Alysse Aallyn

Category: #Addiction

  • Inspired Pleasure – last of the Dance Diaries of Alysse Aallyn

    Party Castle – 11 PM 22 Aug 79

                                         Glad to go to Maine and thrilled to leave it. Mary & Debby dancing.  Today’s been eventful – T got my letters and was enormously moved. He says the worst mistake he ever made was burning my teenage letters. We should try to exist without this phoning but can’t help ourselves. Diet going well: I feel good. Struggling with a pile of thank – you letters from our engagement tour.

    Castle – 7 PM Fri 25 Aug 79

                                         T. and I separated 11 days already – feels like 

    eternity. Avril announces she wants her own apt so I should put house on the market. Maybe it’s easier. Flooding small publishers with Blood Memory – feel pessimistic however. 3 poems accepted – 2 by Colorado Woman, 1 by Friends Journal. Doesn’t feel as good as I’d hoped. 

                              Struggling with new novel where I try to tell the truth 

    about Devon. But why should anyone want THAT God knows. 

    Moving costs $400. I still think I should sell my Fiat. 

                              Rotten crowd tonight.  I am bored and jerking like a marionette. 

    Dancing with crazy Robin and Anne who never stops talking. She says 

    June’s in the hospital in a full body cast – will never dance again.  Car accident.  2 more sets only – praise God.

                                Trying to read about Lewis Carroll. Avril says Zach is

     threatening to show up. Don’t show up, Zach. I have a headache.

    2:30 AM Sun 27 Aug 79 –

                                There is a God and she likes me. Zach didn’t show.

     Long phone call with Toss then walk dogs to think about it. 

    He is such a powerful person it’s a little disturbing. Said he read my poem (The Duel) to his most erudite friend who was very impressed. 

    We wound up in another argument about my dancing. I can’t bear his slurs so I referenced his past drug use – WE’VE BOTH EXPERIMENTED, ALL RIGHT? He wants me to live without money then complains about selling capital. I told him it’s a “schizophrenic bind.” Didn’t mention how I have to PRY my own stock (it’s in my name!) out of Mom and Dad.

                                Reading an idiotic romance – its very idiocy is refreshing. I see why people get addicted to these. Like looking at maps when you’re lost. 

    Ok they’re only two dimensional but it’s SOMETHING! Clutch it like a talisman.

    Crystal Tues 28 Aug 79

                                Last night dancing. EVER! Celebrate with expensive liqueur chocolates but I’m too enervated to appreciate them. Finished I’m Radcliffe, Fly Me. Ultimately a failure. Fails to explore the inherent corruption of institutional structures. 

                               Horrible night. $5 in tips – they are sick of the sight of me and I refuse to buy new costumes. Word of my approaching marriage leaking out everywhere. 

                               I am scared to death of being dependent on T. I think he could 

    reassure me but doesn’t know how because if I really showed need for him would I be undesirable? Is a puzzlement. 

                                I feel like I’m unfastening my suckers from Avril and grabbing onto T! Up here without a net! Then I get mad at myself for being so infantile.

     Can’t I just write and feel powerful? We’ll see! Doubts creeping in! This time next week I’ll be in Kentucky!  Well, I’ve written some good poems lately.

                            Self-confidence atrocity attack. Feel & look rotten. Realizing the extent to which I was fertile soil for my parents’ anxieties.

             3:30 Thurs 30 Aug 79

                                Everything done, ready to leave. I’m in shock. Crawled into the bath with a vodka tonic and now I’m feeling better. Trying to figure out how to approach parents for money. Maybe they could give me my own stock as engagement present? Feel I won’t be able to disguise my contempt. 

    This “I’m All Right Jack” no matter WHAT – is mighty convenient for them.

                                I realize any sense of my own helplessness triggers all this Rage: NOT a good sign for T’s and my relationship. He can’t “make” me independent! I must not succumb, or Plath-ize. (She sacrificed herself to the gods of rage.) I’m doing this guy no favors handing him a woman on the edge of breakdown.

    4:25PM – My darling just called! Relief! He borrowed a truck from 

    somebody so although we’ll have to drive separately we won’t have movers or returns to cope with. He’s driving it out here so I can sleep as late as I like which I really need. Impossibly intense happiness. Peace & joy.  Feel we have been standing in a dinghy trying to balance. Equilibrium is everything.

                             The irrevocableness of marriage. My children mutely applaud my choice. Suffering under the hopelessness of explaining myself to any of T’s friends. Rain. Any excuse not to take a walk (T lives in bad neighborhood.) Feel like a girl in a gothic novel except for the constant sex which makes it a different kind of novel. Break with the past.

                                      Reading Robert Ludlum’s perfectly ludicrous Matarese Circle. In 100 yrs people will wonder how we stomached this stuff. A. and I going to Olney theatre to see The Bat tonight.

    Newport KY – Tues 4 Sept. 79

                                Reading old high school love-letters for anything I can use. Blood Memory  now renamed Speechless.

                                T. ebbs in and out of stranger-hood. He told his friends I used to be an exotic dancer – because he won’t “lie” but I think it was a bad idea. 

    One obscene phone call so far.

                                Don’t like the way they stare at me. Last night we made love twice. I especially like to watch him sleeping – the perfection of his profile is heart-rending. But his angers are so weirdly arbitrary. Not with me so far but I am divided on what to do – if I ignore it will it just get worse?

    Are we programming that I’ll be reasonable and he’ll be outrageous until there’s no going back? But if I don’t “let it slide” it’s non-stop arguments. 

                             Went to a famous restaurant to drink mint juleps last night and ended up in an argument about whether he has any misogynistic ideas or not. I proved he did (he thinks women “act stupid”) but that didn’t make him happy!

                                He’s given me the entire third floor of his house with glorious views over the city – I spend most of my time up here. Total furniture: a desk and a lounge chair. It somewhat makes up for the fact that he presented me with a new vacuum cleaner – obviously thinking I’m going to clean for him.

     Uh oh! Misogynistic idea #763. Mostly I am incredibly happy. At about 8 I’ll start the casserole & set the table. 

    Newport, KY: 10:15 AM Wed 5 Sept 79

                                         The electricians wiring my study have been here for 2 hrs driving me insane. T ordered impossibly ugly furniture from Horchow catalog – luckily agreed to send it back. Enjoying A Certain Slant of Light. Point of view not a problem for this writer. Next Drabble’s The Ice Age. Mental project: The Contemporary Novel.                                              

    6 Sept 79 – 2 PM

                                Toss suffering recurring nightmares that I will leave him to go back to DC Can’t reassure him as much as I’d like.  Moves upset me to a terrifying degree. Let’s hope the next is last till kids are born. I recall when I moved  to Maine to write Devlyn it took me a full month to get my neuroses under control.  

                             4 good pages on book but I still don’t know the plot. So far it’s everyone has no idea what they’re doing which is probably not enough.  Molly Lefebrve’s book on Coleridge fascinating.  

                              T & I rose at 8 to go shopping together.  Argued over each item; his ideas very rigid. Ultimately we laid in a glorious supply food & drink – I gave him check for my ½. He is slightly alarmed I won’t open a checking acct here. But he did offer me allowance which now he says he can’t afford. Too proud to complain. Must make money writing. Should take a walk right now – wake myself up. But light a little scorching – longing for fall.

    12:50 PM Fri Sept 8 – 79

                                Long letter from Devon full of love and caring – his girlfriend sounds so wrong for him – prudish fundamentalist: what is he thinking? Must we marry our nightmares?

                                Perilously close to a bad argument last night – somehow we got over it.   Trying to treat his ideas with respect. Our family has a ban on displays of anger – his doesn’t! In Sheffield World the angriest person wins because they “care” the most. Or are just willing to behave badly, I suggest.

                                 It makes me angry when he postpones our wedding AGAIN because he needs a big production and he thinks I can’t raise the money. It’s my second wedding: not asking folks to pay. House will sell eventually.

                               Sometimes he argues against the whole concept of a wedding: says, “a piece of paper doesn’t marry us” BUT IT DOES. I ask, why does a “piece of paper” make him a lawyer?  He says, “That’s different – a wedding is for other people.” 

                                “Maybe next summer” does not sound good.  Not Thanksgiving (which I think would be the easiest thing) so I suggest spring vacation – he says Sept a year from now!  Wants to have a job first. I don’t like this in-between world. I think it is better to get wedding stuff out of the way. Now he’s trying to talk me into living near his mother in the city but I hate cities. Impasse. Seems I don’t need to cut very deeply to stir up ancient pus. 

                                Can’t speed up the intimacy process as much as I want to. Keep having to detangle Mom & Dad’s puritanical creepers out of my own mind!! They give me a headache. At least T is making dinner tonight. If it weren’t for alcohol I don’t know if we’d pull through. Loving Christina Stead’s Miss Herbert. 

    6:40 PM Long letters to Devon and Merrill, then when T came home I wept for an hour. Apologize. This is heavy work. T shocked me by suggesting we “spend the summer here”- my shocked response showed how much I think I am “camping out.”

    Mon. 10 Sept 79 – Finished mad disturbing Miss Herbert then walk in dark with dogs. People’s complex rationalizations for the arcs, crests & troughs of their lives bear no actual relationship to them says Stead, I think I agree. Order & purpose come in a dream – then flash away again. Liked it even better than Dark Places of the Heart. Weird publishers’ blurb says they themselves don’t understand this novel! Poor Stead!

                                War with my own novel struggles out a snails’ pace of 3 pages a day. Lacking focus. Keep longing to write here like I’m on the verge of some great discovery. Want to read my old diaries – make notes – but that would be a massive undertaking. With NO effect on novel. 

                                In the meantime poor T and I continue our struggling course. On Fri. his friend poor Mary Ellen was raped. I told Toss this was a bad neighborhood! I think I’d be scared if I didn’t have dogs. At least no sodomy or blowjobs. Told T she should come stay here when she & husband get back from hospital – she should not have to live in that house again. 

                                Last night we lay naked face to face kissing and talking about the amazingness of our love. It is amazing. We’re riding a tiger and trying to tame it. 

                                Saw Marquise of O – came home to delicious steak dinner – took a tour of restored houses.  Poor T trying to “sell” me on staying in Kentucky, but I pine for our own Pennsylvania house. So, what is the answer? How does one give true weight to ideas & inchoate aspirations?

                                To the Conservatory to see plants – then home for fabulous lovemaking. Good weekend. 

    Tues. 11 Sept 79 –

                                Every day its catalogue.             

                                Jan & Mary Ellen to dinner – she has black eye but otherwise seems no different. Does not disparage her new (and obviously dangerous) house. 

                                Mom sends separate letters to me & T. I feel she is on “his side” not mine. Obviously “living together” is at the heart of all our problems (secretly, she probably thinks it’s my exhibitionism. Me!) 

                                Reading Self-Starvation about how children make enemies of their own bodies in reaction to growing up. Tremble with recognition. Feel so much hostility from Mom – she doesn’t know what we’re doing but surely I’m corrupting T with my awfulness. Mom said things in her letter she could only know from what I wrote to Genevieve. That outlet stopped. Feeling a rush of mature personal power – I’ve moved beyond them. 

                                Speechless is a horrible, bloody struggle. Writing about things too close to me. Wrote my first seriously bad scene – when they are adults all together. 

    3:50 PM – Too upset after letter from Genevieve to write. She has been robbed of her honest feelings – she is just pumping up and down on the merry go round. The family decision seems to be that T will get sick of me soon but they can’t decide if that is good or bad. My insistence on having a “real relationship” means I’ll never have one! Silly me. Need to do housework – or something – till I feel better. Shouldn’t try to write when feeling despondent.

    Midnight – Bath & Facial. T beautifully aroused – we made love TWICE. He repeated I am only girl he ever wanted to marry. Feel even our most terrible problems being slowly overcome. Routine & diet coming under control.  Dream of the Rood  horribly unsuccessful.

    12 Sept 79 – Magnificent day only half over. Charting novel – seems “completeable.” Starting research for Demon. No bad mail – no guilt about housecleaning – send off Walt Whitman entry. Sylvia Plath poetic incentive – I can’t put her down.

    Dawn walk

    Thunder crusts a gelid sky

    Is it light or is it rain 

    Feathering

    My nest with longing

    Stippling out a soul flushed

     With new growth; bursting from

    The steepled trees.

    This is my world and I release it

    Readied for flying

    Stelliform –

    Tough as spidersilk

    Unrecognizable

    Even to myself who birthed it

    Spent my life creating it.

    Released and

    Blown away. 

  • Inspired Pleasure – the dance diaries of Alysse Aallyn

                 Party Castle 12:05 am 2 July 79

                            Wrote D an angry farewell poem.

    “HOW DID YOU MEET?”

    You saw me naked

    I saw you too close- up.

    Between the green glimpses

    You cut mountains down to size;

    I’d no idea that one could take such charge of space.

    You hovered, teaching –

    Drinking vodka,

    I drank wormwood –

    Everything’s my fault. 

    Now I’m a toad-dweller,  

    Nostrils pierced by thorns 

    Falling face-first through every hole;

    You were the king the ghost pines saluted.

    How you dove and danced!

    Speeding through your love-drunk universe, you

    Infected me with your own whiteness

    Dizziness, till all my blood drained out.

    You challenged God;

    I was just the echo following after.

    Yet here I am after all this time

    And nothing promised remains of you.

    Or, “Good luck with Sleeping Beauty’s castle!” That’s what he gets for messing with my heart. Can’t show anyone – most certainly not him – 

    – and it isn’t really finished – and I don’t think it ever will be. But thank God for diaries. Diaries can be told anything.

                                         Reading Secrets in the Family – it is so superb

     I am going to buy copies for all my sisters. Looking forward to discussing it with Toss. I’m beginning to miss him now – he’s so deep and interesting to be around – so alive on many more levels than anyone else – challenging all my levels. Falling in love – happy, crazy.

                 Thurs 11:05 – Plush Palace – 5 July 79

                                        Back at The Plush – it’s catch as catch can in my 

    present situation. I am alienating managers left and right. But I am happy crazy and who cares?  

                                        Because on the third of July Toss asked me to 

    marry him and I said yes!  Here’s how it happened. On Monday night we ate white clam linguini and Crenshaw melon while listening to Keith Jarrett’s Koln Concert  – then – came together in delicious, soul-freeing sex; two perfectly matched combatants recognizing each other not just from childhood and youth but school and dreams.  He was eager to learn how I could best be pleased – so I surrendered to the inevitable. Fireworks!

                                        He left me sleeping there in the AM – I heard thumping downstairs but I know he has roommates so didn’t think anything of it – 

    – when he came back for lunch he discovered the door broken in and my purse missing. Keys, wallet, everything. I had to call into work – had to call a locksmith to give me keys to my car. 

                                        Toss doesn’t know what else they stole because he doesn’t know what else is supposed to be in this house – called his roommates. They came, police came. So we spent a day of intense babbling and the worst kinds of petty annoyances – but none of it mattered because he was there. In fact, I welcomed it; it was an extra opportunity to be together. 

                                        At one point I said, you know, you’re everything I’ve ever wanted in a man.  He said, if I believed that, I’d ask you to marry me. I said, if you did I’d say yes. 

                                         So he said, “Do you want to get married?” 

    I said, “I think so,” and there it was!  He said I’m the only woman he has ever wanted to marry much less asked. We even chose the children’s names – there are going to be two of them – a boy and a girl of course; a combination of our old addresses! Had to call Aunt Frederica to give her the good news because 

    she’s the one who had to give the hospital permission to stitch me up ten years ago after our first unfortunate night together!  (She was drunk of course. Both times) 

                                     Toss asked me to come back to Kentucky for his

    last year of law school.  I “shouldn’t miss this part of his life.” Dogs too, natch – we are a package deal.  

                                        He has a house he’s rehabbing that has so many 

    rooms it is known as the Hilton.  When I said I would come that was more important to him than our engagement even.  He says I can file for 

    divorce in Kentucky’s understanding Commonwealth. He ordered a case of Moet Chandon, saying now we have to drive up the coast and

     tell everybody. I am a little scared to tell my parents – this suddenness might only seem another strike against me.  We told Avril and Maureen – they just stared – obviously thinking we both have lost our minds – it will take them awhile to believe in it.  I told Avril about Kentucky – 

    she says she can handle the house; she can always rent out my 

    room to a college student if she feels pinched. I want to leave some money with her – at least $1000 – had the brilliant idea to sell my car. 

    Wouldn’t want to be impoverished in Kentucky and I don’t want to be on “retainer” from T.

                         Last night I read Toss The Duel and his eyes 

    filled with tears!  He said the only flaw he sees in this arrangement is that one of us must surely predecease the other!  Could it really happen?  Could we grow old together? Could it be that I will never make love to another person?  Wrote a short note to Bruce, 

    telling him I will definitely be needing a divorce, sooner, rather 

    than later.  Now I am trying to write a letter to D; but honestly, 

    what is there to say?   Summing up our relationship seems only

     to dismiss it.  He has already fallen far, far back into the past.  Toss is my future.

    The Duel

    Europe without you

    Was a funeral feast.

    I recall the procession of your letters

    Far better than 

    The stream of luckless suitors

    Trying to distract me.

    Virgins aren’t distractible.

    Your seductive missives stalked me.

    A fatal ploy was that nude photo

    Adam lonely in his garden.

    I came right home.

    I well recall the ceremonies

    Of that night!

    Your shyness

    My perfume

    Our ignorance

    Wild and hard 

    A riderless horse.

    I did cry out as the candles burned.

    I swear there were some moments when

    We actually saw each other.

    But if this magic sword cuts both ways

    Why was I the only bleeder?

    They peeled me off

    And dropped me down a mile

    Of antiseptic hallway –

    A princess in a bucket.

    It could have ended there

    But at your school I haunted you

    A chilly-breasted demon.

    My daytime incarnation seemed mature:

    I fooled everyone;

    We chatted as you prepared the skin.

    I bit down hard and 

    Tasted  only

    Suture wire.

    You wrote and broke off 

    Our association.

    Years groaned by

    Like convicts chained

    We served our terms with no time off

    For bad behavior.

    Lust had luster,

    Excrement was ecstasy.

    The castaways the whirlwind 

    Flung upon the sand

    Were calm, polite

    We knew our way around. But

    That look you gave me!

    Our unborn children shivered

    In their sausage skins 

    Fully aware

    Their time had come.

    The tale was done

    The frog-mask

    Shivered off

    We saw:

    The you of you

    The me of me –

    Masks 

    Unmirrored

    Scars 

    Unscored

    Virgins not but

    Innocents Restored. 

  • Inspired Pleasure – the dance diaries of Alysse Aallyn

                 Queen’s Chapel Rd – 28 May 79 – Memorial Day

                                        Very staid and old-lady weekend working on the 

    house. We have a wonderful big backyard with gas grill – A. and I “broke it in” yesterday for shish kebab.  Last week’s trip seems months ago already. 

    Thought about getting pregnant by poor D all day. Am I using him? Is it wrong? Nah. I am giving him a chance to be more than he is – and he doesn’t need to know if he can’t handle it. I haven’t even told Avril about this –

    – and I won’t unless it actually works. With my irritating body I might not be able to get pregnant just because I want to. 

                                        A and I saw Peter Sellers in The Prisoner of Zenda –

    – just awful.  Sunday we went back to the Unitarian Church – unfortunately it was a downer.  The worst memories of childhood surfaced as we were lectured on current events as if we were a class of high school students. I would rather hear about personal fascism than international fascism – that is the real spiritual problem.  Bullying a captive audience seems eminently fascist to me.

    We recovered at Ms. K’s Toll House – such a fun place. Spent the afternoon trying to write a poem about how beauty and finiteness are the same thing – when we love someone’s beauty it’s their mortality we are in love with. Not laying a glove on it.

                                        Saw Alien in the eve – the treat of our lives – what a rollercoaster ride! We both adored it. I’m now officially giving up on reviewers – the Washington Post said it wasn’t as good as Star Wars.

     What is wrong with people!!! Apparently reviewers have to pass some sort of idiocy test.

                                        The “cure” was completed when I crawled into bed with Bloomsbury Portraits.Fabulous people. These are the ones my father refers to as the “sexual degenerates.” I adore their interior decorating. 

    Sex lives not so much. Going to ask Maureen to make me a dining room mural.

                                        By sheer good luck I don’t work till Wed.  So I get a real rest. That feeling of pressure negatively impacts my work.

    Slept twelve whole hours – which means I may be up half the night – but I don’t mind if it’s productive. I especially like walking the dogs in the middle of the night so I can ignore the leash law.  They are so good about voice command. 

                 2pm 30 May 79

                                        To my surprise novel goes well. Finished first 

    bloodletting scene.  Reading Flannery O’Connor’s The Habit of Being – love it. Dreading work tonight – not ready to get back.

                 1:15 AM 31 May 79

                                        Hard night. Feel like I have had some protective 

    coating scraped off my eyes and I can see everybody’s pain. Everyone  is in pain. Not pleasant. Must armor up.

                 Plush Palace Fri night 1 June 79 7:50 PM

                                        Had to stop at dance store to buy fishnet Danskins on my way to work. (Kristi darns hers but I’m too lazy). Horrible traffic jam coming and going – then they were out of the ones with the seams which are the only kind that properly shape the buttocks.  So I bought a black pair. 

    They only look good close-up. So I arrived in an automatic bad mood – put on my black costume with the little mirrors. I’ll go to the Maryland Danskin’s tomorrow. Feel better after a couple of bourbons. Now I can see how dancers get into the booze not to mention the bute. Trying to do too much. 

                                        Working, fasting, writing the Great American Novel –

    (it’s turning into the Great Canadian Novel) – something’s got to give.  

    Two bagels, after two bourbons, I’m cutting myself off.  Zachary coming in tonight. I feel I’ve had it with the purely recreational sex (with quarrelsome underpinnings) that is all he can offer. At least I have a good excuse to turn him down till June 22 – I’m booked solid. 

                                         Idly reading George Weinberg’s Self-Creation. Ho hum.

                                        Working with Kristi tonight. She has the most perfect body I have ever seen but is totally neurotic about it.  She can’t appreciate it herself. I speak to her in monosyllables because I don’t want to get sucked into her game of “How can we improve me” that she lays on other dancers.  

    She’s a “yes, but” type; never pleased with anything. 

                                     Fatima came in hawking her used makeup. She is so bizarre. Claims she needs to sell everything for an “important medical operation.” Won’t say what it is – she probably just wants to ruin her breasts as is the fashion lately. Maggie’s breasts are hard as stone.  She’s destroyed her own body. The air is heavy with female paranoia. Specific personal worries degenerate at a moment’s notice into far-flung government conspiracies.

                                        Nervous about upcoming visit with Devon – at least twice a day I decide not to go. If he knows me better than I think he does, he may guess what I’m up to.

                 8:30 PM Sat 2 June 79

                                        Rescued today – got four nights work instead of a possible six. Thank God. Bought wonderful music on the way to work at discount store – all Tchaikovsky’s orchestral music and Purcell’s Fairy Queen. Therapeutic listening after boogy-oogy-oogy.

                                        My parents finished Memory – want to know who Oz is based on. Uh oh. That rattled me. Should I tell? Decided not to and feel like a coward. But they wouldn’t believe me any way and that would be way too painful. They translate any vulnerability or sharing into “no wonder you’re so sick”.

                                        D’s most recent letter suggested canceling our date –

    – he’s about to be ordained and must “purify”. He wants to escape from his past – which I’m a part of.  Get it?  He knows me so well he psychically intuited where I’m at, or more likely he inhaled a whiff of neediness and we can’t have that.  He must be the needy one. 

                                        Zachary and I went out to breakfast after work last night. 

     For an “artist” (I use this term very loosely) he has less intuition than a stone. 

    His compliments are so over the top I am filled with disgust but he doesn’t 

    appear to notice. Had a horrible insight I now can’t get rid of. I am his Devon –

     – the Great White Whale.  Horrors!  Will he now try to get pregnant by me? 

    Thank God, the sexes AREN’T the same.

                                        Feeling a little slowed up by O’Connor’s prejudices in Habit.  She seems too content to be a creature of her era. Tried to read Caroline Gordon because of friendship with F – but not my cup of cappuccino.  

    She is Edith Wharton strained painfully through Somerset Maugham. Instead

     I am branching into a self-help jag – brought a book tonight called The Gift of Grief.  Is this a gift anybody wants?

                                        Avril and I trying Silver Spring Unitarians tomorrow.

                        Party Castle Tues 5 June 79 – 12:35 AM

                                        Devon ordained Sunday. I blew up under all the pressure yesterday – sobbed and sobbed.  Avril said she would go out, get a part time job and just give me the money.  I am so jealous of her for being a full-time student I guess. What an idiot.

    I apologized. I am experimenting with giving up writing. Why force myself to do it? I just won’t do it – enjoy life and job at least for awhile – till I have to write. We’ll see when that is. Trying to read bio of HP Lovecraft. There’s an object lesson wrapped around a cautionary tale.

                 Thurs 7 June 79 2:40 PM

                                        Foolishly agreed to go to the Belmont Stakes with Don, my patent lawyer who is now a regular at the Castle. (He has forgiven me for my hair.) Now I want to back out.  He says we can have separate rooms, he’ll pay for everything, etc – he is going up with a whole party of people. I can’t believe I am going to get into this whole ordeal of having to get to know someone again. What would he do if I said absolutely nothing about myself?  He doesn’t even know I’m a writer, for example. And if I go to Belmont, can’t see Devon.  

    It’s all too stupid – have to think of an excuse to get out of this. If I ruin him as a big tipper what a dope I am. I guess this means I have gone through the whole dating thing and emerged out the other side.  Ready for the next stage – whatever that is. Invited again to present at the Writer’s Conference at Coltsville. Shall I tell them I’ve given up on writing?

                 Castle – 11 PM – Thurs. 15 June 79

                                        Don came in wearing tennis whites (purple in the 

    black light) complete with racket like a Noel Coward character. I told him I was emotionally involved with someone else and just couldn’t go. He just sort of nodded and left without getting a drink – or tipping me – so he probably came in only to see me. Relief.  Freedom beats money any day. I secretly hope he never comes in again. I will live without the tips. I applied for a MasterCard – hoping that will give me a backup way to manage emergencies. Dramatic scene with Jordana tonight – she came in sobbing – her boyfriend wants her to marry him and go to Florida and she doesn’t know what to do.

     I said what I always say, take the risk.  So she quit. Managers are furious with me.

                 Queens Chapel Rd – Sun 17 June 79

                                        Exhausting weekend at seminar. I was supposed to give a reading from Blood Memory. I was a nervous wreck beforehand, sweating, had to switch my breathing to manual – the works.  It went fine. 

    There was so much silence and building tension – then at the end, the release was cathartic. Bravos. That was the good part of the conference.  

    The classes were the bad part. 

                                        Students disappointed that I’ve had only one book published and I’m still poor – they feel I might not be a “real” writer and I don’t blame them. Lamely told them about switching agents. I could have used some more stage presence or at least some bald-faced lies. My lack of confidence was broadcast far and wide.  Having my period. Damn.

  • Inspired Pleasure – the dance diaries of Alysse Aallyn

                       Castle – Wed 1:15 AM 16 May – 79

                                        Unspeakably rotten dinner at the Cosmo Club with Usher Glayne.  Forget him and his majestic New England genes. He is simply “collecting” me as his latest oddity.  He has “so many warm, women artist” friends but no dancer yet (he’s way overdosed on poets) and he drifts from one “presence” to another, sucking wattage like some radioactive swamp monster. He and his wife have an “understanding” which probably means she has no idea where the hell he ever is and nobody’s had sex in eons.  Can’t I do better than this?

                                         In spite of the fact that I’m a declassee person who doesn’t know where her next sexual or emotional meal is coming from I think I must insist on a note from wifey before taking this matter further. According to his poetry he associates sexuality with evil – not that I’m physically attracted to him –

    – it’s just so piquant to be with a man who gets a fresh barber’s shave right before seeing you. (It’s been awhile). 

                                    I don’t think he listened to a thing I said, just 

    gazed at me rapturously. I tried getting him interested in helping me write a screenplay for Faulkner’s Mosquitoes – to me a completely ignored, obviously filmable work. He dismisses, “It’s been done.”  

                                        Well it may have been “treated” BY SOMEBODY but the point is, it hasn’t been treated by us and it hasn’t been filmed  and it would be WONDERFUL. Couldn’t ignite him. He really doesn’t want to talk about writing with me – I guess he has other people for that. I was so happy when our “date” ended I could have wept for joy. On the other hand I am sorry to see these millions slip away.  My children could have used them, not to mention all my fantasies of early retirement busted. Looks like I have no one to depend on but myself.  Enjoying Monica Dickens’ enchanting The Moon was Low. But had to buy a Quaalude from Maureen to get to sleep.  

                                        Finished  V. Sackville-West’s The Devil at Westease. 

     I can’t figure out why she wrote it. She speaks entirely in lost codes.

                                         I really dragged myself in to work today. That’s how you know you’re working too much. Letter from Devon – he’s off to California to “find himself.” What he really wants is any way to figure out how to be a minister in a state of sexual abandon and he instinctively knows if the answer is anywhere, it is in California.  

    On the other hand, will this really turn out to be what he wants?  Not if I know him. The only good news about him is that his genes are impeccable.  Plus, I’m very depressed about my writing. 

                                        Spreading myself too thin – thinking about one project while working on another. My Secaire book is starting to get ridiculous, but I want to follow up this “satanic rites” thing to see where it goes. Why did I come up with it? What does it mean? Who knows? Cheap and derivative everyone would probably say at this point. Yet it holds some interest for me. 

    Love and sex as hostage-taking. The question is, who’s the hostage and who’s the keeper? 

                                        Could it be hours of research, prose and bitching produce only a single poem? Lucky if so.

                                        Even if it’s a mess.

                                        Also miserable about money and my body. Buying the house was a great idea – I love it – however, there are constant expenses I can’t ignore that keep me chained to this goddam stage and dressing room. 

    My mortgage calls for my monthly payment to increase next year – I could worry about that if I wanted to.  And then I always respond to depression and worry with a desire to eat which of course threatens my job. (Sigh.) Tips down –

    (maybe I should buy a wig.) And my face is all broken out so I have to use heavy makeup – and my skin doesn’t like that.

                                         Party Castle 8:20 PM Fri  May 18 – 1979

                                        Fasting all day so feel much better. Two more sets. I am the only dancer willing to dance to Baker Street so they keep playing it for me and it is a tiring song. However all that stretching is good for my muscles probably. Reading  A Time to Keep Silence.  Secaire has got me on a religious kick.

                                                          Genevieve’s Apt. off the Park – NYC – Sun 20 May 79

                                       It’s me laughing and joking and eating a whole box of Entemann’s cookies – and it’s not me. Family. The constant ache of having so little of myself accepted. It’s like being with people like Usher, really – they want such a little piece of you. The worst part is, you get so used to the pain you can’t imagine life without it. Thank God I am usually content to be alone.

                                        Went to the Whitney – gave me some ideas to recast Memory – unfortunately not ideas people will like. I want to make it even more choppy and episodic– rather than “telling the story –“ which is what everyone seems to want. But that’s the only way I can get excited about it.

    Reading it would be like visiting an art gallery.

                 Queen’s Chapel Rd – Tues 22 May 79

                                       That trip helped. I feel better, more focused. My 

    new agent submitted Memory to Putnam who loved it but said they had 

    just published a book with incest theme!  Goddamn it all to hell. But theirreaction cheered me up – they didn’t say anything about choppy, episodic, incomprehensible motives, etc.  So maybe I’m a real novelist and not just a bad poet hungry for money. Making plans for The Lives of the Dancers–

    – a poem for each one. Fun. More fun than novelizing with such a hideous plot –

    – can’t seem to get my people out of the airport.

                                        Write a haiku BECAUSE THEY’RE EASY. Relief.

    Harness UP – ON WEARING A BRA

    Two kinds of clothes –

    Comfortable and un:

    Two viewpoints:

    Supportive and –

                                        Fasting again today. So horribly fat right before my period

     it would not surprise me to go into labor onstage. Apparently no one else has noticed I have lost my waist.  Have agreed to see Devon in Boston next month. 

    I am going off birth control so we will see what happens. I feel sure I can get him into bed. But never telling him he is a father? Can I pull it off? I might try. 

    Getting past block in my novel by having different characters tell different parts of the story.

                                        I give up on Pamela Hansford Johnson. Holiday Friend is The Perfectionists all over again– but not as good. 

                 Party Castle 12:35 AM – Fri 25 May 79

                                        Funny how it all comes together sometimes. Dancing tonight has been ecstasy – is it the fasting? I am cutting my schedule at the Plush Palace – the audience here is so much better. They are really quiet and intense. Probably because it’s so close to the FBI. They get the same relaxation from watching us that you get from a tank of tropical fish. Except of course with that sexual frisson reminding you you’re alive. Read Laura Hobson’s The Tenth Month – pretty shocked by a doctor who would prescribe Nembutal to a pregnant woman. But that’s the way they were back in the Dark Ages. 

                                        Now I’m on Highsmith’s Edith’s Diary – which is 

    fabulous – the review in New York Times was downright immoral. Books should not be reviewed by the stylistically tone deaf. Reviewer should be open to many styles –  I don’t think that’s too much to ask.

    Went on stage tonight glittering with body jewelry – big stones. Big tips. FBI very supportive of the warrior look.

  • Inspired Pleasure – the dance diaries of Alysse Aallyn

                                        11:40 AM Mon 26 Mar 79

                                        Ezra Pound’s last years (Nigel Stock) make very 

    depressing reading. I wish “survivors” seemed more enviable, considering the alternative is Death at the Height of Glory. The good news about a long life is, you can accumulate quite a body of work – the bad news is your instrument 

    becomes increasingly deranged. 

                                        Dreadful schedule this week – 5 shifts including one double.  Present of $2500 “house gift” from Dad means I don’t need to accept

     but I would have to quit and I’m not ready. These are the best places to dance with the best managers – I don’t want to get thrown into some of the compromising situations I’ve heard tell of. Plus they just let me up and leave for vacation whenever I want. Can’t play that hole card too often.

                                                 Spent all day wandering the mazes of literature – look at Lillian Hellman – surely she’s getting very bizarre. She’s a “history fixer” and no one wants artists doing that. 

                                                 3:20 PM Tues 27 Mar 79

                                                 A bad day doesn’t make a bad week thank God.  

    Got drunk with Maureen last night, (too much sherry in our tea) but with careful diet and lots of sleep I bounce back. Anne Lindbergh’s Flower & Nettle a great improvement on previous volumes. Tantalized by Rosamond Lehmann, who ought to be my next project. Pledge:  I AM HAVING ALL MY HAIR CUT OFF MAY 1!!! 

                                                 Starlight 8:30 PM Thurs 29 Mar 79

                                                 Joselle plies me with Chablis – I succumb to get her to spill her secrets – but her secret seems to be she’s thinking of turning lesbian and her gaze on me seems somewhat fixed.  Or am I imagining things? 

    Two glasses of wine on an empty stomach and I’m a goner. God knows I long for the flesh – those “brown motherly furrows” as Plath calls them are in need of plowing. Would I have to exclaim over her body the way men exclaim over me? 

     It just doesn’t sound fun. If only she were less female. More boyish. Order a cheeseburger to snap myself back to reality. This is a dangerous world to be hungry in.

                                                 Reading Randall Jarrell’s Third Book of Criticism. 

    I enjoy him enormously.

                                                 11PM – Shank of the evening.  I am dancing superbly but tips very bad. The approach of tax time or are they simply seeing too much of me? The latter, no doubt.  Went to the health club today but I won’t renew when my experimental month is up.  I was seduced by their sauna and masseur but need something closer to home.

                                                 Starlight 2:30 PM Sat 31 Mar 79

                                                 Hot day – sun behind clouds – the sky is violet and the air intense – looks like rain, but I’m overflowing with joy and luck and good fortune.  Just ate an enormous chef’s salad and two cups of coffee. 

    All I needed for returned confidence was one big tipper and a non-suicidal letter from Devon. (He’s been depressed.)  

    Obviously, it will never work out between us.  We would be in competition each trying to get the other to play caretaker. I need too damn much care.  It would be madness. Discuss this over vod & tons with Avril. Invited back to Mulberry Island, but also got a card to the Bullets opening (which I prefer.) Reading The World, the Flesh and Father  Smith. Dancing very well – what a pity I’m “sculpting in snow”. Feeling “in tune” opens a clear lens to the soul.

                                        9PM Tues 3 Apr 79

                                        Buying spree with A.  Bought a pile of silk shirts and a satin whipcord coat & skirt (black). Immortal piece I should still be wearing thirty years from now. We had a lovely lunch at Third Edition – reminiscing about our lovers’ bodies – what we treasure most – I vote for the flock of milky-white scars above Devon’s buttocks. Aaah. Intimations of glorious, irreproducible mortality.  I am also irate at not hearing from Usher and even more irate at myself for being irate.  He is obviously a no go so what’s wrong with me? I think I may be like those explorers expiring for lack of vitamin C. 

    Need to force myself to eat raw blubber just to save my life.  It’s a wonder anyone survives.

                                        Reading 3rd vol David Garnett’s autobiog – what an unlikeable human being.

                                        Car pooped out on us will cost $250 to fix.

                                        Starlight 9:15 PM Wed 4 Apr 79

                                        I hate wasted days.  Drove all the way to White Flint Mall to pick up my rhinestone glasses – a pin broke on them – and all the way back. Grrr.

                                        Not liking Robt Frost’s letters and Christina Stead’s House of Nations is even harder to get into. But things looking up on diet front.  Fewer binges. 5 days of rain, and a power mogul in the audience who keeps instructing me on how to please him.  I curtsy down to the floor very gracefully and pretend I don’t speak English.

                                        Starlight 8:25 PM Sun 8 Apr 79

                                        Burst of freedom rescues me from inertia. My best moments are intense enjoyment of the present: must write and examine everything. Revel in my own growth – including comprehension that Usher Glayne can’t be my crutch.  Lost 4 lbs eating apples and feel good – refuse to take a guy’s tip because he licked his lips at me.  Yuck.  

                                  Jervaze came into the bar last night, dragging his 

    shame-filled self across the floor.  I couldn’t resist suggesting he come home with me – he was so excited – love poured 

    out of him like a dizzying force.  I browsed greedily on his beautiful body. It was like plugging into an electric current.  He moaned, “You’re so good to me” but when my orgasm came it was just a little pop –  uncorking a bottle of stale champagne.  So goodbye to all that.  Masturbation is really a lot less trouble. 

                                        Out to China Syndrome movie tomorrow with Avril. 

    John Middleton Murray is a blubbering blabster. Usher sent me a poem entitled “I dream of starting off with you” which was obviously not written for me. Took her name out and slammed my name in. What could go wrong? What a pity we leave choice up to men when they so clearly have no idea what they are doing.

            3:30 PM – Dumbarton Oaks – Sat 14 Apr 79

                                        Enjoying a day of full sun. Beautiful carved stone bench –

     – azaleas in full bloom – peace. Woke up determined to finish taxes – offices 

    closed! When can people go if they work all week? Beats me. But it would take more than a late filing to bother me – feel blissful.   Approaching Plath from the question of her reputation. Determined to write and to learn to see movies alone. 

                                        Last night awful sets with Zach – I don’t like his new band. 

    He couldn’t seem to play guitar and sang off-key. Promises of a future have taken his present away. My heart went out to him – ordered a bottle of champagne to cheer him up. Late dinner – I ordered catfish in a spirit of adventure (not good) he ordered what he always has – chicken & fries.

    He told me about the times he’s been mugged and his belief in magic – I didn’t believe any of it. He was full of insecurities about Usher – I decided to act like we have a relationship to make it easier to get rid of Z later on. He “retaliated” by describing his affair with his friend’s 48 yr old divorced mother back on the coast. Sure, sure. Asked to come home with me. I said no. 

            Plush Palace – Mon 23Apr 11PM

                                        God Malcolm Muggeridge is unpleasant (Jesus

     Rediscovered) and not even Christian.  Makes Waugh look like the author of Sermon on the Mount. Trying to figure out how I would address God: 

    What would I say? 

                                        Beautiful note from Devon saying, “I love you dearly”. 

    Sweet.  The silenter I am the more he adores me. Sent a copy of my Plath essay to Usher – we’ll see what he says. Agent passed along a very flattering rejection on Memory – I am “too much” of a poet!  Since I have just concluded(with Usher’s help) that I am no poet at all this cheered me up enormously.

                                        Airborne today – dancing really well. It’s the fasting. Feel a shimmering force field all around me.

                                        Starlight – 12:45 AM – Thurs 25 Apr 79

                                        Dragging myself around this AM –  my own fault for indulging in Irish coffee and caramel ice cream last night.  2nd anniversary party at the PACIFICA radio station and I thought, That might be fun!  It was a disaster.  I took Avril and we were immediately cornered by the club bore. (I had to give him a fake phone no just to get rid of him.)  

    Plus they charged us for our drinks! Rod was there – tight and prim – probably fearful I would attack him about his nonexistent dance story – I put him at his ease. Left after an hour and Avril and I “drowned our disappointment” in the usual way  (it felt good at the time.) Ross & Tom should be required reading for egomaniacs.

                                        Plush Palace 9 PM Mon 30 Apr 79

                                        Had my hair cut today and dyed platinum blonde – like the color not the cut.  I wanted it all off – she asked to “try something” and if I didn’t like it she would “fix it for free”.  Of course, I don’t like it but I didn’t have the time to stay and have it re-done. I think it’s almost too much trouble to go back – get somebody else to fix it.  Everyone likes color however; I needed a boost.  But it’s not what I pictured – looks like a medieval “bowl” cut to me.  

                                    Fistfight! Guy dragged out of the club in handcuffs. Joselle says too bad; he was such a good tipper.

                                        Feel too old tonight – I obviously need a vacation but the only one I can take is in my own mind.  I love the house but it always needs something. 

                                        I was perched on the edge of celibacy but Jervaze showed up last night. Fabulous sex!  Turned out to be worth it! 2 Hrs (I counted!) Oh, bliss. Reading very bad romantic suspense –  A Relative Stranger. It’s a serious problem that I hate everything popular.

                                        2:30 PM Wed May 2 79

                                        Perfect day at home. Worked on poems listening to Mozart. 

    Got my “medieval bowl” changed to “little boy” haircut – it’s wonderful!  Do nothing to my hair anymore!  Don’t have to wash it, brush it or even look at it!  Of course, I have to deal with all the sobbing men at the clubs. Turns out long hair is a powerful masculine fetish.  I consider pretending I’m a different person – but I have the same old costumes.  New stage name?  Wonder if “Colette” is taken.  Guess I didn’t plan this very well.  

                                        Yesterday overeating so today it’s a fast – only coffee.  Phone keeps ringing I refuse to answer. It’s probably Paz begging me to come in and sub for some dancer who had an onstage breakdown.  Reading Wagenknecht’s “psychograph” of Nathaniel Hawthorne. Interesting.

                                        Sun 6 May 79 -1:50 PM

                                        Avril and I drove to St Michaels yesterday – such a pleasure –

     – I remember sailing into that port.  It’s so beautiful I fantasize about buying a house and “retiring” there.  I tell A, you get the country house, I’ll have the town house we can go back and forth.  She says she does not want to live with her sister FOREVER!  Why not when I’m so perfect?

                                        Delicious lunch of soft-shelled crabs and homemade coconut cream pie. Didn’t get to work till 6:40 and I was the only dancer till 9 PM! Apparently previous dancer unconscious in dressing room and ambulance was called.  Sorry I missed it. Eddy gave me extra $$ but told me I can’t wear my black jade rosary on stage (too many complaints). Too bad – it looks so good with white collar and cuffs.  He says the place has been sold again and we will be getting new management.  Hope it’s not Tony.

                                        Plush Palace – 10:10 PM – Mon May 7 – 79

                                        Would like to break my 2 day fasting record but I got up at 5:30 AM this morning and was just too hungry.  Cucumber sandwiches with lots of pepper on whole wheat bread…mmmmm. Here’s my latest plan –

    – rewrite Secaire and Blood Memory – get pregnant Sept 1 1980, have baby May 81!  Father as yet unknown. Certainly not Jervaze whose family is terrifying. Crazy, huh?  Reading The Restless Journey of James Agee.

                                        Tues 8 May 79 – 4:45 PM

                                        Great day’s work on Secaire.  Not “done” but better.  

    Completely new scene showing why Hank and Nilssa are attracted to each other. 10 P!!! Celebrated by going out to buy new notebooks.  Sniff the paper hungrily.  New lighting at the Palace very bad – guess who came in to audition? Brandy! I told manager she was lying about her age so he wouldn’t hire her.  

    Nobody wants to work with her. She’s a grenade with the pin removed.  

                                     Interesting book by Louis Cassells about the differences between religious faiths.  So far I like Unitarianism best but want to expose my kids to as many different ones as possible and let them choose.  Joselle keeps asking me if she’s going to be in my book. (I’m afraid she thinks I cut my hair for her.)  I start instead a poem beginning “the chaste warrior sleeps only with his prey…” Bad! Sad.

                                        3PM Thurs 10 May 79 – Plush Palace

                                        New manager Jasper comes in. Seems nice. I curtsy very low.  Yesterday fasted till evening – wrote 7 pages – walked dogs then Avril & I saw Truffaut’s Love on the Run and went out to dinner. White pizza with plenty of garlic. Usher is reading at a NJ college – invites me to go with him.  Hmm. Needing a pair of hot pink pants to visit this college in.

                 9:30 PM Fri night 11 May 1979

                                        No hot pink pants. Did find a nice pair of aqua polished cotton jeans and matching high-heeled shoes. Usher phoned and we commiserated about publishing. Avril and I went to see the movie, A Little Romance. Very good. Long walk with dogs, further exploring our new neighborhood. People keep their lawns very tidy around here. Since I refuse to do ovens, windows or lawns, house-pride like this could present a problem. 

    Must hire out.  I’m bored with my job, but it pays the bills so well I don’t think I can make changes till July. But who knows what lies just over the horizon? Reinventing oneself could be the greatest pleasure there is.

                                      Plush Palace – Sat night 12 May 1979 

                                      Another exhausting goodbye with Jervaze.  I wore see-through chiffon bell-bottoms and flowered Qiana shirt – gratified to see they had their effect. He said he will always feel the same about me, always be jealous of the person I marry. I must say I now wish he would just go away. Which he’s supposed to do – off to Alabama.  Again. I am not, shall we say, invited to this on-again, off again wedding. Awww. Feeling emotionally drained – only 30 short hours till I see Usher and I want to be witty and “on.” As opposed to slack-jawed and twitching.

                        Queen’s Chapel – 4:30 PM  Sun  May  13 -79

                                        Dragged Avril to Unitarian church. There was a woman minister. I found the service satisfying enough and the church (River Road) very beautiful. They seem to have a lot going on – discussion groups, plays, theology class. I could be interested if I had the time.  Unfortunately everyone seems old. Could I overcome my misanthropy to go alone?  Remains to be seen.  The church has a bookstore – I bought an interesting book on female contemplatives. I’m contemplating a future as a single parent.  

    Feel a faint hormonal stirring.  (Avril says it’s the house.) Who’s the lucky guy? 

                                      Jervaze would have been perfect if it wasn’t for that alcoholic gene. 

    And I don’t think I could hide a baby from Devon for the rest of his life. Usher probably has some impressive genes along with the vast millions to which he constantly alludes. On the other hand, the kid he does have sounds defective. 

    Need to get clear about his marital status.

                                                          Queen’s Chapel – 9:30 PM  May 15 -79        

                                                          Bad visit to NJ with Usher.  Thank God it wasn’t an overnight.  First he showed up in a Mercedes he described as “the color of Lena Horne’s skin”.  UGH!  Next – brace yourself – he wanted to hide me from his audience!!  Dumped me at an antique bookstore (that part wasn’t a total waste –

     – bought the diaries of Cynthia Asquith) then took me out to an apologetic dinner.  

    I was so annoyed I commanded everything to be set on fire – fondue, oysters, 

    and 2 desserts.  (He chose a very good wine. It was the least he could do.) 

    He didn’t want to talk about his reading – said if I had attended there would have been “too many questions”.  And as artists, aren’t we SCARED TO DEATH of questions?  Aren’t we?

  • Inspired Pleasure – the dance diaries of Alysse Aallyn

                             11PM Starlight Wed 7 Mar 79

                                       Very down night. Only $70 so far. Need $600 to

     keep my bills current. Bryony wailing because the state took her children away.

      Sometimes seems like the pain of the helpless is smothering the world. Tony’s 

    the bouncer tonight and he’s all for letting the men stick their bills down the girls’ G-strings!  No thank you.  Wait till Gentleman Randy hears about this. 

                                                Reading a bad German mystery – the mystery being why he wrote it, how it got published and why I’m reading it.  Fantasizing celebrating spring by getting all my hair cut off. Hmmm. Jean Seberg? Could be sexy. 

                                                Wish I’d brought Kafka’s Letters. Making 

    huge floor pillows for my housewarming party. Longing to sink into classical music & bubble bath, followed by Oleg Cassini sheets & cup of diet cocoa. Having my own house really is a dream come true.

                                                Mon 20 Feb 79 – 12:20 AM

                                       Such a depressing party I got drunk just to be “out” of it.  Avril & Ben making out in a corner all evening. Usher brought me books and a bird of paradise flower, Stockley gave me a beautifully framed tiny drawing of crustaceans –

    but then cancelled that by attempting to corner me all evening. He covers up the soul he doesn’t believe in with a repellant fleshy brutality – life is kill and conquer – 

    – eat or be eaten.  Honestly, now I’m scared of him. Afraid to even argue with him for fear of launching something irreversible. Luckily, he next fastened his lasers on Yvonne. Poor Yvonne. Save yourself, I should say but was relieved to be off target. 

    Plan to ask Paz to schedule me for just two nights. On a self-dare, 

    I sent my poem about Rossetti’s model to Usher.  

    LIZZIE SIDDALL: The Woeful Victory

    Be still or I can’t paint you.

    It is evening and

    I almost knew you.  Who are you

    Fair one?  Your mouth is stuffed 

    With poppy hair 

    Fate coils between your breasts

    A snake –

    Your tongue’s torn out.

    You must be the echo of my thoughts.

    (“I am the motionless cradle.”)

    Your flesh takes fire from my setting sun.

    Can you free me, O Lady of the Sundial?

    My eyes grow dim.

    (“Perfect love’s not found this side of heaven.”)

    I shall paint you vermilion

    Butcher nightingales and use their tongues for brushes

    Melting foil & verdigris

    To the tune of Canterbury bells.

    Stay awhile, Fair one.

    I almost thought you spoke.

    (“I am the face rising from the pool

    to drag the drinker deep.”)

    I will bury you in manuscripts, I will

    Visit when there’s time. Someday

    We might marry, but

    I am not whole, dear lady.

    I am not myself.

    Who are You?

     (“I am thyself. What hast thou done to me?”)

                                                Tues 28 Mar 78

                                                Extraordinary spiritual experience.  A haunting.  Someone standing behind me in the empty house. I turned and no one was there but power only increased.  At first I was afraid – then felt a melting richness of love –

    – coming at me, into me from outside of me.  I realized it was Jesus.  Relief.  Followed by –

    Confidence.

                                                Of course, afterwards I question it all over the place.  

    How could I be so certain?  Maybe just an ordinary haunting by a peculiarly loving ghost?  Maybe a thing in my head?  But I do have that memory of certainty and bliss to cling to.  Very powerful.  It’s out there – somewhere.

                                                Starlight Thu 14 Mar 79 – 10:00 PM

                                                Started out as a very bad night – trying to dance myself exhausted – then some guy tipped me a $50 and I ate an orange and now –

    I feel better. (Feeling so unbearably fat I bought diet pills.  Then “dinner” of cashews and wine.) Finished Prayerbook for a Skeptic – I liked it. Fortunately, I brought along a ton of reading. Had to dump Joyce Carol Oates’ Do With Me What you Will when I became disgusted with zombie heroine. NOT as good as The Hungry Ghosts (but reminiscent of McCarthy’s Groves of Academe.)   I’m in the mood for something different.  Not, however, C.S. Lewis’ The Four Loves which is deeply annoying. Women are “unqualified” to be “true friends”. Isn’t that the “know your place” argument?

                                                Maybe what I need is Thos Merton’s, Seeds of 

    Contemplation.               How to switch the physical into the spiritual – that’s what I can’t figure out.  Sexual longings intense – my body on fire. 

                                           No wonder monks beat themselves. Peace and

     concentration in the dressing room – we are all doing doubles. Yvonne is fine.  She is more than a match for Stockley – saw through him without a problem. She just acts interested in all men regardless. On principle. 

    She says if you want to choose, you’ll have to compare offers. So sensible. 

    Tomorrow a day of cleaning & working in my study.

                                                Sun. 18 Mar 1:50 PM.

                                                Terrible nightmare about Usher Glayne. His face 

    melted showing the skull underneath – two hideous holes of darkness.  The world is fierce, cruel, we are all hobbled. Wake to astonishingly gorgeous day. 

                                             Worked on expanding short story Erin – cleaning away deadwood –

    –  it’s only going to be 30,000 words but the hell with it. Can’t “produce” to “compete”.  Want to find the intrinsic shape buried within. The secret meaning.  Letting it speak for itself makes me happy.

                                                Adoring Pilgrim at Tinker Creek. (Wish I had written it.) 

     Then it’s off to the library á la bicyclette for more theology books to understand my haunting. 

    Apparently lots of people have had it. 

                                           Obviously, I should worry more about Success and the fact that I’m dirt poor but I am interested in a different kind of immortality. 

    I have arranged my life so carefully to do exactly what I want.  

    Seems a shame to ruin it now. 

                                                12:30 PM Mon 19 Mar 78

                                                It’s a problem that I don’t like Usher’s poetry. At least he talks about sperm and chastity so presumably is not yet dead from the waist down. He’s successful and I am not, so criticism from me sounds like sour grapes. I call to thank him for the books he send me; a woman who is probably his wife answers. Should I be embarrassed?  We are NOT having A Thing. So, why?

    Out in the yard with dogs trying to read Teilhard de Chardin.  Hot sun.

                                                Café Rabelais, Wed 21 Mar 79 3:25 PM

                                                Pleasant 3 hr lunch with Usher discussing literature

     – he had to run away leaving me with my coffee. Tried to get me to pretendto be willing to date his friend who is wheelchair bound.  I have a feeling this was the whole point of the lunch. I want to talk about literature, he wants to give me away to his friends. I said No. But couldn’t I just make nice? I said no. 

    I’m not that kind of nice. 

                                           I took revenge by asking if he lives with his wife. 

    He said “sort of”.  Their child is “a problem”.  No one can write within a mile of this child.  (Poor wife. Luckily her life doesn’t matter!)  Usher seemed taken aback by my questions so maybe I won’t hear from him again. 

    Good lunch, though. Very cuisine minceur – lots of different dishes and you don’t feel full afterwards. (Rabelais would have been very disappointed.) I top off my coffee with a glass of blond chartreuse. 

                                     At the Phillips, I saw a Goya that made me want to burst into tears. 

    Note to self: reorganize Courtney entirely around paintings. But which artist would be perfect to express my anti-heroine?

                                        4:20 PM Thurs 22 Mar 79

                                        Today a model for what all days should be.  

    I’ve passed unscathed through the financial hysteria of closing on a house, even have money in the bank.  Sparkling weather; spring is definitely here.

    A day of sunbathing – the first are always the worst – skin a white blubbery mass. 

                                     Reading Kroll’s book on Plath symbols – gives one furiously to think.  She wants to find everything in the poems themselves – and of course – that’s exactly where it all is. Plath controlled by potency symbols.

                                        I am sick of Devon’s letters – he must “shield his eyes against my radiance”.  Come on. I can’t believe he doesn’t want exactly the life he’s got. Always hard for me to believe that one can reject the sprinkles, the cherries, the walnuts on the sundae.  My family always lectured me for being attention-seeking and voracious – so it makes me shy to advance myself into anyone’s purview. Plath seemed prepared to be loved for her accomplishments rather than her being – a scary compromise.

                                        Although I do recognize that I am trying to 

    experience my own “wholeness” through the eyes of another with all 

    the danger that implies. Currently trying to kick my sugar cravings.

                                        11:30 AM Fri 23 Mar 79

                                        More sunbathing – my own skin smells 

    intoxicating to me. Like pool water, like beach sand, childhood. 

    Dixie – “God’s lioness” stretches out beside me, wind ruffling her fur. 

    I write a poem about dogs.

    Sticks

    Peter’s dog

    Went on fetching sticks

    Long after it was dead.

    We’d find them on the stoop

    Arranged In patterns

    Pete would sigh and say

    That’s poor old Monk all right

    Still missing the people games

    Heaven won’t allow

                                        Add it to my ghost story book.

                                        Unexpected tear sheets in the mail from Usher 

    – his reviews of Plath. He says he didn’t think it “professional” to disclose

     that he knew her – that seems unprofessional to me.  Makes his comments seem underhanded: pale. He says diplomatically about my poetry that I’m a “rare being.” Hmmm. 

  •              Mon 18 Dec 78 – Plush Palace 6:30 PM

                                        Horrible day. Everything that can go wrong has. 

    Mailing off mss wildly expensive.  Drove Avril around because the Gremlin is in the shop again. Reading Bodyguard of Lies – history having its usual soothing effect.  (Everything much worse for everybody else.) It looks like I will have to work two jobs in Jan to pay for this house.

    Maureen the costume designer wants to rent a room in our house – that would help.  She wouldn’t be a problem – getting a masters in textiles at U. of M so not the usual flaky personality that finds itself onstage. Concluded I really have to break up with Z. It won’t be hard – just stop seeing him. 

                                        One good thing did happen – I was lying in bed at 

    1:30 AM nodding off over Bodyguard – phone rang. I almost didn’t answer it – how could it be anything good – but I thought it might be Avril with some emergency. It was Jervaze! He’s coming back. He’s been offered “crew leader” position in his old job at the Pentagon with a $5,000 bump.  He wants to celebrate by taking me out – we can go to Clyde’s where we partied for his birthday last year.  I hung up feeling good – 

    until I thought this will give me a reason to give up Buck. There’s no way Jervaze won’t find out about him. Ugh. Confrontations. Unless I can keep J out of club? Doesn’t seem possible that he is off the sauce. Must make sure he gets a place of his own – he will be living with his brother to start with. He sounded sober, I’ll say that for him.

                 Plush Palace Tues night 19 Dec 78 – 7:30 PM

                                        Wiped out my savings account to pay bills – well, 

    that’s what it’s for.  We got the Queens Chapel house!  Target date for the move is March 1. Avril  and Maureen very excited. (It really is huge. 5 beds, 3 bathrooms, divideable into 3 suites. Perfect. Huge kitchen, dining room and fenced in yard.) I contemplate writing a book of poems called The Lives of Dancers.  Trouble is, I’d have to tone it down to make it believable. Got one poem already – Impure Women.

    IMPURE WOMEN

    Between my breath and your breath

    Beneath the phallic philanthropic statues on

    The volcanic dragstrip of my city

    The wounded in the scorched earth policy

    Of love

    Muster, linger, await

    Embodiment.

    Pills to make their hearts race faster have

    Stopped their faces dead as clocks

    That witnessed crimes unspeakable

    To mothers versed in tabloid gore.

    Who will bring them

    Absolution now that I am gone?

    In the fresh wounds of a

    Seconal summer

    The stopped children meet

    And kiss.

                                        Is it the approach of Christmas that’s bringing all 

    the old boyfriends back to me like elephants to a boneyard? Ryder

    called. Marc Kramer refers to me his “dream girl” and can’t get me out of his mind and we’ve been out what – three times?  Buck gave me my present at the club – he looked adorable – bath goodies. 

    Don-the-Patent-Lawyer who’s been hanging around the club lately asked me out for New Year’s eve.  I had to refuse because Merrill and husband will be in town but I told him to try later.  He seems interesting –

    – like to get to know him better. Mature. Always trolling for someone presentable to take Home to Mom.

                 Boston to Rockland shuttle 11:45 AM Fri Dec 22

                                         Thank God I brought this diary in my purse. Bad flight feels like Week 7 of the flu and I need something to take my mind off stomach. 

    Love people-watching at the Downeast Gate – there’s a novel in that all by itself. 

    This flight goes straight up the coast.  Avril is sleeping in the co-pilot’s seat – let’s hope she doesn’t have to assume the controls.  She is trying to get a march on the insomnia she always gets around parents.  We just missed Genevieve and Brett – they put 2 planes on this flight and they must be on the other one.

                 Christmas Day

                                        Enmeshed in a family that’s not even close to changing age old patterns. Listening to Christmas music by the Oberlin Choir and roasting chestnuts. As always, food preparations take a disproportionate amount of time –

    – one might as well just surrender and become a restaurant prep chef.  

    Family “scene” caused this time by me – I objected to Dad making the two older daughters executors – I guess that makes me and A “executees”? He says you can’t have four executors.  A likely story. Well I felt I had to lodge a formal protest but of course it didn’t change a thing.

                 Plush Palace – midnight – Fri 29 Dec 78

                                         Merrill and Julian came to watch me dance. I think 

    they were interested. Don The Lawyer came and sat at their table – he behaved himself.  Good evening for tips. Don asked me out Wed – I explained I have a lot of demands on my time – just about to double my working schedule to buy this damn house  – so it doesn’t look good.  He passed that test by taking this news calmly. Having a sister makes me a Real Person at least.

                                          Catching up on dancers – Jerrilee’s  pregnant, 

    Fatima’s new boyfriend  is obviously an ethnic gangster. (Armenian I’m guessing.)  Jerrilee tried dancing at a club in DC where the girls “make lots of money” but just in tips – they have no salary. Rotten. I need extra hours but won’t audition there – prefer the protections offered by The Great Commonwealth of Virginia.

                 Plush Palace – 7:30 PM Tues 2 Jan 79

                                        Horrifying letter from Scott Meredith demanding money to read my novel.  His form letter didn’t acknowledge mine in which I said I was already the author of one book but went on and on about “unpublished writers new to the business.”  They obviously didn’t even read  my letter.  

    My father said,  “Maybe he knows what he’s doing since he’s Norman Mailer’s agent” but I wrote back and said non merci.  Auditioned at The Country Fair – they offered me $100 each three x a week.  Call for my schedule.  So that’s set. They have a good stage plus a barre and a pole.  

    Haven’t seen a barre since Shalimar.

                                        Zachary unfortunately back from New York and in a mood to party. Claims to have provided drugs to SNL.  Reads my novel and says it’s not commercial enough.  I’m sure he’s right, which doesn’t cheer me up at all.  Says it’s too brief – needs development which is also probably true.  Trying to write a poem about funerals called Treading Pasture.  Bad, bad, bad.  Reading Tillie Olsen’s Silences and that’s not cheering me up either.

                 Party Castle 11:15 AM Mon 8 Jan 79

                                        I think I like this place better than Plush Palace or 

    Country Fair. The dancers are totally uninterested in their jobs – they are all busy being college students, musicians and models – they rush in, rush out, spend their time studying and on the phone and offering me cash to finish their sets.  Fine with me. It’s very restful not having to make friends.  I called J’s brother – he’s due Thurs.  Probably the worst thing about this place is the commute – I need to take Rock Creek Parkway and sometimes traffic goes one way and sometimes it goes the other way. An unwary person could end up in a head-on collision. 

                                        The stage is way better than Plush Palace but the dressing room far worse – a miniature chamber behind the potato bins – très très très Colette.  With me tonight are Phoebe, ex-stewardess with a degree in languages and Tasha, very silent black fashion model.  She is gorgeous.  Costumes are not big here – the idea is to wear one g-string all night – pasties small as possible. 

    Contac really works – has totally drained my sinuses but also made me very thirsty – I am drinking gallons of water which I am afraid will make me visibly sweat. (Then pasties slide off and the woman from the Alcohol & Tobacco Task Force rushes forth with ticket.) 

    Got my MS back from Scott Meredith.  Zachary came to see me dance in 

    the new club. We had a tender moment on how tough and insensitive the world is – he is having a bitching time with his new band – wants to go solo but feels that will never get anywhere. The truth is it’s tough to go it alone.  

    Everybody thinks Gift is “unfinished’ – which – horrors – means I have to do more. The dog to her vomit. Absolutely NOT fun. 

                                        I want to start something totally, totally new.  I suppose tolerating all this barfing and re-barfing is what separates the sheep from the goats – but which do I want to be?  Sheep? Goat? Spare me the “fun” of wandering around blindfold trying to imagine what you are touching followed by the Inevitable Disillusionment of taking it off and seeing you’re locked in the Same Old Basement. 

                                        I think Buck has found another girlfriend. I am rather relieved to be let so painlessly off the hook – of course I miss the great parts of our relationship. It was starting to get unmanageable along with everything else. At least with Zachary I can level with him about my life. Tonight’s reading: Margaret Millar whether I like her or not – and I don’t like her. 

                                        Ordered a book on depression through the mail.  Need all the help I can get.  GiGi came in tonight – probably to gloat over my exhausted dancing. Even people who love it inevitably do too much. She’s enjoying being a trophy wife. She says.

  • Inspired Pleasure – the dance diaries of Alysse Aallyn

                                         Plush Palace, Sat 1 July, 9 PM

                                         Rod and I engage in a little smoochy-smoochy hand -holding following Christie play.  I make an effort not to get so drunk that I pull down his pants to view his namesake. Impatient to find out exactly where my next sexual meal is coming from. Tach it up buddy. 

                                         In Dancer News, GiGi says Charlie NEVER goes 

    down on her unless he’s absolutely plastered. I want to know, “And then what good is he?”  She has to admit “not much.”  Says he laps at her like she’s a melting ice cream cone. 

                                         Did like Pamela Hansford Johnson’s Helena trilogy. 

    (Impressions of childhood, though, painfully unreal.)  Now struggling with Grahame Greene’s It’s A Battlefield. Diseased whores abound; women bear their 12th child in crowded rooms (and because he’s a Catholic that’s presumably All Right By Him) and a gay time is had by none.

                                         Midnight Sun-Mon July 2-3 78

                                         Taking Avril to Cellar Door for her birthday before she flies to Michigan to see Merrill.  Gifts Dior dusting powder & wrap around dress.  

    Festive occasion demands dress-up. Avril & I saw Grease, Rod and I saw Heaven Can Wait.  Just sweet enough but it didn’t “move” Rod as much as I hoped. What if he’s one of the “pod people” with nothing inside?  Jury still out.

                                Thurs 4:15 – 6 July 78

                                         Missing Avril so much!  Boy, did I get dependent. 

     It’s just SO Fun to have someone to do things with who thinks ALMOST EXACTLY the same as you do but with interestingly nourishing differences.

     Rod is no substitute.  Still can’t figure him out.  His apartment is 

    completely stark.  Bare.  Not ONE THING on any of the walls. The

     closest I can get to understanding him is that there seems to be no feeling in his family.  They don’t talk at meals. Father’s dead, mother still sends him clothes he hates and he still wears them. (They are perfectly presentable. But what would he wear if she did not dress him?  We’ll never know. I’m not getting in the midst of that.) 

                                         He never  suggests things to do.  I suggest everything. 

     Charlie Byrd in Annapolis (just because I love Annapolis) was OK.  On the other hand, when we went to Le Bistro he ordered Piper Heidseck champagne out of the clear blue sky! Because he said now he’s “finally dating.” 

    So that took initative. Right?

                                         Nice letter from Devon who ‘feels veneration”  for my talent.  

    Sweet. Reading Green’s The von Richthofen Sisters. 

                                         8:30 PM Fri – 7 July 78

                                         Driving in to work in a haze of ecstasy after Perfect Day, heard an infuriating review of Heaven Can Wait  by Penelope Gilliatt.  Really the woman’s a moron. She says she would understand a movie about transmigration of souls in “wartime” but why now!  Who GIVES these people a podium? How did she get this job with so little artistic sense? Bullied her way to the top, most likely.

                                         Von Richthofen sisters turns out to be boring PhD thesis. 

    So hard to get it right.  Therefore switched to Murder of My Aunt.  Amusing.

     (Richard Hull).

                                         Big tipper in tonight.  $138 so far!  I feel like the pigeons in Avril’s class experiments. “Intermittent reinforcement!”  I have to pick up Genevieve and Brett up at the airport tomorrow for Women’s March (we all wear white.) 

     Bringing them back to my place to eat first – I made a gorgeous salmon mousse. Invited Rod just to see if he’s cool.

                                         Sun July 9 78 2 AM

                                         He’s cool.  Wore white, walked the whole march and 

    was so charming to Genevieve and Brett they were dazzled. I’m now feeling relief that I only have ten days till vacation – don’t think I can become “over involved” in that short period of time. 

                                         Adelphi Grist Mill Park – 11:15 AM Mon July 10 – 78

                                         Sunbathing on my favorite rock.  When I get hot

     I’ll splash around (like the dogs are already doing).  Hardly a dry spot left on this rock – but who cares – my diaries have seen worse.  A year ago, the Last Act of the Romantic Psychodrama just beginning.  Whew. 

     I think I came out of it all right.  I’m starting to see a possible Harold-Nicolson/Vita Sackville-West thing developing with Rod.  (He actually KNOWS WHO Harold Nicolson is!!!)  Last night I almost raped him in his theatre seat but I am determined to let him make the first move.  But I do need to know how long I’m going to have to wear Glamorous Lingerie every day (just in case).  I am starting to run out of glamorous lingerie.  But we are having a lovely time – he is witty, intelligent and aware.  I “confessed” all about Devon – my longest relationship – but because he’s a “newly consecrated minister” I can see Rod’s not too worried.  If he only knew! 

                                         A good development is I’m learning not to drink so much. If there isn’t sex right around the corner one must stay aware.  Coffee “without dessert” so to speak.  It’s good for me.  I told him the whole plot of Secaire – weak points become immediately obvious.  He tells me about his ex-wife.

                                         2 PM – Back at home to ringing phone – new 

    croquet ball on the pitch!  Marc Kramer coming into National – do I want

     to have dinner and discuss My Finances. Hmm. Maybe. He knows I’m too poor to invest in anything. But I say Yes.

                                         Fri. 8:05 Starlight Club Springfield, VA Fri 14 July 78

                                         I hate this club. It’s a bitch of a drive so I rarely come here but the tips are good.  Need the cash for vacation.  Unfortunately, I am working with Danielle – the Brazilian lesbian who threatened to kill me.  I’m hoping she won’t recall she threw boiling hot coffee at me.  (Her aim is bad.) 

    She’s usually pretty much out of it. Got $100 tip already from a guy who wonders why I don’t dance at The Gaslight downtown.  Because the dancers have to waitress  there!  Ugh! That place is legendary.  I tried to be polite but really.

                                         Anyway, Kramer was different from what I expected.  We ate prime rib at The King’s Contrivance – he seemed a lot older and a lot sadder. 

     He says whenever he hears 10 CC’s “I’m Not In Love” he thinks of me. 

                                         I asked him what about finances – he said I should invest in real estate.  Wants to “watch my stocks.”  I was embarrassed to tell him there isn’t anything to watch what with Dad keeping such a closed fist on the shares, and me having to sell everything I get. I start to suspect Dad is CONFIDING in him about his estate planning and PRETENDING “our” investments are actually OURS.

                                         This meant we didn’t have that much to talk about and the evening ended with a damp kiss when I turned down sex.  I say I’m In a Relationship.  He says he’s thinking of proposing to his red headed secretary –

    who reminds him of me.  I am kind of insulted but told him to Go For It. I guess 

    I had this built up in my mind – sort of like Chuck Kornowitz where you think it’s going to FINALLY be about SOMETHING ELSE.  How my Mom would jeer!  

    (Wore my 3-piece suit, anyway. With eyeshadow.)

                                         He says he has to come through on his way back

     from Oklahoma, thank God, I could say I’ll be in Maine.  Looks Like It’s Over.  

                                         2:15 AM Mon 17 July 78

                                         Another fiasco.  I should leave now while I’m behind. 

    This has certainly been Trial and Error Week. How did poor Rod – Desirable Husband Material become Inevitable Discard?  I’m sick to death of the Hand Kissings and the Knee Pinchings, Goddamit.  There is something seriously wrong with this man. We had dinner & drinks at the Peter Pan Inn, then drove up and down Price Distillery Rd until I assaulted him.  I admit it.  He is under 

    the impression that we “made love”.   Trust me, one time was plenty.   This is a man who does not “think” with his body.  He gives nothing back, an absorptive rather than reflective surface. 

                                      I worked hard not to let him know how just how incompetent he is, because really, there’s no hope.  

    Some sad girl somewhere who hates sex is going to find her “dream man”. 

     I shouldn’t have pushed it, although seriously I don’t think he will even question if it never happens again.

                                         Damn shame is all I can say.  A cruel waste, when he’s so charming in every other respect. Life is brutal. Sigh. Enjoyed Pretty Baby so much I saw it twice. (Can’t pay close enough attention while Rod is talking.)xxx

  • 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.