On Fifth Avenue; nonstop parade of glittery storefronts & Entitled shoppers.
Glamorous trousseau fun! . Our limo pulls up to Questrina, Sets off parking lights; A woman rushed through the double doors offering Glossy green dress bags in outstretched hands-
Driver swept them to the car and we were off again. “Your clothes,” explained Verne. Excitement, confusion; the Disappointment that Always follows bait and switch:
You get SOMETHING Just not what you expected. Had my dress been chosen for me? “I thought Maribel and I-“ “Oh, there’s lots for you to do,” He dismissed.
Surprised he didn’t offer Lollies to distract me. “Here we are,” says would-be groom. “My place.” A skyscraper on Fifth Avenue?
Shiny red and black doorman – general Of a third world country – Rushed the curb. “Your lordship.” I thought my ears unplugged. Had I heard this right? Did he speak American and was Verne in fact, “a lord”?
I should have watched those damned Downton Abbey episodes my folks begged me to see instead of proudly sequestering with Japanese anime. Limo driver brought all bags – He had to use a different elevator.
43 floor ride, black & gold enameled door thrown open on the penthouse there stood Mirabel.
Chapter Four : The Lost Sister
My eyes filled with tears and I realized How much I’d feared that This was all a scam. “Darling!”
She waved her skinny arms and kissed the air. “Mwah! Mwah! You escaped!” I couldn’t touch her – We laughed and laughed. She gave Verne a burning look – “Get us drinks”
And dragged me – Literally DRAGGED me into A double-doored bedroom and Swept me down upon a white flokati rug. We were children again – Conspiring & strategizing together or She played all the parts and I Gazed on adoringly.
She took control with those hypnotic eyes While my school self asked, IS this really Mirabel? So much smaller than my memory – Disappearing before my eyes in fact, As she had managed to do my whole entire Life; darker – blond all gone –
I know I’m taller now, but how could this tiny thing Have ever been a supermodel? Someone rattled at the door – Mirabel called – “We’re dressing!” Pulled me into giggle – “Leave it!”
Covered my mouth signalling with her Humongous eyes – Crawling to the door she – Peeked out – Pulled in a Champagne bucket and a pair of flutes.
“Grooms get in the WAY!” She laughed and toasted me. “But men! You know!” She gasped and gagged as if She’d never had such wine. I sipped sedately.
Judgingly As I’d learned to do with grown-ups. Who was this Mirabel? The way she carved me With her eyes She must be real Yet something smelled Imposture.
I just don’t know – I’m far too new – It’s far too weird. She leaned to touch my hair. “I always thought They should have named you Anne.”
The door opened and Verne stood over us Looking down reprovingly. Mirabel blanched – I thought because she’d said He’s not to enter – But he was mild enough
Laying dress bags along the bed Reproachfully As if to ask “How can you dress without dresses?” Then he was gone The door slightly left ajar. Mirabel clicked it closed with her foot. She called, “See you at dinner!”
I felt sorry for poor Verne But when we heard the outer door click Mirabel rose and unzipped the bags. She topped off her glass with Vodka from a bottle by the bed. “It’s such bad champagne,” she excused, “In Europe, babies drink this stuff.”
I studied the bottle – Beau Joie Brut Special Cuvée – A brute champagne. Tasted fine to me – like Sharpest winter air.
Mirabel offered her bottle. “No thanks.” She drained her tulip glass. ”You’ve certainly changed,” she commented. Did I drink vodka at eight years old? I said, “So have you.”
“I’m darker now. Verne wouldn’t look at blondes.” Too bad, I thought. I’d hoped she’d find a different type of guy. “Is he really a lord?” Maribel rolled her eyes. “Unfortunately.” At my surprise she added – “It always seems to mean you can’t do Anything you want.”
She shrugged. “At least the restaurants like it.” “And you’ll be –“ “Lady Verne.” She shrugged; unexcited By the prospect. Seemed The opposite of what Old Maribel would have thought.
“So, you just met?” “Oh no, we’ve been together FOREVER – And only now we tie the knot. But you!” She spun me all around. “You’re so tall! And thin!” “I eat like a horse” I apologized
I grow too fast – all my friends are vegan But I eat Everything – “I can’t seem to fast.” “Wait till after the wedding,” Said Maribel
“Then just do a purge. “Think you’d fit a four?” The dress she pulled was pale gold, fairytale dress with endless puffy skirt. My gasp relaxed Mirabel’s face. She smiled.
“I’m sure I could!” almost dropped my wineglass in my excitement to try it on. Stripped down to my unsightly sports bra And boy’s brief pants.
“Can’t wear a bra with this one,” says Mirabel. “I’ll do you up.” She gazed too long – A man’s gaze I thought – I turned away.
I followed all her modeling pages But there’s been nothing for the past Three years.
I was smart enough to know that airbrushed people don’t look like that in real life. Mirabel had been so gorgeous;
those huge eyes and perfect Roman nose seemed to promise a matching depth of soul. We all want to believe that beautiful people Get everything they need from life;
yet I remembered the Mirabel I’d known. She’d never come back to this family fold unless something had gone horribly wrong. As my train slid into the darkness of the Grand Central tunnel I texted the number I’d been given with “Train on time”
followed by a happiness emoji. Then of course I wanted to delete it But wasn’t I – as the only bridesmaid – Obligated to act excited? I’d never done any of this before – It’s Brave New World to me.
The response wasn’t from Mirabel at all but labelled @Valerian: “I’m meeting you. Mirabel otherwise occupied as usual. Look out for red hunting coat.” Who was Valerian? Where was Mirabel? Was this the fiancé who had her phone? If that was the deal from the beginning Mom and Dad would never let me come.
Here’s Mirabel at her core – proficient In the art of “softening people up” Which never meant the truth. Dad says Mirabel always “plays the inside straight” Some disparaging poker term.
As the train lurched to a stop I stood up and studied myself in the Mirrored windows. The girl “Valerian” would see Looked good enough in gray skirt with shiny thigh high patent leather boots and recently highlighted auburn hair. Nothing like Mirabel’s blond gorgeousness of course. But Out from beneath Mom’s thumb
I’d added to my eye makeup – Mom frowns on false lashes – Because looking ready for my moment gives me hope. I hadn’t answered the text: Stranger Danger just too strong. I’d Uber myself – if I knew where I was going. But I wanted the chance to Look at him before he looked
At me. That would work Unless He was the one who’d tried to Friend me – Meaning he’d seen all my pictures? Ugh. You want to be seen and yet somehow Not.
We project ourselves into others’ eyes – I want to be seen in a certain way – Where I control reactions! Of course it makes no sense And that’s what diaries are for – endlessly Trying to reshape Cellphone diary fantasy. But There he was
right by the escalators, standing out in his red coat. Mirabel would never descend to the tracks. A tall, distinguished looking man in his thirties probably, very thin – dark pants and a red down jacket. The closer I got the more Startlingly handsome was that weathered knife-planed face –
Beneath dark glasses – he broke into smiles at the sight of me. No hope of escape – If I thought anything it was – “He’s better than I dreamed!” Made it easier forging some new Relation with my uncomfortably lost sister. He reached for my bag
Kissed the top of my forehead Dry lips – tasting sweat and foundation. “Richenda?” English accent. “I Recognized you immediately. You look just like Mirabel. It’s the eyes.”
I felt a gush of pleasure at Such baseless flattery – Wanted to argue “I am not!” but Zines do say we girls must learn accepting compliments. Sooner rather than never. “Er, thanks.” So ungraceful.
“What happened to Mirabel?” “Unavoidably detained.” He swept both me and bag away from the escalator Down the platform. “We’ll take the elevator to the car service.” Actually, a limo. The driver rushed to take my pathetic flowered bag. Did the driver and this so far unintroduced man know each other – casually or permanent – hard to say.
“You’re the fiancé?” I stuttered out. He seemed surprised. “Sorry,” he said, bundling me into the limo, “It’s Wedding nerves. I’m Philip Valerian. Everyone calls me Verne.” I couldn’t stop laughing.
“Mom thought your name was Rupert Golden!” Verne didn’t find this amusing. “Some previous swain,” he huffed. Wedding nerves? Exactly right. He was jumpy, Fingers drumming on my knee. I was alone with @Valerian.
Fourteen and I used to be bored. Winter breaks were especially glacial
Till just recently –
Right before dinner Mom Put her head around my door : “You won’t believe what happened!” What could excite such A dull person?
But I lacked comparisons because This never happened before. Slammed my book shut because – Geometry is paralyzing – And joined the Guessing game.
“We won Powerball?” “Your sister’s coming home! To get married!” I hadn’t seen Mirabel –ten years older – in eight years. Truth to tell, I could barely remember her. A lifetime ago. “Why?”
Mom – never invited in – Leaned against the INSIDE Of my door. “Make up for the past.” Is that even possible? Or does she want a free wedding?
Mirabel was ALWAYS Always always always About the money. “So who’s she marrying?” “I think his name was something like Rupert Golden.”
“I didn’t want to ask her to wait while I got a pen. She said she’d send details. You know how she hates Snooping.” Everyone hates snooping, I thought.
Mirabel hates Accountability. Snooping can be fun If you’re the one doing it. Addictive. “Rupert Golden’s no real name,” was all I had To contribute. Mom gave me her “Like you’re the expert” face.
But fourteen year olds DO Know everything. We just forget Distracted so easily. We’ll be a whole family again for the first time in – ages.” So she can leave us again, I thought.
I knew. I’d always been Weirdly tuned from Mirabel “Murble” I called her When I learned to speak The dazzling goddess of my Dappled infancy.
Parents are nonsensical. All they cared was that She was willing to pretend for whatever short period that things are copacetic at the family manse.
Parents love pretending. “When’s this happening happening?’ “Unsettled,” said Mom. “She wants your help to buy a dress.” “Me?”
Up to that second I’d been a Peeper at The Family Drama. Did I want to participate? What choice did I have?
“You’ll be her only bridesmaid so she wants your dresses to match,” said Mom, But slowly as if just realizing What stupidity she spoke.
“You go up tomorrow night and the two of you come back Sunday.” How had she agreed to this? She still wasn’t happy.
“Unless… perhaps I’d drive you?” “I’ve taken trains before,” I said, trying to keep the baby whine Out of my voice. “I’m fourteen years old!” “But it’s the city,” wailed Mom
Panic flaring. “I’ve been to the city before, too,” I said. School field trips!!! Alone? First time for everything.
“She said she’d meet the five o’clock train,” sighed Mom, Obviously wondering How had she agreed to this? I almost didn’t like it.
So some strange woman Could call Mom up and Gain more freedom for me Than I’d ever managed?
It’s a gift. Don’t criticize its teeth. “It won’t be dark yet,” I said blithely.
“So is that where she’s living? In the city?” Rumors of international travel had reached us when Mirabel’s modeling cancelled. And all this time she’s Twenty miles away?
Mom seemed so unhappy. “I’m not sure,” she admitted. “Maybe it’s Rupert’s place. I’ll be trusting your good sense.”
She certainly can’t trust Mirabel, I thought. Someone in this family Needs to do some serious snooping.
That night someone named Philip Valerian Tried friending me on Facebook. I turned him down Like a bedspread, I Don’t talk to strangers.
Here’s the theatre where I serve my Indentured Seniors Project. Hem hem Mr. Green is late. I’ve forgotten how to sleep. It’s just not happening. Quit coffee, tried Sominex, nothing doing. Sitting in lobby of theatre school waiting for appointment. Wish I didn’t have to keep a journal the fathead faculty can read about my Theatre Experiences. I will write The Truth here and Dress it up later. Sitting next to me in an armchair is the best looking thing I’ve seen in a month of Sundays – peacenik with red gold hair & mustache named Dale Whitman.
Dylan Green strides in – receding hairline, round cheeks, hypnotic light eyes. Very attractive. Now watching them rehearse O’Casey’s Bedtime Story: Love it. I could watch rehearsals forever. Painting with people. Is that a job? Unfortunately actresses need to be seen and I wish I were invisible. How can one love fashion so much yet not want to be seen? Dr. Gilmour says I am an “enigma”. Green’s an excellent director; working on actors “mood”.
Love writing on trains. Things always look brighter. At Plumly dreaming & reflecting are criminal offenses. Must travel by train: crying for no reason in the car makes M & D think I’m psychotic.
Mon 25 Mar 68 Feel like a lonely drifter. $200 and go directly to jail. Trying to live exclusively in the present. Preston hot & cold, asks me to “give him more time.” That pisses me off just thinking about it; then he gets beggy. Don’t like him or me. He’s a placeholder. This is all my fault: I want subtle, skeptical doubting people and so that’s what I get! Ambivalent confusion. Think I’ll do my nails.
Tues. 26 Mar 68 Train to Radnor where I’m staying with the Carnahans while M & D & A cruise Virgin Islands. Hope I never arrive I like the journey so much. Carnahans very dull. Dislike her, have crush on him. She talks and talks – everything is Freudian. Any object you could grasp, touch or pick up is a penis; vaginas are negative space and no one thinks about them! He listens mournfully. Drinking.
Dancing class this AM at Southwark in leotard too big for me. Still it was fun. Release in a way, if they didn’t have so many mirrors and it was so painfully obvious I am the worst in the class. Guess my “lessons” with that hungry friend of Mom’s didn’t count.
Wanted to sit in on David Margulies’ rehearsal of Oresteia but Ron Reston made me sit in office & answer phones. Ron Bruncati asked me out to Art Museum show. I said OK. He’s bald and old enough to be my father but he is a director and its all grist.
And now for my emotional state – aha! Caught you with a bored expression. Bought a chocolate Easter egg at the station and now I’m going to eat it SLOWLY.
Wed 27 Mar 68 Ron Roston gave me some typing but Ellen Roston’s machine is broken so take an early lunch hour. (Use Sam’s machine when he’s done.) God what a year it’s been. God I would like to destroy this book. Just flipping through it is sheer psychological torture. But can’t destroy – probably for the same reason I’m compelled to finish all that’s on my plate.
Can’t write on the train any more: people are too fascinating. I want to ride in all directions as far as it goes. Just looking. (Is that a job?) Every stop would be a different story.
Bruncati picked me up ( not before I made date with interesting bearded character in acting class – Jack Foster.) Told me all about his boring Roman Catholic upbringing. He ordered alcohol for me – but they turned him down.
Yawned through art museum show – very dull except pen drawings. Pretty sure Bruncati realizes we’re no match. He was driving me up the hill to our house – amazed there was so much land in the middle of town asked, “Do you really live here or are you just trying to get me into the woods?” Har har. (He did not attack me.)
As soon as Avril gets back from Virgin Islands we’ll go see Tommy Steele in Half a Sixpence. (She will be so tan and I will be so jealous.) Reading Julie de Carneilhan – strange little masterpiece. Worship Colette.
The Carnahans pester me to take a cab at night but there’s never one there – I walk from station and no one’s raped me yet. Turn cartwheels and climb trees. I’ll see if they can take me home Sun night – my laundry’s becoming a menace.
April Fool’s Day – Mon 68 Reading Terminal crying my eyes out with everyone staring and that’s no joke. Want to crawl into a hot bath and die. Seems like I will never be much more than a squishy rag. Just opened my purse and NOTHING was there! No wallet, no ticket, no money, nothing!! I can’t WALK to Pewter Hill!!! Left my wallet locked up in Southwark office! Borrow dime from nice man to call home, of course no one’s there. Call the Coxes instead. Good old Theo hope he loves me.
Thurs 4 Apr 68 – Southwark Theatre School Dropped into Goody’s on the way here to pick up a Donovan record for Genevieve’s birthday. Easy day so far. I get to write rejection letters to amazingly accomplished actors pretending I’m Ron – including the lady from Gilligan’s Island. If this doesn’t discourage an aspiring actor, nothing will. Flirting with Dale Whitman – I love his hair. Wonder if he’s red gold & fuzzy all over. Preston walked in all young and ill at ease – I saw him through Dale’s eyes. Ouch! When he wants me I don’t want him and when I want him he doesn’t want me. Impasse. Dancing with Jack Foster last night – easy, happy guy. But he told me “Ball’s in your court” and I don’t like it there. He’s a doper, alas.
5 Apr Fri 68 – Train to Queen Lane
O Brave New World Meteorological Report: Looks like rain. Fashion Report: Looks like I’ve got a run in my stocking.
Importance of Being Earnest seen with Preston. A particularly bad Lady Bracknell. Preston desperately clutched my hand to the inside of his leg (wish he’d put his hand on MY leg occasionally.) He argues that polygamy is man’s natural state. Says “Look at dogs.” Told him to look at wolves, foxes (some birds). All news to him; which is bad news for his “progressive school”. Then off to the Electric Factory. Strobe lights. Pandora’s Box (they stank) & Electric Light Orchestra. (Good.) Preston and I tried getting into the same “leaning box” but a “security guard” jumps at us. What on earth is the point of the boxes then!!!
Preston angry at me because I wouldn’t let him come in at home. Good thing! Dad (just in from the Chesapeake) mixing daiquiris (gave me one!) and wanting to talk.
“You’re getting to be a big girl,” he says insultingly. I gave him my Big Girl on Daiquiris Smile. ( Daiquiris are good.) “How are you fixed for birth control?” Fatally uncool. I staggered. Recovered. “I’m still a virgin.” (In spite of them rather than because of them.) He skipped right over that. He said Dr. Rhodes could fit me with a diaphragm. I said, “I hear those interfere with sexual pleasure.”
He said, “No, no no. We’ve been using one for years.” Mom came in and to my surprise chimed in so this was a staged event. “You were born because of a diaphragm,” she said meaningfully. Dad said, “How about the loop? Looks like a question mark. You don’t want to be changing diapers at theatre school.”
That’ll never happen! If I couldn’t get an abortion I’d throw myself down the stairs. I said, “I think you have to have already had a kid to use those things. There’s always the pill.”
At this point Mom became predictably upset. She hates the pill because you don’t have to struggle with it. And if you don’t have to struggle with sex – then she bursts into tears. So I’ll never find out why sex needs to be a struggle. Dad admitted it was my date with 33-year-old Ron that blew the alarm.
Thurs 12:28 PM 11 Apr 68 Day of for Martin Luther King’s funeral. Watched it on TV. After 200 years looks like the rot is all the way through. Preston came over to invite me to see Paul Butterfield and Jesse Colin Young – too good to resist. Says he has been accepted at Haverford, Columbia & Chicago. Nice to have a future. Ended up wrestling on the floor. He got my shirt off but why do boys find bras such complex engineering problems That’s as far as we went. Watched the Academy Awards – Dustin Hoffman is a darling. (Listening to Tim Buckley. Will not be your Summer Princess or your Midnight Maiden. I will be your Sundown Angel.) Reading Madame Sarah. She was a big failure at the beginning of her career. Some comfort.
Read To Bed in the Afternoon to mom – she laughed the whole time. About child molestation and frigidity? I said, it’s not supposed to be a comedy – she said, “But it’s so funny!” A prophet is without honor, etc. etc. Time to shake the sand off my new, elegantly spurred leather boots.
Thurs 25 Apr 68 – Plumly Trying to learn a little self-reliance but it seems there’s nothing there. No wonder people take drugs. If there was a confidence pill I’d be seriously tempted. Unfortunately on alcohol I am only silly. Sweet loving letter from Devon who has decided to go into politics. I told him all the women would vote for him! He promised to invite me to Paris when he’s ambassador to France – I said it’s a deal. Lying in the sun reading Citizen Hearst.
9PM- relaxing in the Listening Room (no talking. My new favorite spot.) Handel’s Israel in Egypt. At least the music in this Institution for the Severely Disturbed is good. Catharsis! Feeling extremely good nose to grindstone finishing all my work.
Mom coming for Alumni Day – no Dad. She took me to the Cocked Hat to buy Lanz dress for prom. Long and white with thick lace cuffs, very pretty. Senior boys have banded together to “go stag – refusing old fashioned dating enslavement” so I was forced (pride) to import Preston. I’m sure he thinks I’m madly in love with him. I always want people to fall in love with me and when they do I am repulsed. But at least I can be polite.
Put aside Sybille Bedford’s Favorite of the Gods. Bland. Generation of messed up women. Now why would I want to read about THAT here in my prison cell??? Writing porn exotique under my current nom de plume Kathryn Klavier-Scott.
French Class – 11:l0 AM Tues 30 Apr 68 Finished test in 10 mins. Great letter from Merrill saying underneath my “blaze of emotions is a core of strength.” Reassuring. I love her so much. It’s hard not to worry about how false everything feels. I understand the boys’ fears, I really do, I don’t want to commit to something awful & irrevocable either. Old young, make female we are all at total cross-purposes with each other. Language fails us. Poetry? Art? Try to think of a way. Want to run through an art gallery in a nude leotard trailing a colored scarf. It could be my own work: enormously enlarged letters – fragments of “ransom notes” but you can’t tell where or when to make the “drop” so the precious thing is bound to die. (Saw it in a dream.) But I don’t want to go to Art school!!! (Not that they’d let me in anyway.) Then what? “Center down” as the old Quakers say.
Mom & Dad offer me trip to Europe for graduation if I work in a peacenik work project. Sent me a list of possibles. All the obviously, desperate starving places. But Sweden’s also on the list! I want to go to Ireland. (NOT on list.) Reading short stories of Sean O’Faolain.
Wish I didn’t have breasts. I don’t like them. They make me feel like Somebody’s Mother. I would prefer to be flat chested. No sex since JULY. Bought a bottle of New York champagne from Laura for $8 and locked it in my trunk. Not sure what I’m saving it for. Kate Moody signed me up for Operation Match. I got a list of 4 names and I told Casey “I’m going to get us a date. “ So I called the first name on the list – Craig Crawford, a U of Penn student with an apartment. So that’s good! He answered his phone! “Must be a loser if he’s home on Sat night” said the loser home on Sat night. He had company but told me not to worry, “I think she’s in the bathroom.”
He turned out to be absolutely charming, all American, ROTC. By no means a lost cause. Said he’d gone out with 2 girls through Operation Match and one of them spoke no English. I asked for a millionaire (Kate asked for me.)
I said, “Craig, will you be my millionaire?”
He said, “I want to be. Help me make my million.” Asked me out for Fri. I said sure if he can get a date for my friend. So – a reason for champagne.
Tues. 20 Feb 68 Mom came Sun night and took me & Casey out to dinner. Unfortunately she brought a Lame Duck Boarder – one of her “pretend children” some shockingly ugly girl she feels sorry for. I bewailed my barren existence. She told me I’m just “dissatisfied” not miserable. I told her about our date Fri night and she insisted Craig & Unknown Boy have dinner with the family! I told her Impossible. Not wanting to contradict her at dinner I called her up later and ruined it by crying. I SO want to be THERE and not HERE. She thinks I’m the worst spoiled child ever.
Paris Match said Bonnie & Clyde “encourages crime” and Pauline Kael said “those sawdust heads missed the point.” I like her.
1:15 AM Sun 25 Feb 68 The date was AWFUL. Just horribly, incredibly, irredeemably AWFUL. Craig was FAT (why didn’t Kate ask for someone thin?) and his friend was SHORT, with very glisteny wet slicked back hair. But still better looking than Craig.
The evening was so awful there’s no point in describing it. Shared a bottle of Almaden during a decent dinner (eggplant, mushrooms, chicken livers) but when the boys saw we were presentable all they wanted was to get us drunk. The only way this could have been worse would be if it all happened at Pewter Hill. Casey was no help – she’s been in that convent too long! She just went all glassy-eyed on me. The boys wanted to go to their apt and drink and she was all for it! I tried hard to talk them into The Electric Factory and thought I’d succeeded but they said, “Ha, we lied, we’re going to the apt.” Talked them into the Trauma – they stayed 10mins. So we ended up at their apt after all where Casey & Friend made out and danced while I parried pass after pass from Craig who finally gave us and lay with his head in my lap psychoanalyzing me. “You’re restless because you’ve never had roots.”
I had to call a cab before they agreed to take us home. Asked us to fraternity party Sat. Casey wants to go! (I talked her out of it later, thank God.)
We no sooner get home than Mom’s psychosis raises its ugly head, how starved and desperate I am so I will never get anyone good. That same woman who accused me of “going to meet boys” when I was trying to bike ride to Trevallion, who accused Merrill of “living in sin with Bill Saint” (they weren’t) and said Genevieve’s husband wasn’t “clean.” Just weird. So embarrassing with Casey there.
Then Dad came in and asked me “how’s school” like an uncle who hadn’t seen me for twelve years and I burst into tears. A mess all around. This dating stuff SHOULD be easy but its so not. You’d think Mom would be all for “Operation Match” – as long as people are honest it should work. (My advice: ask for a photo.) But no. It shows you want to date and that is evil.
Wed 28 Feb 68 Called Devon this evening – knew I shouldn’t have but I was so depressed. I’d invited Preston to the Mar 5 dance but he said he can’t go. Has to be in a play. Invited e to the play and asked me out for the 22nd instead. I agreed to that but it’s not The Dance. Called Devon to feel something – anything – he said he was glad I called and happy to speak to me. Thought I called to wish him happy birthday! (So I said I had.) He apologized for his letters said they were “written in moments of weakness.” I said they were very romantic. I felt better then, but worse after. He HAS a girlfriend (more than one) there is no point to this. Wrote a poem, Considering the Chill Factor. Hopeless couple who can’t connect.
CONSIDERING THE CHILL FACTOR Considering the chill factor As I always try to do The day was hot Too hot for love or war. We sit in restaurants. I pick The blue veined shrimp He picks the black-veined news. Outside drunkards Carom off the plexiglass like entertaining fish. “They envy us” and Andrew says “How nice.” I see a couple coming in; she holds him up As I so often upheld you. I know that touch surgeons who manipulate the dying. She wears my dress the one I wore the day you Shamed me Stuck me sizzling to the sidewalk Shamed us both with those red red stains. Andrew I don’t think I ever have forgiven you. Andrew says “How nice” he lays his coffee spoon upon the cloth I hate the brown stain it spreads like murder Like the bad smell of death Breeding fumes as we do Corpses in the sun. I rise to speak Shrimp spewing from my mouth like Parasites. “We have always been so happy, you and I.”
Mon 4 March 68 I’ve learned my lesson: when this huge book is used up I WILL GET A SMALL ONE. Gave up on March dance, called Preston and said I’d go to his play if he’ll go to the Electric Factory with me, Casey & Kip and champagne supper after at Pewter Hill. Mom likes Preston because his parents are her friends so she should behave herself. Rich parents used to give their sons peasant girls to practice the facts of life on and Mom is giving Preston to me. He has a nice bass voice, but something festers in his soul. I’m going to find it and poke at it. Mom wanted to invite Brice to dinner! I had to tell her the truth about him so she wouldn’t but if I thought I’d get points from her for spurning his dark desires I was wrong. Everything’s my fault because of clothes & personality. Past midnight – I write by flashlight. Casey talking in her sleep.
Hard to read Spark’s Mandelbaum Gate after Genet. Spark is trapped by her form, defeated by her subject and killed by her characters. Ho hum.
Casey & I started a film company – Gryphon Enterprises – to film my movie ideas. Marquis de Sade (of all people’s!) Eugenie de Franval is a terrific story (without the moralizing obviously) – also Donleavy’s Singular Man. Working on my scripts. Also wrote a short story – Odalisque – about a teenager robbing her own “Christina-esque” boat. Can’t use it for English because Master Gwill hates “plot” on principle. Gives the highest grades to character studies & mood pieces. For him I wrote To Bed In the Afternoon dialog of a frigid woman with her doctor. Sunday into the city to see Pinter’s The Lover – excellently done.
Tues 5 Mar 68 Benson builds a new philosophy in Defense of Homosexuality – happens to be my philosophy as well. One caveat: “the freedom of the subjective person to do as he pleases is overruled by the freedom of the responsible person to do as me must.” Who’s subjective and who’s responsible? For that matter, who’s free.
Benson knows he’s in enemy territory so he follows every argument to infinity: no loose ends. Do women take to lesbianism the way men take to homosexuality or are men just appalling lovers? Take Craig Crawford for example. #1 he’s hideous, #2 he WANTS to be drunk. Any rational sexy girl would start to look good if you’d had too much of that. At the moment I can’t imagine ever wanting to bear children but who knows maybe someday … At the moment 69ing sounds impossible. (Casey & I discuss.)
Merrill writes she “spontaneously aborted” after a month of pregnancy. Depressed her. I hastily replied that since all Aallyn girls are built to be Earth Mothers so she need have no fear. I can see my senior thesis needs to be a “book report: What’s Out There”. They will downgrade me for not expressing my view but they would downgrade me more if I did express it so Lesser of Two Evils…
Wed 6 Mar 68 Wonder if I can sit in a chair for auditions. Dr Gilmour says not. Don’t know what to do with this lump of a body of mine. I should be taking dance EACH DAY. What if I recite my poem?
Got a full weekend permission, there’s a wonder (before lowering of the financial boom.) I have overdrawn 3 times!!! Think of all the starving children in Asia and I spent $4 on a bottle of hair conditioner.
Like to think I am free from all the ridiculous dating taboos like “girls can’t call boys” so I phoned Preston. He’s an unpolished diamond – delighted to speak to me. He’s tall, intelligent, sensitive, thin, witty, friendly, etc. Plans to go to Harvard, run for everything & rule the world. So what if he doesn’t actually attend to this school? The less he knows of me the better, considering what people around here seem to think.
1 AM Sat 9 Mar 68 Twelve hours and my Wretched Audition will be over with. Numb with Dread. Chances very strongly that they will hate me, I will hate them, we will hate each other. I don’t see how I can stand any more rules. But everyone tells me I have to audition at Juilliard so audition at Juilliard I weakly do. Preston and I discussed it thoroughly fifteen mins ago. Nice to have someone to confide in. I impulsively invited him to the operetta and he impulsively accepted. Will he fear being Managed, like Shawn and chafe at it sorely? Insist on “spontaneity” while my calendar goes soggy from disuse? We’ll bomb that bridge when we come to it.
Thinking about Devon all afternoon. “So sweetly cold, so deadly fair!!!” (Byron) Really stupid. It’s like those chicks fixating on the first beak they see.
Plumly – Sun 10 Mar 68 “A character’s recognition, through the force of circumstance of the truth about himself is one of the classic themes of comedy” Walter Allen, NY Times Book Review.
Me at Juilliard. Get ready to laugh. I panicked at the institutionality of it all. Don’t want a building; was hoping for an ocean or a green field. Got through the audition but they’re going to hate me. John Housman told me to “pretend I was in the shower” and I froze. What the hell did THAT mean? Well, I didn’t figure it out. Should I strip? I sang instead which I’m fairly certain is NOT what he meant.
Depression not helped by Preston’s inept kisses, his damp limp hand throughout Guys & Dolls. Everyone envious of us as a “beautiful couple” but I couldn’t get him to apply pressure. Uh oh. This bodes ill, ill, ill for everything else. In memory Shawn tears apart my Lurex stockings to kiss my blue-veined legs.
I looked good I have to say. I wore a gorgeous white and silver glittery dress, white stockings and white six-strap heels. The most glorious part of the entire evening was fleeing this lousy institution in his father’s car instead of returning to my sex-starved roommate (same gender as me!)
We wander in the park at 1 AM in parka & boots over party wear. Steam rising out of the ground looked like Fall of the House of Usher. I climbed the rock wall to the art museum while Preston stared at me. Alas, he is no fun. A mad-haired spectacle was I. He says my nerves look like Francis Scott Key’s flag which is probably right. But I was NOT in the mood for psychoanalysis. Will I survive this place? Because it is winning.
Thinking about Devon all afternoon. “So sweetly cold, so deadly fair!!!” (Byron) Really stupid. It’s like those chicks fixating on the first beak they see.
“A character’s recognition, through the force of circumstance of the truth about himself is one of the classic themes of comedy” Walter Allen, NY Times Book Review.
That’s me at Juilliard. Get ready to laugh. I panicked at the institutionality of it all. Don’t want a building; was hoping for an ocean or a green field. Got through the audition but they’re going to hate me. John Housman told me to “pretend I was in the shower” and I froze. What the hell did THAT mean? Well, I didn’t figure it out. Should I strip? I sang instead which I’m fairly certain is NOT what he meant.
Depression not helped by Preston’s inept kisses, his damp limp hand throughout Guys & Dolls. Everyone envious of us as a “beautiful couple” but I couldn’t get him to apply pressure. Uh oh. This bodes ill, ill, ill for everything else. In memory Shawn tears apart my Lurex stockings to kiss my blue-veined legs.
I looked good I have to say. I wore a gorgeous white and silver glittery dress, white stockings and white six-strap heels. The most glorious part of the entire evening was fleeing this lousy institution in his father’s car instead of returning to my sex-starved roommate (same sex as me!)
We wander in the park at 1 AM in parka & boots over party wear. Steam rising out of the ground looked like Fall of the House of Usher. I climbed the rock wall to the art museum while Preston stared at me. Alas, he is no fun. A mad-haired spectacle was I. He says my nerves look like Francis Scott Key’s flag which is probably right. But I was NOT in the mood for psychoanalysis. Will I survive this place? Because it is winning.
Preston said he liked the sound of my dress. At least. He brought me the candy bar that used to be my favorite. It no longer is.
Tues 12 Mar 68 It is SNOWING outside. Final proof the world’s gone mad. Yesterday so spring-like Casey & I played tennis. Sat I lay in the lower field coated with Bain de Soleil! Vibrating like a wire over second mug of gray coffee.
Thurs. 14 Mar 68 Last day before vacances and I seem to have a fever. Sore throat ripped by endless scream, ears popping, the works. Getting out of class the only benefit. So no date for me. (Word for the day: Nacré. Means mother of pearl. Oh so beautiful. )
No date, but perhaps champagne. Casey and I looked at this enormous bottle (a magnum) and decided it was just what the doctor ordered. Invited Rob Severn (English exchange student) and Bob Burke (black eyebrows, long golden hair from Kenya or someplace) down to the Greenwood to drink it with us. They said they’d be delighted. Smuggled it in a Gimbels shopping bag. It was gone in about 10 mins! (Very grapey stuff.) Did make me feel better however. Unfortunately Burke threw me to the ground, tried to drag me to a shed and stuck his hand right up under my turtleneck. We are in the same weight class: I successfully fought him off.
Severn offered to show him how to behave, I said “please” and he kissed me beautifully. Very nice. I was regretfully forced to tell him I had probably given him typhoid but it was thoughtful of him to risk it. He invited Casey into the shed; she went. Burke said he would like typhoid too. I had to say no. I guess I am not as starved as I thought I was.
Pewter Hill – Sun. Midnight 17 Mar 68 Just read my diary for ’67 instead of writing my Special Project paper. Nauseating. What a boring idiotic little child I was. Pathetic. There is anguish associated with diaries and no mistake. This poor body is one raw nerve. Preston came over last night, I was too weak to make the first move so No Move Was Made. Shouldn’t there be SOMETHING between fighting for your life and fainting from boredom?
Saw his Yeomen of the Guard last night – Preston a very fetching spear-carrier. We saw Closely Watched Trains, came home, made coffee & hamburgers. I told him he didn’t miss anything with the champagne. Was a movie about a shy boy’s fear of impotence the best possible choice? (The best thing about it: Czechs don’t use extras, they use people.) Tried to discuss film (did not like it as much as Loves of a Blonde) but could hear Mom & Dad humping upstairs. Probably working on some kind of manual the doctor gave them. Thanks folks. Preston obviously embarrassed left early.
I am doing a bunch of special projects – Harold Pinter, American Foreign Policy and Konrad Lorenz. Probably ought to be a way to blend these so I can write the same paper for each. How about a play about the Vietnam War performed by ducks?
Toiling on my poetry. Sneaking into the Tower at night to write poetry in black magic marker on the inside of the bathroom stalls. Something “cultural” to look at. (Mostly Millay and Frost but some John Lennon. Plus my Plumly poem sans attribution.) Krissy says everyone knows it’s me because my handwriting is so distinctive.
Verb-Corseted The French teacher sweeps The cherry blossoms from the tennis court (As she would like to sweep the cherries) French them soundly beneath Spiked shoes; printing red marks Like kisses On their half-grown thighs While headmistress Cello-breasted Measures with her thumb The Bath Wife’s heft; Polishes graffiti carved upon her Coffin in Chaucerian High English And the girls, Nun – white Nun – blue Soar above the soccer fields Foul-mouthed angels High on fetal wings; Anticipated ecstasy locked in narrow hope chests Ripened on amphetamines Free love Bad dreams.
1 Dec 67 Cheering letter from penpal Dell Rynehardt, the one who saw me at the Stratford play and asked for an introduction because I was so beautiful! Reading Territorial Imperative and On Aggression. Interesting. So glad to find a valid argument against the conditioned reflex.
Worry that I’m prostituting my mind in this place; Plumly Academy for Losers. My teachers may be well-meaning but they are trying to drag me down the wrong road. Their “good intentions” are dangerous for me. Reading Knut Hamsun’s Growth of the Soil for my “non American novel”. Good to be a senior: these days I do nothing but read which is all I ever did anyway.
Nothing human is alien to me, says Terence. Doesn’t need to be human from my point of view. Fri. study hall, I’m in the library studying for test on the Constitution. Can’t wait for THAT to be over. Casey and I off to dinner at Pewter Hill.
Wed 6 Dec 67 Back at Plumly. Bad birthday – me, Mom & Avril all endlessly menstruating. Auntie Beulah creaking like a shutter in a gusty wind, probably jealous that she can’t menstruate too. I admired Mom’s bracelet and she took it off and handed it to me in an annoyed way! I don’t want it like that!
Now I’m so high strung and bitchy these days it’s a wonder anyone can stand me. I bite my nails, claw my face, pick my hair and my hands shake. I trip over furniture. How will I make it till June? Prognosis: grim. I was SO looking forward to that Pewter Hill dinner, then missed two buses trying to get back to school. Mom kind but irritated underneath; I shot myself to pieces with mental recriminations.
Received two bad shocks; first; Brice Harbreath will be along on our Christmas ski vacation. Ugh. His lewdness & diseased morality seep a constant vicious poison and since he talks a good line about “freedom vs license” M & D don’t realize it. It’s one of those things where you can’t expose him without making yourself look bad. I know he will cling to me like a limpet. Ugh! That laugh! I shiver at the thought. And he dumps ME for being “sexually inadequate” because I wouldn’t take it for granted that all dates should end with a hand job! Ugh, ugh, ugh. “Frigid,” my foot!
Second shock; Mom offered me skis for my birthday and I said I didn’t need them. But when I reconsidered and said I thought new skis would be nice she snapped at me that I don’t need them! I thought it was my choice but guess not! “We’ll rent,” says Mom, “Or you can borrow from Devon.”
Devon the ski coach! That would be great. Put me on the wrong track with him from the start; I was counting on him to protect me from Brice. Hell. The real joke is I’m the only member of this family who can actually ski! (Owing solely to Devon.)
Thurs. 7 Dec 67 Six girls received the same KOB last night – only difference is name printed in block letters on the outside. Inside in crayon: DOESN’T IT SEEM RATHER FOOLISH TO LET YOUR PRIDE BRING YOU DOWN?” One glance and I knew it was Shawn Kobler. Proved it to Casey from his writing sample in my notebook. Everyone else thinks it refers to the Christmas dance; the demand that the guys dress up, buy flowers and act decent. I think the others are camouflage and I am the real target. He has a point, but I’m not admitting it, because sometimes pride is all there is. Was dozing through meeting when Shawn spoke up at the end about how emotion embarrasses everyone. People worry about “self-revelation.” That was brave! But I’m not going to the dance without a date and just “meeting” him there. I would rather go with a guy I DON’T LIKE. So there.
Reading The Man Who Was Thursday, which should definitely be called The Man Who Was Sunday.
Wed. 13 Dec 1967 Ate like a wolf at dinner – like a COVEN of wolves. What is to be done? Flirt with Blair Manteo till I saw Shawn staring at me. Decided to send him an “anonymous KOB” saying “Doesn’t it seem rather foolish to send anonymous KOBs?” Serves him right. But he already confessed to Aynsley so it would be beating a dead boyfriend.
D & M in Vietnam and I’ve heard nothing for 2 weeks. I SUPPOSE they’re all right. Just read the most appalling Newsweek – all they get out of Dr Zhivago, Bonnie & Clyde and Darling is the cut of the clothes.
Casey studying by the window. We were caught for Late Lights so have to study downstairs in the Monkey Cage. Discomfort (no tea) but plenty of company. This is a very Disrespectful Senior Class. Either that or it is unrealistic to expect ANYBODY to finish ANYTHING by 10 PM. Off to Girls’ Locker (to pee) I trip over Bob Burke & Susie Thomas all over the floor (and all over each other.) There may be snow on the ground but it’s spring in our hearts!
On my way back I trip over Renda Swayne & Bill Johnson Doing the Likewise. It’s enough to drive one into the Girls’ Parlor to watch TV with the Uglies and the Morally Fucked Up Council Robots.
I know what I want for Christmas. Print of Breughel’s Hunters in the Snow. As soon as the bell rings Casey and I are making soup.
Tues. 19 Dec 67 – Pewter Hill Advanced state of 20th cent rot clearly observable on Johnny Carson show. I give up and come upstairs. Told Dad I’m thinking I want to be an actress but worry I’m not pretty enough. He says, “Judith Anderson is an actress!”
Have you SEEN Judith Anderson? I have – (MacBeth.) Suicide is preferable. Thanks a lot, Dad!
THINGS ACCOMPLISHED IN THE LAST 3 DAYS: 1) Read Helen Bevington’s When Found Make a Verse of 2) Taught Avril 3 French Christmas carols 3) Took Phinney on 20 walks, brushed him, cleaned up 900 messes 4) Washed every dish I could not talk my way out of 5) Slept & ate continuously
Something’s got to give!
Fri 29 Dec 67 just after midnight – Pinkham Notch NH Past, present & future all mingle. Driving home from a party with Devon Duvall – he keeps kissing my hands. Can’t kiss mouths because we are laughing too hard.
“Goddam it” I say and he says, “What kind of pillow talk is that?”
The kind you have with someone who already has a girlfriend. (or 6.)
Luckily skiing is good for sexual frustration.
Mon. 1 Jan 68 My sex life has nowhere to go but up. My dreams have been INCREDIBLE!! Writhe & pant all night. Reading Achilles His Armor in between doses of The Decline & Fall of Practically Everybody. Wonder if my life will ever be a joke someday to somebody. Left the New Year’s Eve party (Brice kept asking if I was a virgin); faced the fact there would be neither sex or champagne to be had; donned my golden caftan and cleaned my room.
Ever been climbing stairs and you suddenly noticed what your body was doing and you couldn’t do it anymore? That’s what happened to me at the mountaintop, feeling cold and tired and hungry and I thought, what if I suddenly forget how to ski? Devon says beginners have to be taught not to sit on their heels – now the new racing theory is to sit on your heels, so NOBODY knows how to ski. And I don’t like things that work only when you DON’T think about them.
Wed 3 Jan 68 1:10 AM Nietzsche was surely right when he said of all the treasures life unearths, self-knowledge is the last. I am nowhere near it. Find other people a whole lot easier to understand. Mother speaks of auditions and my liver freezes but I was the one who suggested it! Do I want to be endlessly “inspected”? Seems so repulsive. Plus I hate hassle and Plumly is working my last nerve. Do I want to bothered while laboriously constructing my house of cards? Imposserous. Maybe I should join the Peace Corps or lock myself in a room and Write a Novel.
Somerset Maugham says only a writer is truly free and this book shows me how it can be done. As soon as I touch it I’m flushed back into the maelstrom and lost again.
Philosophically I am closest to Hindu. (Dr. Gilmour says I’m a mystic.) That right there separates me hopelessly from Devon who was raised a Hysterical Christian so now has a bad case of Borderline Religious Disorder. He says I’m a Pantheist which is NOT technically true since I believe in the supernatural. Metaphysics are the ONLY physics I have time for.
According to everybody I project confidence, which shows how blind everybody is. Avril told me she sees me rich & famous and herself a housewife married to a 9-5er. (She’s only 13.) She insists she has no talent, which I told her is UTTER BUNK. It’s the other way around: anything seen that young is a flashing pan for sure. Thurber obviously can’t draw and Basil Rathbone obviously can’t act but look at them!
The challenge always is to deepen the imagination.
Plumly Home for Incurables Mon 8 Jan 68 School station wagon met me at Paoli and I was back in jail in time for Vespers. We all bow our heads and I pray to Sredni Vashtar The Magnificent . She answers my prayer; I get an excellent letter from Devon saying how much he misses me! This boy shows promise! And another from penpal Dave saying he can’t find anyone as beautiful as me. Heheheh. He sounds so lovelorn you’d never guess he hasn’t seen me for four years! What a nut! I’m just friendly, I’m not actually encouraging him. Let’s hope he’s not some kind of a serial killer. Help!
In my jail cell complete with high chipped blue walls, iron bedstead and junk bureau I write a story called A Very Private Invasion. Spent a lot of time on it but now I can’t show it to anyone or use it for anything. It’s a fantasy about Devon and me after he gets killed by an avalanche (Heheheh.) It’s always a mistake to cross us writers.
Reading Unicorn can’t figure out why they rave about Iris Murdoch so. Hackneyed plot. Horribly afraid “they” would tell me “That’s the point! Isn’t it a gas!” It’s a gothic so I suppose I should be pleased. Still, literary criticism feels like a moving target.
Sat next to Master Gwill in meeting but didn’t have anything to say to him after. He’s so weird. What is he? Man? Woman? Floating hair? God only knows. Miss Cluny telling the whole junior class how REVOLTED she is by the IDEA of sex! And she’s like twenty-five! Should we be under the instruction of these mentally disabled people?
Casey playing Francoise Hardy. The minute she went to the Tower to take a shower I put on good old honest Stones.
Tues. 9 Jan 68 Last Fr I slept from 7;30 to ll:15 AM! I was so tired I wrote “combinining” instead of “combining” on my poster! Slept through dinner and study hall – Casey covered for me with Wienand. Wienand unscary these days – she has troubles of her own. Senior class pretty certain she left Miss Womrath (who has a broken leg) stuck in the dumbwaiter behind Senior Stairs for an hour and a half. On purpose! As who would not, if given half a chance?
Have to finish my five posters and do some French sentences but bed still looks inviting – as inviting as Plumly sheets will ever be when you’ve forgotten to pick up your laundry two weeks in a row.
College boards an oppressive seal upon my future. Seems a grubby deal with the affluent race. Couldn’t I go to Geneva instead? You know, where there are snows, storms & sailboats? Blame my father for teaching me to be a noncooperator with life and blame Chocolates for Breakfast for teaching me to be a noncooperator with my dad. A little reading is a dangerous thing and a LOT of reading is profoundly liberating. Someday I will be dead and everything I touched and loved will be dead. What will college boards matter then? I’d rather have a boxed set of “Complete Works” so I’d better get started. I love the smell of ink.
Finished Huxley’s Crome Yellow. A charming antique.
Tues. 16 Jan 68 Rather afraid of Colette. She is praised for her “humanity” but her impassivity doesn’t seem especially “human” to me. So the “corpse” of society has maggots! According to her, all relations between the sexes a disaster. Where is the perfect love of Joseph for Sidonie, of Sidonie for baby Sidonie? In her memoirs Colette’s more honest. I guess sometimes life doesn’t satisfy us by being as horrible as it has a right to be. Some salmon make it up the stream.
Fatally shocked Mrs. Liveright by telling her I don’t want to take college boards because I only want to apply to theatre schools. Thought she’s die right there. Now I have to prepare auditions – ugh – 5 pieces in all, 3 contemp & 2 classical. Wonder if they’ll let me be a man in Pinter’s The Caretaker. I don’t think it matters what sex he is.
Lovely letter from Devon worrying about whether we are soulmates! He’s always certain he’s missing some bus or other. I love his letters. Sweet, but confounding.
Thurs 18 Jan 68 Still shuddering from the spell of Colette. Chained to her mother’s fireside she heard the horses coming for her down the echoing road…what is the mystery? What is the secret? I try to get at it by writing a story, Death of a Great Actress. She basically wastes her deathbed trying to please her audience with one last show. Can’t submit it to any class so showed it to Toss Sheffield editor of the lit mag, ProSem. He says No. Why not a Real story about Real things like cows in a field? Shows me horrible photos of bums & train tracks. Says that’s art. I’m aghast. Is he reacting to being kicked off the Religious Life committee for his suggestion that a school bus parked sideways at a drive-in would be a Religious Outing? (He says he’s had his best orgasms – so far – in a school bus. Yet maintains he is a virgin.) Curses be upon them; their little gods are blind. The sooner I blow this dive the better.
Casey & I going into King of Prussia to see Genevieve and shop on Saturday. I will wear my new fur hat & muff and buy a poster of The Rolling Stones. Anything to break the ennui. In the evening, the faculty play, Importance of Being Earnest. I tried to talk senior play committee into Strindberg’s Dream Play; Shawn voted me down! He is still angry about that dance in the marble tunnels under the school where the eyes of glass-caged birds stare us down. There I dared to dance with Blair: girls meant to be “strictly monogamous” here. (Boys are a different story.) Shawn says out loud I only want to be an actress so my “beauty” will be admired. Find a way to turn THAT into an insult! Casey comes in wet and panting from swimming, says her senior project’s been approved. Hope mine will be.
Sat 20 Jan 68 Give me the earth! Give me the world! Will there ever be a book in which I am born on the first page and die on the last? Where if I wanted to know what will happen to me I can just read ahead? Rattling back in the station wagon I was stupid with desire.
Writing by candlelight on my desk’s dark blue blotter. Need to get to bed by one – 45 mins. Loafed hideously through study hall – did manage to finish Nick & Alex. Tried Gertrude Lawrence’s autobio but she is just too stupid – plucked every hair of her eyebrows and said “Darling” all the time ugh. Turned to Princess but got only as far as the annulment chapter before I realized she is just not leveling with us. All this “Dr. M” stuff. Dr. Mabuse? Sometimes there are things we won’t even admit to ourselves (Nietzsche says our own treasure is the last we dig up.)
Poor Alexandra – what did she get for her icons and prayers? Rasputin! “Sunny” was married to “Bloody Nicholas”! We should neither envy nor condemn. Human beings are poor wet butterflies crawling along the grass, flapping useless wings in terror. Marie at least seemed to know she was a broodmare. Poor Marie, bruised by her cloth of silver corsets. Poor Grand Duchesses unprotected by their diamond armor… at least I have my privacy. Seems so precious now!
20 short days we move into Pewter Hill! Can’t wait to sit at my desk at the top of the house watching dusk creep across the park! If the air is pregnant with snow I will have all that I need for Perfect Happiness.
Sun 5 Nov 67 Quite a weekend. Saw Pennebaker’s Don’t Look Back and Bonnie and Clyde the latter leading to a very unpleasant date with Vincent Plevins where he lay with his head in my lap for an hour and a half and sobbed about his childhood. I’m ashamed & horrified & planning to never mention it again – hoping he feels the same.
B & C is a work of art – Casey wept at the end – I controlled myself with Iron Will (I’m especially ugly when I cry.) Certainly puts the sting back into death. Warren Beatty forgot a couple times he wasn’t playing Splendor in the Grass but that woman who played Blanche was very good. Gnomish CW with his squirming mouth & elusive eyes. The film defies discussion. Violence turning people into animals. Master Gwill went on and on about guns being phallic symbols while I tried very hard not to listen.
Didn’t like the opening – just another naked dissatisfied blonde – but at least the love scenes were beautifully controlled. “Hollywood” was resisted. PM says no one will fall for “triumph over impotence” at the end. I’m not sure. Surely it represents their safety with each other rather than actual sex act. To me the most beautiful scene in the film is when Bonnie has “the blues” and Clyde puts his whole hand over her face. They need each other – love emanates from each desperate being.
None of us agreed on The Final Look. PM = “panic”. Jack B = “We’ve got to keep driving”. I think they said different things – Clyde = “it’s over” and Bonnie = “I’m here with you. We’ll die together.”
Master Gwill took us out for ice cream after the film but Jack couldn’t stop yammering. The Truth is SILENCE.
Fri play rehearsal was cancelled so I hitched a ride to Media Station with Lindles. After a brisk walk from the Queen Lane Station I arrived at the house at 5:45. Dad immediately shoved a glass of wine into my hand.
Matt Romer called me up – offered to drive me back and see Don’t Look Back. I really wanted to see it but Dan has taught me how miserable I can be with someone I don’t like. Still, Matt said a lot of kids were coming so I agreed. Hope Matt didn’t think I was avoiding him but I was. He asked why I was so silent: “Thinking about the movie.”
We were late getting back – had to call Casey to check me in. I’ve got to stop being honest and start to LIE she warns me. She is probably right since all I get for my honor is a pile of detens. James Cleland of Duke U in chapel for Vespers. He was adorable – he’s all for “individualizing” religion says they’re all the same anyway! He ruefully observed that the older you get the more you need it.
I think people over-estimate their own resiliency. B & C couldn’t see what they were getting into. We are never as free as we think we are. I used to not understand why people kill themselves when the world is so wonderful and you can always start over. But now I see it’s a question of the Rot – how far it has gotten. Once you have polluted your soul there may be no turning back.
Mon. 6 Nov 67 I tried to sleep. Finished Princess, checked a few references with N&A, then lay listening to the girls calling each other down the halls like lovebirds. The inner life of a private school. Closest to miserable depression today in quite awhile. My headache filed me with such agony my whole body shook. Recalling when M & D wouldn’t allow aspirin because “you don’t need to be all drugged up!” (They disapprove of throat drops also.)
Out on the courts my hands were beet red and would not hold a racket. Hit the ball your racket spins. Felt like an animal on a treadmill! Nasty tennis. Run around the courts – a bit better – back in my room for orange tea. Reading about the Trials of the Russian Aristocracy. They were a bunch of idiots who don’t know where money comes from, sad to say.
Tues. 7 Nov 67 50th anniversary of the Russian Revolution! I was timer at hockey giving me the opportunity to write two letters while sitting hunched in a blanket. Not a bad job. Any job that allows writing is a good job. Also details of Eisenhower’s visit (he landed his helicopter on the lawn!) including movies seen & books read. Etc etc. Acquitted self of All Social Obligation.
(Toss Sheffield asked Eisenhower what’s a soldier to do when asked to fight in an unjust war? Ex-Pres waffled.)
How I wished that I’d brought YOU. You wouldn’t think an old paper notebook could affect one’s life so profoundly, would you? Yet you have. For example, I can’t write letters unless I haven’t written here! Not only do I hate repeating myself – I don’t know what I think until I see it written HERE. Maybe what I need is a piece of carbon paper…Note to Self…
I remember being jealous of people who did NOT keep diaries I felt like such a slave. Breathed a sigh of relief as the SS France sailed past the statue of Liberty – certain I’d made my last entry ever. The Morocco diaries require an Iron Stomach to reread. But I spoke too soon – I was addicted! I have reached the supreme peak of egoism: nothing happens unless I write it down.
Wed. 8 Nov 67 Things never work out the way they are planned! This eve I was going to get so much done. Wash hair & set, do homework and reading. Instead I waste time talking to people. Suddenly got the idea for short story called To Bed In the Afternoon about a frigid woman. I tried to write it all down – typewriter ribbon all screwed up. I give her grandfather Granny’s bedroom, which I can clearly see.
Matt Romer playing Husband #2 calls up to ask me to help him with his part. Put him off – grabbed Eva La Gallienne’s autobio put myself under the hairdryer and start to read. Awful. Dull in the Extreme. Mom & Dad off to NYC to see Rosencrantz & Guildenstern are Dead the lucky devils. Nothing to show for 3 hrs but clean hair ad a foul temper. I could have worked on Christmas cards! When I break promises to myself I fear I am becoming flighty.
Miss Cluny gave me & Casey a pineapple that made our mouths bleed. Now I am struggling with the correspondence of Mrs Patrick Campbell & GB Shaw but I am having trouble keeping the 900 characters straight. They would rather scald their souls then open them to one another. Much fashionably empty Evelyn Waugh double-talk.
Sun 12 Nov 67 Getting upset over people. Hate to see Aynsley turning into a bigoted old lady but she is. At dorm meeting we all plead for unlimited late lights and faculty shoots it down every time. Aynsley sides with them! She snapped at me “You yourself have acted terrible after getting what you want” right in front of everyone! Uh oh! This is my roommate!
She told Casey she felt sorry for C if she roomed with me because I hadn’t “grown up.” Well I don’t plan to turn into Miss Womrath if that’s what growing up amounts to! I was just seething! Aynsley herself hasn’t an iota of personal discipline and always needs help to do her homework! (Which I don’t give her so she is constantly in Lindles’ or McKenzie’s rooms.)
Certain Sarah Lawrence won’t let her in Casey also is a slave to convention (she has nightmares about college entrance exams) – kowtowing frantically to the sadistic old women who run this place. Makes me burn to even TRY to please these old bags. But they won’t let me room by myself! Damn.
Tues 13 Nov 67 Senior Play went remarkably well (although my mother commented loudly that I had never held a broom in my life which is NOT TRUE.) Fun driving around Philly after though Far from the Madding Crowd no good. Terence Stamp couldn’t save it.
Today on the other hand was One of Those Days. Master Gwill insisted I rewrite my paper on The Lark misunderstanding every point I tried to make. (I thought it was funny to write my paper in the style of the play. He did not.) I don’t think I CAN write criticism. All his compliments were just sops to my disappointment. Had that awful, “I’m going to cry” feeling but I couldn’t get away from Master Gwill who kept stumbling after me still talking and making things worse.
Tried to excuse myself saying I’d had a rough day – more compliments emptier and emptier – God it was awful. He obviously thinks I’m a helpless birdbrain. I was 20 mins late to History but he gave me a note.
Everyone could tell I’d been crying! Awful. I am always morbidly ashamed and at war with myself after these outbursts. I guess I am insanely moody – one day all smiles and Tra la la the next deepest, darkest gloom. Guess I am too emotional to be a true intellectual. Maybe no creative person can look at reality in a dispassionate light. Why should we want to?
A journal such as this presents the ridiculous side of life much as I try to embroider & give it meaning. Success? Failure? Only I can solve this conundrum.
Thursday, 16 November 1967 Oh wherefore in my heart that was so hard hast thou these tender places made to come? (For Kip. From me, courtesy of Shakespeare.)
Senior Checkout in the New Gym. We stood around and bounced tennis balls while I thought, there must be more to life than this. Then we ran around the floor several times. If I had a scrap of honesty left in my being I would have walked out. But I’ve been too well indoctrinated. I gritted my teeth and thought, if I waited four years I can wait a half hour, but baby, mentally I’m already gone. In a Russian mood reading Clara Milich and Oblomov. Oblomov is delightful – the scenes between Zahar and his master make me laugh out loud.
Kip and I have been on a collision course for the past few months. We keep colliding, veering off, going to other people. I stopped answering Bloy’s letters so he wrote to the school to find out where I am! Then he wrote me a really angry letter. Then he sent me a picture of him and his girlfriend dressed up for a dance. She’s the exact opposite of me in every known human way, so you go figure it out. I’m ”off “ relationships right now.
Monday, 27 November 1967 English next period – quel nightmare. That is an all Herman Melville class – love him or leave him, with a teacher who does not allow a “careful disorderliness” about the enterprise.
Thanksgiving was wonderful. I gave thanks for my unorthodox family, my excellent education (I make up the deficits) my inquiring mind, interesting face and good figure. Avril and I went for a walk and locked ourselves out. I had to climb the rose trellis and get in the third-floor bathroom.
I decided to kill sentimentality and destroyed all my love-letters – even from Dan who wrote the best ones so far. Not Reed’s KOBs though – they’re not really about me but they’re too good on their own to destroy. I’m sure he didn’t even keep copies, just tossed them off in free verse.
I read the whole of To Die at Noone and Kip and Preston both “dropped in” to see what condition my condition was in – both unfortunately on the same night. So, it was duel a trois with neither of them wanting to be the first to leave and Kip talking about how he was going to Harvard early placement (wrestling scholarship) and trying to make Preston, who attends a high school so hopelessly progressive that they have no grades – feel bad.
Finally Kip had to go first because he had his father’s car (Preston takes train.) So I made out with Preston till about two in the morning as a kind of frustration-revenge-rage thing. He said he loved me and I liked hearing it, but I couldn’t honestly say it back. Reading Easty’s Method Acting. If I did things his way I’d go insane.
This is all I need: I’m in the infirmary with a fever and swollen glands. My throat making me super miserable! No sailing for me – parents suggested it instead of Parents’ Day. These blankets are so stingy; I have all the blankets they had in the blanket closet and still I’m shivering. Damn things are razor thin. It’s the same room I was in last time, The Alysse Aallyn Memorial Chamber. At least they have a bathtub (not that they let you use it enough.)
I used to visit Shawn here when he had his shin splints. Back when he loved me. Snuck in an Andrew Garve – pretty thin plot. Begged Nostrils to let me call Aynsley for a copy of Fathers and Sons. She gave me pills instead – there’s everything wrong with modern science in a nutshell. (One of the pills is a charming turquoise.) I’m sure the Russians could cure whatever I have. (Freud would not be a good idea for a swollen gland sufferer.)
Miss Wickersham in to say Shawn Kobler just arrived with a head injury from soccer! That boy is very accident prone. Will he open his eyes to find the year erased and think we are still dating! There’s a plot! When Miss Wickersham’s back was turned I used the office phone to call Mum – took some pleasure in alarming her. But I had to call because of the sailing. They don’t know what they’ll do now (I know. They’ll go sailing.) Avril has a boil she has to take penicillin for and they’re taking HER!
Now I’m too warm but that beats an arctic fit. I don’t even need a book I’m so busy wondering who Shawn will be when he wakes up. Jekyll? Hyde?
Fri. 20 Oct 67 Accidentally woke the nurse prowling around trying to find out what time it was (5 AM.) Mom called at ten said they decided to go sailing without me. (Natch.) Mom offered to take me to tea (“show me off” was how she put it) at the Annual Service Committee Meeting. I suppose Casey and I could go before the play. She invited us to spend the night but we GAVE to get back here at 11PM at the latest – it’s Halloween Parties – what with the Tunnels & the Crypt the world’s queerest entertainment. I’m going as a wart – which ought to be effortless considering my swollen glands.
Mom reported something weird – she USED that soap Robin sent me – it broke open and there’s a tiny switchblade inside! I begged her to SAVE it for me – she is dubious. Aren’t these illegal? It’s an inch long – press a button and the blade comes winging out. I won’t thank Robin but as he must have known I covet it tremendously. Avril was so taken with it she said, “Do we have to tell her?”
Slept all day – Nostrils is going off and Mrs. Wickersham coming on. Bazarov so pitiful in Fathers & Sons. Paul Petrovich is the most sympathetic character; very finely drawn. “He strolled as far as the end of the garden…lifted his gaze to the sky. But his fine dark eyes reflected only the glimmer of the stars. He was not born a romantic and his soul, so dry and elegant, passionate and misanthropic in the French way, was incapable of reverie.” Bravo!
Sun 22 Oct 67 Slept through Vespers and what everyone tells me was a very fine sermon by Dr Elton Trueblood. Up on dorm wrote some godawful poetry, read 10 p of one book and 7 of another, then into Casey’s room to bother her. She won’t allow herself to be bothered, however. So here I am back, night and day all fatally screwed up. McKenzie’s parents pointed me out to her and said I was “the most beautiful girl” on campus. Tell the photographers is all I can say. Photos look like Mt Rushmore in a light drizzle.
Thurs 26 Oct 67 Easy to become lethargic and apathetic in a system depending on routine. Master Gwill doing me the honor of treating me like an adult, shaking me out of my coma. Tells me he has never seen so much “natural talent” blah blah blah. Now I’m embarrassed about all the mean things I’ve said about him. (He likes Steinbeck! So bourgeois!)
He presented me with a ticket to see Marcel Marceau! He was a little crushed that I have already experienced this but OBVIOUSLY it will be different as that was YEARS AGO. I had to say I was seated behind a pillar at the Paris Opera and could barely see (although maybe that was Mme Butterfly.)
When they let me out of the infirmary I knew I had an excuse to miss dinner so I put on ski pants and a ski sweater, tied my hair back and walked all the way through Girls’ Bounds and Boys’ Bounds down to the farm. Climbed a dead-looking tree and watched the horses eat and the sun set. Cleared my eyes and lungs.
It occurred to me that it doesn’t matter who I am. As I sit in this tree I can be anybody! None of my failures or mistakes even matter because I don’t matter. What a relief! Felt I was in a state of grace. The pageant of the world’s beauty is the model of perfect giving.
Bible class just ending. We are reading The Great Divorce. “So why desire truth if the truth hurts?” asked Biff Withers who is the only person in this class who ever asks an intelligent question.
“Knowledge brings freedom and freedom is worth having” was the answer.
Uh oh! Don’t tell the slaves about freedom. You could see the restless stirring. I nearly stood up and cheered. But of course I didn’t!
I have far too much to read. 5 books in 2 weeks, 3 of them being over 300 p long. Insanity, that’s what it is! Rather read Polidori’s The Vampyre… Occasional flashes of Byron do come through, that magnificent pagan! He did become a sadistic, soulless, stupid fiend when in fact he was neither stupid nor soulless. Shows what can happen.
I feel in Byron lies the secret of the world’s malaise. Must steal him for Lord Noone. When he broke bottles on the ceiling of the room below his wife accouchement I was his forever. It’s the Bad Boy Problem.
Lindles came in and asked, “What’s that?” “I said, “Writer’s practice book”. “Are you writing about me?” “I am now!”
Fri. 27 Oct 67 Stunning day, warm for the end of Oct. I ought to be a) Sitting in my tree; or b) Fast asleep; c) Reading a ridiculously romantic novel and loving every minute of it
Instead here I am in 214 with have a red sign on my door so I can read and eat brownies in peace and quiet. Take 3 aspirin; make a pot of Imperial Gunpowder. I am Insanely Happy. There is a man-made pond about thirty yards away – I could sit here forever just watching the cows come to drink. Who knows what the future holds? At this very moment the Lord of the Manor’s son may spy me through his telescope and say, “Who IS that girl! I like the cut of her jib!”
Possibly dementia has set in. I promise to start work in JUST ONE MOMENT; first I must arrange clipboard, pens, pencils, Kleenex, script, all effluvia pertaining to my role. Also Master Gwill’s book on Method Acting. And an article on cinema verité stuffed into my mailbox by some kind hand.
Tomorrow: the City of Brotherly Love. Last year I enjoyed the Annual Meeting very much; wagering with my sister about the storms raging beneath the participants’ mute and painted masks.
Sun. 29 Oct 67 Just saw Paul Newman in Hud. Don’t think it proves anything we didn’t know before. PN sexy, certainly, in an undershirt. It must be awfully exhausting to continually play alcoholics! Note: women do NOT want someone to rip their dresses off, unless it’s under laboratory conditions with us running the experiment.
Beales used to say loneliness was being by yourself and having a plane pass overhead. I LOVE imagining the lives of others when they don’t know you’re looking in – don’t even know you exist. I’m quite a peeper as I drive thru the townhouse sections of Phila. Trying to write a poem about a man I saw wearing a blue turtleneck and standing under a Tiffany lamp. He was doing something with his hands – tearing up letters, I imagined.
Casey asked me if I wanted to know why didn’t I ring the doorbell? Because that would WRECK it, I said. She said, “You have a lot of inhibitions.” Taking her to my tree this afternoon to see if she can climb it. We’ll see who has inhibitions.
Casey and I stalk the streets of Phila in matching wool dresses, tights & hair bows. Tea with folks NOT FUN – they don’t like Casey and show it. They would like to believe everything bad about me is caused by Someone Else. (I’m sure Casey’s mother wishes to believe the same.) Homecoming magical, however. Love the pauses, the stares the silences. We did not talk about Dan!
Mon. 30 Oct 67 Just couldn’t manage Too Late In the Year – turned my poem into a story. I need to tell a story! I’ve got a first draft. Oddest sense when I’m writing that I’m telling my own future. You’d think I’d make it sparkly and happy like Casey’s stories but no – they end dreadfully – I can’t help myself. It’s Bluebeard’s wife, creeping along the corridor touching all the doorknobs. If she doesn’t open them she won’t really know. But of course, she does know. “Sus-tension.” That is what I’m looking for.
Halloween 1967 (Tuesday) You dear battered, war-scarred, dog-eared book: I love you so! I know I must have delusions of grandeur refusing to destroy any of these books I have written. Containing plenty of things I’m ashamed of! As I look through this particular book it seems far more comprehensible than the fifteen or so volumes that preceded it. Yet I could not possibly destroy these tear-stained annals, much as I would like to. They are as embarrassing as a friend who heard all the confidences of a long dead love affair yet remains certain of her welcome.
Not only journals but also stories, fantasies and ghastly, ghastly poems – each contain a seed that may someday sprout. Shall I someday sit at my desk, cynically accomplished yet utterly without ideas and chance upon one of these barely sane mementoes?
Asked Miss Cluny what she thought of Too Late in the Year. She said she read it twice over before going to sleep and “wants to discuss every word with me.” I must have blanched because she said, “Not to cut it up.” So she must have liked it.
Fifteen bucks for senior pictures! Sounds like highway robbery but I got the parents on the line. “Your father sends his love,” chirruped Mother, while I chomped hard on my cigar and said, “Hold the love and send the cash, sweetheart.”
Aynsley wants to room with Lindles and I want to room with Casey – everyone would be happy but little Hitler – Aka Miss Womrath – is giving us trouble. She thinks it is Very Bad for us Ever to get what we Want.
Wed. 1 Nov 67 Here I sit in Senior Play Rehearsal (Under Milkwood) bored to shriek point. Served ½ my deten this AM sweeping out the lakehouse & scrubbing canoes. Then ran around the lake (because why not?)
I am failing to get the measure of Mrs. Ogmore-Pritchard and wish I was a narrator like Toss Sheffield (Second Voice.) Master Gwill says he will work with me third period – ugh. I want to be very Freudian and invent something to account for her super-cleanliness but doubt if he’ll approve. I want to make it the grandfather’s and NOT the mother’s fault the way it usually is.
Halfway through Nicholas & Alexandra; so replete with echoes of sights seen & persons known I feel like I lived it myself. Nobody knew what was coming but they should have (Fr revolution.) Next will read Grand-Duchess Marie’s Education of a Princess. Translated from the Danish, I assume? Or would it be French at the end of her life?
Matt Romer just mounted the podium and delivered the most asinine speech about Taking the Play Seriously. That’s not the problem – the problem is stage fright. Half the class can’t get word out.
Have a disturbance detention – means I have to study downstairs in Collection – a frozen, brilliantly lit chamber littered with desks designed for pygmy mutants. Just as well – have a paper to write on The Great Rehearsal and I haven’t started it yet.
Here goes Matt with his Irish accent! Let’s just hope there are no Irish (or Welsh) people in the audience.
Master Gwill is taking Casey & Jack B., me & Matt to see Bonnie & Clyde! After reading Pauline Kael’s in the New Yorker I am so excited! (I like her a lot better than Bosley Crowther who relentlessly seizes the obvious.)
My personal feeling about novels, poems & plays is you get out of them who you are. They are mirrors. Alas at this institution Art is seized as a Chance to Indoctrinate the Faithless in Someone Else’s Opinion. Which if you don’t regurgitate on test you get a “Z” and are sent to: “The Principal for Punishment. The Whole Class Will Remain Three Hours After School…Silence!” (Miss Goggins.) I guess Kafka (who lived at HOME and worked in insurance) knew what he was talking about.
Mon 9 Oct 67 “It’s really true that nothing matters…in coconut grove.” Any coconut groves left in this weary world? My usual answer to depression is to plunge myself into reading – psychoanalysis this time – Jung & Freud.
Much more satisfying than poor Swinburne with his roster of pain& struggle. Novel I’m currently writing, To Die at Noone currently retitled As I Weave My Winding Sheet.
Tues. 10 Oct 67 I am going insane but I still don’t know whether I’m doing it on purpose or not. The thing I hate about insanity is its implication of weakness. Maybe it’s just my plan to get out of this place and be allowed to go home. I must be strong. I wouldn’t submit myself to Freud – I can’t imagine sharing the planet with any being who really knew me. Poor foolish girl with delusions of grandeur…
Depression can be so subtle you don’t know it’s over until it’s gone. Currently lying in bed allowing its waves to wash over me. Every one of my nerves has a thousand split ends. Someone dropped books in the hall in front of me and I just stood there and screamed. Wept in the most degrading fashion in front of an ever-enlarging series of sympathetic fossils. Pre-menstrual distress was decided upon. Miss Beeston offered sleeping pills!!! Didn’t accept – who knows what she would do to me once I was in a helpless condition. She’s the one rumored to have murdered her lover with a javelin during the 1936 Olympics. Miss Cluny offered psychiatric help (also refused.)
Master Gwill did one good and one bad thing today. He gave me a B+ on a paper I personally thought was trashy (Bad) and told me my writing showed “maturity”. (Good. There’s a new one.) As I Weave getting increasingly amaranthine soon to break down utterly. Alas. Simply don’t know how to manage transitions. Yet.
Still hoping to date (I never learn.) Don’t want to be alone forever. Aynsley and I not getting along very well – she’s going through a bad period too. It’s Quits Again with Mr. Handsome. Plus she finds my insomnia very hard to handle (I don’t like it either.) Climbed a tree the night of the Fall Dance (I had to get away from Simon somehow) and fell in love with a voice I heard up there. Don’t know who it was. I was very nice at the dance. (I even danced with Scooter Obie!)
Midnight, Fri 13 Oct 67 If this is unreadable do not blame poor Little Me. Drank coffee till my hands jazzed. Tues. night was an all time depression low. From that point one can only rise. Reading Freud’s life by Ernest Jones has given me “neurasthenia”. Split completely into two personae, one speaking and one pretending to listen. Master Gwill took one of us aside (but which one?) and told us not to waste our talents and wither away. We looked at him owl-eyed.
He told me to put on a “one woman show”. I don’t want to do THAT but it does suggest an Escape Route. Senior project at a Phila. Theatre would give me two weeks off! Must investigate.
Strange letter from Dan including one ticket to The Homecoming! Hmm…if I went who would I meet there? I sent him a cold letter saying you broke up with ME and demanding the other ticket.
Then called Mom all excited that I might be living at Pewter Hill during Senior Project I got a tart lecture about Changing My Ways and Not Roaming the Halls At Night. (But I’ll have my own floor!)
Came a cropper with Aynsley too who wants to “clean together”. Ugh! It is bad enough doing it all without someone watching me! (We already have white glove inspections!) How will I make it to June? I was hoping to get TB but it looks like that’s not going to happen. Uh oh, burned my finger with an illegal candle and serve me right.
Sun 15 Oct 67 Cured myself with a meal per to Philly where Casey and I saw Pinter’s magnificent Accident! Bogarde, Seyrig, York, Knox. What can I say! We were both overcome! Every scene was a mini-movie – the abandoned dining table. The broken car. Remaining in memory forever.
Master Gwill brought me a pile of theatre books. Yay! Realized even though I am not happy there is no reason to be depressed. Dinner with Casey at the Nichols’ (pizza) where she is babysitting.
11:40 PM Weird phone calls from “IBM Computer Research.” Both Aynsley and I talked to them till we got angry. Fishy. Suspect Dan’s roommates.
Mon. 16 Oct 67 3 gory chapters of Amos in Bible. Ripped up pregnant women, disturbed bones & general acts of O.T. vandalism. Feeling annoyed that this is presented to us as “philosophy”. Wrote my Bible paper on “Freedom & Discipline” about psychoanalysis and submitted it with considerable relish. Ha! We’ll see what he has to say about that!
Enjoying NY Times Book Review about Games People Play. Agreeing with Dr. Berne about behaviorism. Freud says “personal fulfillment” as a goal is naïve.
Try to talk about theatre with Master Gwill. He is rather slick and shallow and trying to maneuver me into a “liberal arts college” because “it is a very good thing.” Feel I’m being “indulged” so I can be “managed.” But he has the good idea of starting a hobby called Actors Seminar. I promised him I’d join.
Dan called me at lunch at his most pathetic. Promised to send the other ticket. Who would I go with? I said Casey, wouldn’t that be appropriate? His ex-girlfriends out for the evening together! He said only if we talk about him. I said that’s guaranteed. Hung up the phone to Dropped Jaws on Girls’ End. Am I a monster or a role model? Thoughts are divided – it is neck and neck with disapproval having a SLIGHT edge. Just the way I like it.
Reed and I teamed up in English together. I continually underestimate that boy but I think he underestimates himself. I was so afraid he’d sneer at my poetic talents but he performed my dialog with respect (he has yet to write his own.) And it’s about him! Still, he refuses to join Actors Seminar. We tried walking out of class together but we were out of step. Invited him to tea with my parents Parents Day if his aren’t coming. He says, “I hate tea.”
I said, “Now I remember.” He said, “You think it’s the cure for everything.” I said, “It is.” He said, “To each his own escape…” Uh oh. Is that a yes or no?
A Good Acting Exercise for Actors Seminar would be… a) show you love someone without speaking or touching them. b) Same; someone you’re uncomfortable with
Here’s my dialog: Girl: Persecuted recluse who likes to be nice to everyone in hopes of making friends. Plaintive. Boy: Young rebel caught up in the novelty of rebellion. Scene: The Varsity Hockey Field on Friday night. Girl’s attention drawn to Boy who is running around field whistling. G; Who’s that? B: What? G: Who are you, swooping around like that? B: It’s really fun. You should try it. G: Yes, but who are you? B: It’s only Clarence. G: Clarence do you feel all right? B: Yes. G: Then why are you swooping like that? B: Don’t call it swooping. Swooping is a coarse word. G: Oh, I’m sorry. It’s just the word that came to mind. B: If I don’t swoop it makes my head ache strangely. G: Maybe you should go to the infirmary. B: They can do nothing for me there. G: Oh well, then, I’ll leave you to you – B: Please don’t. Isn’t the moon wild tonight? G: You should see the lake! It looks like silver punch bowl of grape juice! And then when the moon went behind a cloud it looked like – I can’t remember what else it looked like. It was only seconds ago and yet I can’t remember. B: Maybe I should go look. G: No, it wouldn’t work. B: Why shouldn’t I look? I’ll go if you want. G: I’d rather swoop. (They swoop for a while.) G: I guess I just don’t have the technique. B: You look funny. G: Let’s go to the lake! B: No, it’s probably all gone by now. G: How could it be? B: Well, the part I didn’t tell you… G: Are you drunk? B: Have you ever seen a drunk person walk this straight? G: No. (They walk awhile.) G: I don’t feel right. It’s like we’re on different wavelengths. B: Or planets. G: You don’t seem all there. B: Is anybody all there? Don’t you find this place emotionally stifling? Every once in awhile you’ve just got to get away. G: I go for a lot of walks but I still feel chained down. B: Yeah, I know what you mean. G: I wish we could go to the top of the hill and just take off. B: Fly away! Yeah, yeah! G: I’m so glad you understand me. B: Isn’t it a groove? G: I’ve been looking all my life for someone to understand me. B: This is like The Early Show. I just want to have fun. I’m not one who wants to go around understanding people. This whole evening is starting to feel like a bad trip. I’ll take an 8×12 cell to a neurotic girl any day. (Girl bursts into tears.) END
Wed 18 Oct 67 Devouring Freud voraciously. I am on the last chapter. Now to The Interpretation of Dreams which I won’t rest until I read.
I had a dream myself last night. It was more of a nightmare. I was at a party wearing my RA t-shirt talking loudly about how much I hated Robin and how I never wanted to see him again. So when he emerged from the crowd I was frightened! He had a skull like death – his eyes were black pits – he was garishly made up with lots of rouge on his yellow-powdered face. His hair seemed stiff and dyed – I was terrified but I didn’t want to take back what I’d said. I backed right up into a closet – the last thing I saw was his arrestingly ugly face. He never spoke, touched me or changed expression – he was like a wax figure in a horror museum. The closet was very small with sliding doors like I used to have in my room at Brockton. Genevieve wrote “Alysse is a nothing” inside it for lack of a better insult.
I know the dream went on and on but I forget it at that point.
Interesting about closets! We played a lot of games in that closet and my memory – the smell of the wood, the shoes, etc – was perfect. I used to read The, Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe in there just in case…The dream reawakened the small and I can smell it right now.
According to Freud dreams are wish fulfillment. I don’t think so.
DREAM OF FREUD’S WOLFMAN
The window opens of its own accord. He’s catapulted forward; waked. Outside, the walnut tree is hung with wolves Each to its branch; they watch him
Blankly. Stillness has its Consequence. They are fat As lambs ready for castration; round As dogs; white as mother’s underdrawers.
Such tails! Thick tails Perked and listening! Blue snow rumples up the bedclothes; stiffens Into plaster. This sky leads nowhere.
The child’s eyes are frozen like the window They do not close; this tree Is butchered at the crown; it will Not grow.
The wind that frosts the room is welcome Stirring like a scream and like a scream It alters what it sees. The wolves levitate.
What they know the child Must discover.
By the way, now that I know what neurasthenia is, give me depression any day. Speaking of Freud Casey says Genevieve “resents” our mother. Like Electra! Must confess I love Mom a little more than Dad. Genevieve has always been the opposite.
Sat on the hearth in Dr. Gilmour’s East Room seminar, wild rain lashing and thrashing outside, my back to the dying fire, wearing one of my Scottish knit wool dresses, dreaming I was a little girl again wearing a white nightgown with Princess Alysse embroidered on the shoulder, when who should appear but Reed, wet from the rain, his skin glowing. Gave him my place. Have I wronged that boy? Everyone thinks so.
“Do I keep falling in love just for the kick of it, Stammering through the thin and the thick of it Hating each old, tired trick of it Know what I am? I’m good and sick of it!” (Sweet Charity.)
Senior pictures a frightful mistake. I really need someone else’s, but whose? Jean Harlow, by choice.
Gryphon – Gibson Island, Chesapeake – Sun 20 Aug 67
Read two books today – Edmundo Desnos Inconsolable Memories and CS Lewis’ Perelandra. I am out of everything I WANT to read and just grimly working my way through the ship’s collection till we get to a bookstore. I’m not used to being a thousand miles from the nearest library. I shouldn’t read so fast but when the books are bad this is what happens.
Dad and I had a long discussion about it over cocktails on the “ahfta-deck”. Dad says the Desnos book got very good reviews. Frankly, I’m surprised.
Desnos thinks he is daring when he is merely boring. His lack of thought about Castro is disappointing. His visit to Hemingway’s house should be a short story all by itself. Since the problem is development of ideas and tone, let’s blame the translation. If only they had used Mark Twain’s friend who translated For to Visit a Sick. Oh well. I am too hungry for amusement. I will be forced to write my own book if this keeps up. CS Lewis somewhat better. He can still make my jaw drop with his masterly artistry. I rate it above Screwtape Letters, which had a tendency to turn into a list of Pet Peeves. Unfortunately the plot is ludicrous and the characters incomprehensible. His philosophy is strange. Why hate the stage? He gets upset over people who don’t appreciate romance poetry – it’s the same damn thing. And why isn’t he a pacifist? Why bomb people you can’t see for the benefit of those you don’t know? What if they’re all a bunch of Satanists? Sounds a lot more dangerous spiritually than going to the theatre. When Weston begged for mercy Ransom smashed his face in then prayed for him! I also don’t like this theory that we would all be happy all day long frolicking in a Biblical kindergarten! We want to research and build – CS Lewis above all.
Waugh also hated pacifists and thought you would get in less trouble killing the wrong people than in refusing to kill at all. Weird.
66 Phillips St, Beacon Hill, Boston – 2:20 AM Wed 23 Aug 67 A most comfortable and peaceful morning in Genevieve & Kent’s apt. Genevieve went to sleep already because she has to get to her job at a dept. store candy counter in the city’s poorest section by 11:15 AM.
Kent and I do no work at all, we loaf around the apt and get into endless, pointless philosophical discussions. We are currently on What Forms the Personality. He maintains the tabula rasa theory – if I was Gen Westmoreland’s daughter I would be a rabid militaristic chauvinist. Oh, so there are no ideas that are more inherently correct than other ideas. Yes, of course there are. So dot dot dot. I draw in constant counter-examples from history – Frederick the Great’s flute playing son – which he can’t refute because he doesn’t know. He’s not used to people putting up this much of an argument apparently.
Genevieve seems well and happy. Kent is tender, imaginative and appears to care for her deeply. I can’t take “sides” – Mom thinks its hurtful to have a parent-less wedding – so she refused consent – Dad had to give it) and Genevieve thinks Mom treats casual guests better than the “trip” she laid on them that weekend. So who was wrong first? It does seem like parents are the chicken and kids are the eggs – therefore parents should keep what tempers they have.
I’m now lying on my pullout couch trying to read Romain Gary’s The Ski Bum. I think I understand him too well. Am trying to construct a Gary novel in my head that is more interesting than this one. It would have at least one murder and a lot of Simenonesque interrogations:
“How did you know he was a boy?” “From the way he walked.” “You are a very good witness. What was he wearing?” “I don’t remember.”
The sky is just starting to lighten. Discovered that if you step to the end of the hall and lift the screen you can climb right out to the wet roof.
I seem bothered by a lot of poltergeists, ghosts and flying saucers that never troubled me before. I’m afraid once they get a toehold they’re with you for good. Kent and I are 98% certain we saw a flying saucer over Boston Common. We gave chase it but it departed. (We may have been influenced by just seeing Those Magnificent Men in their Flying Machines.)
Her ghost, according to Genevieve, is an earring thief. Well, he could climb that tree and get right in is all I’m saying. I should write about Dan Devereux but I am becoming incoherent. Seems like I’ve seen a lot of sunrises lately. Junior Wells tomorrow night!
Approx. 1:30 AM Thurs, 31 Aug 67 I always consider it my fault if a date is not a success but some dates don’t give you much to work with. My date with Dan started out the worst possible way – I missed my train and was an hour late. Had to walk down Penn St to the Queen Lane station in black Vanellis and rust and green chiffon through the worst neighborhood you can possibly think of but nobody did anything worse than catcalling. Then because I’d missed the train had to sit in the station alone! On the Main Line end found Dan peering up the stairwell like a little boy – looking so cute. We played Botticelli in the cab on the way to the restaurant – it was his idea! I was JP Morgan and although he is pretty quick he didn’t get it. So I should like this guy – why don’t I? Is it because he dated Casey? Maybe I know him too well (third hand!) Keep having visions of his & Casey’s elbows & underpants flying!
The Tony George is a romantic restaurant with excellent food but we were almost alone – nobody came in. I am used to galloping in & out but we sat there at least 2 hours. I had clams, flounder stuffed with crabmeat and 5 cups of coffee. Anxiety poured off Dan – infecting me with its sticky mange – God knows why. Afterwards we walked along the river.
Finally showed up at the movie – Citizen Kane. I didn’t care for it because I didn’t like Kane. I feel the movie doesn’t want you to like him so ho hum. The sled thing is idiotic like the punch line of an endless shaggy dog story. Afterwards we went to Dan’s townhouse on Society Hill – it was built 1801 and he is very worked up about it as if it was just about to vanish. All I can say is, you can’t buy taste.
His parents and little sister were in bed. He fixed us both scotches but I said I preferred a gin and tonic. He said they were out! I will never get used to scotch. He worships John Coltrane, put on a record, took off his tie and unbuttoned his shirt. Men look much handsomer partially undressed. He has a very pretty chest. Then he started lecturing me about how I pick boys with no experience so I can dominate them. (Won’t Aiken be surprised to hear! )
I said I really don’t know what I’m searching for – I’m young and I’m playing it by ear. Then Dan told me awful things about Reed! Said I almost destroyed him! I said that CAN’T be true and brought up Marnie. No, no, no, says Dan she’s nothing. I’d be flattered if he wasn’t trying to actually make me feel bad. Shawn also supposedly loved me – now that I DON’T believe! Me – galumphing me! Apparently the more boys like a girl the more they try to destroy her . This is giving me a new perspective on things. I am out of patience with being “liked”.
Dan said I am eminently “watchable”. I explained how I danced all summer and am starting to feel like maybe I can actually do it. He couldn’t believe we cancaned for nuns! Life is strange. He talked me out of catching the 12:30 last train by saying he’d walk me from the all night trolley, got me a pair of his sister’s shirt and jeans and we went out to see the sunrise. (Mom and Dad not home – houseguests only. Why worry?) Rainy and overcast – no sunrise to see! So went to the Melrose Diner where we had steak for breakfast.
What with the trolley, subway and train situation we didn’t reach Penn St till 10:30 AM and everyone had gone. I made hamburgers for lunch then I sent Dan home, had a boiling hot bath and went to bed.
He held my hands ONCE and brushed my lips with his ONCE. This has to be part of a game. I wouldn’t expect anyone but you to believe it!! Houseguest Jeff came back – promised NEVER TO TELL – in fact to perjure his soul for me. Pretty sure he doesn’t believe nothing happened. However now Dan can tell everyone he spent the night with me!
Is 19 hours a “first date” record?
Mon 4 Sept 67 Dan’s and my second date began EXACTLY THE SAME WAY. This is the problem between Germantown and the Main Line – the two are meant Never to cross. Lost my contacts and couldn’t find them. Absolutely gone! So I was late.
Went to a restaurant called Café Lafitte of Drury Lane which I liked MUCH more than the first one. We sat practically in the fireplace! And this restaurant had people. Didn’t even make it to the movie.
I was surprised by how much I wanted Dan. This dating stuff is definitely thawing me. Also he won’t be at Plumly so it feels like a “get out jail free” card. Plus Dan is interesting. He describes himself as the “bastard son of a bastard son.” Says his father wanted to be F. Scott Fitzgerald but had to go into business so whatever choice Dan makes will be wrong.
We went back to his house for coffee – except I would rather have tea – and while he was making it I sat in an armchair so he couldn’t sit beside. He sat at my feet so I could admire his hair and his beautiful shoulders!
I said the summer had made me a little afraid of myself because I had a “problem” with a fellow student. He said when someone is lucky enough to date a girl as interesting as me it doesn’t matter if it doesn’t get physical! That was the right thing to say so I kissed him. He has just the littlest bit of halitosis. Too bad. He said even if I “threw him over” it would be worth it. Uh oh.
We had a marvelous time riding the subways and train home. We called each other Thomas and Virginia, spoke French and pretended to be a married couple having a tiff. I accused him of being homosexual and he accused me of sleeping with everyone I met. It was very funny. We fought about the children – who would get them – each trying to unload them on the other. So fun! He met mother and made outstanding conversation. She was very impressed. What shame I don’t like him more but the spark is wavering.
Kissed goodbye at the gate, then went upstairs to read the Romain Gary he gave me. He just loves Romain Gary.
He phoned this eve from Wisconsin said he sent me three letters and two cards! Said he’s writing me a haiku!
Finally saw Bryan Forbes’ superb The Whisperers. Had his wife & daughter in the cast! “Is there a part for me, darling?” “Well, as it happens…” Ideal family set up. Edith Evans very good. Strange letter from Shawn. He apologized for being “cynical and bitter”; then criticized Plumly’s “pettiness” and “superficial values”. Amen! I was getting all excited about having someone to talk to next year but he seems to think once you’re “close” you CAN’T date. Is this “stay away and just be my friend?” Confusing! I know I’m playing with fire dating Dan – he is bound to talk behind my back and mess me up with the senior boys. A problem when dating younger is considered déclassée. I want a boy who wants to date me, is self-confident, and isn’t afraid of me. Then maybe I can stop being afraid of myself.
Watched The Prisoner – excellent Guinness performance. Winning at cards with Kent & Genevieve.
1:30 AM Sat 9 Sept 67 Yet another Night Flight. If due to some totally unforeseen occurrence your oxygen mask should deploy, grab your neighbor’s knee and breathe normally.
Disgusting letter from Robin made me grit my teeth. “You know I love you & want the best for you Alysse.” I DON”T know that. When he’s trying to put on a big act he is EXCRUCIATING. Luckily he enclosed a pic of me among the can can girls which I will cherish forever.
Telling fake from real appears to be Life Job # 1 (think Hemingway said that.) Sent Robin a 4 p typed letter making it appear I am currently trying to decide between Dan & Shawn! Putting an end (I hope) to this misbegotten correspondence. I NEVER SAID ANYTHING THAT WASN’T THE TRUTH but I also didn’t expose my heart. It’s fun to pretend, isn’t it Robin? You’re pretending to be coy & manly & I am pretending to be a Wild Free Loner when I am just about to settle back in to Sensible Schoolgirl. Yecch.
I think what I really wanted him to know was he didn’t MAKE ONE BIT OF DIFFERENCE to my life. Malicious, eh? Also, NOT the truth. Alas, I must confess. Well, we never pass up the chance to do a little acting, do we Robin?
Went shopping Wed, bought 2 pairs earrings and a capacious suede bag. (Saleswoman did not know the meaning of “capacious.” She found out.) 2 pairs pattered stockings and a black tweed dress with huge white collar & cuffs! Big black patent leather belt. Pilgrim in a miniskirt! Perfect for Plumly! Also 1 pair John Romain shoes – $15. Now I’ve had it with shopping. I find I’m afraid to buy party clothes because it will look like I’m expecting to be asked to dances and I WON’T BE. Dan’s no use having graduated. Better keep my expectations low.
Aynsley called from airport 5:45 – I rushed to meet her. She is SO THIN, so pretty, so blonde, had a good summer, her Southern accent so thick you have to guess at every other word. Good to see her again. Talked ourselves hoarse – looking forward to friends – NOT looking forward to Miss Womrath. Looking forward to classes, NOT looking forward to Collection. Looking forward to Camp Suppers, NOT looking forward to Vespers. (Even though I can sit in senior balcony where we are encouraged to look down upon the heads of our inferiors.) Looking forward to senior coffee (anything beats the Spinal Drainings of a Dead Hippopotamus the underclassmen have to drink) & senior stairs – but checkout (gym) – NO. Mom & I took Aynsley to dinner at Inn of the Four Falls and saw the Fantasticks. Recognized one actress from the Plumly show. Seemed sappier somehow. Felt personally offended by Mom’s sneers about “romance”. How stupid children are and how they don’t know anything! And she’s supposed to be the ONLY happily married one of all my friends’ parents! Presents a grim future.
Fri. AM wakened at 10:30 AM by Dan! I was a sour crab! Agreed to date Sun night to see Junior Wells at the Trauma. I invited him to dinner. Lunch at the art museum with Uncle David who took me out to lunch. He is very entertaining. UNLIKE Dan Devereux who is raining letters & double entendre cards on me. I don’t quite like it. This is the most difficult part of dating – you want to “make an impression” but it’s also a game of tennis: how am I going to return all these serves? Much easier to rush off the court and hide in the woods.
Went to the dentist who made me cry. “Ooops, I hit a nerve.” I couldn’t stop crying from the sheer indignity of it! Maybe Novocain doesn’t work on me. Next time I’m getting gas. Face all swollen STILL as I sit here at the kitchen table with the house asleep.
Alysse Aallyn 