Category: Creativity

Inspired Pleasure
Diary of a Dancer/Poet/Official Girlfriend
```
    Ferry Sat 26 Aug 78
            Made the ferry with nine cars to spare.

    Plush Palace Thurs 31 Aug 78
            Three sets down. Tonight I’m asking Eddy for only
```
three days – it’s hard to be constantly here – like living in a soap opera.
No writing – been sending out query letters. Rod called – had the nerve
to lecture me on publishing, “If you want to play in their league, you have
to wear their uniform.” Deeply annoying – makes me want to bite him.
I refuse to wear anyone’s “uniform”. Back to the unspeakable Constance
Heaven book that is the only thing I brought.
```
    Thurs 8:30 PM 7 Sept 78
            Day spent in the mundane, pricing wicker at Pier 1 with
```
Avril. Lots I wanted but can’t afford. Bought mugs and plant.

7:47 PM Plush Palace – Sat 9 Sept 78
Dinner with Rod. He is handsome, rational, helpful,
kind and forgiving. Unfortunately, he’s also some unknown Third Sex, a
complete zygote. If he’s gay he’ll be the last to know. After three glasses
of wine I found the nerve to say he must have noticed we have no sex life. He
talked sententiously about how we’re both cautious, both been burned before,
give it time, etc – it sounded good, but I knew it wasn’t true. Something’s
wrong with him. The last months of his marriage he slept sexlessly in same
bed with his wife – at the very end her boyfriend even joined them! (Nobody did anything.) Strange and unhealthy.

We went to watch his friend, Zachary play guitar in a coffee-
house at Tyson’s Corners. Now there’s a guy with a noticeably sparking
electrical overload. I was turned on to him and he was turned on to me but of
course nobody did anything.

Rod was absolutely serene, probably didn’t even
notice. But would he even mind? I can’t mention it because Zachary is basically
a sewer rat. It is not a sign of emotional health to even consider counting coup
with this guy. Pity Rod’s so perfect. Waitresses gaze at us adoringly. Mom
and Dad would love him. Wakened this AM by postman thumping on door
with package – turned out to be twenty copies of Flatiron with my
Resurrectionist poem spread – I’m going to send every one of them out.
Makes such a perfect gift and peace offering I may order 20 more.
Reading Nathanel West’s horrific Miss Lonelyhearts.
```
    Plush Palace 6:10 PM Wed 13 Sept 78
            Mon Avril and I went to the play Mrs. Cheyney – it was 
```
excellent – then to the Apple Tree after to dance but the volume of turkeys pitched
up way too high. We made a wonderful evening anyway – picked up effortlessly
right where we left off – complete with psychic communication like imperfectly
sundered Siamese twins. Then off to Rod’s in my black satin suit – he had a
bottle of champagne to celebrate Farrar, Straus & Giroux wanting to see my
novel (I know better than to celebrate a thing like that.)
```
    2:25 PM Thurs 14 Sept 78
            Wonderful letter from Devon affirming and reaffirming 
```
his love. Very healing. Asked to keep the photo I sent him of us when I was seventeen. Described me as “majestic, mature.” Ooooo. Reading Gore Vidal’s
Edgar Box stories.

Difficult letter from Mom. She doesn’t seem to realize she can’t “win”. Her will cannot prevail. If she keeps insisting we will only become more alienated. Good diet day – eggs, grapefruit, almonds. No booze. Lots of water.
```
    Powder Mill Road 20 Sept 78 2:00 PM
            Avril and I met for drinks and steaks, then to White Flint Mall
```
to see Rituals. Hal Holbrook surprisingly good. Trying to read The World of Somerset Maugham in bed – fell asleep at 11 – didn’t wake till nine!
Finished letter to Genevieve answering hers in which she
lectured me on wearing “tight pants”.

Groomed dogs, dishes, vacuuming. Sent Flatiron around – wrote letter to D. Re-read Mimsey. I think it’s a little gem but
can’t be pried out of its’ setting without destruction. Maybe I should send
it around anyway, even though it’s so short. Also found old MS of Secrets –
not bad. But the real eye opener was my writing teacher’s horrible editing –
suggested I change “opaque” to “grey green” – “pressed her eye against
the window” instead of “applied her eye”, which is what I had. Ugh and shiver. Counted up bills. Tight. I hate hand-to-mouthing. So will sell stock. Zachary
told Rod he is attracted to me. I don’t know where that will go – it surprised me.
He is ballsy. See them both at tonight’s party.
```
    Tues 26 Sept 78
            Strange party. Lots of people.  Zachary was there, 
```
visibly lusting. Rod seemed perfectly comfortable about Zachary and me.
He is the weirdest ever. Repressed gay? Asexual? Pod person? Put his arms
around us both. Z very effusive – he is “onstage” all the time. I stopped
myself from saying, “Show everybody your appendectomy scar.” Let him
reveal himself. What do I care? He produced dope but no one got high.
Rod told me I should allow Z to satisfy me – use upstairs bedroom. (Probably
wired for sound.) I was not happy with that – made him follow me home instead.
Good sex, but he hung around till 1. It’s true he made me breakfast – a delicious omelet. But it’s always a mistake to bring them home. When Rod called, Z was still here. That was uncomfortable for me – Rod said relax about it. Stock at 16 so
really can’t sell. Told Marc to watch it for a week but I will be needing the
money. Must unplug phone and work.

Quarter to 7 – Worked on childhood stuff till tension got too
much. Plugged phone back in, dinner, read NY Review of Books. Exercised
dogs. Went to library – got bio Hart Crane – a nice big one – bought huge
desk calendar for planning.

Plush Palace 27 Sept Wed 78
Sitting in dressing room all suited up, breasts taped up into
vertical position – might as well scribble. Good diet – yogurt, plums, apples,
eggs, tuna. Wrote. Scared I’ll arrive at p. 100 and be “finished” – pushed
thought away. Avril called upset – el Diablo died and she missed an exam.
I went to pick her up. She has date tonight with Mystery Man. I am reading
about Hart Crane’s relationship with his parents. Too familiar for comfort.
11:45 PM
Interesting night. My lighter schedule helps me have more
fun with the other dancers – I don’t feel so invaded by them. Avril phoned
about date. Fifty-fifty, she rated it. That’s not very good.
Letter from Devon inviting me up for Oct. I was amazed –
made reservations for Concord Inn. Went to see Claudia Weill’s Girlfriends
with A. We liked it – seemed extra poignant since Opal had to “drop” us
rapacious females on her remarriage.

Then to Warehouse to hear Z sing. Surprise – he was
tense to see me! His throat closed up. Finally sheer professionalism
carried him through – everyone seemed impressed. He never looked
straight at me but I could tell he was watching me out of the corner of his
eye – he flinched at my slightest movement. Flattering? Or scary? I don’t
know. I’m trying to feel flattered – why assume responsibility for everything? Shoulders and Peter P showed up with girlfriends – hello –
big surprise – all exchange new phone numbers. Everyone friendly. Avril
charmed by Shoulders all over again – said she didn’t think that girlfriend
looked serious.

Z descended from stage – I could tell he was having a
battle – should he be “aloof” like a “real performer” or effusive with me?
My unwillingness to seem needy saved us both – I was cool. He asked privately
if he could “stop by” I said yes. Could have kicked myself later.
Shadonna called – asked me to do a double. I forced myself to say no.
```
    Fri Oct 6 – 1:35 PM
            Who should come into the club but Rick Marl – he 
```
said he had just seen Ryder and Ryder told him things between us were
“still the same”!!! I haven’t spoken to R in weeks! Told Rick that. Rick
then showed a desire to “move in” on me – I didn’t squash it. Told him
“call me.” Starting to think the time for “instant honesty” in relationships
is passed. It’s way too dangerous. Make them earn the right for a tour
of my insides. A and I saw Steve Martin last night at College Park.
He skewers the Ryders of this world pretty brilliantly I thought. Specially
loved the skit where he feels “responsible” for his girlfriend’s death.
He shot her when she became annoying.

Fight with Zachary over sex – he thinks – I “take too
long to satisfy.” I was so annoyed I left at 3 in the morning to go to A’s
place. When I came back he was gone – left a note – “in your absence
your odds improve” in his odd little precise architect’s handwriting. Bastard.
He obviously doesn’t mean my odds of being satisfied. He thinks he’s such
hot stuff. He’s performing at The Mistral this weekend.
```
    10:35 PM Tues night 10 Oct 78
            Stock sold. There’s six months rent. Or I could go to 
```
England (I don’t give up easily.) Instead I do a little fun winterizing – new
electric blanket and bathroom rug. I’m enmeshed in an ego problem with
Zachary – this is the “hedonism” Dad is always worried about. I only want
to see him once a week for sex but my ego demands he fall in love with me.
He has invited me Home to Meet the Parents so perhaps I’ve succeeded.
Very handsome unkempt hunk at the club invited me to see him race his
motorcycle in Fredericksburg. This is a tempting piece of Americana I don’t
think I can refuse. He’s just a gorgeous mud puppy.

Spent $17 at the post office sending copies of To Drown
In Air around. Seemed like a lot to me. It’s not just men I’m jumping between.
Reading both Russell Kirk’s unctuous book on Eliot and Ross MacDonald.
Much prefer the latter: I’ll return to him now.
```
Sat 4 PM 14 Oct 78
        How did I get myself into a situation with men calling all
```
the time? It is supposed to be a girl’s fondest dream – in fact it is hell.
I am unplugging the phone for long stretches and not telling them either
or they might be tempted to come over. As Zachary did yesterday –
we ended up sixty-nining on sofa – I admit it was his best sex yet.
```
        Mon 11 PM 16 Oct 78
        Avril and I drove to Fredericksburg for the unkempt 
```
hunk’s race – gorgeous weather – spectators everywhere and I had a hard
time finding a place to park – then a guy in a blue and yellow racing outfit
and helmet appeared and banged on the hood of my car. I thought it was
someone telling me I couldn’t park there but it was Buck and I hadn’t
recognized him. So handsome!

The race was just about to start – he had a party of five or
six people to cheer him on. I didn’t quite get the names – we had to rush out
onto the course. Buck got a good start but his bike went wrong twice – once
he did a spectacular flip and it came down right on top of him. Brady, his friend,
said, “that happens all the time.” Buck was unhurt but had to leave the race.
He seemed relaxed about failure – opened a cooler – gave us all roast beef
sandwiches he had made himself and beer. (I hate beer.) was busily
finding out that Brady’s “unattached”. He’s a big shy handsome lunk too.
Buck put his arms around me and gave me a big hug – told me now I have
to come watch a better race. Ah, the fantasy – the mystery of Buck – who
is he and what is he – taking fire in me. Big, strong, unthreatened,
unthreatening male, bursting with muscles and apparently emotionally
undamaged by life. Why not horses, farm, children with such a one as this?
Could I get so lucky?

I cooked dinner for Avril – liver, onions, mushrooms, rice.
Plenty of bourbon. Still need to go to bed early. Colored and conditioned
my hair and wrote letters.
```
Powder Mill Road Wed – 18 Oct 78
        No poetry - Too much going on – I’m longing for my 
```
hermit days. I think: I ought to be able to date. I ought to be able to have
a little sex, a little love, a little affection – but what a can of worms!
Instantly it spins out of control! I thought Buck might show up at the
club – and indeed he did – after obviously making a special effort with
his appearance. Tight leather jacket, blond hair all puffed out, face
glowing. It was just like a date – only with me dancing onstage. He
stayed 2 and 1/2 hrs – I gave him my standard lecture about not
wasting his life hanging out there – come in say hi and leave. One
beer. Before I finished he said, What are you doing Fri night? I said,
“going out with you.” When I got home Rick called – spying for Ryder
I have no doubt. But I had to tell him I am booked solid through the 30th.
Truth to God.
```
    Powder Mill Rd Thurs 19 Oct 78
            Still balancing thank God. Had lunch with dancer 
```
Yvonne – she said she still wakes up having screaming nightmares
about Warren (he was killed in a car accident. Faced smashed in by a
coke bottle he was drinking at the time. He bled to death.) At least
I don’t have those worries. I sleep like a baby. Worked on costumes.
Waiting for Avril to go with me to Interiors. Reread
my stuff. Think there’s a great deal to be said for the short, short novel.
Maybe encapsulate them into short stories? But no money there.
I remain unappreciated because of refusal to hook
up with some “movement”. Drown rejected. Started dividing the novel into geographical locations – Hooks Lane, Paradise Road. Would make
good short stories.
11:30 PM
Awful, awful night. Dancing badly, shoes broke. Rushed
out and bought another pair in my break. Pasties fell off – carpet tape
of inferior quality or possibly I sweat too much.
```
    12:15 PM Oct 23
            Sitting by phone feeling illogical joy.  Wonderful date 
```
with Buck – restaurant with lots of wood and Tiffany lamps – just a
pleasant, free-flowing conversation. No sex at the end – hug and kiss
in doorway. “May I call you?’ I told him yes – invited him to be my date
Nov 5 at Shadonna’s wedding. He said he would.
```
    Fri 27 Oct 78
            Concord, Mass – the grave of Nathan Bond.&nbsp; 
```
Seems a good place to write – sitting on a gravestone in the sunlight.
So, what was last night like? I arrive to the theology college and another
student goes up to get Devon – I overhear him say “There’s a very
good looking girl here to see you and I mean very good looking.” He
came down looking so different with a new silky beard – exclaimed over
and over again about my gorgeousness. We went up to his room and
were making out on his narrow plank of a bed when the radio played Ambrosia
– How much I Feel. Too much for me! Started to cry and lost a lens!

Now Devon thinks I’m a psycho – which I am. Luckily (for him) and sadly
for me psychos are his specialty. Wish he wasn’t so unctuous about it.
When he attacked me with those eyes I had to get myself a drink – broke
out in shivers and hives – thought I was must black out. He was talking
in general ways about what he wants out of life – he seems to be expressing
fear he can’t find someone better than me. I did my best to get him back
to specifics – even saying a woman can’t propose to a man (Well she could,
but if she proposed to this man she’s never hold him.)

Obviously, he loves me. That question answered. But
there are more. But as much as I deserve? Seems like not. He’s incapable
of making the kind of statement I need him to make. He wants to get a clinical psychology degree and he hinted that I wouldn’t be such a disaster as wife
to a psychologist. (Flattering?)

I told him he has a fear of “emotional success” and
he agreed. He astonished me by making passionate love to me – I didn’t
have to do a thing (other than wear my short pink gauze peasant blouse
and the denim gauchos that show my bellybutton) – he couldn’t get my
clothes off fast enough. Very satisfying – wasn’t an inch of my body
he didn’t kiss – including my heels. I told him my heels had never been
kissed before – so he kissed them again – also sought out all the other
unkissed places. I do feel satisfied for at least a century. We went out
to a Greek restaurant for dinner, then to see The Deer Hunter. Powerful
movie. Crazy, just like life. Christopher Walken lovely.

Drove to Concord in pouring rain. Inn is no Night
at the Plaza – more like Early Hardy Boys. Read Violet Clay before
falling asleep. Dinner tonight with my cousin Tory – pumping him
about Hill School experiences to use in Paradise Road. Buy some
wine for tonight and celebrate my own existence.
```
    G’s place – NYC – Central Park West – 30 Oct 78
            Why do I do this to myself – visit Genevieve?&nbsp; 
```
I just realized the mirror in her hall is a fat mirror. I did eat a lot of
junk food on this trip but I don’t believe I look this bad. On top of that,
Genevieve’s life is a fat mirror to my life – that’s the truth. We just saw
Chabrol’s Violette – we both have a pash for him – but agreed this is not
his best – plus the only Chabrol we know of with absolutely no romantic
elements. It’s probably something I will end up thinking about a lot – and
rewriting in my head – so maybe it’s Ok after all. Wrote a poem for Devon
– Practice Cuts.

Practice Cuts

The dead gush cruelly after dying;
High time to change &
Get religion
Have yogic visions
See god or be a nun
That would be a self worth knowing.
Time is gunning for me
I can feel arthritic fingers
Scrabbling at my dreams
Playing the old tunes but
scratchier, less sensitive.
I’m a body in search of a car wreck
A crime scene consubstantial;
The old deus ex machina
Disaster;
Blood is so good
At erasing uncertainty
Bringing back
A taste for life.
Reduce me, silence
To the essential bones
Of my non essential self
Fortify some other ego
Mine is tired;
Peel from my eyes the thickened skin of grief
Unstop my ears from the dust of
My own consequence
Free my feet from the sharpened judging splinters
For life passes from my like a fever in which
I cry out and cry out and yet
No sound is made
Time to head on out
Like the tide &
Cauterize
the woof-warp of a pattern
So plain that even I can see it.
Teach me not to envy
The gulls their mirrored flight
unmeasured like my own
Reduce me to
unbending bones of my
Essential self
the dark sister;
she
The soul I was
before
I became me.
```
            Can’t turn it into a presentable poem – however, 
```
it did make me feel better writing it. I guess I don’t like being Devon’s
flirtation with damnation. Writing really is the best revenge.
```
    Plush Palace – Thurs 2 Nov 78 8:30 PM
            GiGi’s last night onstage.  She is very down. Charlie
```
is making her quit because “no wife of mine blah-blah-blah.” Eddy says
she’ll be back: can’t find these perks in any other job. I am dancing well.
Apparently, no one but me realizes how fat I’ve gotten.

Both a good and a bad day today. Worked hard on
Gift and Drown – sending out query letters – took pkgs to post office only
to be told a MS has to be bound to go mss rate. I made them look it up
in the manual so I won’t have to go through this again.

They treated me like this must be personal – I’m
trying to “catch” them in mistakes – forgetting I’m the customer entitled
to service who doesn’t want to pay extra for no reason at all. And the
book spells out what services I get – in case they forget. Apology
letter from Tory: his girlfriend “out of line” to be so jealous during our
paella dinner. She did seem strange but since she’s an artist I didn’t
question. I respond with a short note saying I think my questions were
just too personal for her ears so I really cannot blame her.
Reading Edmund Wilson’s life like watching a slow-
motion car wreck – horrible man.
```
    3PM Sat 4 Nov 78
            Trouble bouncing back from the most recent 
```
rejection of Gift. Wouldn’t be so bad if I felt they actually read it. My
agent compares me to Mallarmé – trouble is, no one likes Mallarmé.
My bank has charged me $24 for being $1.70 short on a check.
They did the same thing to Avril – since she has a $6,000 savings account,
she figures she’s paying them to lend out her money at 18% interest. And
whoever you talk to turns out to be a computer.
Buck and I are having a very interesting relationship.
I can hardly believe it’s happening. There’s no bickering over unmet needs –
it’s very restful. Sex could be a potentially explosive problem area –
can’t tell yet – so far so good – I think he’s a learner claiming a lot more
experience than he’s got. There are definitely problems associated with
having sex with a person who is obsessed with speed.

My period started today and it seems cruel to task a
beginner with this issue. At least Buck goes down nobly like Jacques
Cousteau. But he’s not much of a talker. The most amusing aspect is
how we’ve settled down socially – we have a lot of fun around other
people. I am contemplating writing a story called The Official Girlfriend
which will treat this from a sociological perspective. Tomorrow we are
meeting his parents at a restaurant – I hope its dark in there because
they are bound to think I am too old for him. Naturally we are keeping
my job a deep dark secret – I have to be a “hostess” which really blows.
A week from tomorrow he has another race – we’ll take a picnic. I love
these outings.

Plus Avril’s really getting along with Buck’s buddy Brady
– definite prospects of a dating foursome. Unfortunately, Brady left his wife
like two minutes ago and is not what you’d call “fully detached” as yet.
Fortunately: no kids.

Sun 11:15 PM Buck amazed me by confessing that
every time before he sees me he is “sick to his stomach” with worry
that he won’t come up to my expectations. I am a “high status date” and
all his friends are waiting for him to stumble. But then when we’re together
he says he just relaxes and we have a great time. I was really touched by
this. It is nice that in the car mechanic’s world dating an exotic dancer is
high status. I prefer that to being the Shameful Secret which I assume I
was in Rod’s world.

Next week I’m supposedly seeing Zachary twice –
haven’t told Buck – why am I doing this? Insurance? I think I don’t like
Zachary. Am I competitive – is it just thrilling to see him come off the stage
and touch me intimately? (Everyone’s jealous – the men as much as the
women. Rod wants Zachary more than he wants me I think.) But actually
I don’t like Zachary. The trouble with canceling is then it would be just
Buck and me. Me and Buck. Going steady.
```
    12:30 PM Mon 6 Nov 78
            Bizarrely warm day. Had a wonderful time yesterday 
```
at Shadonna’s wedding. Buck wore a marvelous blue suit with blue
suede patches. It was indescribable – sort of like country singer
performance-wear, and with his wispy moustaches and his motorcycle
boots I’m telling you he was a sight to behold. I wore my “slit to there”
diamanté rainbow dress and we danced for hours. Nobody paid us any
attention. We didn’t stand out at all, that’s what I’m telling you.
```
    Plush Palace – Tues – 9:35 PM 7 Nov 78
            Avril said to me this afternoon, “My life is completely 
```
out of control and I don’t care.” She has to drive Brady to his in-laws to
pick up his clothes today because his wife took the car. There’s bound to
be a glorious, satisfying, soap opera scene with a lot of screaming and
object throwing – just like there was the time she helped him extract his
clothes from his wife’s apartment. On top of this Brady is apparently
extremely jealous – in spite of the fact that he’s technically married and
she isn’t. She is seriously thinking of inviting him to Thanksgiving
because he won’t believe that she’s not secretly meeting a beau –
or six! However, he showers her with love, attention and sexual worship
so she says it’s worth every minute of it.

Went out last night with Zachary – we had a sandwich
and drink at Booeymonger’s and saw Animal House. He was driving his
mother’s car. He is assembling a band called Prairie Dust and he’s in
some kind of power struggle with the lead singer who is female. He needs
to be the prettiest person in any band. He says Rod – playing Daddy Big
Bucks – foisted her on him. Because Rod works in radio and is paying
for the tape mix he has Zachary right where he wants him. (She is a
fantastic singer.) Rod might just find his mojo after all.
Following the movie, I finally met the parents – now
that there’s no point in it. Got along like a house on fire with his Dad
because I knew all the obscure Giraudoux plays he had framed posters
of on his wall. I quoted: “And the sewers will be fragrant with jasmine…”
which was my line in Madwoman of Chaillot. I could tell I was a
considerable cut above the street people and space chicks Zachary
usually drags home.

They must be worried as hell that he’s gay – his
room is full of what can only be described as pinup pictures of himself.
Little do they know it’s worse than that – he’s into anything that would
be into him. Bestiality would be frankly appraised on its merits. “Is it a good
looking chicken?”) House full of unbelievably beautiful, unbelievably
uncomfortable furniture – striped satin Empire sofas – stained glass
windows – wrought iron candelabras – that sort of thing. His mother very wary – fiercely Catholic – thin with a long blonde pony-tail and a long horsey face –
but actually quite intelligent and attractive.

Zachary’s room is full of crosses and Gonzaga
pennants – I should have realized this boy has all the earmarks of being
terminally mauled by priests. Parents frantic: when will he get a “real” job.
College was such an unpleasant experience all shudder when it’s mentioned
and no one’s willing to discuss it. I’m betting drugs were involved.

Of course Zachary wanted to have sex in his narrow
twin bed – right beneath the picture of “The Holy Father” (he doesn’t even
have a lock on the door!) and I have to admit I found the Chabrolesque
aspects of the situation arousing. He seemed to lose track of the fact that
it was me – but his orgasms were more explosive than ever.
So there I am again; “The Official Girlfriend.”

Could I put an ad in the paper – some kind of specialized escort service? “Impress
your friends – terrify your parents!” Buck doesn’t know about Zachary and
since I don’t care who else Z does he must realize I’ve got a back burner
– but the truth of it is that between the two of them they’re barely one boyfriend.
One is charming, affectionate, trustworthy and dumb as ditchwater; the
other is upper class, complicated, interesting, artistic, totally untrustworthy
(and most likely a male whore.) It’s a damn shame it has to get like this. I
just don’t know how good at “keeping secrets” I can be. Need to go home
and get some sleep. If have to get down to Funkytown one more time tonight I
won’t be answerable for the consequences.
January 20, 2023
Inspired Pleasure
Diary of a Dancer/Daughter/Poet
```
            Thurs Aug 10 -78 – 5:30 PM
            Feeling happy and serene – it’s been the loveliest visit.  
```
Many bike rides and explorations. Lovely dinner last night at the cottage – Devon asking Dad a lot of questions – then we lay in each other’s arms at the Barnacle
and he said Time to Discuss Our Relationship. Said “some French girl” dumped
him because he’s so incompetent with condoms; he’s so relieved not to have
that with me. I said, “Maybe we should be exclusive.” He said, ‘Could you manage that? I said gratefully, ‘Certainly”, He said, “Thank you for being honest” stripped
off my clothes and made mad, passionate love to me – all orifices massaged,
nipples chewed, armpits sucked – the works. It was really something – probably the most passionate satisfying sex I’ve ever had. He told me our coming together in Plympton after I left my husband was The Most Significant Event in his LIFE.

But does he see me as a Minister’s Wife? No one can. Me included. The Problem of which we do not speak. Drive him to the ferry today,
after that a sail to Brimstone Island.
```
    Shadowe Island - The Cottage – Sat 12 Aug 78
            Mom giggling about how sweet and pure Devon is.  She
```
is certain I’ve been dumped. If she only knew. If I in am suddenly in an Exclusive Relationship with this human will o’ the wisp wouldn’t it be the worst thing for
me? Am I like a Terrible Man who will now say anything to get sex?
Five good pages on novel. Working in omniscient third
person – a violently new departure. A few vague worried sensations that I am
“telling” too much about characters but the Victorians used to get away with
this on a regular basis. How I envy them. There I’ve said it, I envy Mrs. Henry
Wood.
One thing left out of Gardner’s On Moral Fiction is how
rarely we see the book the author wanted – instead we see the draft the

publisher agreed to buy & PROMOTE. Or am I cynical? On the whole I am appreciating Gardner’s ideas – but more than ready to get back to V Woolf’s
letters & diary. That is ecstasy – the “unstructured real.” Far prefer them to
her novels.

Nice long phone talk with Devon. Feeling freed since he
described to me his definition of a future wife; she is not me. In fact, she will
be a very unlucky girl who gets – by his deliberate plan – the least of him. It is comical that I, something of a contemporary expert on all things Victorian,
should even locate such a profoundly divided, deeply Victorian male; product
of such hideous religious and sexual mangling one would think barely possible
in this enlightened century. “Wife” seems to encompass for him some whole
new scary dimension that has nothing to do with sex. What mysteries people are! Bruce wanted a fount of approval and cash. Ryder wanted a mule. Jervaze
wanted a mommy who will bed him down with a bottle of Southern Comfort and
then drive him to the hospital. I can’t even figure out What Rod wants. But Devon seems to want someone whose holiness will “cancel out”
his “bad behavior”. All I know is I don’t want to be any of those people.

But what DO I want? I’m embarrassed to admit it out loud.
I want the spiritual and physical closeness – the “soulmate connection” – to
just keep on intensifying until we switch bodies (and I get to live two lives).
Castaneda says it can be done. (Good subject for novel.)

QUILTING

The scraps
The scraps
The bad acts
Bleed like madras
Over everything
Piecing penalties
Placating the portionless
Fabric cut to fit the frame or
The other way about?
This will all have to be redone
Till it makes some kind of sense.
Make the pieces smaller – ever
Smaller – in my
Empire of
Loneliness.
```
             Devon flat out admitted he is afraid of me –says I 
```
have too much power over him. I was too aggressive with him this time
and I think my “free agency” is where the trouble lies. It “wakes him up”
too much to the existence of another person and reminds him this isn’t all
happening in his head! I am too impatient to wait for him to get ready to
have an actual relationship. In the past, the better he got to know all his
girlfriends – and the more certain he became of them, the less he
wanted them. We are dancing on a knife-edge with our pleasure now. Psychologically he rules out “sexual fire” in long-term relationships. Everyone
but me (and Dad) seems to think sexual fire must burn out.
I look forward to getting back – change in seasons, change
in clothes – working, writing, even running around town with Rod is starting to
look fun. Cold day – sun hidden by clouds.

Burnside Inn – 10PM Sunday 13 Aug 78
Told my dad I took the room here because my typewriter
needs electricity – really of course I wanted privacy with Devon and then we
ended up at the Barnacle! But a public inn (with a handy bar) requires a lot of discipline. More than I have. I am recovering from a scandalous night – too
tired to take a bath I fell asleep in my clothes after cocktails with Marc Kramer
who tried first wooing me with his completely unfettered, unapologetic interest in money by showing me his new house then just flat out tried to get me drunk.
(I did get drunk but not enough to make him seem desirable. He is very hairy.) However, “investment banker” would be a good job to give to my character
Cloud if he ever grows up. If I can ever get him out of prep school.
No more hanging around the bar for me – I plan sit here
in my room every afternoon writing between three and six. Seems to be
all my social schedule will allow. Feel myself getting fat and should cut back
on food – tall order. I just need to go home and DANCE.
Stupid diary! One love problem after another. Well I can
always go back to poor Woolf… her talk of mushrooms, chair covers, butterflies…
```
    Mon 14 Aug 12 midnight -78
            Very unsatisfied with everything I’ve ever written.  The 
```
difficulty is I need to bring all my writing up to my current level of philosophical
maturity (such as it is.) But it keeps increasing exponentially! Never be
embarrassed to start over.

Dinner scene in Paradise Road (newly retitled) feels
shaky. Too many characters for me to handle. Maybe wedding next?
Trying to invest my characters with what I’ve just learned from Devon. Would choosing “the right person” come first (my Mom’s theory) and then the love
follows afterward? More convenient for everyone, certainly.
Almost rolled a poor pimply little fisherman down at the
docks this afternoon because I am such a sucker for gorgeous naked (hairless) shoulders. And the friendly, friendly innkeeper – but don’t get me started, he
has a “wife” or “wife substitute”. Mom’s been very cruel to me lately. At dinner
last night I discovered she RODE THE FERRY with poor shell-shocked Devon (explains his “freeing’ phone call) whom she apparently grilled the whole ride.
She sniffed – “He’ll never marry you.”

Too proud to tell her I just reached that conclusion myself
and it doesn’t elevate him in my estimation (the way it obviously does in hers!)
I could say I actually know Devon better now than he knows himself (he talks
in his sleep), and I can positively state that his stated intentions never bear ANY relationship to his actions. And it’s not a good thing.

He also told he could never become a minister (because
his mother wanted it too badly!) and yet here we all are. He keeps making rules
and I keep watching him break them. Plus, I’ve been taking responsibility for
“making” him do things he doesn’t “want” to for years. It’s a spiritual game of
Chinese checkers he insists on “losing”. I guess it’s just a matter of time before he starts holding it against me.

SUICIDE STREET
This is the street of suicides.
I orchestrated masterpieces in that house
  Third-from-left –
Getting my effects too cheaply I see now
  Unmindful of material
  That lay so close to hand
  New tenants slick the lawn that moats that
  Windowed grave. They repair
The chrysalis I shattered
  Getting out.
```
    10:20 AM Wed 16 Aug 78
            I am so excited by the “newness” of my novel – starting to 
```
feel confident; like I can make these people do anything. Can’t wait to go home
and spread all the versions out – play Max Perkins to my own Tom Wolfe. Might
be able to patch something together. Still my tone needs emergency assistance,
which dictates a massive overhaul. All this omniscience is just too painfully reminiscent of somebody like Balzac – “In the forbiddingly cold winter of 1863” or worse, Dragnet? Must read Speedboat to see how far one can go. Should I
throw everything out and start over again or leave it a 500 p hegira?

Rod sends me a letter every day. He is smart, witty and
culturally aware. His handwriting is perfect. Unfortunately, this does not feel
as good as it should. I have rejected him as a potential husband (or father)
because he is so totally lacking in Projection & Charisma. Unlike Devon I plan
to marry a person I can also have soul-shattering sex with. Even Rod’s myths
are sub-standard. He needs Tale of Genji and Kraft-Ebbing but all he has is
Beowulf. Still, this is not the kind of thing you can tell a person you don’t want
to get serious with.

According to him, Miss You by the Stones is “Our Song”.
My song is Urgent, by Foreigner, and time’s a-wastin’. I can struggle with this
goddam party scene or I can go out and buy toothpaste. Ferry coming in –
very foggy.

Came into Burnside Inn tonight and immediately lost a lens. Searched and searched. Would this be the bill that would break the poor fragile financial camel’s back? Then I found it – stuck to my hair. A miracle.

Mom took me on a walk after dinner – apologized in her
weird oblique way. For a woman who claims to have “given all for love” she
really is quite calculating and cynical about it. “Why buy the cow if the milk is
free?” sums up the whole of her philosophy. She wants me to marry Marc
Kramer and live in wretched discontent, the equivalent, as far as I can see,
to opening a dairy farm and sending out pricelists. Those are the options.
Has doing too much of the emotional scutwork fatally dimmed the stars in her
“love makes the world go round” eyes? “What if I’m not a market-based
economy?” I inquire. Another missed bonding opportunity.

Dad showed gorgeous slides of Fox Island. Every
frame a poem. Made me think I should read old diaries to see what I can get.
Not that Cloud would keep diaries – not reflective that way at all. But Suni
might keep them.
```
    9:30 AM Fri 18 Aug 78
            $100 honorarium from Coltsville Community College for 
```
my presentation – I can eat for a month off of that! Dare I get my dancing
down to 3 nights a week? Would be heaven.

Discussion with sisters about Mom. Here’s their advice: “Remember she’s crazy,” “Remember she’s old,” “Don’t give her any information”
and “Lie.” There it is! If only she could hear them! And I’m the one with the
“Bad Kid” reputation! Over dinner she lectured us on how costumes for the
ballet exalt the human body. Nothing like my combination of pasties,
fishnets and glitter! Hard to listen to after the contempt she has expressed
for my job! Said nothing. What they really hate is that I am my own
choreographer.

I was too dispirited even to point out that back when
ballet was “invented”, back in the dear old Dead Degas Days, dancers were
VERY “declassee” with damn near NO control over their own bodies: how
to express themselves sexually much less how they were viewed.
Looking back over it, my most serious depressions were all caused by attempts to conform. I’m so OVER it. Am I afraid of loneliness?

No. Stigma? Childlessness? Sexlessness? No. I confront all these fears, one
by one. Hard however to keep my head high around Mom and Dad’s evident
conviction that no one can ever be found to love me. They insist on giving me
money because I’m so pathetic . OK, I’ll take it (I’ve taken tips from fans
harboring worse thoughts) but insisted on giving them a poem in return.
Read Dawn Walk out loud looking for praise –

Dawn Walk

Thunder crusts a gelid sky
Is it light or is it rain feathering
my nest with longing
Stippling soul with flushed
new growth; bursting out
the steepled trees.
This is my world and I release it
Released for flying
Stelliform
Tough as spidersilk
Unrecognizable
Even to me who birthed it
Who spent my life creating it.
Released and
Blown away.
```
            They rolled their eyes.
```
I must be secretly determined to make them look bad! Need to get car in
line for the ferry tomorrow AM at nine. Good vacation this has been. Mostly.
Last letter from Rod mentions a big society wedding
we are invited to. He does get invited to the best parties.

1:45 AM
Horrible last dinner at the Mermaid Creek House.
Am I speaking a different language from everybody else? Uncle Clive
downgraded his current girlfriend right in front of her – “she’s got no skills –
she’s not too bright.” I agree – there must be something seriously wrong with
her to want to be around him. Genevieve wants to know how I can love men
who are “weak”. This would have more significance if her second marriage
wasn’t with a submissive. I defended that weak men are “doubters” and doubters
are interesting.

The opposite is arrogance and how attractive is that?
Marc K, for example, doubts nothing. He’s also not very interesting. It would be
easy to be swept along in his wake on autopilot. Maddens me to hear Mom and G discuss Avril’s “low self-esteem.” The nerve! I think they want to pretend that life “makes sense” and is not a dangerous lottery. According to them, A has too low
an opinion of herself and I have too high an opinion of myself. Hmmmm. What’s
wrong with this picture?
January 18, 2023
Inspired Pleasure
Diary of a Dancer Poet
```
            8:45 PM Plush Palace – 24 Jun 78 – Sat
            Bad mood. OD’d on junk food then lost my favorite 
```
hairbrush and other people’s plastic versions break my hair. Growl. I can
write it out. It’s a dirty job but someone’s got to do it. Emotional roller coaster
continues. Just when I declare myself a Celibate Slave to Art a very handsome
(and very blond) man comes in tonight. He works in radio, considering story
about dancers; wants to interview “somebody”.

“You hit pay dirt, my friend.” I tell him but I insist on
pseudonym. I was wearing my silver lamé outfit with the see-through silver
sleeves so looked tiptop if I do say so myself.

His name’s Rod Avery (I’m not kidding) and although
he’s newly divorced he lacks the Rip Van Winkle leer. He works for a reputable
national outlet. I can work with this. Mom would just eat him up. Bought tix to
an Agatha Christie play – maybe I’ll invite him instead of Avril.
```
            Plush Palace, Sat 1 July, 9 PM
            Rod and I engage in a little smoochy-smoochy hand 
```
holding following Christie play. I make an effort not to get so drunk that I
pull down his pants to view his namesake. Impatient to find out exactly
where my next sexual meal is coming from. Tach it up buddy.
In Dancer News, GiGi says Charlie NEVER goes
down on her unless he’s absolutely plastered. I want to know, “And then
what good is he?” She has to admit “not much.” Says he laps at her like
she’s a melting ice cream cone.
```
            Did like Pamela Hansford Johnson’s Helena trilogy. 
```
(Impressions of childhood, though, painfully unreal.) Now struggling with
Grahame Greene’s It’s A Battlefield. Diseased whores abound; women
bear their 12th child in crowded rooms (and because he’s a Catholic that’s
presumably All Right By Him) and a gay time is had by none.
```
            Midnight Sun-Mon July 2-3 78
            Taking Avril to Cellar Door for her birthday before she 
```
flies to Mich to see Merrill. Gifts Dior dusting powder & wrap around dress.
Festive occasion demands dress-up. A & I saw Grease, Rod and I saw
Heaven Can Wait. Just sweet enough but it didn’t “move” Rod as
much as I hoped. What if he’s one of the “pod people” with nothing
inside? Jury still out.
```
        Thurs 4:15 – 6 July 78
            Missing Avril so much!  Boy, did I get dependent. 
```
It’s just SO Fun to have someone to do things with who thinks ALMOST
EXACTLY the same as you do but with interestingly nourishing differences.
Rod is no substitute. Still can’t figure him out. His apartment is
completely stark. Bare. Not ONE THING on any of the walls. The
closest I can get to understanding him is that there seems to be no
feeling in his family. They don’t talk at meals. Father’s dead, mother
still sends him clothes he hates and he still wears them. (They are perfectly presentable. But what would he wear if she did not dress him? We’ll never
know. I’m not getting in the midst of that.)

He never suggests things to do. I suggest everything.
Charlie Byrd in Annapolis (just because I love Annapolis) was OK. On the
other hand, when we went to Le Bistro he ordered Piper Heidseck
champagne out of the clear blue sky! Because he said now he’s “finally dating.”
So that took initative. Right?

Nice letter from Devon who ‘feels veneration” for my talent.
Sweet. Reading Green’s The von Richthofen Sisters.
```
            8:30 PM Fri – 7 July 78
            Driving in to work in a haze of ecstasy after Perfect Day, 
```
heard an infuriating review of Heaven Can Wait by Penelope Gilliatt. Really the woman’s a moron. She says she would understand a movie about transmigration
of souls in “wartime” but why now! Who GIVES these people a podium? How did
she get this job with so little artistic sense? Bullied her way to the top, most likely.
Von Richthofen Sisters turns out to be boring PhD thesis.
So hard to get it right. Therefore switched to Murder of My Aunt. Amusing.
(Richard Hull).

Big tipper in tonight. $138 so far! I feel like the pigeons
in A’s experiments. “Intermittent reinforcement!” I have to pick up Genevieve
and Brett up at the airport tomorrow for Women’s March (we all wear white.)
Bringing them back to my place to eat first – I made a gorgeous salmon mousse. Invited Rod just to see if he’s cool.
```
            Sun July 9 78 2 AM
            He’s cool.  Wore white, walked the whole march and 
```
was so charming to Genevieve and Brett they were dazzled. I’m now
feeling relief that I only have ten days till vacation – don’t think I can
become “over involved” in that short period of time.
```
            Adelphi Grist Mill Park – 11:15 AM Mon July 10 – 78
            Sunbathing on my favorite rock.  When I get hot
```
I’ll splash around (like the dogs are already doing). Hardly a dry spot
left on this rock – but who cares – my diaries have seen worse. A year
ago, the Last Act of the Romantic Psychodrama just beginning. Whew.
I think I came out of it all right. I’m starting to see a possible Harold-Nicolson/
Vita Sackville-West thing developing with Rod. (He actually KNOWS WHO
Harold Nicolson is!!!) Last night I almost raped him in his theatre seat but I am determined to let him make the first move. But I do need to know how long
I’m going to have to wear Glamorous Lingerie every day (just in case). I am
starting to run out of glamorous lingerie. But we are having a lovely time – he
is witty, intelligent and aware. I “confessed” all about Devon – my longest
relationship – but because he’s a “newly consecrated minister” I can see
Rod’s not too worried. If he only knew!

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

2 PM – Back at home to ringing phone – new
croquet ball on the pitch! Marc Kramer coming into National – do I want
to have dinner and discuss My Finances. Hmm. Maybe. He knows I’m too
poor to invest in anything. But I say Yes.
```
            Fri. 8:05 Starlight Club Springfield, Fri 14 July 78
            I hate this club. It’s a bitch of a drive so I rarely come 
```
here but the tips are good. Need the cash for vacation. Unfortunately, I am
working with Danielle – the Brazilian lesbian who threatened to kill me. I’m
hoping she won’t recall she threw boiling hot coffee at me. (Her aim is bad.)
She’s usually pretty much out of it. Got $100 tip already from a guy who wonders
why I don’t dance at The Gaslight downtown. Because the dancers have to
waitress there! Ugh! That place is legendary. I tried to be polite but really.
Anyway, Kramer was different from what I expected. We
ate prime rib at The King’s Contrivance – he seemed a lot older and a lot sadder.
He says whenever he hears 10 CC’s “I’m Not In Love” he thinks of me.
I asked him what about finances – he said I should invest
in real estate. Wants to “watch my stocks.” I was embarrassed to tell him
there isn’t anything to watch what with Dad keeping such a closed fist on the
shares, and me having to sell everything I get. I start to suspect Dad is
CONFIDING in him about his estate planning and PRETENDING “our”
investments are actually OURS.
This meant we didn’t have that much to talk about and
the evening ended with a damp kiss when I turned down sex. I say I’m In a Relationship. He says he’s thinking of proposing to his red headed secretary
who reminds him of me. I am kind of insulted but told him to Go For It. I guess
I had this built up in my mind – sort of like Chuck Kornowitz where you think
it’s going to FINALLY be about SOMETHING ELSE. How my Mom would jeer!
(Wore my 3-piece suit, anyway. With eyeshadow.)
He says he has to come through on his way back
from Oklahoma, thank God, I could say I’ll be in Maine. Looks Like It’s Over.

SUNBATHER

Poor periwinkle hides
within the final
spiny spiral of his shell, no
stronghold that from
hungry file-worms’ whippet tongues nor
sun-mad amateur biologists nor
ten year olds; while I
more evolved, lie
among the oval-jointed shells, the
sheepswool sponges, camouflage
my breasts as comb-jellies, hair
as seaweed, fooling none yet
impressing those
I can’t deceive.
```
            2:15 AM Mon 17 July 78
            Another fiasco.  I should leave now while I’m behind. 
```
This has certainly been Trial and Error Week. How did poor Rod – Desirable
Husband become Inevitable Discard? I’m sick to death of the Hand Kissings
and the Knee Pinchings, Goddamit. There is something seriously wrong
with this man. We had dinner & drinks at the Peter Pan Inn, then drove up
and down Price Distillery Rd until I assaulted him. I admit it. He is under
the impression that we “made love”. Trust me, one time was plenty. This
is a man who does not “think” with his body. He gives nothing back, an
absorptive rather than reflective surface. I was just able to prevent myself
from rushing to the bathroom to masturbate. I worked hard not to let him
know how just how incompetent he is, because really, there’s no hope.
Some sad girl somewhere who hates sex is going to find her “dream man”.
I shouldn’t have pushed it, although seriously I don’t think he will even question
if it never happens again.
Damn shame is all I can say. A cruel waste, when he’s
so charming in every other respect. Life is brutal. Sigh. Enjoyed Pretty Baby
so much I saw it twice. (Can’t pay close enough attention while Rod is talking.)
```
            Wed 19 July 78 - 3:20 PM
            Unbelievably hot. Woke up sluggish, ate last night’s 
```
macaroni, felt worse. Ate grapefruit, felt better. Eddy called me for a double,
I refused. Read Mary Kelly’s Cold Corse. Interesting. Gave me new ending
for Secaire. Off to the creek to play in the naturally freezing Jacuzzi. Must buy
Perrier, fruit and yogurt. Reading Jessica Mitford’s A Fine Old Conflict. Charming.
```
    Shadowe Island – Burnside Inn – 31 July 78
            The island its usual immortal, eternal self.    A ragged
```
paradise. Avril and I came up through Boston – drove “The Freedom Trail”
but couldn’t go to the Ritz Carlton bar because of the dogs. She is taking care
of them down at the cottage.
```
            Mom and Dad look great – thinner and very brown.  When I checked in at the Burnside Inn Paul Morris offered me a drink and we chatted
```
very enjoyably. Trying not to be attracted to him. This vacation might resolve
its masturbatory throbbings when Devon shows up. He is driving down from
Montreal – I am as nervous as a 14 yr old. That poor sawdust doll Rod called
but phone connection (thankfully) very bad. Merrill arrived with children in tow
and we had magnificent lobster dinner down at the shore. Rod sent me a copy of
On Moral Fiction.
```
            Burnside Inn – 5 Aug 78 
            Rod called – we talked 45 mins about Moral Fiction – 
```
I feel an enormous pleasure in his intellect. He asks me if being a poet means
you enjoy life more intensely. I say YES. Maybe we can transition this into a
friendship.
```
            11:30 PM – Devon just phoned – long conversation 
```
on power, authority and ambivalence. He is tormented by his family – can’t
figure out how to escape them. He needs to move out of their town but of
course they get him jobs SO HE CAN’T MOVE OUT OF THEIR TOWN. Says
he’s bringing doughnuts tomorrow over on the ferry – what are my favorites.
That’s easy – anything chocolate. (Mom told A that when he gets off the ferry
and sees how I’m dressed he’ll turn around and get back on! She doesn’t
know him very well. Kind of like Rod – they both think this “minister” thing is
overly determinative. Doesn’t in the least change who he really is.)
```
            Midnight Tues 8 Aug 78
            M & D both wrong and right. Devon DID NOT flee me 
```
at ferry but fell ecstatically into my arms. HE DID, however, painfully said he
can’t express his love for me in “a fully integrated way” (because parson!) and
asked me first just to caress his nude body. He didn’t think he could have sex
with someone he’s not in an exclusive relationship with. But guess what? Then
we had blissful, magnificent sex. I didn’t tell him this is as integrated as it gets
for me and a lot more integrated than it’s been lately! (Poor Rod.)
January 17, 2023
Inspired Pleasure
Diary of a Dancer/Poet
```
            Sat. 6 May 78 – 1:30 PM
            Cleaned & waxed kitchen and bathroom floors, sitting 
```
with newly creamed hands and cup of coffee in recliner. Muse time.
Emerge blinking like a ground hog into a new and spring-like world. A year
ago, I was a rat in a cage. It’s critical never to let the “merchants of neurosis”
trick me into limiting myself.
```
            Tues. 9 May Plush Palace – 9:15 PM
            Mom spent the last two nights at my place – sleeping
```
in my bed since guest room has no bed. Me on sofa – doesn’t matter
since I can’t sleep anyway when she’s around. Up at 7 to make breakfast get
Mom to airport for 10 o’clock plane thank God. Avril came over with blueberry
muffins and gazpacho to discuss the visit.
Everything Mom said felt like an attack. (She did give
me $100 but I spent – and lost – more than that on her visit.) Avril says the
island has been worse for Mom because she’s never confronted with a life
that would contradict her narrow-minded theories, so it’s all: “Why can’t
people get smart and live exactly the way I do?” She tries to make her
personal tastes “emotional law” – and if you don’t agree with her – or God
forbid, want to explore something different you’re “the sick one”. Rough stuff.
We took her to our favorite Ellicott City restaurant – she
wanted Avril to “explain” Mason and me to “explain” my clothes. She said
my clothes trigger “weirdos” following us – it was completely in her
imagination! She cries. No one decent will “have” me, she wails! I say,
what if I don’t want to be “had”? I’d ask her about her life but she isn’t
honest – she doesn’t know Dad has already told us that her ideology is
untrue. She insists when you find Mr. Right everything’s peachy, but Dad
says she was uncomfortable and unwilling about sex at first – didn’t care
for it. They had to “work hard”. I say we have more experience of pain
than Mom ever had – Avril says she “refuses to learn.” Creepy. Turns
what pain she does have back on others somehow.
```
            The best revenge? Write a poem:
```
THE RIGHT PART OF TOWN

We run through life
She thinks
Dancing lightly on high heels
Past disemboweled sofas
Skirting
Drunks & drains.
Taut veins serve as
Toque of manners
High & proud, worn
For company.
This house displays
Her purpose;
New red brick
Virgin stickers swearing
She’s the first.
Processed air admits her
Grudgingly:
“You look like one of us.”
Mentally she sweeps up sun;
Plans daisies, cashmere
Overnight guests
The roar from the street soon turns
This air to poison –
She counts to ten
And breaks a nail in locking up.
She sees it won’t do after all
Too close to stink & squalor;
Doormen, dogs, police locks;
Balconies with lightning rods.
She’ll choose new paths this time
Avoid electronics that have lost
Their parts,
Flexing knees
As always; she
Summons a cab; closer –
Closer to her death;
That suitor never accused
Of gentlemanly behavior.
```
            Can’t wait to resume my privacy and my routine, 
```
reading book about Forster (The Cave & The Mountain) in my own bed.
I think realizing your mother’s limitations is part of
maturity, and I’ve been slow because I’m unwilling to adopt Genevieve’s
methods – “Don’t give her anything – tell her what she wants to hear.”
I thought better of her than that but I struck out. Since their definition of
success is so narrow, I don’t see how I can ever satisfy them.
```
            Plush Palace – 11:30 PM – Wed  10 May 78
            Wonderful day – up at nine to play Frisbee with dogs.  
```
Eddy asked me to come in tonight and although A and I planned a movie
I accepted – that’s my new policy – say yes to everything except doubles
or driving all the way to Springfield. A & I had late lunch together at
Ponderosa – she’s says she’ll study all night. We’ll do laundry together
tomorrow and have drinks Sunday on some sundrenched terrace.
J. came in tonight depressing the hell out of me. I
had nothing to say to him – it would be like using a 12 gauge on a mouse.
Please, just go away and live your life and don’t bother me.
```
            Plush Palace – Midnight – Fri 12 May 78
            I love Friday nights.  They’re always exciting.  Gay girl 
```
in tonight approaching the dancers (without success) you’d think that would
happen more often. If she went a bit slower she might get lucky.
Unfortunately, she just asks us if we are gay. How can we know without
any experience? With the right kind of situation I think we’d admit we’re all
at least a little bit gay.
Avril came over to the house at noon – we had white
wine, macaroni salad with ham and croissants. Eddy called me in 3 sets
early – $265 extra. Irresistible – means I can go to NYC. Carol tells us
about her sexually sadistic husband – handcuffs and everything! She
orders pancakes for dinner to “cheer up” even though maple syrup gives
her hives! Jerrilee tells how hard it was to leave her husband. He held
a gun to her baby’s head. Kristi found a new “wonderful” guy but gave him
herpes and now she fears he’s “done” with her. What a waste since now
they both have herpes! They’re perfect for each other!
This is all a lot more interesting than Ann Bridge’s
Emergency in the Pyrenees. (Even Mrs. Radcliffe was more fun that that).
Who should come in tonight but Peter’s brother Julian!
Thought he was in San Francisco. Apparently I’m one of the Eight Wonders
of DC – can’t pass through without getting a gander. Kissed me in a brotherly
way. We had a nice reminisce about childhood till Eddy sent me back to
dressing room. He saw one set – when I came out again he was gone.
```
            11 PM Mon 15 May 78 
            Sun night got blind drunk on my day off through sheer 
```
frustration and exhaustion; then couldn’t sleep. Intermittent nightmares that
someone was trying to break into my car and throw acid in my face. Decided
to kiss the novel off and let it go – just get an opinion. Concentrate on
something else. Weather depressing – no sunbathing – four day monsoon!
Trying grumpily to live without booze. I can see myself becoming Lida.

2 AM Mon 22 May 78
Exhaustion follows mania. Yesterday couldn’t keep my
eyes open long enough to read the NY Times, but refusing to go to bed dragged
out my notebooks to arrange beside my desk. Horrible old valentines, photos
of Ryder, dreadful wailing screeds fall out. I have so many drafts of Flycatcher
it’s ridiculous. Purging isn’t easy – I totally understand hoarding. How can you
be certain you’ll never need something again? Must get to bed – tomorrow
meet A at College Park Library to see Dear Detective and listen to Couperain.
```
            Fri. Plush Palace – 26 May 78 – 7:20 PM
            Dancing badly.  Reduced to eating saltines (bad girl!) 
```
Feel I can see the end of all this and it’s a cold cold chill. Apparently nothing pleasurable lasts forever – as soon as it’s a “job” it’s over. Poor me! What’s
the next incarnation? Tending art gallery on windswept rainy isle? Living
drunken and obese in a trailer on the edge of the estate?

HORROR STORY

With age lubricity
Darkens into sweat;
We face each other
Across the cooling dinner,
Night by night
Stiff as andirons
Masterpieces best seen by candlelight
To hide the cracks,
Well-meant improvements by
Another’s hand.
A well-matched pair.
Gardens edged perennially with stone
Are called unkillable;
One fountain singing
This tune only. What oracle?
It didn’t look this way
Going forward
Backward is a different view.

I could have sworn that we’d last longer.
I think I caught it from my mother,
Who played a role in Wuthering Heights;
The crone who preaches doom
In guise of cheer.
I requested light enough
To read my tarot; instead recycling
Murky tea brewed
From your used bathwater.
These leaves are dark and do not speak.
I shiver with cold and you
With anger; a well-matched pair, a
Brace of disappointments.
There’s still too much
We can’t admit.
```
            Lovely “date” with Avril.  We went to Sea Fair 
```
(corner Calvert & Conn) for drinks, scallops, mussels at the outside
café. She says Shoulders is a total washout. Looks like Mom succeeded
all too well in convincing us romantic love is the most important thing in life
– I say let’s blame her. A having horrible insomnia troubles so before movie
we bought six classical records to soothe and stun. I really hesitate to go
out with Peter – why cultivate new people when they’re so likely to turn out
just as awful as the old people? I like him now but… he’s on his best behavior.
Really feeling shy and buried in myself. Instead of new man, start a new novel. Something crazy.
A tried Barbara Ellen (exercise studio) but was put off
by their insulting sales techniques. It’s like being chained to a TV listening
to a half hour of ring around the collar commercials. Too bad.
I say she’s got to stop telling prospective employers
she has “no experience”. She worked for hotline, courier service, horrible
fake gyno, etc. We need to construct a resume out of this – we are too damn
honest. Better to project even a witless confidence. I don’t want to have to
tell people about myself, either.

Dear Detective was superb! Followed it up with
gold rush sundae and coffee at Swensen’s. Trying to get into bestsellers
– reading Velda Johnson’s ghastly Etruscan Smile. Would rather read
theology (and Secaire shows it. Alas.) My novel is terrible. It stinks.
It needs to be rewritten from the bottom UP. Plot beyond help.
January 15, 2023
Inspired Pleasure
Diary of a Dancer Who Happens to be a Poet
```
    11:30 AM Friday, 24 March 78
            Staggering down for my first cup of coffee when I 
```
heard Harvey’s voice in the kitchen. Thank God I heard it in time – if
he had seen me in my baby doll nighty I guess he would have considered
himself justified in pinning me immediately to the floor. He brought me a
hibiscus flower as a peace offering.
A more significant peace offering came from Mom
and Dad who gave us each 100 more shares of stock. I tried to refuse it
– they insisted. I warned them I’ll only sell it. Maybe I’ll be able to buy a
new car when I get back. I could use it.
Spent last night trying to read Welty’s Bride of Innisfallen, couldn’t get my mind around it. Read Faithful Are the Wounds instead.
Very like a stage play – which isn’t necessarily a bad thing.
```
    Powder Mill Road – home – 8:30 PM Sun 26 March 78
            Can’t describe the ecstasy of being in my own
```
place. On the island I am hideous – here I am beautiful. The loss of
confidence there is so severe as to actually induce delusions. Now that
I am back I am ready to tackle my existence brilliantly. As always.
We got in last night in the pouring rain – 11:30 PM
– A had coffee and left. I read a soppy love story and slept in my Own Bed.
Today we did laundry, went to see a bad movie – actors working madly
away to no effect. Tomorrow I get mail – hope there’s lots of it.
Did get a beautiful poem out of the island –
Peacock Pavement: The Poet on her walk – submit to Denver
Quarterly – which has been very polite about me lately. They’ve
shown an interest in my stuff though nothing has ever been exactly “right.

PEACOCK PAVEMENT: The Poet on Her Walk
Femininity has Everests I mount daily.
The crow’s belly’s is black, I
Envy his womb-less contentment as I stroll
Among the old wrappers, the used condoms;
Joints rolled tight as bedsheets
Adverts used – abused – discarded.
He envies me my
Zircon hair; my lunar map of freedom,
Battering-ram jaw, baroque nose, the
Greek depths through which
These eyes record their wanderings
Outside the convent walls, between
The stalls, corrals, chained-up lambs,
The leaf-filled swimming pools:
First act, second act, third act
Epilogue.
Numbering days by counting
Depth marks round your taproot
Sporadic questings
Belonging to a future all
Unknowing what anyone will
Ever make
Of these Portentous Pleiades:
Disparate sisters,
Me, myself and I.

Plush Palace – Mon night 27 Mar 78

So glad to be back. Really missed the old place.
Walked in and there was Jervaze, big as life. He was quite plastered
but acted very pleased to see me. I feel he has turned a definite corner.
He could have been somebody, could have made choices, but he
seems to have decided to live in an ever deepening blur. I am well
out of it. I asked him what happened to my ring. He promised to look
for it. He has a new plan of course. His brother is trying to talk him
into returning to school. He’ll talk that to death for a while till his kidneys
fail and his liver withers and his brain goes. Then it won’t matter anymore.
But I must get a picture of him now while he still looks good so I can
show my grandchildren. He was dressed all in white like an angel and
is letting his silver gilt hair grow long. I can hear it now: “You dated
Wild Bill Hickock?” Yes kids. And it was really wild.

LOVEWINGS

My aunt’s a dancer
She said “Feel my thighs
Ain’t they hard
They’re my love-wings
Hard as heartwood
I’m flying on ‘em half the time.
Practice making perfect I’m
Tightening up my style in case a valve
On this here pressure cooker blows
And splatters darkness like a
Damsel in a murder we might
Solve someday.”
She laughed and did an arabesque.
My aunt is thirty-five. I said
What beautiful thighs you’ve got

Called my agent and demanded to know how much
I am actually going to get from HBJ. The answer is $1993, so it’s a
good thing I got that stock which I sold today. April 5 I pick up my new
car – a Fiat. (A takes the Gremlin.) Money in the bank – need to settle in
for a long writing session. Trying to concentrate on my book – Bowen’s
The Last September – but it just feels too distant from my own life. I feel l
ike I’m slowly surfacing, like a corpse that has been in the water for three
days. Last night I finished Anne Tyler’s Searching for Caleb. Her most
beautiful novel in my estimation. Today A and I bought plants, put money
down on car. I’m exhausted and out of love with my own life – don’t
understand why I personally seem to need to do everything backwards.

4:30 PM Fri 31 Mar 78
Barrage of criticism from Mom and Dad that I
spent stock money on car. How do they expect us to live in two different
places and have one car? Doesn’t make sense. Avril has car today for
her eye appt – will pick me up in 45 mins. I am struggling with Bowen’s
The Little Girls. She uses writing for disguise. Last night A and I went
to dinner at an Italian restaurant – she had the clams, I had the shrimp,
we split a bottle of wine. Then we went to see what A described as
“one concentration camp film too many.” I bought tickets to Bonnie Raitt
concert – Mom and Dad suggested I “look up” their friends’ son Peter Pauley.
I may invite him, I do remember him as cool and handsome. But brunette.
Oh well, can’t have everything. Got check from agent – less her percentage –
which I forgot to calculate. So I hope I get paid enough Sat to have money
for car. My future emerges through a glass darkly – don’t know yet whether I like it or not.
```
    2:50 PM Sat ;April 1, 1978 &nbsp;- Starlight
            Working a double. My latest realization is: I can never 
```
have enough money. Curse you, Marc Kramer for suggesting I invest
in real estate. In spite of this I’ve decided not to take on doubles unless I’m
in a jam (as I am over this car.) Interesting new dancer – big hips and no
boobs but a wonderful attitude. Her laugh can be heard by fishing boats
on the distant Chesapeake. Alvera. She works in a lawyer’s office during
the day. I’m trying to imagine her in her suit typing briefs. The Little Girls
is Bowen’s worst written book. She’s not a narrative writer but a prose poet
– always falls down over narrative. Plus I feel a loss of joy in her art – maybe
because she “had” to write it? This is really a book about despair – which
To The North also was – but one book was good and the other isn’t. I think
writing is a lot like cooking – some ideas can’t be rescued through editing –
they just get worse and worse.

10:30 PM Tender is not the night thank God – three
more sets and it will all be over. The next one will be the worst – the last
two I won’t even notice. I called A – she’s despondent. Feeling chained
to the apt I’m sure. I agreed we’d see An Unmarried Woman tomorrow –
go out and have some fun. Mon after her classes we’ll watch The Oscars
at my place. Bought 3 costumes from Kerry that I can ill afford – but they
were a steal. Sent Harvey the Brownmiller book. There’s no excuse for such ignorance.

Plush Palace – 8:50 PM – Thurs night 6 April 78
So ends one of the happiest days of my life. Woke
this AM two minutes before clock radio – breakfast in bed reading –
good work at typewriter. Long walk with dogs – came back to find
Green’s Mag took my whole “suicide” series. A showed up helped me
play with my car – first and second tough to get into and out of until the
salesman professionally broke its little hymen. Seems all right now. Book
going well. Most of the time I feel I have the ideal existence – plenty of
sleep, plenty of exercise, plenty of time to write, plenty of privacy. Paradise.
J called. He is really going to Alabama this time. Said he loved me, thereby
proving my point that the less of a relationship we are having the more
important it is to him. If we never see each other again, I bet he will
remember me as the perfect girlfriend. All future women in his life will
curse my name.

Good letter from Mom and Dad apologizing for
their explosion about car. Part of the problem dealing with them is they
try to preserve a “united front” which means they have to frantically
whisper and negotiate behind the scenes, then speak awkwardly
together like an ill-rehearsed Greek chorus. I can kind of speculate
about who really thinks what – not that I want to.
A and I liked Unmarried Woman – much better
than Goodbye Girl. I tried Peter all day – no answer.

Reading
Storm Jameson’s Journey From the North – it’s like watching a
slo-mo car accident the way she beats up on herself. Why this sense
that honesty requires one must utterly disown all one’s earlier versions?
CS Forrester did exactly the same thing in Long Before 40 – will I feel
compelled to do the same some day about this life I am leading now?
Foolishness is youth’s necessary clothing methinks. Think I will dump
this book without finishing. Try Angus Wilson’s The Middle Age of
Mrs. Eliot.
```
    9:25 PM – Plush Palace – Sat night 8 April 78
            Beautiful day. Off to Columbia, testing my new car. 
```
A & I had lunch at Clyde’s – talked about what fun it would be if we each
had a full-time man – and they liked each other. We could double date.
Feels impossible. Walked around lake – bought baby clothes for Genevieve.
Home, walked dogs, then to work.
Boring evening. Few unenthusiastic customers.

GiGi brought in a bottle of champagne – I broke my rule and had some
out of sheer boredom. A father in with his 2 ½ yr old daughter – sent her
up to the stage with a tip for me. Depressing fact #2 – tried to read a short
story about rape in Fiction called The Intruder – it was awful – turned me
off the whole magazine. Angus Wilson’s Middle Age merely stupid. Will I
have a go at No Laughing Matter? Still no Peter and no explanation. If
he is away on vacation his parents don’t know about it. Feels suddenly
difficult to be independent and alone.

10:10 Pm – Sunday night 9 April 78
Avril met a guy she likes in one of her classes who
likes her. Fingers crossed. As a result I spent Saturday alone, which I
don’t mind. It would be OK with me if every day were the same, wake at 10,
write till 4, then off to work. On Sun we played in Adelphi Mill Park – swam
in the falls – wonderful picnic of brie and cherries – played with dogs. Wrote
poem about Devon:

SEX CADETS

I shall harmonize your life I say
Make your blood sing woodwind
Stretch my nerves harp-tight
Across your exo-shell
While you, heart racer
Put me through my paces –
Muscling through
The gates of my life
Forcing me past theory
Pluperfect post-poetical, ever
Reckless like a downhill artist
Speed devil
Speed demon
Speed dreamer.
```
            Phoned Peter – a girl answered!  He came on very
```
brisk and businesslike – had been in Venezuela. I asked if she was
“the housekeeper” – he hurried to get off phone – said he would drop by
club. Always wanted to see me perform. I told him my schedule. I figure
if he and she are seriously involved so that I shouldn’t move forward –
he’ll tell me. Chloe’s friend Dennis called and tried to make me feel guilty
enough to go out with him. Little does he know how far past that “Since I
can’t think of an excuse you’ll accept I guess I’ll just be forced to go out
with you” stage I am. He turned hostile – said I’d “led him on”. I refused to
rise to this, portraying self as a naturally friendly but also naturally private
person. I guess I’ll have more of this stuff with J gone. He was sort of protection. Everyone wants someone who doesn’t want them. Highly
entertaining if one were bored enough. I am not.

Interesting conversation with A where we discussed
the “courting rules” we’d learned. They were grim – we’ve had to ditch them completely. Got into another one of our “Is Satisfaction Possible”
marathon debates. I always say it is, she says, what if it’s not. I refuse
to consider this option. Mom’s advice to A is loiter around art galleries and art museums to get the right guy. This sounds expensive & time consuming.
Plus, I know too many artists to be in love with this idea. They are the worst.
I want someone stable.

I have to admit my chances of finding someone like
that in the job I’m in seem small. But I only need one guy. I’m special – so
would he be. A insists things were better in the past – “pre-liberation” but I’m
not buying it. Opal’s marriage very instructive on these points. They are both beautiful, can think and have work they love. So why do they fight and sulk nonstop?
Each feels the other does not truly “value them” and fusses for increased
respect. Each thinks the other is “holding them back.” So they claim. With any encouragement I think they would jump into a threesome. Non merci.
January 12, 2023
Inspired Pleasure
Diary of a Poet Who Happens. to be a Dancer
```
Tues, midnight, 9 Feb 78
        What a day. Lost a contact just before bed, which put 
```
me in a hideous temper. 1 ½ hrs sleep, drove A to Laundromat, did
laundry, bought cosmetics, picked her up, did lunch and visited broker.
Just like the other rich girls except for the Laundromat part. Then to
MVA, got MD license renewed, new address, not too horrible photo. Avril
flunked her test must retake Wed.
Back to house managed 2 more hrs of sleep. Woke
up feeling cheerful and streaked hair with L’Oreal. Still have a rotten
cough. The trouble with being sick is you can’t imagine yourself well.
Intimations of mortality. Ate lasagna with A, then off to work. J dropped
in second set, said his car was fixed, seemed cheerful, said his sister-in-law
(whom I suspect of being The Pirate Queen) is reading my book “to
figure out what kind of person I am” (uh oh). He left during my 3rd set
without saying goodbye. Should I drop in on him? Tempting.
He also asked to read Demon. Hmmmm. A of course
thinks I should clamor for “boundaries” “rights”, “clarity” and “definitions.”
I am embarrassed even to tell HER that this is all completely hopeless.
I’d have to set him on my knee and move his mouth. I’d end up defining
every term and he would immediately forget anyway. Anyway, in my
experience, the less “clarity”, the better the sex. Once things have
been completely defined you no longer want to touch each other.
Missing Devon of all people. He must be sick of
Gwynne by now. Where will he find another like me? But it’s always
a bad sign when I plunge into “default” mode. So, I dropped in on Ryder
to take him by surprise. He was there and it was worth it. Gave me a
gorgeous massage. I gave him my cold. We are at the wrong points in
our life trajectories to connect in any meaningful way. Picked up Holt’s
Lord of the Far Island which one of the other girls is reading. Unbelievably
crappy. Why do people prefer this stuff to mine? Oh well. Feeling better –
night almost over.

Sun. 12 Feb 78 – 10:20 PM
Psychic tremors driving home. But when I walked in the
door everything was fine. It’s so comforting to be surrounded with one’s
own stuff – it seems to assumes a personality – like a separate self. A
reassuring stand-in – someone who “goes on” for you when you’re tired.
Very busy weekend – A moving into her own place – sorting, packing,
cleaning, buying. Moving. Hard physical labor since we are doing it all.
“Mother Truckers.” Rushed on to work with my arms aching – J. showed up.
His body seemed solider, less fragile. I gave him a comforter for his birthday
– he seemed to like it – we went to his place to watch Harper – side by side
like an old couple on the couch. I’ve decided he reminds me most of some
wild animal. He always wakes up like a deer finding itself in a cage. He seems
to be just now comprehending that I’m there. He insisted on pleasuring me
so I just accept it. Said his body “hurt”. I wish I could convince him that
caffeine, junk food and alcohol are his enemies, but he is too stubborn to
believe it.  I fear a return of that kidney thing that felled him before. I’m
afraid our relationship belongs to the bar and his apartment, however.
Can’t get him to go anywhere with me; he is “tired” and he works enough
that it’s a believable excuse. He’s so beautiful you’d think he’d be more of an exhibitionist but it’s just the opposite. Three days off. I need it. But on the
whole I am pleased with my life.
```
    1:45 PM MON 13 Feb 78
            Lovely dog walk. My desk collapsed under piles of 
```
books, so I bought new furniture – unpainted. Cleaned, redecorated
spare room (A’s old room.) Looks good. Decided just thinking about J
is channeling my energies away from writing. We have a “sexual friendship”,
so there. That’s Hugh Hefner’s “highest good” so presumably some people
would be happy with it. But J has no influence on my life-plan. R called.
We had a decent conversation.
```
            5:45 PM Snow pouring down – four more inches 
```
expected so I decided not to go out. Last night was the first night I’ve
actually been unable to rouse J – so I just left – went home dirty and
sleepless to a couple of short-changed dogs. Now it turns out he’s in
the hospital undergoing tests because of “passing blood”. Medieval
sounding. Does he have those big black knobs under his armpits?
Ashes, ashes, we all fall down. The sister in law phoned with this info,
also gave the brother’s number where J will go after tests.
```
    9PM Plush Palace – Wed 15 Feb 78
            J quite drunk when he came in this evening – said 
```
he’s turning in his notice and returning to the South. (I wondered if they
fired him but didn’t say it.) I was so upset I walked into the men’s room
by mistake! (No one in there.) He did say “or I could live with you.”
This does not sound good to me. My monogamous soul does not aspire
to a lifetime playing nursie.
```
    10PM – Plush Palace – Thurs 16 Feb 78
            3 sets done – I’m exhausted and my legs hurt but I’ll survive. Spent the afternoon with Chloe and Dennis Parks at WPFW, taping 
```
a vibrant show on paperback publishing. Really enjoyed myself. A came
over for dinner and helped me paint my new study furniture. Got a
frightening letter from the IRS – I phoned – turned out that they think I
owe them an extra $56! They can have it.   Electric bill $76.   Disappointed
by Noel Coward’s Future Indefinite, seeking escape instead in
Mona Farnsworth’s Dark Wood. I deserve escapism after all I’ve
been through.

               11:40PM – Plush Palace – Fri 17 Feb 78
Just finished Rosenberg’s bio of Dorothy Richardson.
She seems just like me – then when I get to the end of her life – poverty
& anguish! Oh dear!

4:00 PM Mon 21 Feb 78
Lying in bed – hair set – an hour to go before work.
Spent all day tidying study – including file drawers – if I was to die this
minute I would give everyone the impression of being a hardworking
artist and an astute businesswoman. Maybe I shouldn’t wreck it by ever
going in there again. Gregory’s book about Dorothy Richardson – lots left out.
Putting myself to sleep with Homage to Daniel Shays – I must have a
lready read this because all the essays seem so familiar.   Very unpleasant
Vidal attack on Anais Nin.
```
    Plush Palace – 7:45 PM
            Lots of comforts in this job. Inhale the pleasure 
```
of a messy dressing room, so full of life & hope. I was sitting down
taking out my curlers when GiGi asked me to do her last set – her knee
hurts – so I put on a gold G- string and did one set without makeup. That
paid my electric bill right there. Settle down with Anne Tyler. Comfortable.
```
    10:30PM – Plush Palace – Thurs 23 Feb 78
            Avril came to work with me – I’m having a great night. 
```
She met a guy here she likes who asked for her number – he seems nice,
but he must have the problems intrinsic to all who haunt this place – alcoholic
or druggy – or just unmotivated in some fatal, fatal way.
Paz’s been telling me her new honey’s too “big”
for her – makes her bleed. That can’t be right. This triggered an
avalanche of gynecological horror stories that ended up with all who
are interested examining Fatima’s hanging “meatus” left over from a
“botched childbirth”. She has trouble tucking it into her G-string!
I declined inspection. Missing an opportunity other writers would have
jumped at? Will I need to describe this someday?
```
    Sun. 26 Feb 78 – 9:45 PM
            J actually showed for dinner last night – while I was
```
stuffing the baked potatoes – we had a wonderful evening, played Clue,
very good sex. Said his sister read my “gothic” but called it Too Victorian.
Disguised praise? I decide to think so. He asked me to visit him in Alabama.
I’m sure there’s a novel in that but do I want to be the one to write it?
Then of course he had to leave early. I called A – had kind of a psychic
flash – a feeling of trepidation about the human condition – she said she
had been sobbing all night. Are we going no place? I asked her. Is it all an illusion? She said she feels she once had a home and family but somehow lost them and can’t adjust. She has a life others would envy – young college student with her own apartment in DC – but she wants back something she never had. “Neva vu” ex-husband Bruce and I used to call it. The unrecognized familiar. I am reading – very appropriately – The Troubled Helpmate. Misogyny in literature.

To Drown In Air

Were the world as simple as

At first it seems

I’d be sky-haunted

Lay my emblems end to end

Ever seeking upward.

Have a fine ambition;

Possibility becomes the future

Without the prodigal waste of past.

Turn your gawper turkey-wards;

Survey the clouds for nourishment

Breathe in all that

Oxygenated snow; be

Young

Be beautiful

Be dead.
January 10, 2023
Inspired Pleasure
Diary of a Dancer
```
Monday 8 Jan 78 – 6 PM
        Twenty-four hours ago I was sitting in my red dress over 
```
a glass of port, waiting for Jervaze to arrive. Anxiety level high. Somewhere
– I think from Mom – I got the impression that my needs are so automatically
repellent to any sane individual that they must be hidden. Therefore, I have
to carefully think my way through to any honest approach – and then it isn’t
really honest any more. But I can’t just be impulsive. Prepared myself for disappointment – that he would be late or perhaps not show – because there
is something weird about him. Some deep dark secret perhaps? But he was
right on time.
This time I took him to my nearest neighborhood restaurant

where the waiter put on quite a show with Irish coffee till flaming liquor rolled
down his sleeves! Jervaze came inside my house without hesitation – I
fretting about how to best establish physical contact while he sprawled
comfortably on the couch. I turned off the overhead light and lit candles –
took off my jacket – he rubbed his face against my breasts acting calm,
respectful and not neurotic. Must be my experience with R that makes me
fearful of being “shamed” every second.
Jervaze kissed and kissed my face so long – tears
automatically filled my eyes. But he did not get upset. Got up like a
perfect gentleman “when it was time to leave” and I managed to resist
attacking him. I did one very strange thing that is causing me anxiety now.
We showed each other our class rings – he always wears his. I slid mine
on his little finger and left it there. He wore it home. Uh oh. 11:30 AM Wed 11 Jan 78
Experiencing sharp attacks of fear all day long at “being in a relationship”. What the hell was I doing giving him my ring? See, I agree that everything’s my fault! Story of my life! Currently enjoying two quiet hours
while A is at the gynecologist. It will be great when she gets her own place.
Plenty of private time and space to panic in.
Today I got a phone call from R and a letter from Devon. So,
I was able to line my relationships up, so to speak, contrast and compare.
Even lumped together they are not one full relationship! R’s “gamesmanship”
is down from its zenith, but, owing to my total nonparticipation, also at its most exposed. Lengthy chat about our vacations, and then he spent probably a
half hour telling me his “insurance setup”. Why? So I can tell everyone
where to find the will and the important papers when he runs into a tree on
his next ski trip! I should be worried about him dying apparently!!!
I let him talk, I didn’t cut him off and I asked no questions,
largely because this makes him the craziest and he deserves it. I know he’s
comforting himself now that I still care about his finances if not about him. Devon thanked me for the glamorpic (described me as “so lovely” and said he feels
like he’s talking to me when he writes his letter) and then launched into a long description of his and Gwynne’s relationship.
They have an “understanding” which seems to involve “being
there for each other” without “demands”. “Why won’t he admit he’s gay?” howls
Avril when I read this to her.
But I don’t think sex is even that simple for him. His approach
is much more diffuse – a constantly vibrating choice between “being sexual”
and “not being sexual”. He and I had such good sex, but if it all has to happen
in a sort of coma, if there can’t be any planning or god forbid, discussion
then the hell with it.
As for Jervaze, he showed up for the last three hours of my
first night back at The Plush Palace from the Starlight. He was wearing my ring.
I asked him if my work bothered him. He said, no, he was cool with it, but was
glad I asked.
Whereupon we went back to his place and made love for 3 hours. Whoo-hoo! I’m not kidding! The first test – home design – alas he
failed. His furnishings are truly HORRIFIC Spanish Mediterranean dreck. His
shower curtain consists of festoons of blue chiffon – it is INCONCEIVABLE
that a male could purchase such a thing. Guess I am not asking the right
questions. Old girlfriend? Mom? Sister-in-law? Some woman raised exclusively
on pirate films had a hand in here somewhere.
As to the sex – that test he passed. He’s a prizewinner there. Everything takes forever and that doesn’t seem to bother him in the least. Is
he some kind of reptile, living in a time zone utterly different from us mammals?
It took him 20 minutes to get my pants off working steadily. I got enough
comments about the beauty of my body to satisfy my ego for life.
He went down on me without a flicker – so much for all those
rumors about Southern men – and when he goes down he stays down. On the
other hand – he never did come. Calms fears of premature ejaculation but
raises other ones. His uncircumcised penis stayed stiff for 3 hours. This is a
first for me, and I don’t know whether I like it. I really can’t give myself
permission to come under these circumstances yet clearly I will have to –
I’ll just have to say, “forget you – let’s concentrate on me.” That could work.
But as I say, it would certainly be different. When I left, he gave me his key.

7:45 Pm – Plush Palace – Thurs 12 Jan 78
Called Jervaze and suggested we do something tonight –
he acted enthusiastic. I said, “Should I be calling you? Wouldn’t want to
call too much,” and he said, “Call all the time.” R–induced horrors dropping
away one by one. It’s snowing – I’ll go straight to Jervaze’s. (He’s close to club.)
```
4PM Friday, Jan 13-78
        I think Jervaze may really be an angel; one of Milton’s 
```
sexed up angels who took a wrong turn to our planet by mistake. Some
anxiety is relieved. We never did get to go anywhere – stayed in bed. Bliss.
But if this doesn’t work I will damn well marry Devon whether he likes it or
not – I can’t take much more of this.

I’m at my desk hammering out letters – trying to answer one
from the island realtor. The studio apt has “no cooking facilities”. I don’t care
but the realtor does, she has a house on the pond for $175 “long lease” she
wants me to take. Says it has a Franklin stove and I could “bike to town.” I admit
I’m interested. Jervaze has offered to come to the island with me in March –
I really shudder at the thought of introducing him to my parents, how to tactfully
say, Please don’t ask him about Ideas and only offer him one drink. Last night
I let myself into his apt, took a shower, tried to use his sparkingly hazardous
blow dryer, gave that up, crawled in bed with him. I had lots of Ryder-induced
fears that he wouldn’t be there, in bed with another girl, etc. But no. There he was, nude, gorgeous, asleep – and when he woke up, happy to see me.

5:25 PM Plush Palace – Sat 14 Jan 78
Snakes dropping into paradise one by one. First, although
Jervaze is incredibly easygoing – it is impossible to get him to state a
preference about a movie or a restaurant, for example – (had to drag him to Eastwood’s Every Which Way But Loose) I can tell he is nervous about
introducing me to his brother and sister in law. Should I just suggest we
lie about what I do for a living? I guess that wouldn’t really solve anything.
Sartre is so right. Hell IS other people. Then there’s my mother – the
latest demon fondling my ear. Once a woman has made herself
vulnerable to a man, she’s through. Uncommitted sex brings out
the worst in men, blah blah blah. Because it’s “too perfect” from his
point of view. I am “causing him moral hazard”. Yes, I tell the voice,
and it would be perfect from MY POINT OF VIEW TOO IF YOU WOULD
JUST SHUT UP. WE ONLY STARTED DATING A COUPLE OF WEEKS
AGO. But one can’t shut out THAT voice so easily.   Mystified by Willard Gaylin’s irritating Caring.    He acts like mutual dependence or
interdependence is some “failure” of personal autonomy.

Powder Mill Road – 11 PM Sunday 15 Jan 78
Jervaze “dropped by” this afternoon. Since it’s such a
long way from his place to mine I was astonished. Is it that I can no
longer believe a man will climb mountains for me? Or is it just my
sensitivities to Jervaze’s strangely inchoate “disabilities” warning me
and sending up red flags? We had a nice talk – he seemed faintly down –
then he had to leave because he needs to get up extra early tomorrow.
I was in too good a mood to work on my novel, bought clothes instead.
3 pairs of pants, sweater coat, five pairs undies, one gauchos. All clothes
size 7. Packaged MSS when I came home so as not to feel too unproductive.


Coleridge poem taken by Virginia community college
screed. No money. (Natch.)

DEEPER INTO COLERIDGE

“Music is beneath me” wrote
the fat man, angering his wife by stealing
her broom for walking
scattering the straw. He loved to
pack a nightcap and declaim upon the moors.
“I would have married a servant girl
could I but be sure of her affection.”
But be sure!
Some men are never fated to be sure.
Amidst politicking, pregnancies and
penny-pinching, he found the time
to fall in love with the Wrong Woman.
No wonder he took opium to distract him
from the faceless fiend that follows after
most of us but specially him
who knew so well to court it.
In his mildewed study he sits alone
clutching his bad heart and writing
“Ours is not a logical age”
January 7, 2023
Inspired Pleasure
Diary of a Dancer
```
Mon 27th Dec 77 11:00 AM
        See Dracula on Broadway – pure pleasure with some 
```
honest scares. Frank Langella very sexy. At Italian dinner Mom and
Dad push island hard, but I know the old people would never leave me
alone. They’d be worse than R. Still, there’s something magical about
being protected from the real world by the ferry – places you can’t get
to easily are wonderful just for that reason.
Mom and Dad say further I can’t be serious about my
writing or I’d have a job in publishing or magazines! I’m so rocked back
on my heels its hard to argue. It sounds so sane. But why won’t it result,
really, in another “hostage taking” of my soul, which, so, so regrettably,
appears to be so damn fragile? Becoming one’s self is life’s greatest
challenge – and so far it does seem necessary to abjure group (gang? Team?) endeavors. Writing doesn’t satisfy unless it comes out of the wild side of
me – my secret side. There’s always the temptation to rip open the spider
and get the silk out faster. Dad rolls his eyes – it’s the old “I’m an artist so
I can do what I want” argument again. How to tell him yes, he’s right. Yes,
I’m taking advantage of my education, my family, my “privileges”; it’s who
they made me. No going back to some invented Dust Bowl life of drudgery
just so THEY can “feel superior & good”. They insist they don’t WANT to
“feel good!” It’s about what’s “right!” My turn to roll my eyes.
```
Detroit, 11:05 PM, Thursday 29 Dec 77
        At the adorably, impossibly 20’s Tudoresque manse my sister 
```
Merrill is restoring – it’s lovely here. Merrill and her husband say dancing is
“sex work” and “sex work” is “OK” if its “regulated so “sex workers aren’t
exploited.” I get annoyed that nobody can tell the difference between dancing
and prostitution! Lots of things cause “erotic titillation” – breathing for
example. Still, I find I’m inclining toward taking a two-month break in March
and going to the island to write. Is this family management? But one of
the reasons I like dancing is because you can “pick it up and put it down.”
Well, we’ll see.
```
Thurs night 29 Dec 77 9:30 PM
            I find as I distance from Ryder I remember some good things 
```
and that makes me happy. He was so unique. It was fun knowing him,
watching him perform impromptu magic for street children and restaurant
patrons. More extraordinary really than poor old Jervaze who in spite of his
glamorous looks drinks way too much and hates his job. Also R knew me as
a “not dancer” which J doesn’t – maybe that persona obscures who I really
am. I remember the excitement of watching Ryder make his television show – unexpectedly sweaty physical labor in choosing camera angles and shots,
timing, music, close-ups – building the tape as the excitement was happening
– more in common with sports than some couch potato activity like editing.
Greek Town for dinner after the Renaissance Center, so the
night ended in a wild bouzouki. Day occupied with antiquing – especially fun
since I am reading Rumer Godden’s China Court, which is basically a love
song to things. It made me worry that there are not enough details in
Demon – what should I add? Perhaps buy a Vogue to see.
```
            Dreamed about Devon last night.  Wonder; what 
```
he’s up to. Maybe I’m being psychic again. Getting some peace of mind
about him as well. Merrill’s daughter comes to read over my shoulder,
then when I move to hide the diary says, “Don’t worry, I can’t read cursive. “
```
    Plush Palace – Tuesday, January 3, 1978 – 9:25 PM
            Back at work. Can’t concentrate on The Murder of Sir 
```
Edmund Godfrey, which is the book I brought because I keep thinking
Jervaze will drop by. Dead silence from him – no call on Christmas. I sent
him one card but of course I only got back yesterday. I can’t bear to take all
the initiative. Oddly (especially after my dream about him) had a card waiting
from Devon. Maybe I AM psychic. Evidently he regrets that love-letter –
encourages me to “hang loose”. Quotes from Sister Goldenhair. In other
words, don’t try to get him to plan to meet skiing, that’s just way more
planning than he can handle. Kind of a pathetic specimen.
```
Plush Palace – 10:05 pm Thurs 5 Jan 1978
        Jervaze came in Tues after my 10:00 set – with lots of little 
```
presents for me, perfume, bears, cards, pins – in a Christmas stocking. He
wore a gold-banded black cowboy hat covered with snow and a shiny black
down parka, his platinum hair swinging around his face – like a visit from an
angel. Or possibly a Chippendale dancer. He is too pretty; mine eyes dazzle.
He stayed till I got off at 1 then walked me to my car – one kiss – asked me
out very formally for Saturday night. I gave him directions to my place and
he wrote them in a book – tipped his hat, climbed into his Shelby and vanished,
leaving me wondering, is he gay? Is he even real? I continue to struggle
reading The Young Romantics – artists in 1840’s Paris.

PLACES I HAVE NEVER LIVED

From which house came my teenage lover?
I should recognize the one – where
As a sick moth haunts the moon he
Marked me in my blood.
He’s the one who died.
Women are more flexible
Turning shit to gold like
Earthworms; men are brittle
Sharp and angry, fall so
Easy out of tune. I sharpen
Ears these winter days
For all the sounds I never heard;
Screen doors slamming –
Secrets, arson,
Stolen kisses
Mustered music, borrowed
Penchant; Mayhem – trenchant
Terror – sentient.
```
        Avril and I found a perfect black sequin tube top while
```
we were out promenading yesterday – I’m going to wear it with my
black silk trouser suit. She thinks she found herself the perfect
apartment too – a studio in a skyscraper with a great kitchen, huge closets,
only $216 month utilities included, says she is going to look for another
week before she decides. Financial fount M & D don’t want her living with
me because I am a “harmful influence.” We saw Armon in a bit part on
TV last night – there weren’t any credits, but I knew it was him.
Listening out of one ear to gossip – Gina says the bartender
at the Starlight is bisexual and that Tony the bagman is her male lover.
She is big, he is little, I can’t imagine them together. He is called the “bagman”
because he runs between the clubs in a Lincoln filled with bags of money.
Gina also says that she is a priest in a mail order religion and that her
breasts are real and her ex-husband raped her nine-year-old daughter.
I can tell for a fact those hard breasts are fake so it does make it tough
to believe anything she says.
Last night went out with Erika to see the new Bunuel
(in spite of her claims to revere him she failed to notice he used different
actors for the same part) and to eat at Chateau Gesundheit. Depressing
conversation about how terrible men are – says her ex-husband is a cross
between a psychopath and a momma’s boy – she naturally assumed
because of R that this would be my favorite subject. She also says all exotic
dancers and showgirls were molested as children and as a result are lesbians who hate men. Asking or inviting? All I can say is that all little girls have unpleasant memories of Adult Men but this is just a chip on her breeze. A breeze I think
I better stay out of in future, perhaps. I also get tired of hearing the Marxist
slant on Life. Love doesn’t exist, people do everything for “self-interest”, etc.
etc. If that is true they are doing a piss-poor job of it. I think people live for
fantasy and some people’s fantasies are very, very cheap.
Hoping drinks with Maeve will be more fun.
```
        Midnight - 6 Jan- 78
        Crazy with love.  Jervaze and I had one of those unforgettable 
```
dates last night – Took him to my favorite restaurant in Ellicott City – Coco Lane
and we talked for hours. He loves dogs – wants to raise Grand Pyrenees. His
favorite cats are English blues. Wanted to be a vet except he always hated
school, so that’s how he got into working with his hands and he thinks there’s
no way back now. He loves WC Fields and horror movies.
The thing I love about him most (apart from his astonishing
beauty) is his natural courtesy, his dignity (he is very polite to anyone in a
service position – the exact opposite of R who acted as if being exigent
was the same thing as being discriminating. Status.) He has such an aura of gentleness and calm, just like those big dogs he loves so much. His isolation,
I like too – he’s the only male I’ve met in quite awhile who doesn’t travel in a
pack. He has a brother in the same job locally – that’s why he came up from
Alabama – but he plainly thinks suburban Virginia is the “fast lane” and I don’t
disabuse him.
He eats seafood by preference and wants to live on the water.
He probably drinks too much and could be an incipient alcoholic. My parents
would be totally, totally appalled but of course it doesn’t take much to appall them. Alas, he hasn’t finished my book – claims he’s “working on it”. I am
waiting for him to outright say he doesn’t understand it – maybe when he
knows me better.
When he kissed me goodnight he only kissed me – a relief
at the time, since it was one less worry. Now of course I wish I had some clearer indication from him that he finds me even attractive. Is he polite or am I resistible? Don’t want to be resistible – we’ll have to change that.
```
 Sat -1 pm 7 Jan- 78
        I’m at the Starlight – our club owner owns this one too – it’s huge.  
```
How I hate this stage. It isn’t a true stage but a runway winding through the
audience, which means you must keep walking all the time – and they try to
fill it by having several girls up at once. One can’t build any audience hypnosis – people pay less attention and have more business meetings – and tips
really take a nosedive. The bartender is a grizzled old lesbian who stares
right up my crotch – supposedly to see if my stocking seams are straight
(they aren’t. Fortunately she doesn’t offer to do them for me – but she still
watches.) Four of the other girls tried to get me to let them smoke dope in
the dressing room – I told them no. They’ll have to go out back with the alley
cats.
Thank God Glee – who has a lot of class – backed me up. So
the two of us had the dressing room to ourselves, which made a pleasant
change from watching the others trying to disguise the scars from their breast operations. Book I brought – The Pleasure of Ruins – does not go with this atmosphere in spite of its title.
R called me here – says he found me thru Randy who
was impressed because Ryder’s on TV! I flatly told him he is scaring the life
of out me with this behavior.
```
         But he seems to know just how far to push things, amazingly 
```
we had a wonderful talk! Gentleman Jim lets us talk in his office: very respectful
of our “privacy”. He obviously thinks we are dating. Wonder if he will tip
R to the fact that I have a “honey on the side” at the Plush Palace? Jesus!
I told R I am sick of his “psychotic twin brother” (good idea for a novel,
actually) and he really laughed – admitted he has “a Jekyll-Hyde” thing
going on. (It’s actually worse than that – it’s really Hyde and Mr. Nastier
Hyde – but didn’t say that. Keep conversation light.) He promised to stop
calling me at work.
January 5, 2023
Inspired Pleasure
Diary of a Dancer
```
 9:30 AM – 22 Dec 77
        Very dissatisfied with my life right now – trying to avoid
```
making out of sheer boredom some kind of major financial mistake –
like buying a house and filling it with furniture. Now that Avril has been
accepted as a “permanent student” at U of MD don’t see why we shouldn’t
share a berth somewhere. One of our dancers is a student there and she
says student housing is very expensive. Why couldn’t I rent out rooms?
But then what would happen to the three months of traveling I was promising
myself ? Wanted to spend March skiing in the White Mountains.
I need something more solid than Romance, that’s for sure.
Jervaze cancelled our last date so now I’m freaking. It is vital that he makes
the next move but my feminist soul revolts. Four months of celibacy appears
to be my limit.

Sitting in the bay window drinking a third cup of coffee and
watching a calico cat stalk the yard. Avril and I have been living rather high
lately, buying clothes for Christmas. Last night saw the movie Telefon
-very exciting but with an unbelievable ending – then watched Baryshnikov’s
delightful Nutcracker on TV. Avril says she’s finally starting to forget old
What’s His Face.

I’m trying to get her interested in the religious and meditation
books that have been such a help to me. She’s not that kind of a reader, alas.
No word from R. My latest “daymare” is that he will just
show up at the club. Should I talk to Randy? A says Ryder’s asked her
about it. I made her promise to say “We don’t think you should have
that information” even if he already knows. I try comforting myself
with my knowledge of his vanity – he wouldn’t want other men to see
Randy throw him out as an “unsuccessful suitor”.

(Angry exes show
up at club routinely and aren’t allowed in no matter how they behave
or how much money they have. They get On The Bad List.) Let’s hope
the sensitivity of his ”face” protects both of us. But he probably would
send a stooge – it is just like him – to spy out the land. Fortunately
I look good and this classy place has the Shalimar beat so no disgrace.
Jervaze and I are trying to keep people at the club from knowing that we
date. But it’s impossible to really disguise favorites what with the tripping,
drinks, flowers and etc even if we aren’t allowed to sit with the customers.
Stooge could probably figure it out. Maybe R would “give up” at the sight
of him. Search me.

I’m at the stage with Jervaze where I hunger for some
symbol of his caring, that he’s broken through the surface status and
glamour of “dating a dancer” and has some deeper regard for me as a
unique human being. He buys copies of my book whenever he finds
them, but of course that’s status and glamour too, even though it’s just
a paperback. I have forbidden him to tell anyone at the club about my
book – he finds that a little weird, but I don’t see how being “a dancing
author” could do me any good. The thing I most love about this job is
that you don’t have to talk. Gave him a book of my poems for his birthday:

a declaration of erotic war.

23 Dec 77 12:15PM
So in love I’m crazed. I’m at that stage where you can’t
honestly tell if the other person is even interested, you’re in such a
delirium. Jealousy of all the other dancers because he looks at them.
Jervaze says he liked my poems, his favorite being Nocturne.

NOCTURNE

Reveal

Yourself to me

To my inner palate

An artist’s palette

Moth-winged hands

Fluttering

Crescent thighs surging

Urging

Union undivided

Prickly venus flytrap hairs that guard

Your anis scented anus

Fleshy mandibles

Trembling sheaves

Snouting for your smoky-salted dinner

Double-snouted cock stiffening

My mango halves

O I will baste you when its time

Angelspit,

Lovespawn

Dipin my styx of roe your

Musky caviar

Sensate wanderer you

Suck

Ubus –

I dreamed you

Open me.
```
        I thought that might do the trick. I possess wiles 
```
unknown to other babes. He mentioned that his brother’s going back
to Alabama so he might be alone for Christmas – I invited him to New
York City but I could tell from his expression he’ll never do it. He thinks
Virginia is the north – calls the New Jersey Turnpike “undriveable” –
a lawless war zone. (If he could hear what we say about the South!)

We exchanged presents – he gave me a bottle of Irish Mist and
another one of my books (he keeps buying them for me) and I gave
him a very small glamour shot in an antique frame – so he can do
anything with it – hide it if he wants. Keep it in his car. He said he liked
it but in the bar light he really couldn’t see. The we went to breakfast –
had a wonderful conversation about ghosts and WC Fields. He believes
in one but not the other. I was hoping he would kiss me – regretted the
first time when “rocked out” on beer, he leaned forward to kiss me but
I pulled away.

But last night would have been completely unmanageable
– under yellowing lights and the stares of strangers (me in my stage
makeup) or out in the pouring rain. So we said goodbye, hopped in our
cars. We may not see each other for three weeks! I’ve got his address
(on his business card) so I can at least send him a card from NY.
Got to get up and face the day. Avril back from her final exam in ½ hour
– then off to Landover Mall to see Saturday Night Fever.
```
 24 Dec 77 - midnight – Plush Palace
        The Big Day. Go home, sleep, wake up, do laundry, take 
```
dogs for shots, buy snow tires. In a haze of infatuation – J was in for 5
hours tonight watching me dance with a sense of unmistakable pride.
He asked for my phone number so he could call me on Christmas Day –
I gave him all of them.

New York City Dec 25 77 – Fri night.
Life is so interesting, Wouldn’t miss it for the world.
Lovely intimate family talks – just what family should be doing for perspective
on past and future. In two days Avril and I drive out to Michigan to see
Merrill – 11 hours – tonight’s dinner in the Village then an early night.
Heard of a studio apt on the island – winterized – going for $200/month.
Of course I will have enough royalties for that…or won’t I? Harcourt royalty
dept uncooperative, editor Lauren very cagey. But won’t the island kill
my already comatose sex life? This is the longest time I’ve been away
from dancing and I miss it. It’s a great substitute for sex but not a complete
one alas. Physical activity vital to my peace of mind.
```
        96th St off the Park- New York City – Dec 77
```
This apt is triggering horrible flashbacks to how sick I was
at the beginning of last summer. Scary that a man could do this to me.
Don’t ever want to get that sick again. Makes me sorry this diary exists
– my trusty friend – because now misery has an actual corporeal reality.
Burn these sickening wails before I die. The Victorians always did.

Well I’m raring to get back. Not only do I miss the dancing,
I miss the bar. Ah, the nightlife. Always a party atmosphere but I could
feel superior for not drinking (or getting high). I like our status and
protections – I like getting paid for exercising, being admired and having
fun. This pleasure just cannot be shared – Mom’s face crimps closed – and
I am lost in the unredeemable beastliness and ugliness she feels certain
it must be. The fact that I am a feminist and consider myself spiritually in
tune with the universe also is incomprehensible to her. (Wives can get into
big spiritual trouble too, but I am too tactful to bring that up.)

Unfortunately
there is no way to defend myself except by attacking back – her “safe”, closed,

restricted world of handmaiden to Dad, feeding and burnishing
him like a racehorse, talking him “up” as if she were his sports coach, does
not seem to me more inherently saintly.

But to Mom self-loss is what “sainthood” is – you totally
do not regard yourself in your care for someone else. The fact that you
are puffing them up like a grampus, encouraging them to be completely
selfish, is I guess too shockingly cruel to mention. So I’m stuck in Patient
Griselda mode with undeserved imprecations heaped on my innocent head.
I wonder if it would be too nasty to talk about how I am sacrificing myself for
those poor lonely men who need to look upon a perfect feminine ideal while
they swill beer? Guess I better not.

Mom is fond of saying that love doesn’t work unless
you open your heart to the other but you can’t do it without marriage!
I say Jervaze and I are “courting” which is a very different thing. I don’t
think I will ever open my heart again. I think perhaps it opens by itself,
naturally. One might as well tear a flower open and complain about
the quality of the bloom.

Interesting being here with Brett and Genevieve and
watching someone else’s marriage from the outside. Does not look
too enviable. Reading “Eclipse of the Hero in Victorian Fiction.” He’s
in eclipse everywhere else, too, I may add.
January 4, 2023
Inspired Pleasure
Diary of a Dancer
```
        12:10 PM- Plush Palace – Wed 19 Oct 77
        Dance night, then dance the next day kind of rough. And 
```
days are bad when the weather’s good – no one comes in. I seem to have
a lot of bills – just turned on the heat – but I’m meeting them. Making some
inroads today on Thomson’s Life of Frost. Randy fired Robin – Yvonne
needs $300 immediately because she just bought a piano. Well good luck
getting it out of this crowd is all I can say. Paz’s “on call” because she left
her husband and moved into the motel across the street. Let’s hope she
shows up. Last time I saw her she was pretty depressed; said she gave
him “the best four years” of her life. I have to get this all down in case I need
it someday. R used to be especially pissed when I got nostalgic for
dancing. But dancing is its own little world.
```
        7:30 PM- Plush Palace – Thu 20 Oct 77
        This aft I was getting ready for work phone rang, I say 
```
hello and Ryder’s tight little voice says: (very meaningfully) Hello.
I turned the radio down (Lakmé) and said casually as I could, “How
are you?”

He said he should enroll in FBI school after all the
trouble he’d had tracking me down.

(It couldn’t have been that hard since Mom and Dad’s
house sitter has been giving my # to all and sundry.) Said he was
punished now for being a non-communicative procrastinator who
should fling himself off the 14th St Bridge. I told him I lived in Beltsville
and danced in Virginia, refused to give further details. I didn’t let him
get away with any of his garbage. He said I’d been in town since Sept 8
without contacting him. I said he’d made it pretty plain he didn’t like what
I had to offer. Then why did I come back? I said, I like it here. Creep!
Like he owns the world!
```
        He said, will you eat with me?  Hmmm.  Something rattling 
```
in Pandora’s box. While I hesitated he said don’t make me disguise myself
as a girl scout cookie salesman (he could get away with it, too.) He said he
hasn’t gone out to dinner since our last night at Alfio’s!!! (I guess the Emmys
don’t count but I said nothing.) Said he’s having to give back his furniture
and sleep on an air mattress because he can’t make the payments. Aww.
This is the idiocy of buying furniture on time, but I still say nothing. So we’re
meeting Babe’s Sun at 3:30. Seems fairly safe… Rushed to library and took
out every true murder book I could find. Just in case.
```
         2 Nov – Plush Palace – 6:05 PM.
        R called this morning to “report in!’  Just to chat about his 
```
day! No more of that, I said. I’m busy. Slam. I don’t chat and I’m not sorry
it’s too late to learn. Actually feeling amazingly happy. Kiki showed me
how to cut off my corn with an exacto knife. All better! Still in Vol I of Life
of Frost. He was a repulsive human being, all right. Nowhere near as fun
as Agatha. Precious equilibrium recovered.
```
        8:30 PM  8 Nov 77
        I gave him the full treatment, poor guy. Red Italian boots, 
```
glittery eyeshadow, tight, tight jeans. Deliberately drove Conn Ave but no
markers from the past reached out their claws. Felt strong and blissful.
I was first there (of course) so could order carafe of wine and think. Thinking,
I’ll just explain to him that my idea of friendship and intimacy requires a
degree of truth telling that appears to freak him out.

He wore his high heels, too. His hair is blonder, longer
and messier than I remembered and it suits him. Off to the Bahamas
next weekend, he says for a “dive”. He wore the pinky ring I gave him
(he says he can’t get it off.) But that holy glow, that shine he used to have
is gone for me. I get it that he doesn’t know the pain he caused –
shallow people can’t. And that’s pitiable, really. He’s not just deaf
in one ear, he’s deaf in his soul.

He has a carefully worked out a “barstool rationale” for
what happened to us; we became lovers before we became friends.
I have no comment. Postponing sex would not have helped – and it
might have made things worse dumping all the responsibility for timing
on me. I think when he saw how easy it was to draw blood he couldn’t
help doing it, and I was a fool and an idiot. I ordered the fruit and
cheese plate but left before it arrived. Realize how much I want all
this to be in the past. No future of any kind exists for us. Not even
in fantasy. The future is what matters. Told him to give my regards
to the folks at the Shalimar. He said he’d give me a buzz.
Bet I can finish Demon by Thanksgiving. Avril coming.
Lucky I have a second bedroom. Furnish it with Kliban posters, a
thrift shop bureau and a mattress on the floor.
```
         12 Nov 77 6:25 PM Plush Palace
        I finally called R. (He’s been leaving me messages.)
```
I said if we were going to have a relationship of any kind – the friendship
that he wanted – we would have to have rules (I got the idea from Nancy
Mitford.) He said he was so glad I called, he’d been having the most awful
day. Took my card out of his rolodex but couldn’t bring himself to destroy it
and put it away in a drawer. What rules he said. I said we’d have to think. No idle calls? No talk about past? He said, “Please forgive me” but of course I can’t. I said
“Forgive me.” He said there’s nothing to forgive,
```
        Dancing suddenly OK? I said we’re done with all 
```
that stuff. Starting over. But I’m very busy working a lot and writing a
lot and he said he’s very busy working a lot. No expectations. We
both said fine and I’m pretty sure he’s as relieved as I am.
We’re going to Looking for Mr. Goodbar Thurs –
I want to see it too. He knows how I love movies. It’s perfect
weather to pick up Avril at the airport and drive to Galesville tomorrow
for brunch with Mom & Dad at the marina. There’s a big white
farmhouse on Old Annapolis Rd I always look at longingly.
```
         Plush Palace 4 PM Wed 15 Dec 1977
        Shaking like a leaf. Ryder called the club saying he 
```
was called early into work tonight – change of plans. Called his work
immediately – “Mr. Arlen’s desk.” Left her a message saying I got his
message but do not call the club. Hope this stymies him till after
Christmas but I know he is going to say we need each other’s workplace

for last minute plan changes.

I say is THIS IS NOT DATING. WE ARE NOT DATING. You can’t be
trusted with my workplace #.

Then I start looking desperately for Jervaze to come in.
He’s supplying me lately with that all-important fantasy vitamin of which
I have been so deficient for so long. Can’t even THINK about R to the
background of Disco Inferno.
```
Sat – 18 Dec 77 9:30 AM
        Very dissatisfied with life and self and, as usual, in 
```
complete confusion as to what to do about it. I suspect I should not be
making any big investment decisions, like buying a house and furnishing
it but I am sick of being such a goddam wanderer. Avril has been
accepted at U of MD – my job is to finish this goddam novel. If I could
finish it maybe March, April and May could be my traveling months.
I thought March skiing could be nice – in Devon’s back yard.

I am in danger of making an idiot of myself over Phil
Jervaze – “Adonis” as I privately call him . He seems very attracted
but is not making the first move. I’ll have to bring him along somehow.
Going tomorrow to Renaissance Music at the National Shrine. Should
I wear my rhinestones or can I restrain myself? Avril says I’m doing a
good job taking her mind off of Dipstick, (my name for Mason). Bought
her $80 worth of clothes – she can pay me back when I need help with
the January rent.
```
        The Plush Palace 20 Dec 1977 – 4 PM                         Avril called to say that Ryder called again – trying to find out my 
```
holiday plans from her. Says he might have to work. I am surprised to
be shaking so much. I am very unhappy about this level of communication.
I was actually hoping not to have to deal with him till after Christmas.
Would prefer not to give him an opportunity to go into his act. I’ve learned
if I call his work I get his secretary. Left the message I will be “out of town”.
Favor, Alysse., The trouble is, telling a game-player you don’t play games
is all part of the game to them! There is absolutely nothing I can do to step
out of this thing except bore him to death. We will see each other fewer
and fewer times, the emotional content will be constantly plummeting,
and meanwhile, the chicks on the side he has summoned up for contrast and amusement will be clamoring for center stage. Let them have it.

And I have my own magic pill in reserve – Jervaze.
That anyone can drift through life so far unironically with shoulder
length platinum hair, platinum mustache and a white cowboy hat, drive
a 72 Shelby and work for the Pentagon titillates my Yankee soul. But
that’s what’s so much fun about the fine commonwealth of Virginia.
It’s full of these people. Uh oh. I hear the rhythm of Disco Inferno,
audience’s current favorite. Dust myself with body glitter and I’m up.
January 3, 2023