kitchen huge, yard very nice (gas grill and “workshop”.) Exciting! My bedroom and study painted lime and emerald green with matching shag carpet. I can work with that.
Mon 29 Jan 79 Castle 7:30 PM
J. came by. Kind of broke my heart he was so loving and tender with me. He said he wanted to come Wed and help us move. Nice of him.
Zachary’s also coming. That could be fun. J. says his fiancée feels I’m “no threat to their relationship.” She must be from another planet. But possibly I can control myself. It’s always dangerous to tell me I can’t have something. Old home week for boyfriends. Marc Kramer called and said his “Official Girlfriend” found my valentine and “got upset”. In my recollection it wasn’t very incriminating. Avril and I trying to scrape together $120 to pay for oil in fuel tank – its always the bills you don’t expect that sink you.
Tonight I’m working with Gaysha, Indonesian law student, and Phoebe. Don came in wearing a Bill Blass suit. Boring crowd. I’m wearing my feathers for fun – got one $40 tip. I think changing costumes helps keep the crowd awake. The really drunk ones think I am a different dancer they haven’t tipped yet. Tasha came in on her night off. Her boyfriend drives a dump truck. She wanted to show off her new flowing weave, rabbit coat and picture of her Eldorado. They are a pair.
Party Castle – 3 Feb 79 11:30 AM
We did it – moved into the Queens Chapel Road house
though nothing is organized yet. My study is the nicest room in the house – a whole wall of huge windows – sunlight always blazing in. I covered the walls with my pictures and they fit perfectly – leaving one wall empty for a big corkboard.
Guess who showed up to help us move? Ryder! He brought his “girlfriend”, plus a huge bucket of Kentucky Fried Chicken and a large bottle of Irish Mist. Girlfriend a shocker – little nursy mousebird of a woman! After all the hell he gave me, this is who he ends up with. His sexual revolution is over – single shot fired.
Went to see Corio play at Childe Harolde – he acted surprised to see me – introduced me to his date, Bev. I didn’t feel Bev is much of a threat – Avril says, “She’s a hot water bottle.” I said, “I’m not giving up”. Zachary didn’t help move – so when he showed up for sex I sent him away. I was really annoyed – his excuse was he “wasn’t up to it.” Who is? Fortunately, I have strong muscles. Carried a gold velvet sofa practically on my head.
Mon 5 Feb 79
Moments of pure joy while painting my bedroom shelves.
So adoring Sylvia Plath. Closer Look at Ariel & Letters. Her letters burst with plans, lists & preparations – like this diary. That’s how it goes. Feeling capable, independent – maybe strong enough to even rewrite Gift. There is pleasure to be had even at the start of a journey with no apparent end in sight. Back on my Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner diet. Feel house will be ready Sunday. Party?
8 Feb 79 Plush Palace
Surprise today - Usher Glayne came in to see me
dance. Curtsied low and slow. I felt intimidated by him but he said he liked poem I sent. Struggling with Boston Adventure – Me no likey. I’m on p. 300 and if there’s a novel in this mess I can’t find it.
8PM Mon night 12 Feb 79
Snowed all night – didn’t feel guilty about calling the
Plush Palace and saying I couldn’t make it. Used the time well – finished my study. It is perfect. Bedroom almost done – must unscramble my jewelry to put it away. Great having laundry in-house – I am washing all my costumes. I give up on Boston Adventure. To think a critic compared her to the Brontës. Well they did have under-functioning ovaries and the English language in common. Marc called – he will be in town and wants to have lunch at the Capitol. Which I would love to do. Told him I took his advice and bought a house. Roll my eyes while he complains about his horrible life investing other people’s money.
Maureen is never here so we hardly see her. And she’s very neat, so far sharing a bathroom is no problem. Recovering from my bout of restlessness, I managed two pages. But it was too hot to work up here last night (I can’t seem to control the heat.) Tomorrow buy fan. Usher called. He wants to be “friends”.
Queens Chapel Rd – Wed 14 Feb 79 At last a comment from an agent who likes Blood Memory (latest incarnation of Gift). We now have one agent who likes it, one who didn’t, one close relative who likes it and two who didn’t, one lover who likes it (and two who didn’t.) I wish she would start a “sell job” with me but she’s just “dying to talk with me about it.” In other words, she wants to know, how crazy ARE you? Sadly, it depends on the day of the week. Avril just phoned – invited me downstairs for an omelet. I said no. Fasting today. (I like being somewhere the kitchen is not.) Later we’ll go out and try to find a pair of emerald pants for me to see my new agent in. This is one of the ways A and I make do with living together – we respect each other’s privacy.
Yesterday at work who should be second dancer but Yvonne! We had so much fun catching up. She’s still dancing at Mother Joe’s, but needs all the work she can get. I feel a perverse satisfaction in the fact that even amazingly talented, flaming beauties can’t seem to struggle out of life’s junk pile. Her ex, whom she quit dancing for, went out with an “all nude” dancer the night after they broke up! A friend of Ryder’s came into the bar – I pretended not to recognize him. I’m sure he’ll be running back with the story. Dreamed I had open lesions in my face and you could see right through them. Reading Greene’s The Human Factor.
1:45 PM Wed Nov 9 –78
I’m in need of a “carte d’identite” so I can look at it
and figure out who I am. Read the first draft of The Speechless and the accompanying comments of my college writing teacher. She bollixed it up. Her deconstructive destruction seems purposeful – I don’t believe she didn’t know how good it was. Can I save it? I know I should work on one thing at a time but apparently my mind doesn’t operate that way. In the mail a letter from a publisher offering to read my poetry – for $50.00. Took me longer after that to sink to the necessary depth to get some writing done. And it still probably wasn’t any good.
Thurs night – Plush Palace – Nov 9 - 78
Working tonight with Roulette and Jerry – wonderfully
hilarious old hands. We laugh until we fall over. “How Deep Is Your Love “ is throbbing through the walls, Maureen’s got me in a costume-trading whirl and Roulette is so heavily into the Jack Daniels she is showing everyone pictures of her dog. (A Doberman. Who looks exactly like every other Doberman I have ever seen.) Suddenly I’ve acquired a whole new dancing wardrobe. But will it make me a new person? That’s what I want to know. With a view to listening to Marc Kramer for once in my life because he’s rich and I’m not. Avril and I went house-hunting. The trigger was a wonderful broken down old house in College Park (complete with white pillars) so I called to ask the price. Real estate agent sucked me effortlessly in, entering into our quest with gusto. I am almost 28 years old and although I don’t make much money – apparently I make enough. The house was hopeless. It needs $50,000 on the roof alone. But the agent has plenty others to show us. Bizarro letter from Ryder. He said “after that visit I thought you’d never trust me again” and “I bow down to you.” Which visit? The one where I allowed him to give me a massage? I refuse to inquire further because that’s exactly what he wants me to do. He is just needled that I have so obviously given up on him. Why am I attracted to these weirdos? I know the problem between us is that I want a mutual relationship and he wants a pack animal. I want to be with the person I love and “love” makes him want to run away (because it makes him feel “out of control”). But where is the fun in telling him this? He couldn’t use the maze clue even if I gave it to him. So I write a short note telling him I’m busy with Zach and Buck. That should fix his jealous wagon. I didn’t tell him about the hours of sexual bliss Buck and I shared last night! Buck is warming up nicely – invited me to his parents’ house for the weekend – they will be away. Unfortunately, he snores horribly – sounds like he’s strangling. A by-product of motorcycle racing. Needs that cartilage cleared out with a vacuum hose. Trying to read Rumer Godden’s Breath of Air. Boring and unctuous. Put it down for Dear Scott/Dear Max, which is of course delightful.
Mon 13 Nov 78
Busted, wasted day. Avril called to borrow $90 so she can
pick up el Diablo from Courtesy Motors – fortunately I had it so we went to bank, then car dealer. Then I tried to get an oil change but they don’t do Fiats. Took long enough to tell me they don’t have the right wrenches. Real estate agent phoned to say I qualify for special FHA loan. I had to call my landlord because apparently I don’t have heat. Avril is having lots of trouble with Brady who is alternately aggressive and suicidal. I think he is more trouble than he’s worth but admit he has very pretty, very long, long thighs. He and Buck went to high school then trade school together – Buck exhibits a grisly picture of them at their prom with their dates. B’s date is his soon to be ex-wife. Buck was also B’s best man but I was spared those photos. Zachary asked me out next Fri night but I’d rather be with Buck – but if he doesn’t ask me in time I’ll tell him I’m ”going out with the girls.” That’s what he tells me he does; “goin’ out with the guys” – so presumably this is an OK excuse. If he says what girls I’m in a bit of a pickle. But I’m a writer – I‘ll invent some. It can’t be anyone he knows. Fortunately he has no idea what a hermit I really am. Still stuck in the childhood of my novel. Can’t wait for them to grow up. Re-read Le Ble en Herbe which helped a lot. (Aaaahhhhh… Colette!) Off to Crown Books with A – then White Flint Mall for Christmas shopping – had coffee at The Perfect Cup. Nice outing. I bought wonderful rhinestone cat’s eye glasses. Saw Bergman’s Autumn Sonata – moving.
Mon 27 Nov 78 - 1:35 PM
Time to write in this neglected diary while waiting to have
my snow tires mounted. This threatens to blow my entire day. They also had to replace a fuse that apparently blew in the middle of a rainstorm so that my wipers stopped working. Visit with Mom and Dad very touchy. (They are staying with Peter’s mother Rita and everyone’s slightly angry I’m not dating him and I can’t narc on his Secret Relationship.) Mom casually accepted an invitation for all of us to go out to dinner on a night I was going out with Zachary, so I said I would have to invite him and got a tirade on my thought- lessness. Then I pointed out she was the thoughtless one assuming I didn’t have any plans. She apologized, I apologized. It blew over. Then Avril had the nerve to ask Rita if she could smoke – Mom exploded just as if it were her house. (Rita said No. She’s trying to quit.) M & D piled on me – I’m insane to contemplate buying a house – even if the mortgage would only cost what rent already costs. Their real objection is that I might “choose wrong” – somehow encumber myself with a property that will make me even less attractive (if that were EVEN possible) to A Decent Man. Not even dragging in Marc Kramer’s sacred name as Advisor helped at all. Dad did come see a few houses with us. (We’ve seen 16 so far.) He had to admit it isn’t a bad deal as long as I can get that FHA loan. Zachary behaved very well around M and D – the “Official Boyfriend” – but of course he owed me. Fortunately the evening was over before they could find out too much about him (or he offered them drugs) so his cover wasn’t blown. Conversation at dinner very boring. Psychology 101. “Why don’t people say what they want?” “Why don’t people try to get what they want?” “Why do people lose interest in what they say they want?” (Rita’s going through her third divorce.) Since no one seems the least bit interested in the complexities of achieving Actual Gratification by attempting to mesh one’s constantly evolving desires with those of someone else I can only shake my head sagely and flee at the first opportunity. Mom and Dad actually tackled these questions and struggled with them like a pair of marriage counselors. The truth is Rita’s ex has found somebody else and she shouldn’t be so surprised – they were both married when she hove onto his horizon. Got a very stoned phone call from Zachary last night – he was over at Rod’s and “something” was making him horny. (I’ll bet I can guess.) Fortunately, I managed to convince him he was in no state to drive – leaving him prey to Rod, probably. Well, we all have to take our chances in this life. Saturday night with Buck unsatisfying – he claimed his non-breathing nose is preventing him from going down on me. I let him know his account is in arrears and he will have to do something about it sooner or later. He chose later and fell immediately asleep. So I left. I’m not sure I will ever get to Stage 2 with this guy. He made a point of tracking me down at Avril’s apt, calling to apologize. A and I saw 3 more unacceptable houses – but the real estate agent says there are plenty more. Fun to be in a buyer’s market for a change.
Sat 7 pm Plush Palace – 2 Dec 78
Just recovering from some tremendous bout of food
poisoning – must have gotten it from the Sleazy Restaurant Around the Corner – but all I had there was a takeout salad. Still, it could have been the dressing. No fever. I was throwing up all Wednesday. I called A to drop by after class but she was so worried she came right over. I finally was able to keep down some chicken soup. Then we went to Bethesda in the eve to see Zach’s Gordon Lightfoot impersonation – I had a little wine to make me feel better. (Free drinks always taste best.) Finally finished the childhood section but I don’t feel good about it. Novels don’t want you to do anything in life but write them all the time. I am only at p. 133.
I am already exhausted and needing a vacation. Cheered myself up by wrapping Christmas gifts – baroque music and Victorian gift-wrap did it for me. I especially love those chubby Victorian cherubs who couldn’t become airborne without at least two brawny stagehands hauling on a mighty hawser. Reading My Mother/Myself in between boogie-oogie-oogying. Dinner party with A, Buck, and A’s old boyfriend who happened to be in town. We ate stuffed Cornish game hen, played Clue and went dancing at the Bastille.
Thurs night – Plush Palace – 11:30 PM – 7 Dec 78
Manic night – a dancer literally dragged off the stage by
the police because her roommate is accusing her of stealing $3300 of furniture. Thank God she came back so I only had to dance one extra set. Wed night we found a house! It has 5 bedrooms, 3 bath perfect in every way except that that it’s packed into a neighborhood of like houses so there are absolutely no vistas. But the price is right. We made an offer but they accepted another offer – ours is the “backup contract.” So, we still might get it.
Thurs am 1:07 14 Dec 78
Finished the novel in an insane burst of speed – 10
pages a day for four days. Now I have to calm down and see what I’ve got. I still feel pretty good about it – but probably reading it will depress me. And Devon will probably never speak to me again since he is in it. His Christmas card says I am a genius and he is in awe of me. Hey, it could be true. My publisher’s statement arrived. $50. $50. There goes that Feb vacation. Pretty sure I need a new agent. What did “stooping to genre” achieve exactly? I didn’t get a living wage. I didn’t get a publisher, agent or editor receptive to my work. It’s like I’m starting over – again. On an up note: looks like we might get the house! It is SO perfect. Fenced in yard and everything.
Mon 18 Dec 78 – Plush Palace 6:30 PM
Horrible day. Everything that can go wrong has.
Mailing off mss wildly expensive. Drove Avril around because the Gremlin is in the shop again. Reading Bodyguard of Lies – history having its usual soothing effect. (Everything much worse for everybody else.) It looks like I will have to work two jobs in Jan to pay for this house. Maureen the costume designer wants to rent a room in our house – that would help. She wouldn’t be a problem – getting a masters in textiles at U. of M so not the usual flaky personality that finds itself onstage. Concluded I really have to break up with Z. It won’t be hard – just stop seeing him. One good thing did happen – I was lying in bed at 1:30 AM nodding off over Bodyguard – phone rang. I almost didn’t answer it – how could it be anything good – but I thought it might be Avril with some emergency. It was Jervaze! He’s coming back. He’s been offered “crew leader” position in his old job at the Pentagon with a $5,000 bump. He wants to celebrate by taking me out – we can go to Clyde’s where we partied for his birthday last year. I hung up feeling good – until I thought this will give me a reason to give up Buck. There’s no way Jervaze won’t find out about him. Ugh. Confrontations. Unless I can keep J out of club? Doesn’t seem possible that he is off the sauce. Must make sure he gets a place of his own – he will be living with his brother to start with. He sounded sober, I’ll say that for him.
Plush Palace Tues night 19 Dec 78 - 7:30 PM
Wiped out my savings account to pay bills – well,
that’s what it’s for. We got the Queens Chapel house! Target date for the move is March 1. Avril and Maureen very excited. (It really is huge. 5 beds, 3 bathrooms, divideable into 3 suites. Perfect. Huge kitchen, dining room and fenced in yard.) I contemplate writing a book of poems called The Lives of Dancers. Trouble is, I’d have to tone it down to make it believable. Got one poem already – Impure Women.
IMPURE WOMEN
Between my breath and your breath Beneath the phallic philanthropic statues on The volcanic dragstrip of my city The wounded in the scorched earth policy Of love Muster, linger, await Embodiment. Pills to make their hearts race faster have Stopped their faces dead as clocks That witnessed crimes unspeakable To mothers versed in tabloid gore. Who will bring them Absolution now that I am gone? In the fresh wounds of a Seconal summer The stopped children meet And kiss.
Is it the approach of Christmas that’s bringing all the old boyfriends back to me like elephants to a boneyard? Ryder called. Marc Kramer refers to me his “dream girl” and can’t get me out of his mind and we’ve been out what – three times? Buck gave me my present at the club – he looked adorable – bath goodies. Don-the-Patent-Lawyer who’s been hanging around the club lately asked me out for New Year’s eve. I had to refuse because Merrill and husband will be in town but I told him to try later. He seems interesting – like to get to know him better. Mature. Always trolling for someone presentable to take Home to Mom.
Ferry Sat 26 Aug 78
Made the ferry with nine cars to spare.
Plush Palace Thurs 31 Aug 78
Three sets down. Tonight I’m asking Eddy for only
three days – it’s hard to be constantly here – like living in a soap opera. No writing – been sending out query letters. Rod called – had the nerve to lecture me on publishing, “If you want to play in their league, you have to wear their uniform.” Deeply annoying – makes me want to bite him. I refuse to wear anyone’s “uniform”. Back to the unspeakable Constance Heaven book that is the only thing I brought.
Thurs 8:30 PM 7 Sept 78
Day spent in the mundane, pricing wicker at Pier 1 with
Avril. Lots I wanted but can’t afford. Bought mugs and plant.
7:47 PM Plush Palace – Sat 9 Sept 78 Dinner with Rod. He is handsome, rational, helpful, kind and forgiving. Unfortunately, he’s also some unknown Third Sex, a complete zygote. If he’s gay he’ll be the last to know. After three glasses of wine I found the nerve to say he must have noticed we have no sex life. He talked sententiously about how we’re both cautious, both been burned before, give it time, etc – it sounded good, but I knew it wasn’t true. Something’s wrong with him. The last months of his marriage he slept sexlessly in same bed with his wife – at the very end her boyfriend even joined them! (Nobody did anything.) Strange and unhealthy.
We went to watch his friend, Zachary play guitar in a coffee- house at Tyson’s Corners. Now there’s a guy with a noticeably sparking electrical overload. I was turned on to him and he was turned on to me but of course nobody did anything.
Rod was absolutely serene, probably didn’t even notice. But would he even mind? I can’t mention it because Zachary is basically a sewer rat. It is not a sign of emotional health to even consider counting coup with this guy. Pity Rod’s so perfect. Waitresses gaze at us adoringly. Mom and Dad would love him. Wakened this AM by postman thumping on door with package – turned out to be twenty copies of Flatiron with my Resurrectionist poem spread – I’m going to send every one of them out. Makes such a perfect gift and peace offering I may order 20 more. Reading Nathanel West’s horrific Miss Lonelyhearts.
Plush Palace 6:10 PM Wed 13 Sept 78
Mon Avril and I went to the play Mrs. Cheyney – it was
excellent – then to the Apple Tree after to dance but the volume of turkeys pitched up way too high. We made a wonderful evening anyway – picked up effortlessly right where we left off – complete with psychic communication like imperfectly sundered Siamese twins. Then off to Rod’s in my black satin suit – he had a bottle of champagne to celebrate Farrar, Straus & Giroux wanting to see my novel (I know better than to celebrate a thing like that.)
2:25 PM Thurs 14 Sept 78
Wonderful letter from Devon affirming and reaffirming
his love. Very healing. Asked to keep the photo I sent him of us when I was seventeen. Described me as “majestic, mature.” Ooooo. Reading Gore Vidal’s Edgar Box stories.
Difficult letter from Mom. She doesn’t seem to realize she can’t “win”. Her will cannot prevail. If she keeps insisting we will only become more alienated. Good diet day – eggs, grapefruit, almonds. No booze. Lots of water.
Powder Mill Road 20 Sept 78 2:00 PM
Avril and I met for drinks and steaks, then to White Flint Mall
to see Rituals. Hal Holbrook surprisingly good. Trying to read The World of Somerset Maugham in bed – fell asleep at 11 – didn’t wake till nine! Finished letter to Genevieve answering hers in which she lectured me on wearing “tight pants”.
Groomed dogs, dishes, vacuuming. Sent Flatiron around – wrote letter to D. Re-read Mimsey. I think it’s a little gem but can’t be pried out of its’ setting without destruction. Maybe I should send it around anyway, even though it’s so short. Also found old MS of Secrets – not bad. But the real eye opener was my writing teacher’s horrible editing – suggested I change “opaque” to “grey green” – “pressed her eye against the window” instead of “applied her eye”, which is what I had. Ugh and shiver. Counted up bills. Tight. I hate hand-to-mouthing. So will sell stock. Zachary told Rod he is attracted to me. I don’t know where that will go – it surprised me. He is ballsy. See them both at tonight’s party.
Tues 26 Sept 78
Strange party. Lots of people. Zachary was there,
visibly lusting. Rod seemed perfectly comfortable about Zachary and me. He is the weirdest ever. Repressed gay? Asexual? Pod person? Put his arms around us both. Z very effusive – he is “onstage” all the time. I stopped myself from saying, “Show everybody your appendectomy scar.” Let him reveal himself. What do I care? He produced dope but no one got high. Rod told me I should allow Z to satisfy me – use upstairs bedroom. (Probably wired for sound.) I was not happy with that – made him follow me home instead. Good sex, but he hung around till 1. It’s true he made me breakfast – a delicious omelet. But it’s always a mistake to bring them home. When Rod called, Z was still here. That was uncomfortable for me – Rod said relax about it. Stock at 16 so really can’t sell. Told Marc to watch it for a week but I will be needing the money. Must unplug phone and work.
Quarter to 7 – Worked on childhood stuff till tension got too much. Plugged phone back in, dinner, read NY Review of Books. Exercised dogs. Went to library – got bio Hart Crane – a nice big one – bought huge desk calendar for planning.
Plush Palace 27 Sept Wed 78 Sitting in dressing room all suited up, breasts taped up into vertical position – might as well scribble. Good diet – yogurt, plums, apples, eggs, tuna. Wrote. Scared I’ll arrive at p. 100 and be “finished” – pushed thought away. Avril called upset – el Diablo died and she missed an exam. I went to pick her up. She has date tonight with Mystery Man. I am reading about Hart Crane’s relationship with his parents. Too familiar for comfort. 11:45 PM Interesting night. My lighter schedule helps me have more fun with the other dancers – I don’t feel so invaded by them. Avril phoned about date. Fifty-fifty, she rated it. That’s not very good. Letter from Devon inviting me up for Oct. I was amazed – made reservations for Concord Inn. Went to see Claudia Weill’s Girlfriends with A. We liked it – seemed extra poignant since Opal had to “drop” us rapacious females on her remarriage.
Then to Warehouse to hear Z sing. Surprise – he was tense to see me! His throat closed up. Finally sheer professionalism carried him through – everyone seemed impressed. He never looked straight at me but I could tell he was watching me out of the corner of his eye – he flinched at my slightest movement. Flattering? Or scary? I don’t know. I’m trying to feel flattered – why assume responsibility for everything? Shoulders and Peter P showed up with girlfriends – hello – big surprise – all exchange new phone numbers. Everyone friendly. Avril charmed by Shoulders all over again – said she didn’t think that girlfriend looked serious.
Z descended from stage – I could tell he was having a battle – should he be “aloof” like a “real performer” or effusive with me? My unwillingness to seem needy saved us both – I was cool. He asked privately if he could “stop by” I said yes. Could have kicked myself later. Shadonna called – asked me to do a double. I forced myself to say no.
Fri Oct 6 – 1:35 PM
Who should come into the club but Rick Marl – he
said he had just seen Ryder and Ryder told him things between us were “still the same”!!! I haven’t spoken to R in weeks! Told Rick that. Rick then showed a desire to “move in” on me – I didn’t squash it. Told him “call me.” Starting to think the time for “instant honesty” in relationships is passed. It’s way too dangerous. Make them earn the right for a tour of my insides. A and I saw Steve Martin last night at College Park. He skewers the Ryders of this world pretty brilliantly I thought. Specially loved the skit where he feels “responsible” for his girlfriend’s death. He shot her when she became annoying.
Fight with Zachary over sex – he thinks – I “take too long to satisfy.” I was so annoyed I left at 3 in the morning to go to A’s place. When I came back he was gone – left a note – “in your absence your odds improve” in his odd little precise architect’s handwriting. Bastard. He obviously doesn’t mean my odds of being satisfied. He thinks he’s such hot stuff. He’s performing at The Mistral this weekend.
10:35 PM Tues night 10 Oct 78
Stock sold. There’s six months rent. Or I could go to
England (I don’t give up easily.) Instead I do a little fun winterizing – new electric blanket and bathroom rug. I’m enmeshed in an ego problem with Zachary – this is the “hedonism” Dad is always worried about. I only want to see him once a week for sex but my ego demands he fall in love with me. He has invited me Home to Meet the Parents so perhaps I’ve succeeded. Very handsome unkempt hunk at the club invited me to see him race his motorcycle in Fredericksburg. This is a tempting piece of Americana I don’t think I can refuse. He’s just a gorgeous mud puppy.
Spent $17 at the post office sending copies of To Drown In Air around. Seemed like a lot to me. It’s not just men I’m jumping between. Reading both Russell Kirk’s unctuous book on Eliot and Ross MacDonald. Much prefer the latter: I’ll return to him now.
Sat 4 PM 14 Oct 78
How did I get myself into a situation with men calling all
the time? It is supposed to be a girl’s fondest dream – in fact it is hell. I am unplugging the phone for long stretches and not telling them either or they might be tempted to come over. As Zachary did yesterday – we ended up sixty-nining on sofa – I admit it was his best sex yet.
Mon 11 PM 16 Oct 78
Avril and I drove to Fredericksburg for the unkempt
hunk’s race – gorgeous weather – spectators everywhere and I had a hard time finding a place to park – then a guy in a blue and yellow racing outfit and helmet appeared and banged on the hood of my car. I thought it was someone telling me I couldn’t park there but it was Buck and I hadn’t recognized him. So handsome!
The race was just about to start – he had a party of five or six people to cheer him on. I didn’t quite get the names – we had to rush out onto the course. Buck got a good start but his bike went wrong twice – once he did a spectacular flip and it came down right on top of him. Brady, his friend, said, “that happens all the time.” Buck was unhurt but had to leave the race. He seemed relaxed about failure – opened a cooler – gave us all roast beef sandwiches he had made himself and beer. (I hate beer.) was busily finding out that Brady’s “unattached”. He’s a big shy handsome lunk too. Buck put his arms around me and gave me a big hug – told me now I have to come watch a better race. Ah, the fantasy – the mystery of Buck – who is he and what is he – taking fire in me. Big, strong, unthreatened, unthreatening male, bursting with muscles and apparently emotionally undamaged by life. Why not horses, farm, children with such a one as this? Could I get so lucky?
I cooked dinner for Avril – liver, onions, mushrooms, rice. Plenty of bourbon. Still need to go to bed early. Colored and conditioned my hair and wrote letters.
Powder Mill Road Wed – 18 Oct 78
No poetry - Too much going on – I’m longing for my
hermit days. I think: I ought to be able to date. I ought to be able to have a little sex, a little love, a little affection – but what a can of worms! Instantly it spins out of control! I thought Buck might show up at the club – and indeed he did – after obviously making a special effort with his appearance. Tight leather jacket, blond hair all puffed out, face glowing. It was just like a date – only with me dancing onstage. He stayed 2 and 1/2 hrs – I gave him my standard lecture about not wasting his life hanging out there – come in say hi and leave. One beer. Before I finished he said, What are you doing Fri night? I said, “going out with you.” When I got home Rick called – spying for Ryder I have no doubt. But I had to tell him I am booked solid through the 30th. Truth to God.
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.” He came 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 was 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 more. But as much as I deserve? 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 or be a nun That would be a self worth knowing. Time is gunning for me I can feel arthritic fingers Scrabbling at my dreams Playing the old tunes but scratchier, less sensitive. I’m a body in search of a car wreck A 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 is tired; Peel from my eyes the thickened skin of grief Unstop my ears from the dust of My own consequence Free my feet from the sharpened judging splinters For life passes from my like a fever in which I cry out and cry out and yet No sound is made Time to head on out Like the tide & Cauterize the woof-warp of a pattern So plain that even I can see it. Teach me not to envy The gulls their mirrored flight unmeasured like my own Reduce me to unbending bones of my Essential self the dark sister; she The soul I was before I became me.
Can’t turn it into a presentable poem – 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.
3PM Sat 4 Nov 78
Trouble bouncing back from the most recent
rejection of Gift. Wouldn’t be so bad if I felt they actually read it. My agent compares me to Mallarmé – trouble is, no one likes Mallarmé. My bank has charged me $24 for being $1.70 short on a check. They did the same thing to Avril – since she has a $6,000 savings account, she figures she’s paying them to lend out her money at 18% interest. And whoever you talk to turns out to be a computer. Buck and I are having a very interesting relationship. I can hardly believe it’s happening. There’s no bickering over unmet needs – it’s very restful. Sex could be a potentially explosive problem area – can’t tell yet – so far so good – I think he’s a learner claiming a lot more experience than he’s got. There are definitely problems associated with having sex with a person who is obsessed with speed.
My period started today and it seems cruel to task a beginner with this issue. At least Buck goes down nobly like Jacques Cousteau. But he’s not much of a talker. The most amusing aspect is how we’ve settled down socially – we have a lot of fun around other people. I am contemplating writing a story called The Official Girlfriend which will treat this from a sociological perspective. Tomorrow we are meeting his parents at a restaurant – I hope its dark in there because they are bound to think I am too old for him. Naturally we are keeping my job a deep dark secret – I have to be a “hostess” which really blows. A week from tomorrow he has another race – we’ll take a picnic. I love these outings.
Plus Avril’s really getting along with Buck’s buddy Brady – definite prospects of a dating foursome. Unfortunately, Brady left his wife like two minutes ago and is not what you’d call “fully detached” as yet. Fortunately: no kids.
Sun 11:15 PM Buck amazed me by confessing that every time before he sees me he is “sick to his stomach” with worry that he won’t come up to my expectations. I am a “high status date” and all his friends are waiting for him to stumble. But then when we’re together he says he just relaxes and we have a great time. I was really touched by this. It is nice that in the car mechanic’s world dating an exotic dancer is high status. I prefer that to being the Shameful Secret which I assume I was in Rod’s world.
Next week I’m supposedly seeing Zachary twice – haven’t told Buck – why am I doing this? Insurance? I think I don’t like Zachary. Am I competitive – is it just thrilling to see him come off the stage and touch me intimately? (Everyone’s jealous – the men as much as the women. Rod wants Zachary more than he wants me I think.) But actually I don’t like Zachary. The trouble with canceling is then it would be just Buck and me. Me and Buck. Going steady.
12:30 PM Mon 6 Nov 78
Bizarrely warm day. Had a wonderful time yesterday
at Shadonna’s wedding. Buck wore a marvelous blue suit with blue suede patches. It was indescribable – sort of like country singer performance-wear, and with his wispy moustaches and his motorcycle boots I’m telling you he was a sight to behold. I wore my “slit to there” diamanté rainbow dress and we danced for hours. Nobody paid us any attention. We didn’t stand out at all, that’s what I’m telling you.
Plush Palace – Tues – 9:35 PM 7 Nov 78
Avril said to me this afternoon, “My life is completely
out of control and I don’t care.” She has to drive Brady to his in-laws to pick up his clothes today because his wife took the car. There’s bound to be a glorious, satisfying, soap opera scene with a lot of screaming and object throwing – just like there was the time she helped him extract his clothes from his wife’s apartment. On top of this Brady is apparently extremely jealous – in spite of the fact that he’s technically married and she isn’t. She is seriously thinking of inviting him to Thanksgiving because he won’t believe that she’s not secretly meeting a beau – or six! However, he showers her with love, attention and sexual worship so she says it’s worth every minute of it.
Went out last night with Zachary – we had a sandwich and drink at Booeymonger’s and saw Animal House. He was driving his mother’s car. He is assembling a band called Prairie Dust and he’s in some kind of power struggle with the lead singer who is female. He needs to be the prettiest person in any band. He says Rod – playing Daddy Big Bucks – foisted her on him. Because Rod works in radio and is paying for the tape mix he has Zachary right where he wants him. (She is a fantastic singer.) Rod might just find his mojo after all. Following the movie, I finally met the parents – now that there’s no point in it. Got along like a house on fire with his Dad because I knew all the obscure Giraudoux plays he had framed posters of on his wall. I quoted: “And the sewers will be fragrant with jasmine…” which was my line in Madwoman of Chaillot. I could tell I was a considerable cut above the street people and space chicks Zachary usually drags home.
They must be worried as hell that he’s gay – his room is full of what can only be described as pinup pictures of himself. Little do they know it’s worse than that – he’s into anything that would be into him. Bestiality would be frankly appraised on its merits. “Is it a good looking chicken?”) House full of unbelievably beautiful, unbelievably uncomfortable furniture – striped satin Empire sofas – stained glass windows – wrought iron candelabras – that sort of thing. His mother very wary – fiercely Catholic – thin with a long blonde pony-tail and a long horsey face – but actually quite intelligent and attractive.
Zachary’s room is full of crosses and Gonzaga pennants – I should have realized this boy has all the earmarks of being terminally mauled by priests. Parents frantic: when will he get a “real” job. College was such an unpleasant experience all shudder when it’s mentioned and no one’s willing to discuss it. I’m betting drugs were involved.
Of course Zachary wanted to have sex in his narrow twin bed – right beneath the picture of “The Holy Father” (he doesn’t even have a lock on the door!) and I have to admit I found the Chabrolesque aspects of the situation arousing. He seemed to lose track of the fact that it was me – but his orgasms were more explosive than ever. So there I am again; “The Official Girlfriend.”
Could I put an ad in the paper – some kind of specialized escort service? “Impress your friends – terrify your parents!” Buck doesn’t know about Zachary and since I don’t care who else Z does he must realize I’ve got a back burner – but the truth of it is that between the two of them they’re barely one boyfriend. One is charming, affectionate, trustworthy and dumb as ditchwater; the other is upper class, complicated, interesting, artistic, totally untrustworthy (and most likely a male whore.) It’s a damn shame it has to get like this. I just don’t know how good at “keeping secrets” I can be. Need to go home and get some sleep. If have to get down to Funkytown one more time tonight I won’t be answerable for the consequences.
Thurs Aug 10 -78 – 5:30 PM
Feeling happy and serene – it’s been the loveliest visit.
Many bike rides and explorations. Lovely dinner last night at the cottage – Devon asking Dad a lot of questions – then we lay in each other’s arms at the Barnacle and he said Time to Discuss Our Relationship. Said “some French girl” dumped him because he’s so incompetent with condoms; he’s so relieved not to have that with me. I said, “Maybe we should be exclusive.” He said, ‘Could you manage that? I said gratefully, ‘Certainly”, He said, “Thank you for being honest” stripped off my clothes and made mad, passionate love to me – all orifices massaged, nipples chewed, armpits sucked – the works. It was really something – probably the most passionate satisfying sex I’ve ever had. He told me our coming together in Plympton after I left my husband was The Most Significant Event in his LIFE.
But does he see me as a Minister’s Wife? No one can. Me included. The Problem of which we do not speak. Drive him to the ferry today, after that a sail to Brimstone Island.
Shadowe Island - The Cottage – Sat 12 Aug 78
Mom giggling about how sweet and pure Devon is. She
is certain I’ve been dumped. If she only knew. If I in am suddenly in an Exclusive Relationship with this human will o’ the wisp wouldn’t it be the worst thing for me? Am I like a Terrible Man who will now say anything to get sex? Five good pages on novel. Working in omniscient third person – a violently new departure. A few vague worried sensations that I am “telling” too much about characters but the Victorians used to get away with this on a regular basis. How I envy them. There I’ve said it, I envy Mrs. Henry Wood. One thing left out of Gardner’s On Moral Fiction is how rarely we see the book the author wanted – instead we see the draft the
publisher agreed to buy & PROMOTE. Or am I cynical? On the whole I am appreciating Gardner’s ideas – but more than ready to get back to V Woolf’s letters & diary. That is ecstasy – the “unstructured real.” Far prefer them to her novels.
Nice long phone talk with Devon. Feeling freed since he described to me his definition of a future wife; she is not me. In fact, she will be a very unlucky girl who gets – by his deliberate plan – the least of him. It is comical that I, something of a contemporary expert on all things Victorian, should even locate such a profoundly divided, deeply Victorian male; product of such hideous religious and sexual mangling one would think barely possible in this enlightened century. “Wife” seems to encompass for him some whole new scary dimension that has nothing to do with sex. What mysteries people are! Bruce wanted a fount of approval and cash. Ryder wanted a mule. Jervaze wanted a mommy who will bed him down with a bottle of Southern Comfort and then drive him to the hospital. I can’t even figure out What Rod wants. But Devon seems to want someone whose holiness will “cancel out” his “bad behavior”. All I know is I don’t want to be any of those people.
But what DO I want? I’m embarrassed to admit it out loud. I want the spiritual and physical closeness – the “soulmate connection” – to just keep on intensifying until we switch bodies (and I get to live two lives). Castaneda says it can be done. (Good subject for novel.)
QUILTING
The scraps The scraps The bad acts Bleed like madras Over everything Piecing penalties Placating the portionless Fabric cut to fit the frame or The other way about? This will all have to be redone Till it makes some kind of sense. Make the pieces smaller – ever Smaller – in my Empire of Loneliness.
Devon flat out admitted he is afraid of me –says I
have too much power over him. I was too aggressive with him this time and I think my “free agency” is where the trouble lies. It “wakes him up” too much to the existence of another person and reminds him this isn’t all happening in his head! I am too impatient to wait for him to get ready to have an actual relationship. In the past, the better he got to know all his girlfriends – and the more certain he became of them, the less he wanted them. We are dancing on a knife-edge with our pleasure now. Psychologically he rules out “sexual fire” in long-term relationships. Everyone but me (and Dad) seems to think sexual fire must burn out. I look forward to getting back – change in seasons, change in clothes – working, writing, even running around town with Rod is starting to look fun. Cold day – sun hidden by clouds.
Burnside Inn – 10PM Sunday 13 Aug 78 Told my dad I took the room here because my typewriter needs electricity – really of course I wanted privacy with Devon and then we ended up at the Barnacle! But a public inn (with a handy bar) requires a lot of discipline. More than I have. I am recovering from a scandalous night – too tired to take a bath I fell asleep in my clothes after cocktails with Marc Kramer who tried first wooing me with his completely unfettered, unapologetic interest in money by showing me his new house then just flat out tried to get me drunk. (I did get drunk but not enough to make him seem desirable. He is very hairy.) However, “investment banker” would be a good job to give to my character Cloud if he ever grows up. If I can ever get him out of prep school. No more hanging around the bar for me – I plan sit here in my room every afternoon writing between three and six. Seems to be all my social schedule will allow. Feel myself getting fat and should cut back on food – tall order. I just need to go home and DANCE. Stupid diary! One love problem after another. Well I can always go back to poor Woolf… her talk of mushrooms, chair covers, butterflies…
Mon 14 Aug 12 midnight -78
Very unsatisfied with everything I’ve ever written. The
difficulty is I need to bring all my writing up to my current level of philosophical maturity (such as it is.) But it keeps increasing exponentially! Never be embarrassed to start over.
Dinner scene in Paradise Road (newly retitled) feels shaky. Too many characters for me to handle. Maybe wedding next? Trying to invest my characters with what I’ve just learned from Devon. Would choosing “the right person” come first (my Mom’s theory) and then the love follows afterward? More convenient for everyone, certainly. Almost rolled a poor pimply little fisherman down at the docks this afternoon because I am such a sucker for gorgeous naked (hairless) shoulders. And the friendly, friendly innkeeper – but don’t get me started, he has a “wife” or “wife substitute”. Mom’s been very cruel to me lately. At dinner last night I discovered she RODE THE FERRY with poor shell-shocked Devon (explains his “freeing’ phone call) whom she apparently grilled the whole ride. She sniffed – “He’ll never marry you.”
Too proud to tell her I just reached that conclusion myself and it doesn’t elevate him in my estimation (the way it obviously does in hers!) I could say I actually know Devon better now than he knows himself (he talks in his sleep), and I can positively state that his stated intentions never bear ANY relationship to his actions. And it’s not a good thing.
He also told he could never become a minister (because his mother wanted it too badly!) and yet here we all are. He keeps making rules and I keep watching him break them. Plus, I’ve been taking responsibility for “making” him do things he doesn’t “want” to for years. It’s a spiritual game of Chinese checkers he insists on “losing”. I guess it’s just a matter of time before he starts holding it against me.
SUICIDE STREET This is the street of suicides. I orchestrated masterpieces in that house Third-from-left – Getting my effects too cheaply I see now Unmindful of material That lay so close to hand New tenants slick the lawn that moats that Windowed grave. They repair The chrysalis I shattered Getting out.
10:20 AM Wed 16 Aug 78
I am so excited by the “newness” of my novel – starting to
feel confident; like I can make these people do anything. Can’t wait to go home and spread all the versions out – play Max Perkins to my own Tom Wolfe. Might be able to patch something together. Still my tone needs emergency assistance, which dictates a massive overhaul. All this omniscience is just too painfully reminiscent of somebody like Balzac – “In the forbiddingly cold winter of 1863” or worse, Dragnet? Must read Speedboat to see how far one can go. Should I throw everything out and start over again or leave it a 500 p hegira?
Rod sends me a letter every day. He is smart, witty and culturally aware. His handwriting is perfect. Unfortunately, this does not feel as good as it should. I have rejected him as a potential husband (or father) because he is so totally lacking in Projection & Charisma. Unlike Devon I plan to marry a person I can also have soul-shattering sex with. Even Rod’s myths are sub-standard. He needs Tale of Genji and Kraft-Ebbing but all he has is Beowulf. Still, this is not the kind of thing you can tell a person you don’t want to get serious with.
According to him, Miss You by the Stones is “Our Song”. My song is Urgent, by Foreigner, and time’s a-wastin’. I can struggle with this goddam party scene or I can go out and buy toothpaste. Ferry coming in – very foggy.
Came into Burnside Inn tonight and immediately lost a lens. Searched and searched. Would this be the bill that would break the poor fragile financial camel’s back? Then I found it – stuck to my hair. A miracle.
Mom took me on a walk after dinner – apologized in her weird oblique way. For a woman who claims to have “given all for love” she really is quite calculating and cynical about it. “Why buy the cow if the milk is free?” sums up the whole of her philosophy. She wants me to marry Marc Kramer and live in wretched discontent, the equivalent, as far as I can see, to opening a dairy farm and sending out pricelists. Those are the options. Has doing too much of the emotional scutwork fatally dimmed the stars in her “love makes the world go round” eyes? “What if I’m not a market-based economy?” I inquire. Another missed bonding opportunity.
Dad showed gorgeous slides of Fox Island. Every frame a poem. Made me think I should read old diaries to see what I can get. Not that Cloud would keep diaries – not reflective that way at all. But Suni might keep them.
9:30 AM Fri 18 Aug 78
$100 honorarium from Coltsville Community College for
my presentation – I can eat for a month off of that! Dare I get my dancing down to 3 nights a week? Would be heaven.
Discussion with sisters about Mom. Here’s their advice: “Remember she’s crazy,” “Remember she’s old,” “Don’t give her any information” and “Lie.” There it is! If only she could hear them! And I’m the one with the “Bad Kid” reputation! Over dinner she lectured us on how costumes for the ballet exalt the human body. Nothing like my combination of pasties, fishnets and glitter! Hard to listen to after the contempt she has expressed for my job! Said nothing. What they really hate is that I am my own choreographer.
I was too dispirited even to point out that back when ballet was “invented”, back in the dear old Dead Degas Days, dancers were VERY “declassee” with damn near NO control over their own bodies: how to express themselves sexually much less how they were viewed. Looking back over it, my most serious depressions were all caused by attempts to conform. I’m so OVER it. Am I afraid of loneliness?
No. Stigma? Childlessness? Sexlessness? No. I confront all these fears, one by one. Hard however to keep my head high around Mom and Dad’s evident conviction that no one can ever be found to love me. They insist on giving me money because I’m so pathetic . OK, I’ll take it (I’ve taken tips from fans harboring worse thoughts) but insisted on giving them a poem in return. Read Dawn Walk out loud looking for praise –
Dawn Walk
Thunder crusts a gelid sky Is it light or is it rain feathering my nest with longing Stippling soul with flushed new growth; bursting out the steepled trees. This is my world and I release it Released for flying Stelliform Tough as spidersilk Unrecognizable Even to me who birthed it Who spent my life creating it. Released and Blown away.
They rolled their eyes.
I must be secretly determined to make them look bad! Need to get car in line for the ferry tomorrow AM at nine. Good vacation this has been. Mostly. Last letter from Rod mentions a big society wedding we are invited to. He does get invited to the best parties.
1:45 AM Horrible last dinner at the Mermaid Creek House. Am I speaking a different language from everybody else? Uncle Clive downgraded his current girlfriend right in front of her – “she’s got no skills – she’s not too bright.” I agree – there must be something seriously wrong with her to want to be around him. Genevieve wants to know how I can love men who are “weak”. This would have more significance if her second marriage wasn’t with a submissive. I defended that weak men are “doubters” and doubters are interesting.
The opposite is arrogance and how attractive is that? Marc K, for example, doubts nothing. He’s also not very interesting. It would be easy to be swept along in his wake on autopilot. Maddens me to hear Mom and G discuss Avril’s “low self-esteem.” The nerve! I think they want to pretend that life “makes sense” and is not a dangerous lottery. According to them, A has too low an opinion of herself and I have too high an opinion of myself. Hmmmm. What’s wrong with this picture?
8:45 PM Plush Palace – 24 Jun 78 – Sat
Bad mood. OD’d on junk food then lost my favorite
hairbrush and other people’s plastic versions break my hair. Growl. I can write it out. It’s a dirty job but someone’s got to do it. Emotional roller coaster continues. Just when I declare myself a Celibate Slave to Art a very handsome (and very blond) man comes in tonight. He works in radio, considering story about dancers; wants to interview “somebody”.
“You hit pay dirt, my friend.” I tell him but I insist on pseudonym. I was wearing my silver lamé outfit with the see-through silver sleeves so looked tiptop if I do say so myself.
His name’s Rod Avery (I’m not kidding) and although he’s newly divorced he lacks the Rip Van Winkle leer. He works for a reputable national outlet. I can work with this. Mom would just eat him up. Bought tix to an Agatha Christie play – maybe I’ll invite him instead of Avril.
Plush Palace, Sat 1 July, 9 PM
Rod and I engage in a little smoochy-smoochy hand
holding following Christie play. I make an effort not to get so drunk that I pull down his pants to view his namesake. Impatient to find out exactly where my next sexual meal is coming from. Tach it up buddy. In Dancer News, GiGi says Charlie NEVER goes down on her unless he’s absolutely plastered. I want to know, “And then what good is he?” She has to admit “not much.” Says he laps at her like she’s a melting ice cream cone.
Did like Pamela Hansford Johnson’s Helena trilogy.
(Impressions of childhood, though, painfully unreal.) Now struggling with Grahame Greene’s It’s A Battlefield. Diseased whores abound; women bear their 12th child in crowded rooms (and because he’s a Catholic that’s presumably All Right By Him) and a gay time is had by none.
Midnight Sun-Mon July 2-3 78
Taking Avril to Cellar Door for her birthday before she
flies to Mich to see Merrill. Gifts Dior dusting powder & wrap around dress. Festive occasion demands dress-up. A & I saw Grease, Rod and I saw Heaven Can Wait. Just sweet enough but it didn’t “move” Rod as much as I hoped. What if he’s one of the “pod people” with nothing inside? Jury still out.
Thurs 4:15 – 6 July 78
Missing Avril so much! Boy, did I get dependent.
It’s just SO Fun to have someone to do things with who thinks ALMOST EXACTLY the same as you do but with interestingly nourishing differences. Rod is no substitute. Still can’t figure him out. His apartment is completely stark. Bare. Not ONE THING on any of the walls. The closest I can get to understanding him is that there seems to be no feeling in his family. They don’t talk at meals. Father’s dead, mother still sends him clothes he hates and he still wears them. (They are perfectly presentable. But what would he wear if she did not dress him? We’ll never know. I’m not getting in the midst of that.)
He never suggests things to do. I suggest everything. Charlie Byrd in Annapolis (just because I love Annapolis) was OK. On the other hand, when we went to Le Bistro he ordered Piper Heidseck champagne out of the clear blue sky! Because he said now he’s “finally dating.” So that took initative. Right?
Nice letter from Devon who ‘feels veneration” for my talent. Sweet. Reading Green’s The von Richthofen Sisters.
8:30 PM Fri – 7 July 78
Driving in to work in a haze of ecstasy after Perfect Day,
heard an infuriating review of Heaven Can Wait by Penelope Gilliatt. Really the woman’s a moron. She says she would understand a movie about transmigration of souls in “wartime” but why now! Who GIVES these people a podium? How did she get this job with so little artistic sense? Bullied her way to the top, most likely. Von Richthofen Sisters turns out to be boring PhD thesis. So hard to get it right. Therefore switched to Murder of My Aunt. Amusing. (Richard Hull).
Big tipper in tonight. $138 so far! I feel like the pigeons in A’s experiments. “Intermittent reinforcement!” I have to pick up Genevieve and Brett up at the airport tomorrow for Women’s March (we all wear white.) Bringing them back to my place to eat first – I made a gorgeous salmon mousse. Invited Rod just to see if he’s cool.
Sun July 9 78 2 AM
He’s cool. Wore white, walked the whole march and
was so charming to Genevieve and Brett they were dazzled. I’m now feeling relief that I only have ten days till vacation – don’t think I can become “over involved” in that short period of time.
Adelphi Grist Mill Park – 11:15 AM Mon July 10 – 78
Sunbathing on my favorite rock. When I get hot
I’ll splash around (like the dogs are already doing). Hardly a dry spot left on this rock – but who cares – my diaries have seen worse. A year ago, the Last Act of the Romantic Psychodrama just beginning. Whew. I think I came out of it all right. I’m starting to see a possible Harold-Nicolson/ Vita Sackville-West thing developing with Rod. (He actually KNOWS WHO Harold Nicolson is!!!) Last night I almost raped him in his theatre seat but I am determined to let him make the first move. But I do need to know how long I’m going to have to wear Glamorous Lingerie every day (just in case). I am starting to run out of glamorous lingerie. But we are having a lovely time – he is witty, intelligent and aware. I “confessed” all about Devon – my longest relationship – but because he’s a “newly consecrated minister” I can see Rod’s not too worried. If he only knew!
A good development is I’m learning not to drink so much. If there isn’t sex right around the corner one must stay aware. Coffee “without dessert” so to speak. It’s good for me. I told him the whole plot of Secaire – weak points become immediately obvious. He tells me about his wife.
2 PM – Back at home to ringing phone – new croquet ball on the pitch! Marc Kramer coming into National – do I want to have dinner and discuss My Finances. Hmm. Maybe. He knows I’m too poor to invest in anything. But I say Yes.
Fri. 8:05 Starlight Club Springfield, Fri 14 July 78
I hate this club. It’s a bitch of a drive so I rarely come
here but the tips are good. Need the cash for vacation. Unfortunately, I am working with Danielle – the Brazilian lesbian who threatened to kill me. I’m hoping she won’t recall she threw boiling hot coffee at me. (Her aim is bad.) She’s usually pretty much out of it. Got $100 tip already from a guy who wonders why I don’t dance at The Gaslight downtown. Because the dancers have to waitress there! Ugh! That place is legendary. I tried to be polite but really. Anyway, Kramer was different from what I expected. We ate prime rib at The King’s Contrivance – he seemed a lot older and a lot sadder. He says whenever he hears 10 CC’s “I’m Not In Love” he thinks of me. I asked him what about finances – he said I should invest in real estate. Wants to “watch my stocks.” I was embarrassed to tell him there isn’t anything to watch what with Dad keeping such a closed fist on the shares, and me having to sell everything I get. I start to suspect Dad is CONFIDING in him about his estate planning and PRETENDING “our” investments are actually OURS. This meant we didn’t have that much to talk about and the evening ended with a damp kiss when I turned down sex. I say I’m In a Relationship. He says he’s thinking of proposing to his red headed secretary who reminds him of me. I am kind of insulted but told him to Go For It. I guess I had this built up in my mind – sort of like Chuck Kornowitz where you think it’s going to FINALLY be about SOMETHING ELSE. How my Mom would jeer! (Wore my 3-piece suit, anyway. With eyeshadow.) He says he has to come through on his way back from Oklahoma, thank God, I could say I’ll be in Maine. Looks Like It’s Over.
SUNBATHER
Poor periwinkle hides within the final spiny spiral of his shell, no stronghold that from hungry file-worms’ whippet tongues nor sun-mad amateur biologists nor ten year olds; while I more evolved, lie among the oval-jointed shells, the sheepswool sponges, camouflage my breasts as comb-jellies, hair as seaweed, fooling none yet impressing those I can’t deceive.
2:15 AM Mon 17 July 78
Another fiasco. I should leave now while I’m behind.
This has certainly been Trial and Error Week. How did poor Rod – Desirable Husband become Inevitable Discard? I’m sick to death of the Hand Kissings and the Knee Pinchings, Goddamit. There is something seriously wrong with this man. We had dinner & drinks at the Peter Pan Inn, then drove up and down Price Distillery Rd until I assaulted him. I admit it. He is under the impression that we “made love”. Trust me, one time was plenty. This is a man who does not “think” with his body. He gives nothing back, an absorptive rather than reflective surface. I was just able to prevent myself from rushing to the bathroom to masturbate. I worked hard not to let him know how just how incompetent he is, because really, there’s no hope. Some sad girl somewhere who hates sex is going to find her “dream man”. I shouldn’t have pushed it, although seriously I don’t think he will even question if it never happens again. Damn shame is all I can say. A cruel waste, when he’s so charming in every other respect. Life is brutal. Sigh. Enjoyed Pretty Baby so much I saw it twice. (Can’t pay close enough attention while Rod is talking.)
Wed 19 July 78 - 3:20 PM
Unbelievably hot. Woke up sluggish, ate last night’s
macaroni, felt worse. Ate grapefruit, felt better. Eddy called me for a double, I refused. Read Mary Kelly’s Cold Corse. Interesting. Gave me new ending for Secaire. Off to the creek to play in the naturally freezing Jacuzzi. Must buy Perrier, fruit and yogurt. Reading Jessica Mitford’s A Fine Old Conflict. Charming.
Shadowe Island – Burnside Inn – 31 July 78
The island its usual immortal, eternal self. A ragged
paradise. Avril and I came up through Boston – drove “The Freedom Trail” but couldn’t go to the Ritz Carlton bar because of the dogs. She is taking care of them down at the cottage.
Mom and Dad look great – thinner and very brown. When I checked in at the Burnside Inn Paul Morris offered me a drink and we chatted
very enjoyably. Trying not to be attracted to him. This vacation might resolve its masturbatory throbbings when Devon shows up. He is driving down from Montreal – I am as nervous as a 14 yr old. That poor sawdust doll Rod called but phone connection (thankfully) very bad. Merrill arrived with children in tow and we had magnificent lobster dinner down at the shore. Rod sent me a copy of On Moral Fiction.
Burnside Inn – 5 Aug 78
Rod called – we talked 45 mins about Moral Fiction –
I feel an enormous pleasure in his intellect. He asks me if being a poet means you enjoy life more intensely. I say YES. Maybe we can transition this into a friendship.
11:30 PM – Devon just phoned – long conversation
on power, authority and ambivalence. He is tormented by his family – can’t figure out how to escape them. He needs to move out of their town but of course they get him jobs SO HE CAN’T MOVE OUT OF THEIR TOWN. Says he’s bringing doughnuts tomorrow over on the ferry – what are my favorites. That’s easy – anything chocolate. (Mom told A that when he gets off the ferry and sees how I’m dressed he’ll turn around and get back on! She doesn’t know him very well. Kind of like Rod – they both think this “minister” thing is overly determinative. Doesn’t in the least change who he really is.)
Midnight Tues 8 Aug 78
M & D both wrong and right. Devon DID NOT flee me
at ferry but fell ecstatically into my arms. HE DID, however, painfully said he can’t express his love for me in “a fully integrated way” (because parson!) and asked me first just to caress his nude body. He didn’t think he could have sex with someone he’s not in an exclusive relationship with. But guess what? Then we had blissful, magnificent sex. I didn’t tell him this is as integrated as it gets for me and a lot more integrated than it’s been lately! (Poor Rod.)
10:45 AM Sat 29 May 78
Woke up this morning muttering about betrayal and
failure. Seems my life separates into two phases: pre and post ex-husband Bruce. Pre-Bruce I was such an innocent – I think “goober” is the descriptive expression. Schools should not let these pathetic characters out – but we were so eager to roam free. There is no savagery to which people will not descend to protect their egos. On top of all this, we have to battle M & D who, of all people, SHOULD be in our corner. They’re pissed we’re not more successfully infantilized. Determine NOT to do this to my kids. Reading Hodgson’s Carnacki The Ghost Hunter (1900) heartbreakingly dull. And it could have been so good – a combination of Gerard Manley Hopkins and Sherlock Holmes is just what the doctor ordered.
3 PM Tues 30 May 78
Struggled through 2 bad pages on Demon that will
have to be rewritten, then finished Sylvia Townsend Warner’s tragic At the Stroke of Midnight. This beautiful short story almost finished me. Yesterday Italian food made me & Avril logy – we tried going dancing. Horrible place, bad band. (Tramps). Predatory males (who spoke bad English) very difficult to get rid of. Saw Greek Tycoon instead – worse even than we’d been led to believe. Came home and read two bad detective stories by “good” writers. Guilt-inducing cash from M & D – makes me feel inadequate but I need it. Means I can buy new vac clnr AND summer dresses. Call Peter like a dutiful child – this whole affair is tinged with doom. Thank God he is “busy” with his Secret Married Woman (who turns out to Someone Big in the Democratic Committee)! His parents and my parents should just date each other. Dogs need walking and I need to check on vandalism at abandoned house.
2 PM Sat June 2 – 78
Trouble opening latest letter from Devon – I had
the weirdest premonition it would a marriage proposal! It was indeed very loving – he has hit a summit of boredom and restlessness for which I am doubtless not the cure. Praised my novel for its “mystical sense of altered consciousness.” Wow. I like that better than “brilliant satire”. A & I went to Dillards concert at Cellar Door – they are so charming. Reminiscences of seeing Bruce play there. First act was Scarlet Ribera and Black Rose Band – liked her even better. Some attractive men, but casual sex seems to raise more problems than it solves. A & I agree that after the “healing” comes the “strengthening” period. Coltsville Community College asks me to teach seminar on gothic novel – of course I said yes. Poor misbegotten bastards. But at least I like watching the birds stuffing themselves at my feeder.
Plush Palace Mon 5 June 78
Perfect day – interesting stirrings inside – feel I am on
the edge of some sort of breakthrough. Yesterday fresh sweet corn and turkey salad at A’s, then we watched B Stanwyck’s Double Indemnity on TV. Classic Chandler. “Aren’t you going 75 in a 30 mph zone?” After that I dressed up in my satin 3-piece suit to see Helmut Berger at the Kennedy Center. (Sigh). What a honey that man is. Then sent Bruce a letter with the Unwelcome News that I am “estopped” from filing for divorce in the state of Maryland because he made me sign a “no contest” paper and then dropped his suit! Paralysis!
I know he was hoping to get out of this without paying (his last girlfriend proffered enough cash to get us this far then predictably abandoned him as soon as his True Colors became apparent.) Maybe I can establish residence in Virginia and start all over again. Had an eye appt in Bethesda so went to that library where I’ve never been and got a TON of interesting books. Treasuring Patricia Beers’ Reader, I Married Him.
Plush Palace Mon 12 June 78 – 7:00 PM
Horrible experience last night at the Garland Dinner
Theatre – we were seated with some couple where the male was obviously severely mentally ill –she fed him 1,000 pills throughout dinner to keep him from exploding. We could have “complained” and demanded to be seated elsewhere but it just seemed so cruel. Avril & I used every bit of our mother’s otherwise completely pernicious training and tried to act as if nothing was happening.
I’m trying to muster up the discipline to unplug my phone till six – I’m getting too involved in A’s job hunt. She told me to Butt Out. She’s right – I should just write. What the hell am I thinking being somebody’s “mother”? We have too much of a mother already – for both of us. Martin Green’s Children of the Sun a survey rather than the illumination I’d hoped for. Now I need a real Brian Howard bio.
Fri – Day One – 16 June 78
Phone awoke me at one am – no one there. Got back
to sleep by sketching out plot for novel where woman hires P I to find out who on list of names has been sending hang-up calls. Major Names of a Lifetime. Yesterday excellent day – haven’t known such joy since April. Sunbathing reading Ada Leverson & Her Circle – delicious. (Unfortunately she was a bit of an idiot.) Cleaned entire house yesterday so when I got back from dancing it was immaculate. (The dogs – who had been outside in the yard – messed it up again immediately.) Read Jane Rule’s excellent Lesbian Images at work. She’s dumb about Colette and Bowen but I agree with her that loneliness and bad experiences are the enemy, not homosexuality. But I don’t think I’m up for a lesbian experience – women too emotionally demanding. They do too much work (men do too little). Hideously unsatisfactory choice – like having to choose between a ton of salt or none. Better to go without. Peter called to say we “ought to get together”.
Seemed very halfhearted to me. Bet he wants to tell his mother he’d made an effort. I doubt we can surmount this fundamental lack of attraction (we both prefer blondes) but Mom thinks just the opposite. Marry people you’re NOT attracted to so you won’t be “swept away” by “hormones” and you can make “reasoned decisions”! Is that pitiable or what? Avril says she’s LYING because EVERYBODY lies about sex. Suggested Mom handed Dad her wet underpants on their very first date. (At the ballet? I don’t see it.) Mom has also said the worse you are at sex the more likely you are to get a proposal. Does this make sense to you? Ryder’s marriage (under these exact principles) lasted 2 yrs and he wanted to be anywhere but home.
Plush Palace – 22 June 78 – 3 PM
Second double this week. I hate them but I need
$80 for typewriter, $300 to pay back A, $100 to quiet the utilities people, $200 Burnside Inn and at least $200 “Mad Money”. You know, in case I go mad. It could happen, especially the way things are going. Need extra cash for Vacation, which I approach as if it were a Sacrament. Secaire gets written NEVER under this regime. Oh well. There’s always poetry.
SYLVIA PLATH: The Festering Weight
I know you deceived me With the bald-headed lady My true kin; My mother renounced Your swollen giblets in my name. See? I bleed tulips. It’s happened twice before; I seed the earth With children, little miracles. I give them their inheritance – a Carriage full of baby dung Flung Down the coal hole To remind me of you. Pearly maggots bee–like Suck my lip to Scent the fault that clings to me: Heredity. This enemy’s face shifts cleverly; First male, then jew, then blurred and unfamiliar, genitalia like narcissi. I reserve the right to reject This choiceless life. See? My body’s scarred by Your refusals. The blackbird sings out Blackly.
Yesterday cleaned house, walked dogs, cooked fish
stew. Avril & I read family letters, then went out to see A Different Story. Both liked it enormously.
Sat. 6 May 78 – 1:30 PM
Cleaned & waxed kitchen and bathroom floors, sitting
with newly creamed hands and cup of coffee in recliner. Muse time. Emerge blinking like a ground hog into a new and spring-like world. A year ago, I was a rat in a cage. It’s critical never to let the “merchants of neurosis” trick me into limiting myself.
Tues. 9 May Plush Palace – 9:15 PM
Mom spent the last two nights at my place – sleeping
in my bed since guest room has no bed. Me on sofa – doesn’t matter since I can’t sleep anyway when she’s around. Up at 7 to make breakfast get Mom to airport for 10 o’clock plane thank God. Avril came over with blueberry muffins and gazpacho to discuss the visit. Everything Mom said felt like an attack. (She did give me $100 but I spent – and lost – more than that on her visit.) Avril says the island has been worse for Mom because she’s never confronted with a life that would contradict her narrow-minded theories, so it’s all: “Why can’t people get smart and live exactly the way I do?” She tries to make her personal tastes “emotional law” – and if you don’t agree with her – or God forbid, want to explore something different you’re “the sick one”. Rough stuff. We took her to our favorite Ellicott City restaurant – she wanted Avril to “explain” Mason and me to “explain” my clothes. She said my clothes trigger “weirdos” following us – it was completely in her imagination! She cries. No one decent will “have” me, she wails! I say, what if I don’t want to be “had”? I’d ask her about her life but she isn’t honest – she doesn’t know Dad has already told us that her ideology is untrue. She insists when you find Mr. Right everything’s peachy, but Dad says she was uncomfortable and unwilling about sex at first – didn’t care for it. They had to “work hard”. I say we have more experience of pain than Mom ever had – Avril says she “refuses to learn.” Creepy. Turns what pain she does have back on others somehow.
The best revenge? Write a poem:
THE RIGHT PART OF TOWN
We run through life She thinks Dancing lightly on high heels Past disemboweled sofas Skirting Drunks & drains. Taut veins serve as Toque of manners High & proud, worn For company. This house displays Her purpose; New red brick Virgin stickers swearing She’s the first. Processed air admits her Grudgingly: “You look like one of us.” Mentally she sweeps up sun; Plans daisies, cashmere Overnight guests The roar from the street soon turns This air to poison – She counts to ten And breaks a nail in locking up. She sees it won’t do after all Too close to stink & squalor; Doormen, dogs, police locks; Balconies with lightning rods. She’ll choose new paths this time Avoid electronics that have lost Their parts, Flexing knees As always; she Summons a cab; closer – Closer to her death; That suitor never accused Of gentlemanly behavior.
Can’t wait to resume my privacy and my routine,
reading book about Forster (The Cave & The Mountain) in my own bed. I think realizing your mother’s limitations is part of maturity, and I’ve been slow because I’m unwilling to adopt Genevieve’s methods – “Don’t give her anything – tell her what she wants to hear.” I thought better of her than that but I struck out. Since their definition of success is so narrow, I don’t see how I can ever satisfy them.
Plush Palace – 11:30 PM – Wed 10 May 78
Wonderful day – up at nine to play Frisbee with dogs.
Eddy asked me to come in tonight and although A and I planned a movie I accepted – that’s my new policy – say yes to everything except doubles or driving all the way to Springfield. A & I had late lunch together at Ponderosa – she’s says she’ll study all night. We’ll do laundry together tomorrow and have drinks Sunday on some sundrenched terrace. J. came in tonight depressing the hell out of me. I had nothing to say to him – it would be like using a 12 gauge on a mouse. Please, just go away and live your life and don’t bother me.
Plush Palace – Midnight – Fri 12 May 78
I love Friday nights. They’re always exciting. Gay girl
in tonight approaching the dancers (without success) you’d think that would happen more often. If she went a bit slower she might get lucky. Unfortunately, she just asks us if we are gay. How can we know without any experience? With the right kind of situation I think we’d admit we’re all at least a little bit gay. Avril came over to the house at noon – we had white wine, macaroni salad with ham and croissants. Eddy called me in 3 sets early – $265 extra. Irresistible – means I can go to NYC. Carol tells us about her sexually sadistic husband – handcuffs and everything! She orders pancakes for dinner to “cheer up” even though maple syrup gives her hives! Jerrilee tells how hard it was to leave her husband. He held a gun to her baby’s head. Kristi found a new “wonderful” guy but gave him herpes and now she fears he’s “done” with her. What a waste since now they both have herpes! They’re perfect for each other! This is all a lot more interesting than Ann Bridge’s Emergency in the Pyrenees. (Even Mrs. Radcliffe was more fun that that). Who should come in tonight but Peter’s brother Julian! Thought he was in San Francisco. Apparently I’m one of the Eight Wonders of DC – can’t pass through without getting a gander. Kissed me in a brotherly way. We had a nice reminisce about childhood till Eddy sent me back to dressing room. He saw one set – when I came out again he was gone.
11 PM Mon 15 May 78
Sun night got blind drunk on my day off through sheer
frustration and exhaustion; then couldn’t sleep. Intermittent nightmares that someone was trying to break into my car and throw acid in my face. Decided to kiss the novel off and let it go – just get an opinion. Concentrate on something else. Weather depressing – no sunbathing – four day monsoon! Trying grumpily to live without booze. I can see myself becoming Lida.
2 AM Mon 22 May 78 Exhaustion follows mania. Yesterday couldn’t keep my eyes open long enough to read the NY Times, but refusing to go to bed dragged out my notebooks to arrange beside my desk. Horrible old valentines, photos of Ryder, dreadful wailing screeds fall out. I have so many drafts of Flycatcher it’s ridiculous. Purging isn’t easy – I totally understand hoarding. How can you be certain you’ll never need something again? Must get to bed – tomorrow meet A at College Park Library to see Dear Detective and listen to Couperain.
Fri. Plush Palace – 26 May 78 – 7:20 PM
Dancing badly. Reduced to eating saltines (bad girl!)
Feel I can see the end of all this and it’s a cold cold chill. Apparently nothing pleasurable lasts forever – as soon as it’s a “job” it’s over. Poor me! What’s the next incarnation? Tending art gallery on windswept rainy isle? Living drunken and obese in a trailer on the edge of the estate?
HORROR STORY
With age lubricity Darkens into sweat; We face each other Across the cooling dinner, Night by night Stiff as andirons Masterpieces best seen by candlelight To hide the cracks, Well-meant improvements by Another’s hand. A well-matched pair. Gardens edged perennially with stone Are called unkillable; One fountain singing This tune only. What oracle? It didn’t look this way Going forward Backward is a different view.
I could have sworn that we’d last longer. I think I caught it from my mother, Who played a role in Wuthering Heights; The crone who preaches doom In guise of cheer. I requested light enough To read my tarot; instead recycling Murky tea brewed From your used bathwater. These leaves are dark and do not speak. I shiver with cold and you With anger; a well-matched pair, a Brace of disappointments. There’s still too much We can’t admit.
Lovely “date” with Avril. We went to Sea Fair
(corner Calvert & Conn) for drinks, scallops, mussels at the outside café. She says Shoulders is a total washout. Looks like Mom succeeded all too well in convincing us romantic love is the most important thing in life – I say let’s blame her. A having horrible insomnia troubles so before movie we bought six classical records to soothe and stun. I really hesitate to go out with Peter – why cultivate new people when they’re so likely to turn out just as awful as the old people? I like him now but… he’s on his best behavior. Really feeling shy and buried in myself. Instead of new man, start a new novel. Something crazy. A tried Barbara Ellen (exercise studio) but was put off by their insulting sales techniques. It’s like being chained to a TV listening to a half hour of ring around the collar commercials. Too bad. I say she’s got to stop telling prospective employers she has “no experience”. She worked for hotline, courier service, horrible fake gyno, etc. We need to construct a resume out of this – we are too damn honest. Better to project even a witless confidence. I don’t want to have to tell people about myself, either.
Dear Detective was superb! Followed it up with gold rush sundae and coffee at Swensen’s. Trying to get into bestsellers – reading Velda Johnson’s ghastly Etruscan Smile. Would rather read theology (and Secaire shows it. Alas.) My novel is terrible. It stinks. It needs to be rewritten from the bottom UP. Plot beyond help.
10:30 PM – Plush Palace – Mon night 10 April 78
Two more sets. I’ll live. Finished study of Mary McCarthy
by Doris Grumbach. Much prefer that to actually having to read McCarthy who reminds me of Aldous Huxley – Is it possible to be too contemporary? Trends of modern writing a little too sketchy for me. No book should feel like flipping through a magazine. Sensory overload sans enlightenment. As for Angus Wilson – we are parting forever. I read all but two stories in Such Darling Dodos – back on the shelf he goes.
Wonderful day – up before 7, read New York Times, sent out poems – magnificent walk with dogs – explored abandoned house. Haunted by novel – so went back and got six pages – one good new idea. Called publisher – ordered ten more books. Little self-promotion. While working got call from the Plush Palace – would I come in two sets early for Glory, who is sick? Love to. Just feeling bankrupted by the drycleaners. I was justified too because first set got a big tip. ($300)! Peter called – said he would have loved to go to the Raitt concert with me but had to go to Vermont. He certainly talks differently when his girlfriend/housekeeper/telephone answerer person is not around. He hinted that his love life is impossibly complex and he doesn’t want his parents to know. I’m guessing that she is married.
He promised to get in touch when he gets back. I’m in the ladies room because the air-conditioning in dressing room not working – it is suffocating in there. Yesterday evening thoroughly enjoyable – steaks wine and hot fudge sundaes at A’s then watched Richard Brooks Happy Ending which really was a bomb. Trying to read Anthony Powell’s Venusberg but feeling nothing yet. Tried Sarton’s Miss Pickthorn – a hash of all her other stuff – very slight. Avril not home for past four hours – out on date with Jordan. Can’t wait to hear how it went.
11:45 PM – Thurs 13 Apr 78
Safe & warm in my gilt-canopied bed, happy in spite
of my cold. A & I got “El Diablo” inspected today – $70 – But at least she can take it to the MVA tomorrow and have it put in her name. That great feeling of “starting out fresh”. In spite of dribbles & wheezes, blissful dog walk followed by deep-dish pizza & wine at Armand’s. No painful memories. Cherry blossoms are out.
Saw Coming Home with Jon Voigt & Jane Fonda. Good, if somewhat earnest. Bruce Dern acted like he was in a different movie. Rough part deserves a hero’s commendation. I stare at the casually interdependent couples – it’s been a year since I could lay a hand on another’s thigh with that proprietary air. Poor A dissolved in tears towards the end – too reminiscent of the “endless pain” of vets like Bruce and Mason. I’d be more sympathetic if they didn’t take it out on others. What they learned apparently is how to “stage a war”. The people we love inflict the worst damage. A’s at the stage where she’s still haunted by Mason but feels it’s “boring” to talk about him so she bottles it up. I tell her get a diary. Hope to finish Powell’s Agents & Patients tonight – but it is a little dull.
Plush Palace –Fri 14 Apr 78 – 3:50 PM
Only 3 more sets, with 4 dancers. Still, made
enough tips for groceries. Buy wild birdseed for the birds cavorting outside my desk’s bay window. Daringly went on without stockings – such a savings if we didn’t have to buy them but Eddie told me No Cigar. Too bad – they’re hot in summer. Alvera says Yvonne’s back at Mother Joe’s. I thought she wouldn’t be able to eat enough shit to stay in her music clerk job. We goddesses areso spoiled by our pedestal. Called A in the afternoon to see how she was doing – Shoulders was there flexing his muscles at her and she is over the moon. Trying to be glad for her but in spite of his obvious beauty I’m afraid he is a bit of a shit. (See testimony past burnees plus eviction notices.)
I feel I must disappear deeper into solitude and see what’s down there. Gift (new version of Courtney) coming along interestingly but slowly. I’m afraid it has no plot other than my own life, when what it needs is a couple of murders. (Same thing my life has always required.) Poems easier instead:
MAN – FISH
My husband caught a walleye; I caught A day-old baby Trolling my Dalkon shield On idle spinnerets I hooked him He bore the wounds of other fishermen. Through holes in his side I saw His heart still beating Shielded by a membrane tough As duck’s egg. I said I think I can save him My husband said too small And threw him back.
Tried to read Phyllis Bottome but she’s a fatal cross between a didact and a pleaser; sort of like a barky little dog. Most unpleasant. And that casual anti-Semitism pretty shocking.
Plush Palace – Sat 5:50 PM 15 Apr 78
Halfway through novel – can’t figure out if I’m
satisfied or not. All my discoveries so agonizingly slow. Can’t afford fuckups – then I’ll have to go through it all AGAIN. Slept late, breakfast at A’s. We did laundry together, then played gin. I was the first one here thank God (means I’m the first to leave). Got my schedule – 4 nights in a row, 2 days off. Good. Congratulate myself on my intellectual freedom as I wrap black lace around my throat, recalling all the put-downs suffered as the “architect’s helpmeet”.
Reread Alvarez’ description of Plath’s suicide – I don’t agree her death was some “by-product.” Her mother raised her to be murdered by other people – Nazis or husbands. There had to be a “bloodletting” – Mrs. Plath’s ulcer – Sylvia’s “suicides”. If you don’t “accept” martyrdom someone will have to die in your place. Kid yourself it’s” freedom” just because you choose time & place. It bothers me terribly that they shared a bedroom during Sylvia’s formative years. Death would seem inevitable just to get some privacy & distance. Poor Sylvia offered those magnificent poems to Alvarez and he backed away terrified because Art is terrifying. $30 for lost contact that came out when a necklace scraped my eyeball while I was hanging upside down. Teach me to wear contacts onstage. Who needs to see the audience anyway?
7:15 PM Sun 16 Apr 78
Spent the day in bed eating oranges, coffee, peanut
butter. A’s spending the night at Shoulders’ new place – then tomorrow we’re going to the new Cassavetes film and I’m excited. Jervaze in for last set to invite me to his going away party. I slept nine hours. Horrifying Who Made the Lamb – author really lost control of this one but I bet she would say she was just “reporting”. Books do Furnish a Room much better than Powell’s previous – has a sense of direction. “Trapnel himself always insisted that a novel is what its writer is”. I would agree. Style follows taste, I think. Realize Dad and I don’t mean the same thing by the word “intellectual”. He means a person who knows specific things, (education) I mean a person who thinks a certain way (style). Twain never meet. I am not respectful of an artificially acquired patina of “points of view”. Wrote the infirmary scene – just what I wanted to say. Maybe I need to give up sex and even male companionship – just can’t afford them.
Plush Palace – 6:45 PM Fri 21 Apr 78
Wonderful walk along Powder Mill Road thinking
about the mystique of money. I eternally fight a rearguard action. M & D call at noon – Genevieve had little girl – Belinda. Avril delivers my new lens – bounce notice in mail – I tear my hair in a frenzy. I get to dance 2 sets for GiGi – $200 – she tells me about her night of sin with Louie. And she wants another one. Life’s a soap opera. Management says there’s going to be a drug raid with dressing room search warrant. Panic among the girls – but not me. Check out the customers with a more intense interest. Are narcs here? Everyone planning to leave town except me. I offer to work tomorrow night. Reading an interesting study of Iris Murdoch novels – the Disciplined Heart. Too much coffee – I’m switching to tomato juice.
Sat night – 22 Apr 78 8:30 PM
My whole body hurts from dancing 5 nights in a row.
It’s not good for tips, either. Poor May Sarton is trying to exorcise Eliz Bowen. Good luck with that! Elizabeth so contemptuous of “schoolgirl crushes”! Real love in EB’s world seems strangely synonymous with corruption & loss. Old fashioned view and more male really – “ejaculate” and die. We women get children, poems & novels out of it. Avril stood up for dinner by Shoulders. Uh oh. Beginning of the end. Apparently saying “yes” is fatally unsexy. She & I will be eating her pot roast tomorrow – fine with me. Fatima came down early but Lori refused to go up, pointing to her watch! Much excitement & hissing.
7:45 PM – Mon. 24 Apr 78
Good Gift scene – Miss Pruitt vs. Viv. Now I need a
boathouse picnic. Every time you get to the mountaintop there’s just more mountain. Then you’re supposed to “prune” at the end – if you have any energy left. Trying to read A Literature of Their Own but Showalter too hard on poor old Woolf. Women have always owned literature, it’s the publishers, editors and critics we apparently can’t have. 60,000 words on Gift tells me it’s time to celebrate. No novel could EVER be this hard again. I demand a party.
Strange letter from Devon – he is involved with some “Jewish woman” and it isn’t going well. She seems “inaccessibly foreign” and he is “losing faith” in his “ability to pick a friend.” Is this a plea for help? He specifically asked where I would be this summer. Said he loved me. Took his glamour pic out of the bin where it has lain and put it up, then went out with A and bought a bikini. She and Shoulders are so mired in excuses, lies and expectations no new relationship seems possible. Intensive sunbathing season starts tomorrow.
1PM Thu May 4 -78
Comparing lovers. “It’s Devon in the stretch with
Jervaze fatally winded and Bruce fallen by the wayside”. Write poem:
The sideways smile
I heard you singing and remembered things that you’ve forgotten I see you clearly Fish in a hailstone. See your hands Long for a man I always thought And your upper lip too short Like a lion’s in fact You have an animal presence Placing no trust in words Placing no trust in love Acting like you’d never met me As you roll your joints with private letters that I sent islands undiscovered and worlds unreachable. You were the joke I didn’t get; I recall your sideways smile blowing smoke between us refusing to forgive the essential fragility that Marks us humans; Fated as you were always to surrender to the scornful cries of your Invisible bystanders.
Finished Gift last week. Letting it “perk”. It already feels “swallowed up” by the past. Avril read it, disappointed by the ending. Wants murder at the very least. But is that real life? I think I agree with her that it should be. People should kill themselves when you are done with them. Sadly, in reality they’re all whimper and no bang. How to fix?
When I’m not engaged on some important work my “real life” ceases. Car to its “first service” Mon – involved ferrying each other around and jockeying with one car. Why don’t M & D appreciate this? It’s like they want us to be ashamed of needing other people to survive. Mom staying in NYC with the new baby but then coming here Sat. to inspect our dissolute lives. Uh oh. I won’t have any trouble getting time off but I hate to. Can’t work when she is here. Living two weeks off one paycheck can be done. But I will feel obligated to battle Mom for financial freedom.
Finished Glendinning’s Bowen. A life rich and strange but hardly enviable. I’m being pestered by old “college friend” but I am officially “not home”. She sneaks around the house, sniffing.
11:30 AM Friday, 24 March 78
Staggering down for my first cup of coffee when I
heard Harvey’s voice in the kitchen. Thank God I heard it in time – if he had seen me in my baby doll nighty I guess he would have considered himself justified in pinning me immediately to the floor. He brought me a hibiscus flower as a peace offering. A more significant peace offering came from Mom and Dad who gave us each 100 more shares of stock. I tried to refuse it – they insisted. I warned them I’ll only sell it. Maybe I’ll be able to buy a new car when I get back. I could use it. Spent last night trying to read Welty’s Bride of Innisfallen, couldn’t get my mind around it. Read Faithful Are the Wounds instead. Very like a stage play – which isn’t necessarily a bad thing.
Powder Mill Road – home – 8:30 PM Sun 26 March 78
Can’t describe the ecstasy of being in my own
place. On the island I am hideous – here I am beautiful. The loss of confidence there is so severe as to actually induce delusions. Now that I am back I am ready to tackle my existence brilliantly. As always. We got in last night in the pouring rain – 11:30 PM – A had coffee and left. I read a soppy love story and slept in my Own Bed. Today we did laundry, went to see a bad movie – actors working madly away to no effect. Tomorrow I get mail – hope there’s lots of it. Did get a beautiful poem out of the island – Peacock Pavement: The Poet on her walk – submit to Denver Quarterly – which has been very polite about me lately. They’ve shown an interest in my stuff though nothing has ever been exactly “right.
PEACOCK PAVEMENT: The Poet on Her Walk Femininity has Everests I mount daily. The crow’s belly’s is black, I Envy his womb-less contentment as I stroll Among the old wrappers, the used condoms; Joints rolled tight as bedsheets Adverts used – abused – discarded. He envies me my Zircon hair; my lunar map of freedom, Battering-ram jaw, baroque nose, the Greek depths through which These eyes record their wanderings Outside the convent walls, between The stalls, corrals, chained-up lambs, The leaf-filled swimming pools: First act, second act, third act Epilogue. Numbering days by counting Depth marks round your taproot Sporadic questings Belonging to a future all Unknowing what anyone will Ever make Of these Portentous Pleiades: Disparate sisters, Me, myself and I.
Plush Palace – Mon night 27 Mar 78
So glad to be back. Really missed the old place. Walked in and there was Jervaze, big as life. He was quite plastered but acted very pleased to see me. I feel he has turned a definite corner. He could have been somebody, could have made choices, but he seems to have decided to live in an ever deepening blur. I am well out of it. I asked him what happened to my ring. He promised to look for it. He has a new plan of course. His brother is trying to talk him into returning to school. He’ll talk that to death for a while till his kidneys fail and his liver withers and his brain goes. Then it won’t matter anymore. But I must get a picture of him now while he still looks good so I can show my grandchildren. He was dressed all in white like an angel and is letting his silver gilt hair grow long. I can hear it now: “You dated Wild Bill Hickock?” Yes kids. And it was really wild.
LOVEWINGS
My aunt’s a dancer She said “Feel my thighs Ain’t they hard They’re my love-wings Hard as heartwood I’m flying on ‘em half the time. Practice making perfect I’m Tightening up my style in case a valve On this here pressure cooker blows And splatters darkness like a Damsel in a murder we might Solve someday.” She laughed and did an arabesque. My aunt is thirty-five. I said What beautiful thighs you’ve got
Called my agent and demanded to know how much I am actually going to get from HBJ. The answer is $1993, so it’s a good thing I got that stock which I sold today. April 5 I pick up my new car – a Fiat. (A takes the Gremlin.) Money in the bank – need to settle in for a long writing session. Trying to concentrate on my book – Bowen’s The Last September – but it just feels too distant from my own life. I feel l ike I’m slowly surfacing, like a corpse that has been in the water for three days. Last night I finished Anne Tyler’s Searching for Caleb. Her most beautiful novel in my estimation. Today A and I bought plants, put money down on car. I’m exhausted and out of love with my own life – don’t understand why I personally seem to need to do everything backwards.
4:30 PM Fri 31 Mar 78 Barrage of criticism from Mom and Dad that I spent stock money on car. How do they expect us to live in two different places and have one car? Doesn’t make sense. Avril has car today for her eye appt – will pick me up in 45 mins. I am struggling with Bowen’s The Little Girls. She uses writing for disguise. Last night A and I went to dinner at an Italian restaurant – she had the clams, I had the shrimp, we split a bottle of wine. Then we went to see what A described as “one concentration camp film too many.” I bought tickets to Bonnie Raitt concert – Mom and Dad suggested I “look up” their friends’ son Peter Pauley. I may invite him, I do remember him as cool and handsome. But brunette. Oh well, can’t have everything. Got check from agent – less her percentage – which I forgot to calculate. So I hope I get paid enough Sat to have money for car. My future emerges through a glass darkly – don’t know yet whether I like it or not.
2:50 PM Sat ;April 1, 1978 - Starlight
Working a double. My latest realization is: I can never
have enough money. Curse you, Marc Kramer for suggesting I invest in real estate. In spite of this I’ve decided not to take on doubles unless I’m in a jam (as I am over this car.) Interesting new dancer – big hips and no boobs but a wonderful attitude. Her laugh can be heard by fishing boats on the distant Chesapeake. Alvera. She works in a lawyer’s office during the day. I’m trying to imagine her in her suit typing briefs. The Little Girls is Bowen’s worst written book. She’s not a narrative writer but a prose poet – always falls down over narrative. Plus I feel a loss of joy in her art – maybe because she “had” to write it? This is really a book about despair – which To The North also was – but one book was good and the other isn’t. I think writing is a lot like cooking – some ideas can’t be rescued through editing – they just get worse and worse.
10:30 PM Tender is not the night thank God – three more sets and it will all be over. The next one will be the worst – the last two I won’t even notice. I called A – she’s despondent. Feeling chained to the apt I’m sure. I agreed we’d see An Unmarried Woman tomorrow – go out and have some fun. Mon after her classes we’ll watch The Oscars at my place. Bought 3 costumes from Kerry that I can ill afford – but they were a steal. Sent Harvey the Brownmiller book. There’s no excuse for such ignorance.
Plush Palace – 8:50 PM – Thurs night 6 April 78 So ends one of the happiest days of my life. Woke this AM two minutes before clock radio – breakfast in bed reading – good work at typewriter. Long walk with dogs – came back to find Green’s Mag took my whole “suicide” series. A showed up helped me play with my car – first and second tough to get into and out of until the salesman professionally broke its little hymen. Seems all right now. Book going well. Most of the time I feel I have the ideal existence – plenty of sleep, plenty of exercise, plenty of time to write, plenty of privacy. Paradise. J called. He is really going to Alabama this time. Said he loved me, thereby proving my point that the less of a relationship we are having the more important it is to him. If we never see each other again, I bet he will remember me as the perfect girlfriend. All future women in his life will curse my name.
Good letter from Mom and Dad apologizing for their explosion about car. Part of the problem dealing with them is they try to preserve a “united front” which means they have to frantically whisper and negotiate behind the scenes, then speak awkwardly together like an ill-rehearsed Greek chorus. I can kind of speculate about who really thinks what – not that I want to. A and I liked Unmarried Woman – much better than Goodbye Girl. I tried Peter all day – no answer.
Reading Storm Jameson’s Journey From the North – it’s like watching a slo-mo car accident the way she beats up on herself. Why this sense that honesty requires one must utterly disown all one’s earlier versions? CS Forrester did exactly the same thing in Long Before 40 – will I feel compelled to do the same some day about this life I am leading now? Foolishness is youth’s necessary clothing methinks. Think I will dump this book without finishing. Try Angus Wilson’s The Middle Age of Mrs. Eliot.
9:25 PM – Plush Palace – Sat night 8 April 78
Beautiful day. Off to Columbia, testing my new car.
A & I had lunch at Clyde’s – talked about what fun it would be if we each had a full-time man – and they liked each other. We could double date. Feels impossible. Walked around lake – bought baby clothes for Genevieve. Home, walked dogs, then to work. Boring evening. Few unenthusiastic customers.
GiGi brought in a bottle of champagne – I broke my rule and had some out of sheer boredom. A father in with his 2 ½ yr old daughter – sent her up to the stage with a tip for me. Depressing fact #2 – tried to read a short story about rape in Fiction called The Intruder – it was awful – turned me off the whole magazine. Angus Wilson’s Middle Age merely stupid. Will I have a go at No Laughing Matter? Still no Peter and no explanation. If he is away on vacation his parents don’t know about it. Feels suddenly difficult to be independent and alone.
10:10 Pm – Sunday night 9 April 78 Avril met a guy she likes in one of her classes who likes her. Fingers crossed. As a result I spent Saturday alone, which I don’t mind. It would be OK with me if every day were the same, wake at 10, write till 4, then off to work. On Sun we played in Adelphi Mill Park – swam in the falls – wonderful picnic of brie and cherries – played with dogs. Wrote poem about Devon:
SEX CADETS
I shall harmonize your life I say Make your blood sing woodwind Stretch my nerves harp-tight Across your exo-shell While you, heart racer Put me through my paces – Muscling through The gates of my life Forcing me past theory Pluperfect post-poetical, ever Reckless like a downhill artist Speed devil Speed demon Speed dreamer.
Phoned Peter – a girl answered! He came on very
brisk and businesslike – had been in Venezuela. I asked if she was “the housekeeper” – he hurried to get off phone – said he would drop by club. Always wanted to see me perform. I told him my schedule. I figure if he and she are seriously involved so that I shouldn’t move forward – he’ll tell me. Chloe’s friend Dennis called and tried to make me feel guilty enough to go out with him. Little does he know how far past that “Since I can’t think of an excuse you’ll accept I guess I’ll just be forced to go out with you” stage I am. He turned hostile – said I’d “led him on”. I refused to rise to this, portraying self as a naturally friendly but also naturally private person. I guess I’ll have more of this stuff with J gone. He was sort of protection. Everyone wants someone who doesn’t want them. Highly entertaining if one were bored enough. I am not.
Interesting conversation with A where we discussed the “courting rules” we’d learned. They were grim – we’ve had to ditch them completely. Got into another one of our “Is Satisfaction Possible” marathon debates. I always say it is, she says, what if it’s not. I refuse to consider this option. Mom’s advice to A is loiter around art galleries and art museums to get the right guy. This sounds expensive & time consuming. Plus, I know too many artists to be in love with this idea. They are the worst. I want someone stable.
I have to admit my chances of finding someone like that in the job I’m in seem small. But I only need one guy. I’m special – so would he be. A insists things were better in the past – “pre-liberation” but I’m not buying it. Opal’s marriage very instructive on these points. They are both beautiful, can think and have work they love. So why do they fight and sulk nonstop? Each feels the other does not truly “value them” and fusses for increased respect. Each thinks the other is “holding them back.” So they claim. With any encouragement I think they would jump into a threesome. Non merci.
