Goddesses Embody Balance – Like a perfectly baked cake, goddesses are a pinch of this, a dusting of that, a hefty serving of something else. We are making our way blindfolded across a restless lagoon by stepping on the lotus leaves.
You can tell when something in you is out of whack. Ordinary souls castigate themselves but goddesses calibrate their approach, recognizing that Balance is a key law of nature designed to help us avoid the dreaded stagnancy that is experienced as a living death. Once our conscious is in harmony with our subconscious, our dreams begin to balance our waking life. Even the worst nightmare can be looked at objectively in the light of day, as a story with potency and significance.
Goddesses Revere Balance – Unfortunately contemporary life has become a competitive pursuit of “highs”. A good life well-lived provides natural highs – learning a skill, reveling in physical gifts, falling in love, listening to music, sharing with children, enjoying the grandeurs of nature. Our intellect teaches us that every “high” is dramatically enriched just by thinking about it! That’s why we are called “homo sapiens.”
Balance is a Powerful Law of Nature – The pursuit of competitive highs without the thinking and enshrining stages always leads to excess and grief. Highs for their own sake inevitably disappoint, leading to a pursuit of more and more dangerous highs, which, if we are not thinking about them, sharing them with others and incorporating them into our beings, damages our ability to experience joy. Understanding and managing our “emotional highs” is the key to joy.
Goddesses Live on All Levels At Once – Goddesses learn to give thanks for and pay tribute to the Past, to enjoy and understand the Present, to anticipate and strategize for the Future and to revel and be comforted by the promise of Eternity.
Balancing the Levels – Joy that is held in the mind is joy endlessly re-experienced. It will be yours forever, and you will be able to share it with all the people you love for the rest of your life. Each of us briefly experience heaven during our lifetimes; prolonged, immortalized and enriched by experiencing and re-experiencing with each other.
Goddess Challenge – We need to personally set up our brain’s “reward system” to handle pleasure and suffering or we will be prescribed drugs in an attempt to achieve the same effect chemically. Drugs can be useful as training wheels; ideally we want to teach our systems to achieve the same effect naturally. Calm is the first step to balance, so we must learn to calm ourselves. Meditation, sleep and yoga offer the best methods for reliable self-soothing. First we assert calm over our breath, then our bodies, lastly our thoughts. It’s not that difficult! Reminder: this occurred naturally every night of our lives before we started stressing about it!
Night Is the Leveler – Our species needs sleep to connect to the Universal Mind, and to the minds of all Dreamers, human and animal. Conscious dreaming (often called lucid dreaming) provides a trusted avenue to filter daily discoveries down to your subconscious level. Always have a joy to think about just as you are going to sleep, and another for when you are waking up. This will sharpen your connection with emotional ecstasy and deepen your life.Once our conscious is in harmony with our subconscious, our dreams will balance our waking life. Even the worst nightmare can be looked at objectively, as a story with potential significance.
Models & Mentors – “The key is not to prioritize what’s on your schedule but to schedule your priorities” – Stephen Covey
“Don’t get so busy making a living that you forget to make a life” – Dolly Parton
“For everything there is a season, a time for every activity under heaven. 2 A time to be born and a time to die. A time to plant and a time to harvest. 3 A time to kill and a time to heal. A time to tear down and a time to build up. 4 A time to cry and a time to laugh. A time to grieve and a time to dance. 5 A time to scatter stones and a time to gather stones. A time to embrace and a time to turn away. 6 A time to search and a time to quit searching. A time to keep and a time to throw away. 7 A time to tear and a time to mend. A time to be quiet and a time to speak. 8 A time to love and a time to hate. A time for war and a time for peace. – Ecclesiastes 3
Have you ever both wanted something and not wanted it? Of course you have. It’s the human condition. We often choose something temporary, hoping to dodge the consequences. Or we tolerate something to get a certain outcome, and when we’re denied that, we feel cheated.
My duality is the desire to reveal myself and also be private. I want both things at once – to be completely known and to be utterly unknown.
I already have two superpowers (Art & Love) but if I could get a third (seems unlikely) I would choose Invisibility. I love eavesdropping on conversations.
These aspects of myself have certainly frustrated incredulous friends, boyfriends, managers and agents.
I was very uncomfortable in the theatre, speaking and acting other people’s words, but I think (though I never got the chance) that acting my own words would have felt even worse.
I could never express to family and friends the enormous relief it was to dance – utterly silent – in the spotlight –to my own moods – which you couldn’t dignify as “choreography”. Being almost nude didn’t bother me at all but felt absolutely right, since clothes & costumes were an impediment to which the performer must be mindful.
I became a Warrior trying to explain these anomalies to people. Welcome to duality – the other edge we walk.
As soon as my education was my own to manage, I bollixed it up. My high school’s near total repudiation of Art left me seeking some kind of art school, but which? I was accepted at a School of the Arts in San Diego but depressed by the distance – a visit to my ex-boyfriend in Oregon and a visit to my handsy uncle in Hollywood had not endeared me to the West Coast. I auditioned at glitzy acting schools but had zero game and even less confidence so obviously THAT wasn’t going to work, so I started off modestly by interning at Southwark Theatre School (they gave me office work) and taking classes at the Philadelphia Academy of Dance. I was physically clumsy and slow and this was going to hold me back from any theatre career. I was very well developed in the left brain areas but my right brain appeared to be asleep. Although I was the worst in the class I did get better and I was amazed to be accepted by a prestigious theatre school in New York City. I got an apartment in New York city, signed up for classes at Martha Graham to prop up my confidence, and gave that a try.
Just a year ago I was leaving MN, assessing my theatre summer and its value! This was a better theatre experience but I’m not sure I can remain in the theatre if I dislike routine so much. Robin says I’m spoiled and lazy but I like surprises. Constant astonishment would be perfect. Robin says that is film acting but I photograph so horribly I could only play witches. I have a jaw like a boxing glove. I do feel more sure of myself and more determined in my philosophy. I’d consider dancing if every dancer alive weren’t better than me – I am not a “natural dancer” at ALL. But it’s fun!
I learned to respect Catholicism but I see its danger: putting men in charge. They have crazy ideas! Robin for example, thinks I’m a “whore” because I WON’T have sex! I think my moral philosophy is pure and untainted but he says if I like passion without penises I must be a lesbian! (I better not tell him about Fleur. I’ve had my chance! ) Love is NOWHERE in this equation. He grabbed me backstage as I was going on for Act III and said I broke his heart. I told him to write a radio serial – I don’t think his heart ever came out to play. He was very insulted but Jodi and I have discussed this. She agrees his deepest feelings are not involved – this is a volcano of selfishness and anger and I should stay away. She says he wants to talk badly about me to everyone but they will see it for what it is. Jodi moved in a few days ago – I am liking having a roommate better than I thought I would. Looking forward to seeing Mom & Dad and cruising a new area. Play with my thirteen-year-old sister and catch up on my sleep.
Mon 17 July 67 Rehearsal bad this evening. I am gobbling aspirin. Whenever I see Robin talking to someone I know its about me. The orchestra is so pathetic there isn’t a beat to dance to! We get our counts mixed up. Left my black ballet slippers at the dorm and Mr. Johnson wouldn’t let me wear my pink ones – had to wear a pair that didn’t fit. The second act is definitely the worst – they put the summerhouse where I am supposed to be standing! I am literally dancing against a wall. I nearly killed Carrie in the cartwheel and then my bodice started to unlace. The only fun I have is in the cancan. And in the final act I have to waltz with Robin! That means I am wearing my ugliest costume for the meaningless finale.
Miss Whalen delivered an ill-timed lecture. All those considering suicide will go ahead now and do it and the orchestra will be even smaller. Tea and sticky buns with Sister Mary Rosycheeks back at the dorm provide some relief. In a week I’ll be on the boat!
Tues 18 July 67 There is a serious drawback to having a roommate – I never get anything done! Mom and Dad called from Cape Cod I started crying and then we got cut off! I am ashamed of myself – they are never going to know I’m not miserable. I can’t explain about Robin obviously (Mom would take HIS side!!!) I get so homesick when I hear their voices! Avril was telling me about all the “psychedelic” boutiques on the shore.
Thurs 20 July 67 “Is the world a lunatic asylum then? Are we all courteous maniacs discreetly making allowances for everyone else’s derangement?”
This from Muriel Spark’s wonderful The Comforters which I just this moment finished reading. So fabulous. So satisfying. Didn’t understand the title until I read that sentence! Halfway through I doubted I could survive the chaos (or the self-conscious writing. “Joe was feeling tired. “I’m feeling tired, said Joe.” There’s only so much of that you can stand.) The book jacket prints a nice quote from Evelyn Waugh and I will follow that man through thick and thin. It turned out to be worth it. Words blown out of context, motives ignored, manipulations misconstrued while people automatically say the opposite of whatever they really feel. Spark is enchanting. I will get all her other novels to read, but my next project is Waugh’s son Auberon’s Foxglove Saga.
Sat with Chris Cahill during dinner. He is only 14 but painfully smart. No one can stand him but me – he wants to argue about art and/or history at every possible moment. With a male Alysse Aallyn on the loose how can I help but lend a hand. Spark backs me up that we are kinder toward those whose madness we recognize!
Last night’s preview VERY successful – the nuns loved it. They are as sentimental as whores (according to Giraudoux!! ) Sister Mary Rosycheeks said the cancan girls have such cute bottoms! Our dancing was certainly the high point! Must get over to the theatre now in fact – it’s only ten to seven but I need ages making up.
1:50 AM Fri 21 July 67 Fierce rainstorm this afternoon – Jodi and I were DRENCHED! Had to dry my hair under the bathroom blower.
Too much to eat! Jodi & I celebrating opening night with clove tea & orange peel (Alysse’s special recipe) chocolate cookies, apple and the rest of the orange. Who needs the dining hall? I’d better stay up while the tea takes its course – I hate being wakened in the middle of the night three feet off the bed on my bladder. Jodi looks so sweet over there – sleeping clutching her Kleenex box!
Finished part I of Foxglove. Auberon’s nowhere near as biting as his father – but he is witty and entertaining. He’s certainly a lot more organized than Muriel! He’s also not a fatalist but maybe he’s too young (cover portrait handsome young man.) Hmmm. Don’t think I could ever marry a novelist. How would you ever know who was plagiarizing who?
Opening night audience was packed. At first NOTHING could amuse them but by the beginning of the second act they were thawed and started applauding EVERYTHING!! Loved the cancan! Such a letdown when it’s over! I’m ecstatic when I’m dancing – sweat didn’t ruin my makeup – not a curl out of place – lost no feathers – not even an earring! Did not forget Sasha’s gloves or tights! Triumph! I am learning. (It was the first time I was EVER in the Green Room on time.)
Some of these costume changes are TOO MUCH – once again Carrie forgot to double knot my bodice and it started to unravel!
Called the travel agent – booked a flight for Wed. Get out of here 9:30 AM making only one change at Minneapolis. Get into Kennedy 3:30 PM their time. Then a train to Montauk. I wish Mom would meet me – I’d like to talk to her and it would do her good to get away. I’m sure she is afraid to talk honestly about Genevieve, but she’ll never feel better if she doesn’t. Her impulse is always to pretend it isn’t happening – I remember her stepping over dead drunk men in the street and being goosed by parking lot attendants in Morocco. All with regal hauteur. I bought her a green paisley cigarette case as a mark of a new Tolerance to let her know I love her – she knows I hate her smoking. At some point we have to step past all the frozen tears and kisses.
Before the second act curtain when Robin and I were frozen in our places, him touching my bare back he begged me to go to the Black Hawk with him after the play. I said No. I said, ‘:Do you hate me Robin” and he said no but I can see he does.
After the play I ran up the iron stairs to the dressing room, smeared cold cream on my face & eyelashes, put on my dress without a bra and rushed out before anyone could speak to me. Sweet, seven page letter from Genevieve July 15 –
“This is a shamefully overdue letter and I apologize but all sorts of phenomena are happening in my life – I’m sorry I haven’t included you sooner..” Then she sprung her big surprise – she’s marrying Kent Winokur! Said she loves him because he’s like Daddy! Hmmm… Said she’s probably get married next weekend and I could come visit them! I wrote back saying I thought marriage was a hell of a contract and nineteen’s awfully young but I know she won’t listen to me! Enclosed penny candy as a wedding present!
I do disapprove. It’s not Mom and Dad – I don’t think she can help feeling trapped because she WILL be trapped! I wouldn’t give up the excitement of independence so easily, that wild exhilaration. You never want to think you’ve missed the action. And what if she wants to be alone? I want to know that somewhere there is a single bed I can always return to. On the other hand, I haven’t met anyone who makes me want to give that up. I suppose it’s possible he exists. Sings Barbra:
“I want to find my true love like all the lovesongs say I want to do what I want, I want to get my way. Wild dreams grow wise when sweet childhood flies Time waved her hand and the breeze Blew sand from my eyes…”
But I may be making a mistake thinking what revolts me revolts her. Maybe she is the wife type. I better go to bed – Jodi and I have to clean the paint room tomorrow and I will look like Living Death. Is there no rest for the wicked?
Sun 23 July 67 Rudely awakened at 10:30 AM by Mater and Pater calling from Connecticut. Gave them my flight info.
The day went blissfully, lazily. Robin came over insisting I help him with his NDEA lines, so I did. We hugged. He begged me to come for a drive. I was infused with physical longing but refused. Thank God I was strong enough! He claimed the pink ribbon from my hair. I wouldn’t let him have it unless he would give me his shirt on the spot. He wouldn’t so I refused to let him have the ribbon.
Here’s the note he gave me: “If what you want is not to be together, if that will make it easier, I’ll try. Believe me, I’ve always tried to do everything your way.” Jesus I’ll be glad to get out of this place!
Tues 25 July 67 4:30 AM Looks like I won’t be getting to bed tonight either! Didn’t get underway with my packing till 3;15 because I was saying goodbye to everyone in the smoker.
Performance went great – ballet especially! Last applause rang in our ears. Black velvet curtains swung together and the major domo enfolded the cancan dancer in his arms. It’s a wrap! Strike! (Means something different in the theatre.)
Felt so nostalgic taking off my satin & feathers!
After strike cancan dancer eluded the majordomo, went back to the dorm to say goodbye to Jodie and meet her folks. Farm folk! I am so ashamed of my snobbishness! Robin insisted on a Last Walk. I’d actually believe he just had rotten luck to fall in love with me – if he hadn’t SAID he wants me because he can’t HAVE me! Sick! We sat on the stone steps and I stared into his crooked face (he is so much handsomer onstage!) He still doesn’t understand why I wouldn’t kiss him. What’s it matter to me?
It mattered.
He will NEVER understand but he insisted we correspond. He also demanded to drive me to the airport. Uh oh. What if he kidnaps me? My frugality will be the death of me!
Swimming last night in the Lourdes pool – skinny dip! Just me & Jodi playing “Loch Ness monster!” Nice nuns caught us and showed us the door. All the cancan girls met in the smoker and munched cherries.
Raced up to the fourth floor sundeck to watch the sun come up over the bluffs. Wake bring in huge breakfast – hot chocolate, mushroom omelet and doughnuts!
Picked up my tickets from the travel agent – they are incredibly cheap – I don’t understand it at all. Three hours sleep in the afternoon. Parents called from Block Island where they are stranded by rough winds so Mom can’t come. I wasn’t depending on her so unsurprised. No point going to bed now! Second sunrise in a row! Shared with Joan Peska who suffers from an abscessed tooth.
This summer’s been worth it. 1) take bath 2) clean room 3) finish packing 4) iron dress 5) ? My tea is cold. I can sleep on the plane.
26 hours without T. Spoke to him last night and again this afternoon. His acceptance of me is total, but it comes from a position of strength and I have fears of being annihilated. Last night I experienced hallucinatory states – drove home the wrong way – felt something was happening to the car – re-experienced my swallowing problem. Resolved my panic by starting a poem.
Sat night Toss and I read the diary passages where
we lose our “divinity” (his word) together. He cried and told me what he’d felt like from his “side”, wanting to be male & in control, feeling helpless & immature. Agreed if we had married then we’d be divorced now.
11:05PM Trying to read Oneness & Separateness. Not well suited to me right now! Much as I want to be a mother the thought of a demanding infant between me & T truly horrifying. Insane fears of rejection and abandonment – why on earth should I trust this man? Called T at work! Complete craziness. He reassured me we will have private alone time a real vacation in the Berkshires. He said champagne arrived. Called A & we discussed Mom & Dad – how they rewarded “self-sufficiency” and responded to neediness coldly. Makes it hard to be honest now but I hate this weirdly formal relationship with my own parents. Avril says there is no retraining them.
Sat 14 July 79 – StormFall Farm – 11:15 PM Oh, my God who would believe it – here I am 11 years later! Told T about my uncle last night as we made sexual “confessions”. He was completely calm about it so it’s no longer a Big Secret. He insisted I read his ex-girlfriend’s letters. She was a Piper Cub to his Concorde, believe me. He kept carbons of his letters to her!!!! Not very loving – downright fatherly. In a bad way.
T’s actual father and he smoked cigars last night
after dinner leaning against the mantel – they were so beautiful together I felt stunned. Wrote a poem:
MY HUSBAND SMOKES CIGARS WITH HIS FATHER BY CANDLELIGHT
Your profiles cut my heart like glass. Go ahead. I’m a bleeder, I’ll Still be here when you look back. Your father is a silver-headed Walking-stick; his elongation glows with far less heat. You’re his nemesis; and he’s used to it. The wooden floors washed cornelian Perhaps by sunset Perhaps by jealousy of girls who Lost you; judged too soon the temper of your eyes Wrote too many letters or Not enough; the wrong kind Addressed to the pale law student with The cinderblock heart Traveling commentator with the hundred Dollar bill rolled inside his shoe, The long-haired Pinkerton guard. You learned to suck the cherries Scarless from the tree; it’s no mean art Broke a few at first; we all did. By what right am I the winner? You chose me in thirty seconds leaving enough time to smoke another cigar.
Everyone wants us to marry before May. But I feel
I need some time in Kentucky first. Toss told me last night that on paper he is a millionaire. Here’s luck, because if I keep on keeping on, I’m a pauper! Tom’s grandmother’s response was “I am not surprised.” She committed herself to reading my “thriller”. At dinner he announced I’m the only woman he’s ever wanted to marry. Tom’s dad said he thought he’d be a bachelor forever. Privately we affirmed absolute sexual fidelity forever. Will we be able to keep it?
Plush Palace – Wed 18 July 79 – 4:55 PM Boring day but good tips. Magnificent party at The Third Edition last night for Avril’s birthday. (I didn’t care for Avril’s latest “honey” Vigo but was furious at myself – she should date as widely as possible. Maybe I was affected by T who is a snob and a purist.) Drinks, fruit & cheese – then dinner at The Old Angler & Frank Langella in Dracula. (Not a good version.) “Finances” discussion with T. He talked me out of selling my car. I worry about being dependent on him but he says it will be fine. Sounds to me like he is living on a knife’s edge – working part time, going to law school, selling stock when he needs money (which he is loathe to do being naturally frugal.) Too tired to make love last night but we started up in the middle of the night – both asleep. Doors keep opening – then there’s another one.
Castle – 1 PM – Thurs 19 July 79 So happy I can’t take it all in. Feel like someone recovering from a long illness. Read Cheever’s Goodbye My Brother – as satisfying as a novel. Last night we made love for hours and hours but I just couldn’t come – kept holding his face saying, “Is it really you”? Dancing with Barbara the Kikuyu and blonde Joyce of the day-glo costumes.
3 PM Party Castle – 24 July 79 First real friction last night – very predictably, about my job. I’m irritated over the assumption that its sordid and brutalizing. It is totally NOT the same as the dancers in DC!!! LIFE can be sordid and brutalizing – I like this club because it ISN’T and I’ve tried others. We discussed HIS job which also has its sordid and corrupting aspects. Duh. His last girlfriend gave him shit about it (and refused to read the paper!) so it’s a sore point. He should get it. There was a horrible moment when he felt foreign and alien – but I expected it – too much intimacy always causes a backlash. Trying to read Sisters & Strangers. The Victorian novel is not dead.
Castle – 2 Aug 79 – Wed Seems hopeless to TRY writing in this book – things happen so fast – a month is an eternity. Last night celebrated our 11th “divinity loss” anniversary – and a difficult anniv. It was. T came to see me dance for the first time – with Avril so it wouldn’t be so bad but had to leave he was so upset. He didn’t like me smiling! Like I’m ENJOYING myself! The PLACE didn’t bother him (“reverent & reserved” were his words) just my pleasure in movement beauty & freedom! Uh oh! He goes back to my parents’ argument: IT’S TURNING MEN ON. So what? I get impatient with that – that way lurks the “hajib”.
We have to educate each other. At the end the atmosphere seemed cleared and we both cried with relief. Even though I know my love is in the larval stage, I’ve never loved anyone the way I love him. We had our last dinner at 641 E street – steak and wine, fruit, cream, brandy. He asked me if there were any boyfriends’ the report of whose marriage “depressed” me (he was referring to my marriage) and I had to say no.
He opened a letter from Mindy, ex-girlfriend he was thinking of re-starting a relationship with except she went to Nepal. A letter I would have thought perfectly reasonable two months ago now strikes me as ridiculous – an ounce of love is worth more than all these pages of barter.
I got a wonderful letter from Devon – he’s found “another girl” (with three more in reserve I’m betting) and wishes me the best. But T was upset because he closed with “I love you” a word NOT thrown around in his world! (Mindy and Cindy don’t say it!) He says it’s the only part of the letter he believes – “the guy is a total phony.” I said his only victim is himself. We then made love on the floor on top of all our exes’ letters. Gloriously. Got a poem out of it.
The Bridesmaid Yes, I know everything You’re my poor Relation. I know of your daddy’s desk where you Fucked with formaldehyde fingers I know of your lonely Rosary of abortions I repeat, I know everything. We made love on your letters undisturbed As two icons. She’s imperfect He told me. Unseated by mortality We must take our place With the king’s crazy mistresses; Brewing menstrual blood coffee And mandrake root tea. Swim away, little bridesmaid, You’re too young I’m in love We’ve got Too much in common ever to meet. Need to see dentist & gyno, overhaul bike, pay bills. T. meets Ralph Nader at 6. Lucky me snagging someone so ambitious and competent.
Castle Mon 6 Aug 79
God I need Maine. I love T but I need to get away
from him. I am used to being alone 4-5 hours a day. Starving for that. Wonder how many otherwise perfect relationships break up for this reason! T. is a little TOO driven. A little TOO single-minded. Makes me argue with him – I can’t help it. For example: he talked about the “ugliness of the desert landscape.” It’s not my “thing” either – because I grew up somewhere else – but O’Keeffe taught me to see the beauty of it. What he REALLY meant was “I don’t like it” but he raises it to a religious principle “New England is better.” That’s embarrassing.
I constantly feel he’s trying to “re-educate” me – for example he didn’t like my turquoise silk pants because he “doesn’t like colors that don’t appear in nature.” When shown an aquarium of tropical fish he doesn’t “count” them, their colors are “cultivated” and somehow “wrong.” The truth is bright colors make him nervous. So say THAT.
Sat night we went to an office party of his people (to which I wore the aforementioned pants) and praised the house over- extravagantly. (He does NOT like my yellow velvet furniture. I’m giving it to Maureen.) “One good picture” per wall, beige Danish oldern furniture – unbelievably boring and sterile. A chipped china frog would have done the place a world of good. Could warn of decorating problems ahead. His younger brother Dominic in town – when I complimented his Mazda sports car and said I’d love to have one someday Toss said “we’ll see” as if I could never buy one for myself! These flare-ups are important signs. Must work on my self-value.
8 Aug 79 Packing for Maine came across D’s letters. Not a “good” one among them. “Phoniness” is NOT his problem – that’s not the right word – he’s not even “tone deaf” which was Bruce’s disorder. I think it’s a “temperature” thing – he WANTS all passion sexualized (not that he would ever admit it) and doesn’t trust intimacy, closeness – as if he doesn’t believe – doesn’t want to believe it exists. He fears never freeing himself from the physical so he cultivates a lonely “spirituality” but he’s mired HIMSELF in it. So that’s pathetic. I take responsibility – he probably felt hounded by my love. Thank God I escaped is all I can say. I’m betting he was geared up to torture me for a lifetime. I let T read my short story about his mother. That was probably a mistake. (In it he’s planning her death!) He made some idiotic writing class comments – I said it wasn’t THAT far along – but there’s something appealingly mythic about this undigested mass. Worry about it in ten years!
Shadowe Island ME – Mon 7:30 AM 12 Aug 79
Toss just left on the ferry so I can relax. Wish this
diary ended here – I need a New Life. But Not Yet. Rainy with a gray sea. Dogs stretched out snoring on the Greek carpet. This visit has been everything I wanted, but the first night was classic in its ghastliness. Guests showed up at cocktails and stayed through dinner – unexpectedly – this mob scene making our announcement a bit tougher. Toss whispered, “Want to go through with it?” I said, “Sure.”
We opened the champagne. The guests loved it – Mom & Dad really surprised. Dad started talking about his difficult father-in-law and how things would be different but flat out calling me a liar when I chimed in about how Wilbur returned his prison mail (he told me this story HIMSELF last Christmas!) I kept my temper – oh I must have got it wrong. (I didn’t. We’d discussed it later ad nauseam.) Avril attacked me later for bringing it up and “embarrassing” Dad – but he’d been TALKING ABOUT HIS DIFFICULT FATHER IN LAW. Toss was surprised at Avril’s hostility – used to her as an ally. He said, “They obviously think you’re invulnerable.” Probably. If so they’re all idiots! I thought A was upset about her own out-of-his-depth boyfriend, Vigo. Anyway T rescued the evening bringing tears to Mom’s eyes by talking about how he’d always loved me. M & D apologized & congratulated us.
Sunday the four of us toured the island – trying to get along with Vigo. (A says he has just one testicle as if that’s all that’s wrong with him.) At dinner watched slides of my growing up – T tremendously moved – then lobster dinner.
Tues 13 Aug 79 – 5 PM T called last night on his WATS line and we talked ½ an hour. Says he used to play an “airport game” of “Looking for his future wife” but thought “I AM married!” Wow!
Sun. 19 Aug 79 T’s letter came! Glorious. I do not feel worthy. Tension between A & V – he teases her too much – we all try to ignore it – tough to figure out how to call him on it without opening up hostilities. Hope she dumps him. T on phone! Ex-island boyfriend visits. A says he acts like he wants to knock me to the floor and French kiss me to death. Seems accurate. Glad T missed him.
Party Castle – 11 PM 22 Aug 79 Glad to go to Maine and thrilled to leave it. Mary & Debby dancing. Today’s been eventful – T got my letters and was enormously moved. He says the worst mistake he ever made was burning my teenage letters. We should try to exist without this phoning but can’t help ourselves. Diet going well: I feel good. Struggling with a pile of thank you letters.
Castle – 7 PM Fri 25 Aug 79 T. and I separated 11 days already – feels like eternity. Avril announces she wants her own apt so I should put house on the market. Maybe its easier. Flooding small publishers with Blood Memory – feel pessimistic however. 3 poems accepted – 2 by Colorado Woman, 1 by Friends Journal. Doesn’t feel as good as I’d hoped. Struggling with new novel where I try to tell the truth about Devon. But why should anyone want THAT God knows. Moving costs $400. I still think I should sell my Fiat. Rotten crowd. Bored and jerking like a marionette. Dancing with crazy Robin and Anne who never stops talking. She says June’s in the hospital in a full body cast – will never dance again. 2 more sets – praise God. Trying to read about Lewis Carroll. A says Zach threatening to show up. Don’t show up, Zach. I have a headache.
2:30 AM Sun 27 Aug 79 – There is a God. Zach didn’t show. Long phone call w/T then walk dogs to think about it. He is such a powerful person it’s a little disturbing. Said he read my poem (The Duel) to his most erudite friend who was very impressed. We wound up in another argument about my dancing. I can’t bear his slurs so I referred to his past drug use – WE’VE BOTH EXPERIMENTED, ALL RIGHT? He wants me to live without money then complains about selling stock. I told him it’s a “schizophrenic bind.” Didn’t mention how I have to PRY my stock (that’s in my name) out of Mom and Dad.
Reading an idiotic romance – its very idiocy is refreshing. I see why people get addicted to these. Like looking at maps when you’re lost. Ok they’re only two dimensional but its SOMETHING!
Party Castle Tues 28 Aug 79 Last night dancing. Celebrate with chocolates but I’m too enervated to appreciate it. Finished I’m Radcliffe, Fly Me. Ultimately a failure. Fails to explore the inherent corruption of institutional structures. Horrible night. $5 in tips – they are sick of the sight of me and I refuse to buy new costumes. I am scared to death of being dependent on T. I think he could reassure me but doesn’t know how because if I really needed him would I be so desirable? Is a puzzlement.
I feel like I’m unfastening my suckers from Avril and grabbing onto T! Up here without a net! Then I get mad at myself for being so infantile. Can I just write and feel powerful? We’ll see! Doubts creeping in! This time next week I’ll be in Kentucky! Well, I’ve written some good poems lately. Self-confidence atrocity attack. Feel & look rotten. Realizing the extent to which I was fertile soil for my parents’ anxieties.
3:30 Thurs 30 Aug 79 Everything done, ready to leave. I’m in shock. Crawled into the bath with a vodka tonic and now I’m feeling better. Trying to figure out how to approach parents for money. Maybe they could give me my own stock as engagement present? Feel I won’t be able to disguise my rage. This “I’m All Right Jack” no matter WHAT – is mighty convenient for them. I realize its any sense of helplessness that triggers all this rage NOT a good sign for T’s and my relationship. He can’t “make” me independent! I must not succumb, or Plath-ize. (She sacrificed herself to the gods of rage.) I’m doing this guy no favors handing him a woman on the edge of breakdown.
4:25PM – My darling just called! Relief! He borrowed a truck from somebody so although we’ll have to drive separately we won’t have movers or returns to cope with. He’s driving it out here so I can sleep as late as I like which I really need. Impossibly intense happiness. Peace & joy. Feel we have been standing in a dinghy trying to balance. Equilibrium is everything. The irrevocableness of marriage. My children mutely regard my choice. The hopelessness of explaining myself to any of T’s friends. Rain. Any excuse not to take a walk (T lives in bad neighborhood.) Feel like a girl in a gothic novel except for the constant sex which makes it a different kind of novel. Break with the past.
Reading Robert Ludlum’s perfectly ludicrous Matarese Circle. In 100 yrs people will wonder how we stomached this stuff. A. and I going to Olney theatre to see The Bat tonight.
TOMORROW STARTS WOMAN INTO WOLF Alysse Aallyn’s thriller about difficult marriages & split identities
…a thrill-ride, unique and highly recommended reading.” –Entrepreneur.com “deceit, rape, fertility, imprisonment and a mother’s grief…as each piece of the tightly coiled fiction was loosed I waited for the revelation to come…she couldn’t imagine the extent of the deception until it was spelled out. Neither could I.” –MyShelf.com “one of the most unusual mysteries I have ever read…I loved reading Woman Into Wolf … kept me on the edge of my seat right through the end…I highly recommend this novel to fans of crime mysteries that also enjoy some extra spice in their stories.” – Readerviews.com “a very fine psychological thriller… the characters in this book are as bright as crystal and as sharp as shattered glass. Aallyn not only can describe them to a neo-noun, she can make them speak true to those characters. Quite a talent…a novel every bit as worthy as her first.” ArmchairInterviews.com
Tues 28 Mar 78 Extraordinary spiritual experience. A haunting. Someone standing behind me in the empty house. I turned and no one was there but power only increased. At first I was afraid – then felt a melting richness of love – coming at me, into me from outside of me. I realized it was Jesus. Relief. Confidence. Of course afterwards I question it all over the place. How could I be so certain? Maybe just an ordinary haunting by a peculiarly loving ghost? Maybe a thing in my head? But I do have that memory of certainty and bliss to cling to. Very powerful. It’s out there – somewhere.
Starlight Thu 14 Mar 79 – 10:00 PM Started out as a very bad night – trying to dance myself exhausted – then some guy tipped me a $50 and I ate an orange and now I feel better. (Feeling so unbearably fat I bought diet pills. Then “dinner” of cashews and wine.) Finished Prayerbook for a Skeptic – I liked it. Fortunately, I brought along a ton of reading. Had to dump Joyce Carol Oates’ Do With Me What you Will when I became disgusted with zombie heroine. NOT as good as The Hungry Ghosts (but reminiscent of McCarthy’s Groves of Academe.) I’m in the mood for something different. Not, however, C.S. Lewis’ The Four Loves which is deeply annoying. Women are “unqualified” to be “true friends”. Isn’t that the “know your place” argument?
Maybe what I need is Thos Merton’s, Seeds of Contemplation. How to switch the physical into the spiritual – that’s what I can’t figure out. Sexual longings intense – my body on fire. No wonder monks beat themselves. Peace and concentration in the dressing room – we are all doing doubles. Yvonne is fine. She is more than a match for Stockley – saw through him without a problem. She just acts interested in all men regardless. On principle. She says if you want to choose, you’ll have to compare offers. So sensible. Tomorrow a day of cleaning & working in my study.
Sun. 18 Mar 1:50 PM. Terrible nightmare about Usher Glayne. His face melted showing the skull underneath – two hideous holes of darkness. The world is fierce, cruel, we are all hobbled. Wake to astonishingly gorgeous day. Worked on expanding short story Erin – cleaning away deadwood – it’s only going to be 30,000 words but the hell with it. Can’t “produce” to “compete”. Want to find the intrinsic shape buried within. The secret meaning. Letting it speak for itself makes me happy.
Adoring Pilgrim at Tinker Creek. (Wish I had written it.) Then it’s off to the library á la bicyclette for more theology books. Obviously, I should worry more about Success and the fact that I’m dirt poor. But I have arranged my life so carefully to do exactly what I want. Seems a shame to ruin it now.
12:30 PM Mon 19 Mar 78 It’s a problem that I don’t like Usher’s poetry. At least he talks about sperm and chastity so presumably is not yet dead from the waist down. He’s successful and I am not, so criticism from me sounds like sour grapes. I call to thank him for the books; a woman who is probably his wife answers. Should I be embarrassed? We are NOT having A Thing. Out in the yard with dogs trying to read Teilhard de Chardin. Hot sun.
Café Rabelais, Wed 21 Mar 79 3:25 PM Pleasant 3 hr lunch with Usher discussing literature – he had to run away leaving me with my coffee. Tried to get me to pretend to date his friend who is wheelchair bound. I have a feeling this was the whole point of the lunch. I want to talk about literature, he wants to give me away to his friends. I said No. But couldn’t I just make nice? I said no. I’m not that kind of nice. I took revenge by asking if he lives with his wife. He said “sort of”. Their child is “a problem”. No one can write within a mile of this child. (Poor wife. Luckily her life doesn’t matter!) Usher seemed taken aback by my questions so maybe I won’t hear from him again. Good lunch, though. Very cuisine minceur – lots of different dishes and you don’t feel full afterwards. (Rabelais would have been very disappointed.) I top off my coffee with a glass of blond chartreuse. At the Phillips, I saw a Goya that made me want to burst into tears. Note to self: reorganize Courtney entirely around paintings. But which artist would be perfect to express my anti-heroine?
4:20 PM Thurs 22 Mar 79 Today a model for what all days should be. I’ve passed unscathed through the financial hysteria of closing, even have money in the bank. Sparkling weather; spring is definitely here. A day of sunbathing – the first are always the worst – skin a white blubbery mass. Reading Kroll’s book on Plath – gives one furiously to think. She wants to find everything in the poems themselves – and of course – that’s exactly where it all is. Plath controlled by potency symbols.
I am sick of Devon’s letters – he must “shield his eyes” against my radiance”. Come on. I can’t believe he doesn’t want exactly the life he’s got. Always hard for me to believe that one can reject the sprinkles, the cherries, the walnuts on the sundae. My family always lectured me for being attention-seeking and voracious – so it makes me shy to advance myself into anyone’s purview. Plath seemed prepared to be loved for her accomplishments rather than her being – a scary compromise.
Although I do recognize that I am trying to experience my own “wholeness” through the eyes of another with all the danger that implies. Trying to kick my sugar cravings.
11:30 AM Fri 23 Mar 79
More sunbathing – my own skin smells
intoxicating to me. Like pool water, like beach sand, childhood. Dixie – “God’s lioness” stretches out beside me, wind ruffling her fur. I write a poem about dogs.
Sticks
Peter’s dog Went on fetching sticks Long after it was dead. We’d find them on the stoop Arranged In patterns Pete would sigh and say That’s poor old Monk all right Still missing people games Heaven won’t allow
Add it to my ghost story book.
Unexpected tear sheets in the mail from Usher
– his reviews of Plath. He says he didn’t think it “professional” to disclose that he knew her – that seems unprofessional to me. Makes his comments seem underhanded: pale. He says diplomatically about my poetry that I’m a “rare being.” Hmmm.
11:40 AM Mon 26 Mar 79
Ezra Pound’s last years (Nigel Stock) make very
depressing reading. I wish “survivors” seemed more enviable, considering the alternative is Death at the Height of Glory. The good news about a long life is, you can accumulate quite a body of work – the bad news is your instrument is increasingly deranged. Dreadful schedule this week – 5 shifts including one double. Present of $2500 “house gift” from Dad means I don’t need to accept but I would have to quit and I’m not ready. These are the best places to dance with the best managers – I don’t want to get thrown into some of the compromising situations I’ve heard tell of. Plus they just let me up and leave for vacation whenever I want. Can’t play that hole card too often. Spent all day wandering the mazes of literature – look at Lillian Hellman – surely she’s getting very bizarre. She’s a “history fixer” and no one wants artists doing that.
3:20 PM Tues 27 Mar 79
A bad day doesn’t make a bad week thank God.
Got drunk with Maureen last night, (too much sherry in our tea) but with careful diet and lots of sleep I bounce back. Anne Lindbergh’s Flower & Nettle a great improvement on previous volumes. Tantalized by Rosamond Lehmann, who ought to be my next project. I AM HAVING ALL MY HAIR CUT OFF MAY 1!!!
Starlight 8:30 PM Thurs 29 Mar 79 Joselle plies me with Chablis – I succumb to get her to spill her secrets – but her secret seems to be she’s thinking of turning lesbian and her gaze on me seems somewhat fixed. Or am I imagining things? Two glasses of wine on an empty stomach and I’m a goner. God knows I long for the flesh – those “brown motherly furrows” as Plath calls them are in need of plowing. Would I have to exclaim over her body the way men exclaim over me? It just doesn’t sound fun. If only she were less female. More boyish. Order a cheeseburger to snap myself back to reality. This is a dangerous world to be hungry in.
Reading Randall Jarrell’s Third Book of Criticism. I enjoy him enormously.
11PM – Shank of the evening. I am dancing superbly but tips very bad. The approach of tax time or are they simply seeing too much of me? The latter, no doubt. Went to the health club today but I won’t renew when my experimental month is up. I was seduced by their sauna and masseur but need something closer to home.
Starlight 2:30 PM Sat 31 Mar 79
Hot day – sun behind clouds – the sky is violet
and the air intense – looks like rain, but I’m overflowing with joy and luck and good fortune. Just ate an enormous chef’s salad and two cups of coffee. All I needed for returned confidence was one big tipper and a non-suicidal letter from Devon. (He’s been depressed, is all.) Obviously it will never work out between us. We would be in competition each trying to get the other to play caretaker. I need too damn much care. It would be madness. Discuss this over vod & tons with Avril. Invited back to Mulberry Island, but also got a card to the Bullets opening (which I prefer.) Reading The World, the Flesh and Father Smith. Dancing very well – what a pity I’m “sculpting in snow”. Feeling in tune opens a clear lens to the soul.
9PM Tues 3 Apr 79
Buying spree with A. Bought a pile of silk shirts and
a satin whipcord coat & skirt (black). Immortal piece I should still be wearing thirty years from now. We had a lovely lunch at Third Edition – reminiscing about our lovers’ bodies – what we treasure most – I vote for the flock of milky-white scars above Devon’s buttocks. Aaah. Intimations of glorious, irreproducible mortality. I am also irate at not hearing from Usher and even more irate at myself for being irate. He is obviously a no go so what’s wrong with me? I think I may be like those explorers expiring for lack of vitamin C. Need to force myself to eat raw blubber just to save my life. It’s a wonder anyone survives. Reading 3rd vol David Garnett’s autobiog – what an unlikeable human being. Car pooped out on us will cost $250 to fix.
Starlight 9:15 PM Wed 4 Apr 79
I hate wasted days. Drove all the way to White Flint
Mall to pick up my rhinestone glasses – a pin broke on them – and all the way back. Grrr. Not liking Robt Frost’s letters and Christina Stead’s House of Nations is even harder to get into. But things looking up on diet front. Fewer binges. 5 days of rain, and a power mogul in the audience who keeps instructing me on how to please him. I curtsy down to the floor very gracefully and pretend I don’t speak English.
Starlight 8:25 PM Sun 8 Apr 79
Burst of freedom rescues me from inertia. My best
moments are intense enjoyment of the present: must write and examine everything. Revel in my own growth – including comprehension that Usher Glayne can’t be my crutch. Lost 4 lbs eating apples and feel good – refuse to take a guy’s tip because he licked his lips at me. Yuck. Jervaze came into the bar last night, dragging his shame-filled self across the floor. I couldn’t resist suggesting he come home with me – he was so excited – love poured out of him like a dizzying force. I browsed greedily on his beautiful body. It was like plugging into an electric current. He moaned, “You’re so good to me” but when my orgasm came it was just a little pop – uncorking a bottle of stale champagne. So goodbye to all that. Masturbation is really a lot less trouble.
Out to China Syndrome movie tomorrow with Avril. John Middleton Murray is a blubberer. Usher sent me a poem entitled “I dream of starting off with you” which was obviously not written for me. Took her name out and slammed my name in. What could go wrong? What a pity we leave choice up to men when they so clearly have no idea what they are doing.
1:45 PM Wed Nov 9 –78
I’m in need of a “carte d’identite” so I can look at it
and figure out who I am. Read the first draft of The Speechless and the accompanying comments of my college writing teacher. She bollixed it up. Her deconstructive destruction seems purposeful – I don’t believe she didn’t know how good it was. Can I save it? I know I should work on one thing at a time but apparently my mind doesn’t operate that way. In the mail a letter from a publisher offering to read my poetry – for $50.00. Took me longer after that to sink to the necessary depth to get some writing done. And it still probably wasn’t any good.
Thurs night – Plush Palace – Nov 9 - 78
Working tonight with Roulette and Jerry – wonderfully
hilarious old hands. We laugh until we fall over. “How Deep Is Your Love “ is throbbing through the walls, Maureen’s got me in a costume-trading whirl and Roulette is so heavily into the Jack Daniels she is showing everyone pictures of her dog. (A Doberman. Who looks exactly like every other Doberman I have ever seen.) Suddenly I’ve acquired a whole new dancing wardrobe. But will it make me a new person? That’s what I want to know. With a view to listening to Marc Kramer for once in my life because he’s rich and I’m not. Avril and I went house-hunting. The trigger was a wonderful broken down old house in College Park (complete with white pillars) so I called to ask the price. Real estate agent sucked me effortlessly in, entering into our quest with gusto. I am almost 28 years old and although I don’t make much money – apparently I make enough. The house was hopeless. It needs $50,000 on the roof alone. But the agent has plenty others to show us. Bizarro letter from Ryder. He said “after that visit I thought you’d never trust me again” and “I bow down to you.” Which visit? The one where I allowed him to give me a massage? I refuse to inquire further because that’s exactly what he wants me to do. He is just needled that I have so obviously given up on him. Why am I attracted to these weirdos? I know the problem between us is that I want a mutual relationship and he wants a pack animal. I want to be with the person I love and “love” makes him want to run away (because it makes him feel “out of control”). But where is the fun in telling him this? He couldn’t use the maze clue even if I gave it to him. So I write a short note telling him I’m busy with Zach and Buck. That should fix his jealous wagon. I didn’t tell him about the hours of sexual bliss Buck and I shared last night! Buck is warming up nicely – invited me to his parents’ house for the weekend – they will be away. Unfortunately, he snores horribly – sounds like he’s strangling. A by-product of motorcycle racing. Needs that cartilage cleared out with a vacuum hose. Trying to read Rumer Godden’s Breath of Air. Boring and unctuous. Put it down for Dear Scott/Dear Max, which is of course delightful.
Mon 13 Nov 78
Busted, wasted day. Avril called to borrow $90 so she can
pick up el Diablo from Courtesy Motors – fortunately I had it so we went to bank, then car dealer. Then I tried to get an oil change but they don’t do Fiats. Took long enough to tell me they don’t have the right wrenches. Real estate agent phoned to say I qualify for special FHA loan. I had to call my landlord because apparently I don’t have heat. Avril is having lots of trouble with Brady who is alternately aggressive and suicidal. I think he is more trouble than he’s worth but admit he has very pretty, very long, long thighs. He and Buck went to high school then trade school together – Buck exhibits a grisly picture of them at their prom with their dates. B’s date is his soon to be ex-wife. Buck was also B’s best man but I was spared those photos. Zachary asked me out next Fri night but I’d rather be with Buck – but if he doesn’t ask me in time I’ll tell him I’m ”going out with the girls.” That’s what he tells me he does; “goin’ out with the guys” – so presumably this is an OK excuse. If he says what girls I’m in a bit of a pickle. But I’m a writer – I‘ll invent some. It can’t be anyone he knows. Fortunately he has no idea what a hermit I really am. Still stuck in the childhood of my novel. Can’t wait for them to grow up. Re-read Le Ble en Herbe which helped a lot. (Aaaahhhhh… Colette!) Off to Crown Books with A – then White Flint Mall for Christmas shopping – had coffee at The Perfect Cup. Nice outing. I bought wonderful rhinestone cat’s eye glasses. Saw Bergman’s Autumn Sonata – moving.
Mon 27 Nov 78 - 1:35 PM
Time to write in this neglected diary while waiting to have
my snow tires mounted. This threatens to blow my entire day. They also had to replace a fuse that apparently blew in the middle of a rainstorm so that my wipers stopped working. Visit with Mom and Dad very touchy. (They are staying with Peter’s mother Rita and everyone’s slightly angry I’m not dating him and I can’t narc on his Secret Relationship.) Mom casually accepted an invitation for all of us to go out to dinner on a night I was going out with Zachary, so I said I would have to invite him and got a tirade on my thought- lessness. Then I pointed out she was the thoughtless one assuming I didn’t have any plans. She apologized, I apologized. It blew over. Then Avril had the nerve to ask Rita if she could smoke – Mom exploded just as if it were her house. (Rita said No. She’s trying to quit.) M & D piled on me – I’m insane to contemplate buying a house – even if the mortgage would only cost what rent already costs. Their real objection is that I might “choose wrong” – somehow encumber myself with a property that will make me even less attractive (if that were EVEN possible) to A Decent Man. Not even dragging in Marc Kramer’s sacred name as Advisor helped at all. Dad did come see a few houses with us. (We’ve seen 16 so far.) He had to admit it isn’t a bad deal as long as I can get that FHA loan. Zachary behaved very well around M and D – the “Official Boyfriend” – but of course he owed me. Fortunately the evening was over before they could find out too much about him (or he offered them drugs) so his cover wasn’t blown. Conversation at dinner very boring. Psychology 101. “Why don’t people say what they want?” “Why don’t people try to get what they want?” “Why do people lose interest in what they say they want?” (Rita’s going through her third divorce.) Since no one seems the least bit interested in the complexities of achieving Actual Gratification by attempting to mesh one’s constantly evolving desires with those of someone else I can only shake my head sagely and flee at the first opportunity. Mom and Dad actually tackled these questions and struggled with them like a pair of marriage counselors. The truth is Rita’s ex has found somebody else and she shouldn’t be so surprised – they were both married when she hove onto his horizon. Got a very stoned phone call from Zachary last night – he was over at Rod’s and “something” was making him horny. (I’ll bet I can guess.) Fortunately, I managed to convince him he was in no state to drive – leaving him prey to Rod, probably. Well, we all have to take our chances in this life. Saturday night with Buck unsatisfying – he claimed his non-breathing nose is preventing him from going down on me. I let him know his account is in arrears and he will have to do something about it sooner or later. He chose later and fell immediately asleep. So I left. I’m not sure I will ever get to Stage 2 with this guy. He made a point of tracking me down at Avril’s apt, calling to apologize. A and I saw 3 more unacceptable houses – but the real estate agent says there are plenty more. Fun to be in a buyer’s market for a change.
Sat 7 pm Plush Palace – 2 Dec 78
Just recovering from some tremendous bout of food
poisoning – must have gotten it from the Sleazy Restaurant Around the Corner – but all I had there was a takeout salad. Still, it could have been the dressing. No fever. I was throwing up all Wednesday. I called A to drop by after class but she was so worried she came right over. I finally was able to keep down some chicken soup. Then we went to Bethesda in the eve to see Zach’s Gordon Lightfoot impersonation – I had a little wine to make me feel better. (Free drinks always taste best.) Finally finished the childhood section but I don’t feel good about it. Novels don’t want you to do anything in life but write them all the time. I am only at p. 133.
I am already exhausted and needing a vacation. Cheered myself up by wrapping Christmas gifts – baroque music and Victorian gift-wrap did it for me. I especially love those chubby Victorian cherubs who couldn’t become airborne without at least two brawny stagehands hauling on a mighty hawser. Reading My Mother/Myself in between boogie-oogie-oogying. Dinner party with A, Buck, and A’s old boyfriend who happened to be in town. We ate stuffed Cornish game hen, played Clue and went dancing at the Bastille.
Thurs night – Plush Palace – 11:30 PM – 7 Dec 78
Manic night – a dancer literally dragged off the stage by
the police because her roommate is accusing her of stealing $3300 of furniture. Thank God she came back so I only had to dance one extra set. Wed night we found a house! It has 5 bedrooms, 3 bath perfect in every way except that that it’s packed into a neighborhood of like houses so there are absolutely no vistas. But the price is right. We made an offer but they accepted another offer – ours is the “backup contract.” So, we still might get it.
Thurs am 1:07 14 Dec 78
Finished the novel in an insane burst of speed – 10
pages a day for four days. Now I have to calm down and see what I’ve got. I still feel pretty good about it – but probably reading it will depress me. And Devon will probably never speak to me again since he is in it. His Christmas card says I am a genius and he is in awe of me. Hey, it could be true. My publisher’s statement arrived. $50. $50. There goes that Feb vacation. Pretty sure I need a new agent. What did “stooping to genre” achieve exactly? I didn’t get a living wage. I didn’t get a publisher, agent or editor receptive to my work. It’s like I’m starting over – again. On an up note: looks like we might get the house! It is SO perfect. Fenced in yard and everything.
Mon 18 Dec 78 – Plush Palace 6:30 PM
Horrible day. Everything that can go wrong has.
Mailing off mss wildly expensive. Drove Avril around because the Gremlin is in the shop again. Reading Bodyguard of Lies – history having its usual soothing effect. (Everything much worse for everybody else.) It looks like I will have to work two jobs in Jan to pay for this house. Maureen the costume designer wants to rent a room in our house – that would help. She wouldn’t be a problem – getting a masters in textiles at U. of M so not the usual flaky personality that finds itself onstage. Concluded I really have to break up with Z. It won’t be hard – just stop seeing him. One good thing did happen – I was lying in bed at 1:30 AM nodding off over Bodyguard – phone rang. I almost didn’t answer it – how could it be anything good – but I thought it might be Avril with some emergency. It was Jervaze! He’s coming back. He’s been offered “crew leader” position in his old job at the Pentagon with a $5,000 bump. He wants to celebrate by taking me out – we can go to Clyde’s where we partied for his birthday last year. I hung up feeling good – until I thought this will give me a reason to give up Buck. There’s no way Jervaze won’t find out about him. Ugh. Confrontations. Unless I can keep J out of club? Doesn’t seem possible that he is off the sauce. Must make sure he gets a place of his own – he will be living with his brother to start with. He sounded sober, I’ll say that for him.
Plush Palace Tues night 19 Dec 78 - 7:30 PM
Wiped out my savings account to pay bills – well,
that’s what it’s for. We got the Queens Chapel house! Target date for the move is March 1. Avril and Maureen very excited. (It really is huge. 5 beds, 3 bathrooms, divideable into 3 suites. Perfect. Huge kitchen, dining room and fenced in yard.) I contemplate writing a book of poems called The Lives of Dancers. Trouble is, I’d have to tone it down to make it believable. Got one poem already – Impure Women.
IMPURE WOMEN
Between my breath and your breath Beneath the phallic philanthropic statues on The volcanic dragstrip of my city The wounded in the scorched earth policy Of love Muster, linger, await Embodiment. Pills to make their hearts race faster have Stopped their faces dead as clocks That witnessed crimes unspeakable To mothers versed in tabloid gore. Who will bring them Absolution now that I am gone? In the fresh wounds of a Seconal summer The stopped children meet And kiss.
Is it the approach of Christmas that’s bringing all the old boyfriends back to me like elephants to a boneyard? Ryder called. Marc Kramer refers to me his “dream girl” and can’t get me out of his mind and we’ve been out what – three times? Buck gave me my present at the club – he looked adorable – bath goodies. Don-the-Patent-Lawyer who’s been hanging around the club lately asked me out for New Year’s eve. I had to refuse because Merrill and husband will be in town but I told him to try later. He seems interesting – like to get to know him better. Mature. Always trolling for someone presentable to take Home to Mom.
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.)
9:30 PM Mon 27 Feb 78
Love the drive between my place and A’s – taking
not New Hampshire Ave but Riggs Road. Blind turns and nonsequential lights give me that old country feeling. We had just seen The Parradine Case. Interesting. Good jumping off place for other ideas. I like the form. Could I manage novelistically the “outsides revealing insides” that film so confidently assumes? Day started badly with non-working electric blanket and slowly building headache – probably from finishing reading Helpmate – what a chronicle of lacerations.
Tues. Feb 28 1:15 PM
Left message with agent – why no check? I was
thinking of going to England in two weeks, according to my old timeline. Doesn’t seem possible now.
GOTHIC NOVEL
A woman alone is open and gaping, a Button hole without a button hook. She carries her muff held stiffly Out before her like an offering Flic, flic! The eyes of strangers Slit the pause like razors. This railway carriage stinks of creosote, wet fur. “I prefer the window up, thank you” “I prefer it down”. She lights a Sobranie to remind her Of Devon in the haying; the gentlemen Lean forward, reading the initials On her morocco case.
9:50PM – Plush Palace – Wed 1 Mar 78
J in to say goodbye – going to Alabama for a
few days to set things up for moving there. I did wonder if it was the last time I would ever see him – but from the way he clutched my hand and kissed the air (illegal to kiss customers here) that can’t be true. But remember the way Devon carried on about me and then disappeared for years? Men are strange. So who the hell knows. 3 sets down. Dancing superbly if I do say so myself. Ticking like a clock.
Friday Mar 3 – Plush Palace – 9:15 PM I am forcing myself to write this. J came in tonight, very drunk and crying. (Sold the Shelby. They gave him some kind of middle of the road muscle car in return.) Would he carry on like this about me? Now that he has the money to go to Alabama he doesn’t want to. What made me think he would actually complete something just because he acted so definite? I am hampered by my physical passion for him – he is so gorgeous. Those dents in his thighs alone are worth everything. But I can’t start mothering him – it would be the end of the Life as We Know It. Finished A Tyler’s Tin Can Tree – I see why she likes it least. Characters blurred. Reading Wm Trevor’s Elizabeth Alone – too many curlicues.
6:55PM – Plush Palace – Mon 6 Mar 78
Eventually everyone in this job gets bad knees –
something to do with dancing in six-inch heels. I would be better off if I just walked around like some of the other girls, but my narcissism demands I be the best. I can see guys in the audience poking each other when I come out – “that’s her” and that alone makes it worth it for me. On the other hand the presence of J seriously diminishes tips – he needs to go away so I can make some money. A and I were restless after dinner last night and went out dancing. Big mistake. Defensive boring, hostile men who count like drill sergeants while pretending to “dance”. “Do the hustle!” Much expense – no pleasure – after three brandy and sodas I was content to rack out on A’s bed at 3 AM. I need to up my writing to 10 p a day – I do NOT need to party. Amazing letter from Devon about how lovely and precious and gifted I am but he can’t see me because he’s too deep in his own life. He’s still searching for the perfect lover and has no clues. Well, I guess that’s honest. Should be flattered he’s trying to preserve our relationship at all. London is beginning to ebb away – looks like I’ll only get a few hundred dollars. There’s a downer. So why aren’t I writing? Reading Crucial Conversations by May Sarton. You’d swear it was written by an eighteen year old with no experience of life whatever. However, its very brashness gives me the courage to jump back into my own book.
12:55 PM
Very tired. Shouldn’t keep working with this intensity
but my new discovery of shaky financial position means I have to. When I “have to” do anything it makes me feel soiled. Wild idea of getting pregnant by J. He’s pretty enough. But what would that fix? Only my biological clock and my finances – permanently. Fixed in a downward direction if you get my drift. Finished Sarton’s Mermaids, starting Tyler’s Caleb.
6:30PM – Plush Palace – Tues 7 Mar 78 A triumphant day. Like some manic-depressive, I am in my high cycle. Probably from reading Elizabeth Bowen – The Cat Jumps. Amazed at how much I like it – much better than Death of the Heart. She leaves me feeling a writer can do anything. I see my book now as thirteen short, sharp, clear scenes. Why can’t I do it any way I want? Tonight I have To The North to look forward to.
Plush Palace – 11:PM Fri Mar 10 – 78 Wednesday I broke up with Jervaze. Thursday he called me. I got the impression that in the South it’s when you break up that things really start to get interesting. Apparently if I wanted wild declarations I should have done this long ago. Fortunately, I can handle this on the phone. It’s that glorious body dipped in platinum dust that I can’t say no to. Finished Bowen’ s World of Love and To the North. I can’t believe she was ever popular – I like her too much. She suits me exactly. What a stylist. OK, forget plot, character, those little appurtenances. She makes them seem so unimportant. Imagine recasting Courtney in this light. I guess her style is too forties, but would that be necessarily a bad thing? A called. She and I are crutches to one another, but I like her better than any man I have ever met. Watched Monty Python, steak dinner, then she helped me paint my new four-poster bed. (Gilt, of course. Gives me a new title – The Gilty Bed.) Watched La Femme Infidele sur le television while consuming an appropriate wine.
Plush Palace – 11:PM Sat Mar 11 – 78
I was in too good a mood today. Bought a new costume from Maureen just when I AM JUST ABOUT TO LEAVE FOR THREE WEEKS, but it is yellow velvet and fake sapphires with armbands and everything – a beauty. Good work on novel, ate hamburgers (and eclairs) with A, wrote a good letter to Devon
in answer to his weird one to me. Struggling with Eva Trout and The Ponder Heart. Nix on both. Fortunately, also have a June Thomson murder mystery for a chaser. A and I assembled my bed – canopy and everything, it looks smashing with its hangings of brown lace. Then she called Mason in Calif to see why he isn’t sending her stuff – he said he’s seeking another estimate – they had a rational discussion but she was obviously very shaken when she hung up. I teased her that he is wearing her clothes and probably looks good in them.
Plush Palace – Wed/Thu Mar 15 – 78
No London in my future. I’ve accepted it. I need
affordable breaks from this life – two weeks in Maine, one week in Boston, etc. A and I going to Maine tomorrow. A spent the weekend comforting Opal who is upset about the failure of her marriage – it’s the old story – when it’s the woman’s turn to be babied man withdraws, making frightened, threatening noises. Finished Sarton’s Kinds of Love. I can see why some people like it. It kind of has a “National Geographic” feel to it – here’s a guide to the “foreigners”. But it is not a good novel – it’s Faith Baldwin through and through. Reading Sarton is like attending writing class – she never loses the miasma of the eager student and she has a lot of interesting ideas. But, remarkably for a poet, she is deficient on the mystery end. Perhaps she doesn’t understand that a novel is another kind of poem. Lots of Ructions here tonight: Gina and Jerrilee fighting and I have to play peacemaker (because there’s nowhere to go from the dressing room other than the alley or the ladies room and no guarantee rabid fans will stay away.) I haven’t packed – will be up till 4.
2PM – Shadowe Island Sat Mar 18 – 78
Every time I come back to this beautiful island I wonder
why I ever leave. Dogs are in paradise. Mom and Dad relaxed, involved, charming. A all defensive about the “failure” of her life with Mason so I am off the hook – temporarily. I’m reading The House In Paris – restores my high estimation of Bowen. The trouble with this island is that the rest of existence vanishes totally when I am here. I am eating too much but the food is so fabulous it would seem immoral to resist – roast lamb, new potatoes, spinach quiche, sour cream gravy, stuffed mushrooms, strawberry trifle. We stayed up late reading Ruth Rendell’s mystery stories aloud, then I fell asleep and I had the most delicious erotic dream about J – much better than the real thing. Felt what it would be like to be a deep-throated cello vibrating endlessly.
Mon Mar 20 7:00 PM -78
Why is it around my parents my self-confidence takes
a nosedive? Every fingernail becomes deciduous. I had better call Plush Palace and get put on next week’s schedule. Finished House and began Heat of the Day. My mother asks questions that reveal her to be jealous of all the reading I do. Her delicate hint – she would feel “lazy” doing so much reading because there must be something that she would be neglecting. I tell her I, on the other hand, if I were not reading, would feel guilty. (As well as deprived.) Thus we must differ. The great thing about Eliz B – she writes like no one else. To criticize her would be like saying the plumed flycatcher has a little too much plume. Managed to prevent Mom from inviting “young people” to a “weenie roast on the shore” for me and A. We are here to HIDE. She was very nice about it. Do imagine I could live here. Listening right now to Haydn’s Clock Symphony. Now that would be a great title for a short story about an unattached woman in her late twenties… A and I have wonderful conversations in our twin beds like a pair of teenagers home on holiday from school, listening to the distant waves crash on the dark shore. I realize we could still be feeling like this even when we are a pair of decrepit old maids – which is probably why families like to stay together. You are timeless for each other. She asked me which of my boyfriends had known me best. I think Toss Sheffield – certainly better than my own husband. But this is not a flattering conclusion since he seems to have run wildly in the opposite direction.
THE CENSOR’S CENSOR
Our childhoods were different. My Parents didn’t believe in medicine Yours worshipped Wall Street. You Took ex-lax to reduce for wrestling, LSD To see God, smoked Queen Anne’s Lace for lack Of something better – Rejected poetry that I wrote. I Rewrote Melville, shiked to The observatory – you Tucked the bedsheets in so tight I had to sleep with someone else. You combed your hair to imitate Dick Diver And were soon out of school. Looks like I’ll be stuck in here forever. For me it’s Leap Year every year That seems to mean I do things backwards Proposing to the boys and coming upside down. I forget why I tried so hard to please you. Save me a seat in the tobacco-brown Mercedes Do you think you could forgive me now?
Wed Mar 22 78 – 4:15 PM
Waiting for cocktails, I discover a flaw in the divine Miss
E B. She doesn’t like to admit that she is of the same clay as her characters. Those creatures based on the Mosleys she repudiated utterly as if creatures from another planet. I’ve got news for her. Creatures from another planet are not that interesting. Last night was one of the most traumatic family eveningsI have ever experienced – I think my eyes are still puffy. I heard we would be having Island People to dinner – he used to be a university president/professor so presumably would be good company – they met because somebody was the bridesmaid of somebody else’s bridesmaid so there is a connection. It started with me wearing a green silk shirt, my denim gauchos and hardly any makeup (yes I wore eyeshadow) and being told by Mom that my “get-up” was “more suitable for a bar.” (All of a sudden she’s an expert on bars.) Harvey and Edna turned out to have “heard of my job” – I gather in some commiseration session on Incredibly Unsatisfactory Children – however they refuse to accept that there is any difference between being an exotic dancer and being a stripper (hello! I don’t strip) and somehow Harvey segued from castigating “exotic dancers who try to feel superior to strippers” to criticisms of “ total sexual freedom” which apparently means that “everybody should jump on everybody.” I tried to dignify this mess by explaining that it is actually the reverse – in the “old days” under the “ancien regime sexuelle” a dancer could expect to be “jumped on” by “anybody” because of her job (like poor old Degas’ ladies) but that actual freedom for women would mean a world in which one could be a barely clothed dancer (I would think anyone would admit nudity is at least an equally valid way of expressing the art of muscle, line and form as heavily costumed artificial approximations) without it becoming some sexual signal that one has “lost caste” and therefore privacy and choice. I recommended Susan Brownmiller’s book to this painfully ignorant male (God knows what he taught – he had never heard of Brownmiller – seems to have her confused with Ti-Grace Atkinson assuming she must write books no self-respecting intellectual would read (maybe he was the type of university president who just brings in wads of cash). He challenged my premise that the ultimate societal freedom would be for unattached females to not to be under the threat of rape every minute. Harvey insisted – with a perfect straight face that women rape men every bit as much as the reverse – “psychologically of course” which he says is just as terrible – and in fact probably even more so since we all know the “physical thing is no big deal” and often does people a “favor”. I must say this does not reflect very well on his wife Edna but she was smiling smugly so I think she may have just been too obtuse to follow any of the arguments. I really could not cope with this free-for-all avalanche of idiocy especially when my parents played their trump card – if bars where women sit in front of a drink and watch barely clothed men cavorting don’t exist, therefore this is an antifeminist exercise and my claim to be a feminist is a sham. I think it was at that point that I burst into tears. Which of course was totally demeaning. I sorely missed Avril’s assistance – she refused to jump in but made peacemaking noises like “you both have a point” (untrue – their “points” are a disgrace). Ugly Harvey apologized – what a monster! but there could be no satisfaction in it for me at that point. Avril went walking with me until they left. Alas, waiting till they were gone did not end the discussion. Mom and Dad pounced on us to drive home their point that the male animal is a violent dangerous creature barely contained by the civilizing influence of the female. (Guess they can’t get behind Harvey’s “female rapist” idea.) Of course they are going to rape any female who lets down her guard for a second and it will all be her fault. (Didn’t R make this case? I’m ashamed to share a world with these people.) Any kind of a sexual display (I guess the beach would certainly qualify) is a declaration of “Jump in boys! It’s free today!” At least they recognized Harvey’s behavior as extreme (“Two drinks and he’s lost” was Dad’s comment.) Basically as long as I work at “that bar” I’m the “lost cause” and if any decent male finds out about it our relationship will be over in a trice. This kind of thing makes me wonder why I bother to visit them. Fortunately, I’m escaping soon, but the whole ferry reservation problem means one loses the right to fight irretrievably with one’s hosts on this island. Dad’s big mistake was giving me an example of a good marriage as Lillian Hellman and Dashiell Hammett! Did I blow my top! He probably thought I’d listen to him if he produced a literary example. He wasn’t aware that not only were they not married but Mr. Hammett was married to someone else and cheated on poor Hellman whenever he could manage to stay stiff long enough. (I really didn’t want to “get in” to the alcoholism problem. Lillian tried to make him seem like a “mentor” but honestly she was just his keeper and bail bondsman.)
Alysse Aallyn 