Alysse Aallyn

Author: alysse

  • Inspired Pleasure – the dance diaries of Alysse Aallyn

                     

                                        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 sheerfrustration 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, the Alcoholic.

                                         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 Avril 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? 

                                         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. 

                                         Avril 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.

                                         10:45 AM Sat 29 May 78

                                         Woke up this morning muttering about betrayal and failure.  Seems my life separates into two phases: pre and post 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 vacuum cleaner  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”.   Avril & 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” paperand 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 Avril’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.

                             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 Avril, $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 re-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. 

                                         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. 

  • Inspired Pleasure – the dance diaries of Alysse Aallyn

            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 scene in my novel – 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 my latest 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 Avril and bought a hopeful bikini.  She and Shoulders are so mired in excuses, lies and expectations no relationship seems possible.   

    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”.  Needs poetry.

                                        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 Mom & Dad 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.  Certainly can’t work when she is here.  Living two weeks off one paycheck canbe 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. 

                                        Sat. 6 May 78 – 1:30 PM

                                        Cleaned & waxed kitchen and bathroom floors, sitting with newly creamed hands and cup of coffee sunbathing 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 living on an 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 man 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 actual pain 

    than Mom ever had – Avril says she “refuses to learn.”  Creepy.  Turns what pain she does have back on others somehow. 

                     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 – just tell her what she wants to hear.”  

    I thought better of her than that but I’ve struck out so far.  Since their definition of success

    is so narrow, I don’t see how I can ever satisfy them.

                                        The best revenge? Always: 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

    She summons cabs; closer –

    Closer – always –

    To death;

    The constant suitor never accountable

    For gentlemanly behavior.  

  • Inspired Pleasure – the dance diaries of Alysse Aallyn

                 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 writing 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 the play by play.

                                        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 role 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 Avril 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.  Avril’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 so 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 of 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 so much easier instead.

    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 Avril’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 I suffered back in the day when I was an “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 Mom & Daughter 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, raisin bread, peanut butter.  Avril’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 meets. I am not respectful of artificially acquired patinas –

    “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. Mom & Dad 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. 

  • Inspired Pleasure – the dance diaries of Alysse Aallyn

    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, clearly NOT in Alabama at all.. 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 Hickok?” Yes kids. And it was really wild.

                                        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. (Avril 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.  Feels like 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 the hard way and 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.   Monday 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, Against Our Will.  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. Avril showed up helped me play with my new 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. 

     Jervaze 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 theytry to preserve a “united front” which means frantically 

    whispering and negotiating behind the scenes, then speaking 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.

                                        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 Avril 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. Avril 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. 

  • Inspired Pleasure – the dance diaries of Alysse Aallyn

                 Wed Mar 22 78 – 4:15 PM

                                        Waiting for cocktails, I discover a flaw in the divine Miss Elizabeth Bowen. She doesn’t like to admit that she is of the same clay as her characters. Those creatures based on the Mosleys she repudiated utterly as if creatures from another planet. I’ve got news for her.  Creatures from another planet are 

    not that interesting.

                                        Last night was one of the most traumatic family 

    Evenings I have ever experienced – I think my eyes are still puffy. I heard we would be having Island People to dinner – he used to be a university president/professor so presumably would be good company – they met because somebody was the bridesmaid of somebody else’s bridesmaid so there is a connection.  It started with me wearing a green silk shirt, my denim gauchos and hardly any makeup (yes I wore eyeshadow) and being told by Mom that my “get-up” was “more suitable for a bar.”  (All of a sudden she’s an expert on bars.)  

                                   Harvey and Edna turned out to have “heard of my job” –I gather in some commiseration session on Incredibly Unsatisfactory Children – however they refuse to accept that there is any difference between being an exotic dancer and being a stripper (hello! I don’t strip) and somehow Harvey

     segued from castigating  “exotic dancers who try to feel superior to strippers”  to  criticisms of “ total sexual freedom”  which apparently means  that  “everybody should jump on everybody.”   

                                        I tried to dignify this mess by explaining that it is actually the reverse – in the “old days” under the “ancien regime sexuelle”  a dancer could expect to be “jumped on” by “anybody” because of her job (like poor old Degas’ ladies) but that actual freedom for women would mean a world in which one could be a barely clothed dancer (I would think anyone would admit nudity is at least an equally valid way of expressing the art of muscle – 

    line and form as heavily costumed artificial approximations) without it becoming  some sexual signal that one has “lost caste” and therefore privacy and choice. I recommended Susan Brownmiller’s book to this painfully ignorant male (God knows what he taught –  he had never heard of Brownmiller – seems to have her confused with Ti-Grace Atkinson assuming she mustwrite books no self-respecting intellectual would read (maybe he was the type of university president who just brings in wads of cash).  

                                        He challenged my premise that the ultimate societal freedom would be for unattached females to not to be under the threat of rape every minute.  Harvey insisted – with a perfect straight face that women rape men every bit as much as the reverse – “psychologically of course” which he says is just as terrible – and in fact probably even more so since we all know the “physical thing is no big deal” and often does people a “favor”.

     I must say this does not reflect very well on his wife Edna but she was smiling smugly so I think she may have just been too obtuse to follow any of the arguments.  

                                        I really could not cope with this free-for-all avalanche of idiocy especially when my parents played their trump card – if bars where women sit in front of a drink and watch barely clothed men cavorting don’t exist, therefore this is an antifeminist exercise and my claim to be a feminist is a 

    sham. I think it was at that point that I burst into tears.  Which of course was 

    totally demeaning.  I sorely missed Avril’s assistance – she refused to jump in

     but made peacemaking noises like “you both have a point” (untrue – their “points” are a disgrace). Ugly Harvey apologized – what a monster! but there could be no satisfaction in it for me at that point. Avril went walking with me until they left.

                                        Alas, waiting till they were gone did not end the discussion. Mom and Dad pounced on us to drive home their point that the male animal is a violent dangerous creature barely contained by the civilizing influence of the female.  (Guess they can’t get behind Harvey’s “female rapist” idea.) Of course they are going to rape any female who lets down 

    her guard for a second and it will all be her fault.   (Didn’t Ryder make this case?

      I’m ashamed to share a world with these people.)  Any kind of a sexual display (I guess the beach would certainly qualify) is a declaration of :

    “Jump in boys! It’s free today!” At least they recognized Harvey’s

     behavior as extreme (“Two drinks and he’s lost” was Dad’s comment.)  

                                        Basically, as long as I work at “that bar” I’m the 

    “lost cause” and if any decent male finds out about it our relationship will be over in a trice. This kind of thing makes me wonder why I bother to visit them.  Fortunately, I’m escaping soon, but the whole ferry reservation problem means one loses the right to fight irretrievably with one’s hosts on this island.  Dad’s big mistake was giving me an example of a good marriage as Lillian Hellman and Dashiell Hammett!  

    Did I blow my top! He probably thought I’d listen to him if he produced a literary example. He wasn’t aware that not only were they not married but Mr. Hammett was married to someone else and cheated on poor Hellman whenever he could manage to stay stiff long enough.  (I really didn’t want to “get in” to the alcoholism problem.  Lillian tried to make him seem like a “mentor” but honestly she was just his keeper and bail bondsman.)

                 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 

    – Avril 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. 

  • Inspired Pleasure – the dance diaries of Alysse Aallyn

                 12:55 PM

                                        Very tired. Shouldn’t keep working with this intensity but my new discovery of shaky financial position means I have to. When I “have to” do anything it makes me feel soiled.  Wild idea of getting pregnant by Jervaze.  He’s pretty enough. But what would that fix? Only my biological clock and my finances – permanently.  Fixed in a downward direction if you get my drift.  Finished Sarton’s Mermaids, startingTyler’s Caleb.

                 6:30PM – Plush Palace – Tues 7 Mar 78     

                                        A triumphant day. Like some manic-depressive,

     I am in my high cycle.  Probably from reading Elizabeth Bowen – 

    The Cat Jumps.   Amazed at how much I like it – much better than Death of the Heart.  She leaves me feeling a writer can do anything. I see my book now as thirteen short, sharp, clear scenes.  Why can’t  I do it any way I want? Tonight  I have To The North to look forward to.

                 Plush Palace – 11:PM Fri Mar 10 – 78

                                        Wednesday I broke up with Jervaze to make him finally go home. Thursday he called me.  I got the impression that in the South it’s when you break up that things really  start to get interesting.  Apparently if I wanted wild declarations I should have done this long ago. Fortunately, I can handle this 

    on the phone.  It’s that glorious body dipped in platinum dust that I can’t say no to.

                                        Finished Bowen’ s World of Love and To the North.  

     I can’t believe she was ever popular – I like her too much.  She suits me exactly. What a stylist.  OK, forget plot, character, those little appurtenances.  

    She makes them seem so unimportant. Imagine recasting Courtney  in this light. I guess her style is too forties, but would that be necessarily a bad thing?

      Avril called. She and I are crutches to one another, but I like her better than any man I have ever met.  Watched Monty Python, steak dinner, then she helped me paint my new four-poster bed. (Gilt, of course. Gives me a new title – The Gilty Bed.) Watched La Femme Infidele sur le television while consuming an appropriate wine.

                 Plush Palace – 11:PM Sat Mar 11 – 78

                                        I was in too good a mood today. Bought a new costume from Maureen just when I AM JUST ABOUT TO LEAVE FOR THREE WEEKS, but it is yellow velvet and fake sapphires with armbands and everything – a beauty.  Good work on novel, ate hamburgers (and eclairs) with Avril, wrote a good letter to Devon

    – in answer to his weird one to me.  Struggling with Eva Trout and The Ponder Heart. Nix on both.  Fortunately, also have a June Thomson murder mystery for a chaser.

                                        Avril and I assembled my bed – canopy and everything, it looks smashing with its hangings of brown lace. Then she called Mason in Calif to see why he isn’t sending her stuff – he said he’s seeking another estimate – they had a rational discussion but she was obviously very shaken when she hung up.  I teased her that he is wearing her clothes and probably looks good in them.

                 Plush Palace – Wed/Thu Mar 15 – 78

                                        No London in my future. I’ve accepted it. I need 

    affordable breaks from this life – two weeks in Maine, one week in Boston, etc. A and I going to Maine tomorrow.  Avril spent the weekend comforting Opal who is upset about the failure of her marriage – it’s the old story – when it’s the woman’s turn to be babied man withdraws, making frightened, threatening noises.

                                        Finished Sarton’s Kinds of Love.  I can see why 

    some people like it.  It kind of has a “National Geographic” feel to it – here’s a guide to the “foreigners”.  But it is not a good novel – it’s Faith Baldwin through and through. Reading Sarton is like attending writing class – she never loses the miasma of the eager student and she has a lot of interesting ideas. But, remarkably for a poet, she is deficient on the mystery end. Perhaps she doesn’t understand that a novel is another kind of poem. Lots of Ructions here tonight: Gina and Jerrilee fighting and I have to play peacemaker (because there’s nowhere to go from the dressing room other than the alley or the ladies room and no guarantee rabid fans will stay away.) I haven’t packed – will be up till 4.

                 2PM – Shadowe Island Sat Mar 18 – 78

                                        Every time I come back to this beautiful island I wonder why I ever leave.  Dogs are in paradise. Mom and Dad relaxed, involved, charming.   Avril  all defensive about the “failure” of her life with Mason so I am off the hook – temporarily. 

                                        I’m reading The House In Paris – restores my high estimation of Bowen. The trouble with this island is that the rest of existence vanishes totally when I am here.  I am eating too much but the food is so fabulous it would seem immoral to resist – roast lamb, new potatoes, spinach quiche, sour cream gravy, stuffed mushrooms, strawberry trifle.  We stayed up late reading Ruth Rendell’s mystery stories aloud, then I fell asleep and I had the most delicious erotic dream about J – much better than the real thing.

     Felt what it would be like to be a deep-throated cello vibrating endlessly.

                 Mon Mar 20 7:00 PM -78

                                        Why is it around my parents my self-confidence takes a nosedive?  Every fingernail becomes deciduous.  I had better call  Plush Palace and get put on next week’s schedule.  Finished House and began Heat of the Day.  My mother asks questions that reveal her to be jealous of all the reading I do.  Her delicate hint – she would feel “lazy” doing so much reading because there must be something that she would be neglecting.  I tell her I, on the other hand, if I were not reading, would feel guilty. (As well as deprived.)  Thus we must differ. The great thing about Eliz B –

    – she writes like no one else.  To criticize her would be like saying the plumed flycatcher has a little too much plume.

                                        Managed to prevent Mom from inviting “young people” to a “weenie roast on the shore” for me and A.  We are here to HIDE.  She was very nice about it.  Do imagine I could live here. Listening right now to Haydn’s Clock Symphony.  Now that would be a great title for a short story about an unattached woman in her late twenties…

                                        Avril and I have wonderful conversations in our twin beds like a pair of teenagers home on holiday from school, listening to the distant waves crash on the dark shore.  I realize we could still be feeling like thiseven when we are a pair of decrepit old maids – which is probably why families like to stay together. You are timeless for each other.  She asked me which of my boyfriends had known me best.  I think Toss Sheffield – 

    certainly better than my own husband.  But this is not a flattering conclusion since he seems to have run wildly in the opposite direction

  • Inspired Pleasure – the dance diaries of Alysse Aallyn

        Tues, midnight, 9 Feb 78 

                              What a day. Lost a contact just before bed, which put 

    me in a hideous temper.  1 ½ hrs sleep, drove Avril to the Laundromat, did laundry, bought cosmetics, picked her up, went to lunch and visited broker.

     Just like the other rich girls except for the Laundromat part.  Then to MVA, got MD license renewed, new address, not too horrible photo. Avril flunked her test must retake Wed.

                              Back to house managed 2 more hrs of sleep.  Woke 

    up feeling cheerful and streaked hair with L’Oreal.  Still have a rotten cough. The trouble with being sick is you can’t imagine yourself well.  

    Intimations of mortality.  Ate lasagna with Avril, then off to work.  Jervaze dropped in second set, said his car was fixed, seemed cheerful, said his sister-in-law (whom I suspect of being The Pirate Queen) is reading my book “to figure out what kind of person I am” (uh oh).  He left during my 3rd set without saying goodbye.  Should I drop in on him? Tempting.   

                              He also asked to read Demon. Hmmmm. Avril of course thinks I should clamor for “boundaries”  “rights”, “clarity” and “definitions.” 

     I am embarrassed even to tell HER that this is all completely hopeless. 

     I’d have to set him on my knee and move his mouth. I’d  end up defining every term and he would immediately forget anyway.  Anyway, in my experience, the less “clarity”, the better the sex.  Once things have been completely defined you no longer want to touch each other. 

                              Missing Devon of all people.  He must be sick of 

    Gwynne by now. Where will he find another like me?  But it’s always a bad sign when I plunge into “default” mode.  So, I dropped in on Ryder to take him by surprise. He was there and it was worth it. Gave me a gorgeous massage. I gave him my cold.  We are at the wrong points in our life trajectories to connect in any meaningful way. Picked up Holt’s Lord of the Far Island which one of the other girls is reading. Unbelievably

     crappy.  Why do people prefer this stuff to mine? Oh well.  Feeling better –night almost over.   

        Sun. 12 Feb 78 – 10:20 PM     

                              Psychic tremors driving home. But when I walked in the door everything was fine.  It’s so comforting to be surrounded with one’s own stuff – it seems to assumes a personality – like a separate self.  

    A reassuring stand-in – someone who “goes on” for you when you’re tired. 

    Very busy weekend – Avril moving into her own place – sorting, packing, cleaning, buying. Moving.  Hard physical labor since we are doing it all. 

     “Mother Truckers.”  

                               Rushed on to work with my arms aching – J. showed up.

     His body seemed solider, less fragile. I gave him a comforter for his birthday

     – he seemed to like it – we went to his place to watch Harper – side by side like an old couple on the couch.  I’ve decided he reminds me most of some wild animal. He always wakes up like a deer finding itself in a cage. He seems to be just now comprehending that I’m there.  He insisted on pleasuring me –

    I just accept it. Said his body “hurt”. I wish I could convince him that caffeine, junk food and alcohol are his enemies, but he is too stubborn to believe it.

      I fear a return of that kidney thing that felled him before.  I’m afraid our relationship belongs to the bar and his apartment, however. 

    Can’t get him to go anywhere with me; he is “tired” and he works enough that it’s a believable excuse. He’s so beautiful you’d think he’d be more of an exhibitionist but it’s just the opposite. Three days off. I need it. But on the whole I am pleased with my life.

                 1:45 PM MON 13 Feb 78

                                        Lovely dog walk. My desk collapsed under piles of books, so I bought new furniture – unpainted.  Cleaned, redecorated spare room (A’s old room.) Looks good. Decided just thinking about Jervaze is channeling my energies away from writing. We have a “sexual friendship” –

     so there.  That’s Hugh Hefner’s “highest good” so presumably some people would be happy with it.  But Jervaze has no influence on my life-plan.  Ryder called. 

    We had a decent conversation.

                                         5:45 PM  Snow pouring down – four more inches 

    expected so I decided not to go out. Last night was the first night I’ve actually been unable to rouse Jervaze – so I just left – went home dirty and sleepless to a couple of short-changed dogs.  Now it turns out he’s in the hospital undergoing tests because of “passing blood”. Medieval sounding.  Does he have those big black knobs under his armpits? 

    Ashes, ashes, we all fall down. The sister in law phoned with this info, also gave the brother’s number where Jervaze will go after tests.

                 9PM Plush Palace – Wed 15 Feb 78

                                       Jervaze quite drunk when he came into the club this evening – said he’s turning in his notice and returning to the South. (I wondered if they 

    fired him but didn’t ask.) I was so upset I walked into the men’s room by mistake! (No one in there.)   He did say “or I could live with you.”

    This does not sound good to me. My monogamous soul does not aspire to a lifetime playing nursie.

                 10PM – Plush Palace – Thurs 16 Feb 78     

                                        3 sets done – I’m exhausted and my legs hurt but I’ll survive.  Spent the afternoon with Chloe and Dennis Parks at WPFW taping a vibrant show on paperback publishing.  Really enjoyed myself.  Avril came over for dinner and helped me paint my new study furniture. Got a frightening letter from the IRS – I phoned –  turned out that they think I owe them an extra $56! They can have it.   Electric bill $76.   Disappointed by Noel Coward’s Future Indefinite, seeking escape instead in Mona Farnsworth’s Dark Wood.  I deserve escapism after all I’ve been through.  

                                       11:40PM – Plush Palace – Fri 17 Feb 78     

                                        Just finished Rosenberg’s bio of Dorothy Richardson. She seems just like me – then when I get to the end of her life – poverty & anguish! Oh dear!

                 4:00 PM Mon 21 Feb 78     

                                        Lying in bed – hair set – an hour to go before work.  

    Spent all day tidying study – including file drawers – if I was to die this minute I would give everyone the impression of being a hardworking artist and an astute businesswoman. Maybe I shouldn’t wreck it by ever going in there again.  Gregory’s book about Dorothy Richardson – lots left out.  

    Putting myself to sleep with Homage to Daniel Shays – I must have already read this because all the essays seem so familiar.Very unpleasant Gore Vidal attack on Anais Nin.

                 Plush Palace – 7:45 PM

                                        Lots of comforts in this job. Inhale the pleasure 

    of a messy dressing room, so full of life & hope. I was sitting down taking out my curlers when GiGi asked me to do her last set – her knee hurts – so I put on a gold G- string and did one setwithout makeup. That paid my electric bill right there.  Settle down with Anne Tyler. Comfortable.

                 10:30PM – Plush Palace – Thurs 23 Feb 78     

                                        Avril came to work with me – I’m having a great night.  

    She met a guy here she likes who asked for her number – he seems nice, but he must have the problems intrinsic to all who haunt this place – alcoholic or druggy – or just unmotivated in some fatal, fatal way.

                                        Paz’s been telling me her new honey’s too “big” 

    for her – makes her bleed. That can’t be right. This triggered an 

    avalanche of gynecological horror stories that ended up with all who 

    are interested examining Fatima’s hanging “meatus” left over from a “botched childbirth”.  She has trouble tucking it into her G-string!  

    I declined inspection.  Missing an opportunity other writers would have 

    jumped at? Will I need to describe this someday?

                 Sun. 26 Feb 78 – 9:45 PM     

                                        Jervaze actually showed for dinner last night – while I was stuffing the baked potatoes – we had a wonderful evening, played Clue, very good sex. Said his sister read my “gothic” but called it Too Victorian.

     Disguised praise? I decide to think so. He asked me to visit him in Alabama. 

    I’m sure there’s a novel in that but do I want to be the one to write it? 

    Then of course he had to leave early. I called Avril – had kind of a psychic flash – a feeling of trepidation about the human condition – she said she had been sobbing all night. Are we going no place? I asked her. Is it all an illusion?   

                               She said she feels she once had a home and family but somehow lost them and now can’t adjust.  She has a life others would envy – young college student with her own apartment in DC – but she wants back something she never really had.  “Neva vu”  ex-husband Bruce and I used to call it.  The unrecognized familiar.  I am reading – very appropriately – The Troubled Helpmate.   Misogyny in literature.

                 9:30 PM Mon 27 Feb 78

                                        Love the drive between my place and Avril’s – taking not New Hampshire Ave but Riggs Road. Blind turns and non-sequential lights give me that old country feeling.  We had just seen The Parradine Case.  Interesting.  Good jumping off place for other ideas. I like the form. 

                                    Could I manage novelistically the “outsides revealing insides” that film so confidently assumes? Day started badly with non-working electric blanket 

    and slowly building headache – probably from finishing reading Helpmate –

    – what a chronicle of lacerations.

                 Tues. Feb 28 1:15 PM

                                        Left message with agent – why no check? I was 

    thinking of going to England in two weeks, according to my old timeline. 

     Doesn’t seem possible now.

                 9:50PM – Plush Palace – Wed 1 Mar 78     

                                        Jervaze in to say goodbye – off to Alabama for a

     few days to set things up for moving there.  I did wonder if it was 

    the last time I would ever see him – but from the way he clutched 

    my hand and kissed the air (illegal to kiss here) that can’t 

    be true.  But remember the way Devon carried on about me and then disappeared for years? Men are strange. So who the hell knows.  

    3 sets down. Dancing superbly if I do say so myself.  Ticking like a clock.

                 Friday Mar 3 – Plush Palace – 9:15 PM

                                        I am forcing myself to write this. Jervaze came in tonight, very drunk and crying. (Sold the Shelby. They gave him some kind of middle of the road muscle car in return.) Would he carry on like this about me? Now that he has the money to go to Alabama he doesn’t want to. What made me think he would actually complete something just because he acted so definite?  I am hampered by my physical passion for him – he is so gorgeous. Those dents in his thighs alone are worth everything.  But I can’t start mothering him – it would be the end of the Life as We Know It.

                                        Finished Tyler’s Tin Can Tree – I see why she

     likes it least. Characters blurred. Reading Wm Trevor’s Elizabeth Alone

     – too many curlicues.

                 6:55PM – Plush Palace – Mon 6 Mar 78

                                         Eventually everyone in this job gets bad knees – 

    something to do with dancing in six-inch heels.   I would be better off if I just walked around like some of the other girls, but my narcissism demands I be the best. I can see guys in the audience poking each other when I come out – “that’s her” and that alone makes it worth it for me.  

    On the other hand the presence of Jervaze seriously diminishes tips – he needs to go away so I can make some money.

                                        A and I were restless after dinner last night and 

    went out dancing. Big mistake.  Defensive, boring, hostile men who count like drill sergeants while pretending to “dance”.  “Do the hustle!”  

    Much expense – no pleasure – after three brandy and sodas I was content to rack out on Avril’s bed at 3 AM. I need  to up my writing to 10 p a day – I do NOT need to party.

                                         Amazing letter from Devon about how lovely 

    and precious and gifted I am but he can’t see me because he’s too deep in his own life. He’s still searching for the perfect lover and has no clues. Well, I guess that’s honest. Should be flattered he’s trying to preserve our relationship at all.  London is beginning to ebb away – looks like I’ll only get a few hundred dollars. There’s a downer.  So why aren’t I writing?  

                                         Reading Crucial Conversations by May Sarton. 

    You’d swear it was written by an eighteen year old with no experience of life whatever. However, its very brashness gives me the courage to jump back into my own book.

  • Inspired Pleasure – the dance diaries of Alysse Aallyn

        Mon 30 Jan 78

                              Jervaze and I were supposed to go out Sat night – I had the day shift and he said he’d pick me up. I waited 20 mins before going to his apt. 

    There he was with a little blond beard on his chin – lying on the sofa very depressed. Told me to go to the concert without him.  By myself?   

    Wouldn’t that be fun!  I was aghast – tried arguing with him – he said he wasn’t leaving the apt.  So I said I’d stay with him. Went out and bought fish and chips and beer. We watched Sahara, then Saturday Night Live.

     Pitiable.  Made love in the shower. In the AM he refused to come out to breakfast with me, and I really had to go home to the dogs. He gave me a good hug when I left but do I want to drag this inert man through all the stages of intimacy?  

                              Called him today, he was very blue.  Homesick as

    always.  Takes alcohol for depression!  Can’t figure out whether to go over there or leave him alone.  I really need a better invitation – my choice is to stay away.

    I don’t think he’s actually SUICIDAL although if he stopped drinking, he might be.  And how could I tell?  He still has his car so he’s either asking too much for it or he’s doing nothing about his problems. I bet the latter’s the case. Reading The Letters of Charles Dickens in conjunction with the Life. Decorated A’s old room with Dad’s old charts –

     – looks pretty good.

                              Dancing well – I can’t give a bad set. Remembering what Devon said about skiing – the body does the right thing – if you “get out“ of its way.    J came in – in a much better mood. (Some new “magic” elixir, no doubt.)  He must have called to get my schedule because I didn’t tell him. Asked him if he wanted me to “drop by” after work – he said it was “up to me”. A question of wanting what you get.

    I think the traditional male female role thing may be reversed in our case.  I wouldn’t be surprised if he was one of those pretty guys who’s always been pursued and as a result he feels like a “thing”.  Never developed a self, so to speak. This is what comes of being so hung up on beauty. But when I look at the assemblage of clowns, predators and weirdos soliciting for my hand my heart fails me.

                              Wrote a difficult letter to Devon in which I answered

     (long overdue) his about Gwynne and frankly (but with masterful subtlety) –

    went all out to make him jealous of J.  Cheap of me, but I have to have some fun. He started it: we are reduced to bragging about our dance cards. 

     I don’t think you can truly have a “passionate” relationship with a guy who doesn’t want exclusivity because of then of necessity you’re required to hold something back. Dad called, says he’s sending me more stock “for tax reasons” (I.e. it’s really mine and they’re making him.)   Then said in a very depressed way, “I suppose you want to sell it.”  I wanted to surprise him by saying NO but that would leave me feeling manipulated so I said it depends on my royalty statement (which it does.) Due in 3 weeks.

        Mon midnight 6 Feb 78

                              Fri night J was in the bar getting slowly snockered. Very proud to take me home. We had our most passionate sex session yet –

    – 5 hours! Of course he couldn’t come. We finally quit because I was exhausted. I am out of love with Tantric sex. He told me the sexiest thing I do is play with my breasts when we make love! I only do it because he doesn’t!  The big lug.  

    He asked me what I would do if I accidentally got pregnant.

     (He knows about IUD.)  I said have the baby.  Of course I didn’t

     tell him that I might not inform him of the fact – depends on him 

    and the state of our relationship. 

                              Which raises the important question: do I want

    an alcoholic baby? Wouldn’t you be watching it throughout childhood to see if it favored rum candy?  He said he hoped we’d get married because a child needs a father.  I think this might be the way an Alabamian proposes.  Surprising how totally un-good it felt.  I almost got as depressed as he is.  Jervaze, who has the beauty of an angel-god, is no better than a drifter.  Even I am shocked by my own taste.  His life is guaranteed to go from bad to worse because of his fatal Hamlet-like inability to take charge.  Clearly he needs to be the full time project of some managing woman. This is bringing out all my masculine characteristics, some of which, frankly, I was hoping never to see again.  I am also bothered by the fact that he can’t have serious conversations.  I would say he absolutely does not know me at all, and appears satisfied with that. 

    I probably also don’t know him, although I am beginning to face the fact that there may be nothing to know. 

                              The drama of my own existence is important to me.

     There’s a full cast of characters and  A LOT OF PLOT SURPRISES

     and he hasn’t even opened the book. It’s frustrating because it makes everything less meaningful.  I feel I’m in a bind, though, because he’s definitely the best of the bunch in all the bars I’ve danced.  Most attendees are married men looking for fantasy, fun and excitement.  They are the dancers’ favorite because they’re established, generous and sometimes they actually leave their wives. This happened with Ryder –

    – although he always insisted (and I believed) it wasn’t me, it was him. 

     (And her, presumably).  The best you can do is “catch them on the cusp” of divorce.  The “singles” men come in three kinds – total losers who can’t manage a relationship and that’s what they’re doing in a bar like this, guys who need you to quit the minute you start dating them because “no girlfriend of mine” blah blah blah.  (More R).  The third is guys who are fine with you dancing – in fact they want to be your manager. Several dancers have fallen for these guys and often they marry them. He buys their costumes, drives them to and fro, bargains with the club owner and even looks after the kids. 

    The good ones don’t just drain her money, date the competition or beat her up. 

     (Those are rare. But exist.  I’ve met them.)  Only now she can’t ever quit!  

                              Take Lida for example. Lida’s in her 40’s and can’t be seen in the light of day.  Although she has a perfect body, she is real scary in close up – 

    – gets the worst clubs and shifts – here she is strictly a fill-in.  One dancer and her boyfriend live in a van, going from club to club. He sits in the bar for every set and that has to be OK with the management.

                               This would seem to mean my parents are right that I can’t meet nice men because of my job, and although I don’t want to go all apocalyptic, it is hard to see how this can get better.  I could meet someone through my writing –

    if I were a different kind of more public person but I just can’t seem to change. (I’m getting happier and happier Being Me.) Probably my best bet is to go back to college –

     – I’ve been wanting to – take a class here and there (a lot of dancers do this) and 

    date guys without letting them know what I do for work until I know them really well.          Money is the problem there.  More capital expense. I make good money and I should be able to afford it, however it doesn’t combine well with my plans to take time off and travel. I would have to work constantly which so far I have been too spoiled to do.  A light schedule keeps dancing fresh for me –

     – it’s also good for my writing.  So I should probably compromise and 

    take one class – something nice and cheap like adult ed at the community college. I’ll think about it.

                              Sat night J was all withdrawn again. I don’t think he wants me to coax out of him what the problem is; I think when he is in that mood he really just wants me to go away.  So I do.  Avril says I’m being an idiot – that he is clearly in love with me – in her definition, I’ve “arrived”.  I could get him to move in with me, structure his time and tell him what to do. 

    Maybe that’s what he wants but it certainly isn’t what I want.

    He’s so depressed about his family — and it is too late to lie to them about what I do because his brother (whom I’ve still never met) “already knows”. Could I change my name and get away with being someone else entirely? Tell me again why should I go to those lengths? 

                              He would just appall my parents. This would confirm every bad thing about me they’ve ever said (and they’ve said a lot).  It’s really one of those tragic Victorian love stories (The Tenant of Wildfell Hall) except that maybe its more SCI fi because we’re from different PLANETS.  I’m beginning to think he’s actually “cast off” by his family –

     – that’s his deep dark secret.  His alcoholic behavior “ruined” him in his 

    hometown somehow.  (He did graduate high school.  He says.) He’s  the horrible albatross from the Coleridge poem (or he’s trying to shift it off onto me.)  Under the apparently inexorable rules of sexual attraction, once again he’s a weird mirror image of me.  But instead of being a drunk  (which my parents would prefer) I’m a poet.  Probably in the South it all comes to the same thing.  In the North it’s almost the same.  Here we’ve got actual mental illness thrown into the mix.) 

                              Can’t say my advice which is he ought to write them off .  He totally buys into their rejection and who knows, maybe it will save him in the end.  “Dump your family” was my advice to my ex-husband, so possibly it’s me who has the problem. 

                              Mom and Dad asked if Jervaze was an intellectual and I said,  

    “Well, he’s reading my book.”  I didn’t tell them he’s been reading it for the past two months with no end in sight.  I don’t dare even comment on it.

    It snowed about 20 hours – that’s another thing I like about J –

    – he lives right next to the club. It’s hard on my dogs – but so would my death on the roads be.

                                Ryder called today – 3rd time in a month. He acted very loving and considerate – I don’t believe it for a minute.  Now he’s worried about my health – wants to bring me homemade chicken soup, etc.  I don’t rise to these flies any more and it feels so good.  Any desire I may have had to see the flesh ripped from his bones with red-hot razorblades has ebbed. 

     I take that as progress. I look forward to seeing him again because I think it would be great to feel nothing.

  • Inspired Pleasure – the dance diaries of Alysse Aallyn

        7:45 Pm – Plush Palace – Thurs 12 Jan 78

                              Called Jervaze and suggested we do something tonight – he acted enthusiastic.  I said, “Should I be calling you?  Wouldn’t want to call too much,” and he said, “Call all the time.” Ryder–induced horrors dropping away one by one.  It’s snowing – I’ll go straight to Jervaze’s. (He’s close to club.)

        4PM Friday, Jan 13-78

                              I think Jervaze may really be an angel; one of Milton’s 

    sexed up angels who took a wrong turn to our planet by mistake.  Some anxiety is relieved. We never did get to go anywhere – stayed in bed. Bliss. 

    But if this doesn’t work I will damn well marry Devon whether he likes it or not – I can’t take much more of this.

                              I’m at my desk hammering out letters – trying to answer one from the island realtor. The studio apt has “no cooking facilities”. I don’t care but the realtor does, she has a house on the pond for $175  “long lease” she wants me to take. Says it has a Franklin stove and I could “bike to town.” I admit I’m interested. Jervaze has offered to come to the island with me in March –

     I really shudder at the thought of introducing him to my parents, how to tactfully say, Please don’t ask him about Ideas and only offer him one drink.  

                              Last night I let myself into his apt, took a shower, tried to use his sparkingly hazardous blow dryer, gave that up, crawled in bed with him. I had lots of Ryder-induced fears that he wouldn’t be there, in bed with another girl, etc.  But no. There he was, nude, gorgeous, asleep – and when he woke up, happy to see me.

        5:25 PM Plush Palace  – Sat 14 Jan 78 

                              Snakes dropping into paradise one by one. First, although Jervaze is incredibly easygoing – it is impossible to get him to state a preference about a movie or a restaurant, for example – (had to drag him to Eastwood’s Every Which Way But Loose)  I can tell he is nervous about introducing me to his brother and sister in law. Should I just suggest we lie about what I do for a living? I guess that wouldn’t really solve anything.  

    Sartre is so right.  Hell IS other people.  Then there’s my mother – the latest demon fondling my ear.  Once a woman has made herself vulnerable to a man, she’s through.  Uncommitted sex brings out the worst in men, blah blah blah.  Because it’s “too perfect” ( his point of view).  I am “causing him moral hazard”. Yes, I tell the voice, 

    and it would be perfect from MY POINT OF VIEW TOO IF YOU WOULD JUST SHUT UP.  WE ONLY STARTED DATING A COUPLE OF WEEKS AGO. But one can’t shut out THAT voice so easily.   Mystified by Willard Gaylin’s  irritating Caring.    He acts like mutual dependence or interdependence is some “failure” of personal autonomy.   

    Powder Mill Road – 11 PM Sunday 15 Jan 78

                              Jervaze “dropped by” this afternoon.  Since it’s such a 

    long way from his place to mine I was astonished.  Is it that I can no longer believe a man will climb mountains for me? Or is it just my sensitivities to Jervaze’s strangely inchoate “disabilities” warning me and sending up red flags?  We had a nice talk – he seemed faintly down –

    then he had to leave because he needs to get up extra early tomorrow.

     I was in too good a mood to work on my novel, bought clothes instead. 

    3 pairs of pants, sweater coat, five pairs undies, one pair gauchos. All clothes 

    size 7. Packaged MSS when I came home so as not to feel too unproductive.      

                              Coleridge poem taken by Virginia community college 

    screed. No money. (Natch.)

                              11Am Tues 17 Jan 78

                              Reading Evelyn Waugh’s diaries over my third cup of coffee with open mouthed amazement.  It seems almost a work of fiction. Try to imagine these whines and wails ever appearing in print! Imposserous as Bert Lahr would say. Thank God for The Victorian High Colonic: a pre-mortem bonfire. Highly recommended, my dear.

                                7:30 PM No word from J so I assume he is really coming to eat dinner here.  The evening’s menu: sherry and smoked oysters, cheese and crackers, burgundy and manicotti stuffed with crab.  French bread, banana nutbread and coffee for dessert, if we make it that far without attacking each other.  Need to watch the drinking – had two glasses of sherry while cooking and am definitely feeling it.

        2:15 AM Wed 19 Jan

                              J gone – he had to – no clothes here.  I let him go

     fairly gracefully – after hours of sex without anyone coming I was happy to be alone. He’s definitely an alcoholic. He gets away with it by never seeming drunk (only once in awhile. His “tell” is he wants to talk about Alabama.) But he’s also never not drinking. He seems too young but it definitely explains the physical problem.

        11Am

                              Avril came to consult about a bad date. Glad her classes start tomorrow – Limbo an unpleasant place to live. Need to walk dogs now 

    – going to AFI theatre tonight to see Next Stop, Greenwich Village.  

    Time keeps chewing us up and spitting us out.

        1 PM Thurs 20 Jan 78

                              Excellent morning lying in bed reading Byron. It would 

    be lovely to be rich – it would not be lovely to be Byron. 

    Another deeply rooted legacy of Ryder’s is that I now expect others to constantly lie (to themselves, above all)  about their motivations.  

    You can only judge by what they actually do which throws all planning 

    into the crapper and means you’re stuck with a lot of confused, open mouthed standing around waiting for disaster. I don’t make promises either – I just don’t say anything – which fact apparently caused me to assume I’d really enjoy a relationship with a totally nonverbal type like J. 

                                Turns out: noooooooo.   I torture myself about what he must be thinking and feeling which – let’s face it – may not be much.     Wish my royalties would arrive – I’ve spent them over in my mind a thousand different ways. 

    Can’t do anything about island property, travel, car, or self-publicity without them.  Capital expenditures, all. I am making dinner for A at four thirty to hear all about her first day of classes – then I go to work.  Love driving down the highway with the other “night shifters” – I always think I can pick them out.  Our special sense of purpose makes us different.

        Sunday 24 Jan 78  7:30 PM

                              Read Popcorn Venus, saw Julia, so alternately 

    depressed and cheered by turns. Thinking a lot about “impure relationships”. 

    How innocent to assume those are the ones with certain kinds of sex in them. In actuality, it is more the hostage taking mentality that is to be feared.  Can one just “Glance in” so to speak and then hustle the hell out? 

                              I’ve been so scared off,  I am having a non-relationship. 

    When Jervaze is not in my bed, it’s as if he never existed. Would I be surprised 

    if I found out he had some secret life?  Hell no, I’d be encouraged. I think the truth is he watches football alone, gets drunk, sleeps and works – 

    that’s all he does. 

                             I liked Julia because I am interested in the question 

    of what repressed sexuality does to relationships – does it change them?  

    Seems it would have to. Well, you can fool some of the people… Starting to re-think Courtney.  Worst novel ever written?  If so, what can I do 

    about it?  Is it too late?  Tell it from the cat’s point of view – something radical like that. Write it in blank verse like Spoon River Anthology.  

    Jervaze is mystified that I read by choice. Avril says “Don’t you get it? 

    He’s a mud puppy.” What can I say?  I’m such a sucker for male beauty. 

        Mon. 23 Jan 78

                              Enraptured by biography of John O’Hara.  Starts brilliantly – 

    describing his study at the time of his death – framed awards, Cape Cod lighters, bound diaries. Everything just “perfect” the way poor F. Scott always dreamed. The novels were steppingstones to the study, not the other way around!  I am feeling alienated from my study at the moment. 

    Have decided that my typewriter table – a board atop a wine rack – is all 

    wrong.  A and I went to Hechinger’s and studied several “office systems”. 

     Plastic cubes $70 even for a looksee. I’ve set my heart on satinwood so I guess next stop antique stores. What would an antique typing table

     look like?  A dressing table is the right height?  Sans mirror?  Wouldn’t want to look at oneself while working! First step to madness! 

                               When I work without interruption, time vanishes.  Maybe it’s like riding without spurs: you become the horse (one’s deepest self). 

     J. showed up Sun night.  We drank sherry, played cards. He is getting to like sherry, which I’m afraid, is my fault.  Someone needs to go on the wagon and I don’t want it to be me.  Heard via the rumor mill that Ryder broke his leg skiing!  Ha ha! Did he get insurance for that?   Maybe he wasn’t kidding and he was trying to kill himself.  I just don’t understand people like him.  He approaches everything as “it’s you or me” so the mountain let him have it although frankly I’m surprised it wasn’t someone else’s leg that got broken. Maybe he killed the other guy. Sent him a card – he’s “recuperating” at his parents’ house on a steady diet of Italian food.

        Thurs 26 Jan 78

                              Jervaze came in the Plush Palace last night and I talked to him until Eddy got restive. Turns out he has horrendous financial problems – 

    including hospital bills for a kidney complaint. Probably will have to sell his car even though it is a part of him like his cowboy hat. I was feeling carefree and immortal and suggested he move in with me – he’s thinking about it. Now of course I’m aghast. What if I gave him Avril’s room and he started bringing girls home? I could listen to them making love for hours and hours and hours – no one ever coming. Would I be jealous or would I feel sorry for her? See, this relationship is complex – I am wanting to run like hell or place an ad for “Needed: Goal oriented individual – good at sex – not too inflexible.“  Hopeless.  They have to get stiff and then hang loose at just the right times – “Impeccable timing”? A tall order, I know. 

                              Today I had trip to the dentist and letter from Mom –

     trip to the dentist was easier.  (He told me I have a “runner’s heart”.  

    Did not tell him I was a dancer.  Said I was a walker.  True – since 10 mos old.)  Mom says that if I really loved her I’d get a decent job. She and Dad offered to give me money so I don’t have to dance.  Respectful endowment of course would be great.  Unfortunately, they only mean, “till I get over my sickness.”

                              Happy to turn ‘em down flat.  Mom keeps saying a 

    feminist wouldn’t allow men to look at her in a sexual way. This is my 

    mother of the “Marilyn Monroe dress” (still hers and Dad’s favorite.) My mother who has always turned heads and received accolades as a major

     beauty, with drunken men pawing her in European restaurants, dazed Arab men following her down the beach, stoned college professors slobbering over her at parties.  All “her fault” apparently!!  It’s a critical component of hers and Dad’s relationship that he “captured” such a “prize”.  

    But all this must remain unsaid or “someone” will boo-hoo.

                              Who would bother to deny the roles of biology and 

    acculturation?  I’d like to live off my writing – but it is rapidly becoming apparent that to do that you have to write to “their” taste. And they have such bad taste!  Plus, I find I covet anonymity.  In spite of my profession of “being stared at”, I feel like I am the observer. It’s a heady sense of power.  

    This is theatre, after all. They may think they sit in darkness, but I can still see them.

                              Off to visit Ryder and his broken leg.  Took him cookies and magazines – cookies I did NOT bake myself.  I wondered if I would end up telling him about Jervaze – flirted with the idea – he would be scared to death if he ever caught sight of that beautiful, beautiful man.  That’s what J is best at.

     But I would be doing it to hurt him and since he has always accused me of doing everything to hurt him (born on an island, sentenced to prep school, losing my virginity to someone else, writing) it  seems as if actually doing it I would 

    be “giving in” to his worldview.  I must remain a refusenik. In the end he never asked me about myself;  but talked incessantly about him.  Trying to impress me, like on a first date. 

                              Looking back on it I think he’s just trying to stoke any hots I may still have for him.  He’s never bought into his own “friendship bullshit”;

     he doesn’t even believe it about same sex friends. The universe is fundamentally competitive and we’re all crabs in a barrel trying to step on each other’s heads to get a better view. Eat or be eaten, baby!  He made allusions to the fact that  “you” only value things you work hard for… or things you’ve lost.  Ha ha – zinger!   A grenade lobbed at me. 

                              The visit left me feeling uncomfortable – frustrated – 

     vaguely “one down” –  but unable to put my finger on it. From the way his sisters treated me I have a horrible feeling he tells people I was the love of his life but wouldn’t give up my selfishly immoral lifestyle.  That’s what he would do, the bastard, act like he was the victimized one.  I hope his leg heals crooked.  

                              Probably a good thing I didn’t mention Jervaze – he looks so good but he’s totally non-nutritious and collapses like a creampuff on scrutiny. We’d have to live in Alabama – he’s made that very clear. I can’t even imagine him having a conversation with another person in front of me. 

    He has no family pictures. I’d drop in on him at work just to catch a glimpse of him interacting with humans but it’s the Pentagon ! They wouldn’t let me in. He’s only a repairman, too, so he probably has a completely fictitious personality there.  

                              Still working on Waugh’s diaries.  Hard to avoid the 

    conclusion that he became Catholic to avoid giving up his pride.  

    Just another elegantly exclusive men’s club.  Anything to get out of “becoming human”.  You know.  The way Jesus did.

                              Almost midnight – last costume change of the evening. Pink and black lace, pink gladioli in my hair.  Black tassels, the works. Gentleman Jim – now a magnate with a string of clubs  – was in earlier – I was dancing my absolute best – wild applause – the crowd was chanting  my name.  But when I went to find him to ask him for a raise he was gone. Next time. 

                              This is the time of the evening Zombiehood sets in.  Jervaze comes in earlier and earlier – he asks me to come over, I don’t have to bring it up.  

    Made me promise to wake him.  I told him I would be “merciless” with him. 

     He wanted to know “how merciless”.  He is pretty cute.  He wasn’t wearing my ring – said he took it off at work because it was bothering him. Uh oh!

     I can imagine. What an idiot I was to give it to him.  Tips have been good –

    – I think I’ll buy a steak on my way over.  He doesn’t eat well at all. I am so hungry I have been stealing saltines from the kitchen.

                              No excitement here. Neither Gina nor Mary pregnant as they thought. Turns out both have flu.   The new girl, Maggie, has been telling me she’s got $35,000 in parking tickets.  She is one of those see-through thin girls who can’t dance at all – but has a great sense of humor.  She injects bute directly into her knees, as if she was a racehorse.

  • Inspired Pleasure – the dance diaries of Alysse Aallyn

                 Plush Palace – Tuesday, January 3, 1978 – 9:25 PM

                                        Back at work. Can’t concentrate on The Murder of Sir Edmund Godfrey, which is the book I brought – because I keep thinking Jervaze will drop by. Dead silence from him – no call on Christmas.  I sent him one card but of course I only got back yesterday.

    I can’t bear to take all the initiative. Oddly (especially after my dream about him) had a card waiting from Devon. Maybe I AM psychic. Evidently he regrets that love-letter – encourages me to “hang loose”. Quotes from Sister Goldenhair.  In other words, don’t try to get him to plan to meet skiing, that’s just way more planning than he can handle. Kind of a pathetic specimen.

        Plush Palace – 10:05 pm Thurs 5 Jan 1978

                              Jervaze came in Tues after my 10:00 set – with lots of little presents for me, perfume, bears, cards, pins – in a Christmas stocking. He wore a gold-banded black cowboy hat covered with snow and a shiny black down parka, his platinum hair swinging around his face – like a visit from an angel.  Or possibly a Chippendale dancer.  He is too pretty; mine eyes dazzle. 

                            He stayed till I got off at 1 then walked me to my car – one kiss – asked me out very formally for Saturday night.  I gave him directions to my place and he wrote them in a book – tipped his hat, climbed into his Shelby and vanished.

    Leaving me wondering, is he gay? Is he even real?  I continue to struggle reading The Young Romantics – artists in 1840’s Paris.

                              Avril and I found a perfect black sequin tube top while

     we were out promenading yesterday – I’m going to wear it with my black silk trouser suit.  She thinks she found herself the perfect apartment too – a studio in a skyscraper with a great kitchen, huge closets, only $216 month utilities included, says she is going to look for another week before she decides. Financial fount M & D don’t want her living with me because I am a “harmful influence.” We saw Armon in a bit part on TV last night – there weren’t any credits, but I knew it was him.

                              Listening out of one ear to gossip – Gina says the bartender at the Starlight is bisexual and that Tony the bagman is her male lover. 

    I can’t imagine them together. He is called the “bagman” because he runs between the clubs in a Lincoln filled with bags of money. Gina also says that she is a priest in a mail order religion and that her breasts are real and her ex-husband raped her nine-year-old daughter. I can tell for a fact those hard breasts are fake so it does make it tough to believe anything she says. 

                              Last night went out with Erika to see the new Bunuel

     (in spite of her claims to revere him she failed to notice he used different actors for the same part) and to eat at Chateau Gesundheit. Depressing conversation about how terrible men are – she says her ex-husband is a cross 

    between a psychopath and a momma’s boy – she naturally assumed because of Ryder that this would be my favorite subject. She also says all exotic dancers and showgirls were molested as children and as a result are lesbians who hate men. I say is that alllittle girls have some unpleasant memories of Adult Men but this is just a chip on her breeze.  A breeze I think I better stay out of in future, perhaps. I also get tired of hearing the Marxist slant on Life. Love doesn’t exist, people do everything for “self-interest”, etc. etc. If that is true they are doing a piss-poor job of it. I think people live for fantasy and some people’s fantasies are very, very cheap.

                              Hoping drinks with Maeve will be more fun.

                              Midnight – 6 Jan- 78

                              Crazy  with love.  Jervaze and I had one of those unforgettable dates last night – Took him to my favorite restaurant in Ellicott City – Coco Lane and we talked for hours. He loves dogs – wants to raise Grand Pyrenees. His favorite cats are English blues. Wanted to be a vet except he always hated school, so that’s how he got into working with his hands and he thinks there’s no way back now. He loves WC Fields and horror movies.  

                              The thing I love about him most (apart from his astonishing beauty) is his natural courtesy, his dignity (he is very polite to anyone in a service position – the exact opposite of status-focused Ryder who acted as if being exigent was the same thing as being discriminating.) He has such an aura of gentleness and calm, just like those big dogs he loves so much. His isolation, I like too – he’s the only male I’ve met in quite awhile who doesn’t travel in a pack. He has a brother in the same job locally – that’s why he came up from Alabama – but he plainly thinks suburban Virginia is the “fast lane” and I don’t disabuse him. 

                              He eats seafood by preference and wants to live on the water.

     He probably drinks too much and could be an incipient alcoholic. My parents would be totally, totally appalled but of course it doesn’t take much to appall them.  Alas, he hasn’t finished my book – claims he’s “working on it”. I am waiting for him to outright say he doesn’t understand it – maybe when he knows me better.

                              When he kissed me goodnight he only kissed me – a relief at the time, since it was one less worry. Now of course I wish I had some clearer indication from him that he finds me even attractive. Is he polite or am I resistible? Don’t want to be resistible – we’ll have to change that.  

        Sat -1 pm 7 Jan- 78

                              I’m at the Starlight – our club owner owns this one too – it’s huge.  

    How I hate this stage. It isn’t a true stage but a runway winding through the audience, which means you must keep walking all the time – and they try to fill it by having several girls up at once. One can’t build any audience hypnosis – people pay less attention and have more business meetings – and tips really take a nosedive. The bartender is a grizzled old lesbian who stares right up my crotch – supposedly to see if my stocking seams are straight (they aren’t. Fortunately she doesn’t offer to do them for me – but she still watches.) Four of the other girls tried to get me to let them smoke dope in the dressing room – I told them no. They’ll have to go out back with the alley cats. 

                              Thank God Glee – who has a lot of class – backed me up. So –

    the two of us had the dressing room to ourselves, which made a pleasant change from watching the others trying to disguise the scars from their breast operations. Book I brought – The Pleasure of Ruins – does not go with this atmosphere – in spite of its title.

                              Ryder called me here – says he found me thru Randy who was impressed because Ryder’s on TV!  I flatly told him he is scaring the life of out me with this behavior. 

                               But he seems to know just how far to push things, so, amazingly we had a wonderful talk!  Gentleman Jim lets us talk in his office: very respectful of our “privacy”.   He obviously thinks we are dating.  Wonder if he will tip R to the fact that I have a “honey on the side” at the Plush Palace?  Jesus!

     I told R I am sick of his “psychotic twin brother” (good idea for a novel, actually) and he really laughed – admitted he has “a Jekyll-Hyde” thing going on.  (It’s actually worse than that – it’s really Hyde and Mr. Nastier Hyde – but didn’t say that. Keep conversation light.)  He promised to stop calling me at work. 

        Monday 8 Jan 78 – 6 PM

                                Twenty-four hours ago I was sitting in my red dress over a glass of port, waiting for Jervaze to arrive. Anxiety level high.  Somewhere –

     – I think from Mom – I got the impression that my needs are so automatically repellent to any sane individual that they must be hidden. Therefore, I have to carefully think my way through to any honest approach – and then it isn’t really honest any more.  But I can’t just be impulsive.  Prepared myself for disappointment – that he would be late or perhaps not show – because there is something weird about him.  Some deep dark secret perhaps? But he was right on time.

                              This time I took him to my nearest neighborhood restaurant 

    –  where the waiter put on quite a show with Irish coffee till flaming liquor rolled down his sleeves!  Jervaze  came inside my house without hesitation – 

    Me fretting about how to best establish physical contact while he sprawled comfortably on the couch.  I turned off the overhead light and lit candles – took off my jacket – he rubbed his face against my breasts acting calm, respectful and not neurotic. Must be my experience with R that makes me fearful of being “shamed” every second.  

                              Jervaze kissed and kissed my face so long – tears 

    automatically filled my eyes.   But he did not get upset. Got up like aperfect gentleman “when it was time to leave” and I managed to resist attacking him.  I did one very strange thing that is causing me anxiety now. 

    We showed each other our class rings – he always wears his. I slid mine on his little finger and left it there. He wore it home. Uh oh.

        11:30  AM Wed 11 Jan 78

                              Experiencing sharp attacks of fear all day long at “being in a relationship”.  What the hell was I doing giving him my ring?  See, I agree that everything’s my fault!  Story of my life! Currently enjoying two quiet hours while Avril is at the gynecologist.  It will be great when she gets her own place. 

    Plenty of private time and space to panic in.  

                              Today I got a phone call from Ryder and a letter from Devon. So –

     I was able to line my relationships up, so to speak, contrast and compare. 

    Even lumped together they are not one full relationship!  R’s “gamesmanship” is down from its zenith, but, owing to my total nonparticipation, also at its most exposed.  Lengthy chat about our vacations, and then he spent probably a half hour telling me his “insurance setup”. Why? So I can tell everyone where to find the will and the important papers when he runs into a tree on his next ski trip!  I should be worried about him dying apparently!!!  

                              I let him talk, I didn’t cut him off and I asked no questions, largely because this makes him the craziest and he deserves it. I know he’s comforting himself now that I at least care about his finances if not about him. Devon thanked me for the glamorpic (described me as “so lovely” and said he feels like he’s talking to me when he writes his letter) and then launched into a long description of his and Gwynne’s relationship. 

                              They have an “understanding” which seems to involve “being there for each other” without “demands”.  “Why won’t he admit he’s gay?” howls Avril when I read this to her. 

                              But I don’t think sex is even that simple for him. His approach is much more diffuse – a constantly vibrating choice between “being sexual” and “not being sexual”. He and I had such good sex, but if it all has to happen in a sort of coma, if there can’t be any planning or god forbid, discussion then the hell with it.

                              As for Jervaze, he showed up for the last three hours of my first night back at The Plush Palace from the Starlight. He was wearing my ring. I asked him if my work bothered him. He said, no, he was cool with it, but was glad I asked.  

                              Whereupon we went back to his place and made love for 3 hours.  Whoo-hoo!  I’m not kidding!  The first test – home design – alas he failed. His furnishings are truly HORRIFIC Spanish Mediterranean dreck.  His shower curtain consists of festoons of blue chiffon – it is INCONCEIVABLE that a male could purchase such a thing. Guess I am not asking the right questions. Old girlfriend? Mom? Sister-in-law? Some woman raised exclusively on pirate films had a hand in here somewhere.  

                              As to the sex – that test he passed. He’s a prizewinner there. Everything takes forever and that doesn’t seem to bother him in the least. Is he some kind of reptile, living in a time zone utterly different from us mammals? 

    It took him 20 minutes to get my pants off working steadily.  I got enough comments about the beauty of my body to satisfy my ego for life.  

                              He went down on me without a flicker – so much for all those rumors about Southern men – and when he goes down he stays down.  On the other hand – he never did come. Calms fears of premature ejaculation but –

    raises other ones. 

    When I left, he gave me his key.