Alysse Aallyn

Category: #Addiction

  • The Book of You – Haiku Diary by Alysse Aallyn

    #Haiku: Recovery

    Inchoate serf

    Self –births,

    Self-parents:

    Finding freedom

    Behind her

    Fear

  • The Book of You – Haiku Diary by Alysse Aallyn

    #Haiku: The Rainbow

    Beyond this storm

    Gold doors

    Enticingly beckon.

    Fly soon but

    Not yet.

  • The Book of You – haiku diary by Alysse Aallyn

    #Haiku: Peace

    Weft woven self

    Knots;

    Bleeds –

    Empties;

    Absorbs

    Splendor from our

    Tangled world

  • The Book of You – Haiku Diary by Alysse Aallyn

    #Haiku: Creativity

    You: 

    Immortalized;

    Fireborn

    Force majeure

    Create

    Become –

    Exalt

    You.

  • The Book of You – Haiku Diary by Alysse Aallyn

    #Haiku: Autumn

    Shadow side

    Of summer

    Entropy’s reminder.

    Regret

    Doubles down

  • Haiku Diary

    #Haiku: The Goddess: Power Incarnate

    Your

    Brave,

    Burnished; brutalized

    Carapace.

    Manifest.

    Gaze.  Accept.

    Love.

  • Haiku Diary by Alysse Aallyn

    Haiku: The Life Force

    Energy

    Resurged –

    De-powers dread

    Re=powers health

    Re-focus

    Aim

  • 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.