Feeling upside down with a chance to get right side up. A call from the real estate agent – we can move into the Queens’ Chapel Road house Feb 1 if we want to because that’s when they’ll be out. We’d only have to pay them one-month rent. A and I looked at each other and immediately said “yes”! Woohoo! Rushed off to Wendy’s for celebration dinner – note we chose a cheap place. It will be that way from now on. Called Mom and Dad in Trinidad to tell them. Dad sounded very dejected and gloomy like we are completely crazy and certain to be old maids on his tab forever now.
Sunday Zachary and I went to Ellicott City. We were coming out of Cocoa Lane (he paid) when we met an old friend of Zachary’s –
– Corio – singer for the Bills Blues Band. Gorgeous. I stuttered and quivered like an infant. I may have to do something about this powerful attraction.
He gave me his card. Avril listens to call-in shows all the time and she says women are sick of being penalized for making the first move. Men say they “want it” but usually that’s an absolute lie. So how can I make this guy think he’s making the first move? Puzzler. Z needed to score some dope so we parted company. Corio is playing Childe Harold’s next month so maybe I will see him there.
Plush Palace 11:15 PM
Two doubles in two days. My father’s right, I’m off my head.
Can’t keep doing this to myself. Drive from one club to the other in full makeup –
– wearing only a gold lamé cover-up in rush hour traffic. God knows what the drivers think I do for a living but I can imagine.
Ronnie says Jervaze was in asking for me! Alvera dancing tonight – she says I’m her favorite person to dance with. Sigh. Feels like home.
Famous poet – Usher Glayne – came in tonight – I
recognized him from party at the Folger Shakespeare Library (we both read).
Shyly introduced myself. He gave me his card told me to send him something.
Who would expect to see a beautiful man like this in a sleazy trap like the Plush Palace? Sent him my Byron poem.
HAVING SEX WITH LORD BYRON
or
“Or, if you can’t have love, you can always have relatives”
Lord Byron took his lady on the sofa
Before the wedding dinner;
He considered sex a “hostile act” and
Liked to get it over with.
Afterwards both parties sued for rape.
“Poor me”, quoth his lordship,
“Nobody’s been so ravished since the Trojan War.”
Some truth there was; the stampede
Of countesses was considerable.
This poet who fell upon chambermaids
Like a “thunderbolt”
Confounded all by falling in love with
Foolish Gussie, his half-sister.
Ain’t that the way;
Overwhelmed by choice, people cherish
That forced card.
Reading Crazy Sundays about Fitzgerald in Hollywood.
Ten days till we move into new house. Need sleep badly. Maybe buy a Quaalude from Maureen.
Castle – Fri Jan 26- 79 –5:30 PM
Halfway through my double – pacing myself – still
feel fine. Reading Published in Paris. Obnoxious guy in tonight calls himself Spewey Suckman – says he knows Zachary. No I do not wish to spend my evening chatting – but he does tip well. Discovered that my phone’s been accidentally unplugged for days so I fantasize about all these men –
Jervaze, Usher Glayne, Zachary, Don trying to reach me. Maureen very excited about moving in with us – A and I each get 2 bedrooms (a bedroom and a study) and she gets one (but it’s a big one). She and I will have to share abathroom upstairs (there’s two on the first floor) but we’ll survive. Just had the most fascinating conversation about sex with Roulette.
If I hadn’t drunk two glasses of wine I’d understand it better, but if I hadn’t drunk two glasses of wine I wouldn’t be having it in the first place. She wants to discuss the clitorises of bisexual females –
– she’s convinced they’re bigger. I really couldn’t say.
Jervaze is getting married – that’s the latest – his brother set it up – so he brought in the bottle of wine and we’re all taking swigs. That’s my excuse for drinking on the job. “Long-time girlfriend from Alabama.”
I suppose this is my fault for being so discouraging about him living with me. We are just at different stages, I guess. I wished him well. Cross him off my list (sigh.) Feel this leaves my sexual eggs bouncing around in a single basket – very unsafe place for them, in my experience. Avril and I toured our house. I hadn’t fully appreciated the yucky white paneling but the carpets are good and the place is spotlessly clean. Kitchen huge, yard very nice (gas grill and “workshop”.) Exciting! My bedroom and study painted lime and emerald green with matching shag carpet. I can work with that.
Mon 29 Jan 79 Castle 7:30 PM
J. came by. Kind of broke my heart he was so loving and tender with me. He said he wanted to come Wed and help us move. Nice of him.
Zachary’s also coming. That could be fun. J. says his fiancée feels I’m “no threat to their relationship.” She must be from another planet. But possibly I can control myself. It’s always dangerous to tell me I can’t have something.
Old home week for boyfriends. Marc Kramer called and said his “Official Girlfriend” found my valentine and “got upset”. In my recollection it wasn’t very incriminating. Avril and I trying to scrape together $120 to pay for oil in fuel tank – its always the bills you don’t expect that sink you. Tonight I’m working with Gaysha, Indonesian law student, and Phoebe. Don came in wearing a Bill Blass suit. Boring crowd. I’m wearing my feathers for fun – got one $40 tip. I think changing costumes helps keep the crowd awake. The really drunk ones think I am a different dancer they haven’t tipped yet.
Tasha came in on her night off. Her boyfriend drives a dump truck. She wanted to show off her new flowing weave, rabbit coat and picture of her Eldorado. He also has flying hair and a fur coat. They are a pair.
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”. Drownrejected. Started dividing the novel into geographical locations – Hooks Lane, Paradise Road. Would make good short stories.
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.
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.” Hecame 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 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 bigger questions. But as much as I deserve love? 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 TheDeer 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?
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
Be a nun
Be a self worth knowing.
Time is gunning for me
Arthritic fingers
Scrabbling at my dreams
Playing old tunes
scratchier, less sensitive.
I’m a body in search of a car wreck
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’s tired;
Peel from my eyes the thickened skin of grief
Unstop my ears from the dust of
My own consequence
Free my feet from judging splinters
Life passes from my like a fever in which
I cry out and cry out and yet
No sound is made.
Out
Like the tide
Cauterize
The woof-warp pattern
So plain that even I can see it.
Teach me not to envy
The gulls their mirrored flight
Unmeasured unlike my own
Reduce me to
Unbending bones of my
Essential self
Dark sister;
She;
The soul I was
Before
I became me.
Can’t turn it into a presentable poem – yet – 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 Giftand 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.
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 wrongwith 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 protege, 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 considercounting 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 Flatironwith my Resurrectionistpoem 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 Maughamin 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 Devon. 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 my bills. Tight. I hate hand-to-mouthing. 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 alwaysa 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 negative 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 like a serious contender.
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. Asked privately if “he could stop by” I said yes. Could have kicked myself later.
Shadonna the new scheduler 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 – Ryder’s spy – 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. Rickthen 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. Avril 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 withZachary – 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.
Z 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 DrownIn 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 on sofa – I admit it was his best sex yet.
Mon 11 PM 16 Oct 78
Avriland I drove to Fredericksburg for the unkempt
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 in his racing gear. 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.) Avril 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.
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 meansyou 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 Avril 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 Devon 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 say 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.)
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 Fictionis 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.” Farprefer 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. Probably having to do with his mother. 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.)
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 full rights & 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 hewanted 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 that 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 “wifely 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 that’s not a good thing.
He alsotold 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.
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 Speedboatto 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.
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’mthe one with the
“Bad Kid” reputation! Over dinner she lectured us on how costumes for the ballet exaltthe 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 everbe 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 Walkout 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?
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.
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 sheerfrustration 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, the Alcoholic.
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 Avril 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?
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.
Avril 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.
10:45 AM Sat 29 May 78
Woke up this morning muttering about betrayal and failure. Seems my life separates into two phases: pre and post Bruce.
Pre-Bruce I was such an innocent – I think “goober” is the descriptive expression. Schools should not let these pathetic characters out – but we were so eager to roam free. There is no savagery to which people will not descend to protect their egos. On top of all this, we have to battle M & D who, of all people, SHOULD be in our corner. They’re pissed we’re not more successfully infantilized. Determine NOT to do this to my kids.
Reading Hodgson’s Carnacki The Ghost Hunter (1900) heartbreakingly dull. And it could have been so good – a combination of Gerard Manley Hopkins and Sherlock Holmes is just what the doctor ordered.
3 PM Tues 30 May 78
Struggled through 2 bad pages on Demon that will have to be rewritten, then finished Sylvia Townsend Warner’s tragic At the Stroke of Midnight. This beautiful short story almost finished me. Yesterday Italian food made me & Avril logy – we tried going dancing.
Horrible place, bad band. (Tramps). Predatory males (who spoke bad English) very difficult to get rid of.
Saw Greek Tycoon instead – worse even than we’d been led to believe. Came home and read two bad detective stories by “good” writers. Guilt-inducing cash from M & D – makes me feel inadequate but I need it. Means I can buy new vacuum cleaner AND summer dresses. Call Peter like a dutiful child – this whole affair is tinged with doom. Thank God he is “busy” with his Secret Married Woman (who turns out to Someone Big in the Democratic Committee)! His parents and my parents should just date each other. Dogs need walking and I need to check on vandalism at abandoned house.
2 PM Sat June 2 – 78
Trouble opening latest letter from Devon – I had
the weirdest premonition it would a marriage proposal! It was indeed very loving – he has hit a summit of boredom and restlessness for which I am doubtless not the cure. Praised my novel for its “mystical sense of altered consciousness.” Wow. I like that better than “brilliant satire”. Avril & I went to Dillards concert at Cellar Door – they are so charming. Reminiscences of seeing Bruce play there. First act was Scarlet Ribera and Black Rose Band –
liked her even better. Some attractive men, but casual sex seems to raise more problems than it solves. A & I agree that after the “healing” comes the “strengthening” period. Coltsville Community College asks me to teach seminar on gothic
novel – of course I said yes. Poor misbegotten bastards. But at least I like watching the birds stuffing themselves at my feeder.
Plush Palace Mon 5 June 78
Perfect day – interesting stirrings inside – feel I am on the edge of some sort of breakthrough. Yesterday fresh sweet corn and turkey salad at A’s, then we watched B Stanwyck’s Double Indemnity on TV. Classic Chandler. “Aren’t you going 75 in a 30 mph zone?”
After that I dressed up in my satin 3-piece suit to see Helmut Berger at the Kennedy Center. (Sigh). What a honey that man is.
Then sent Bruce a letter with the Unwelcome News that I am “estopped” from filing for divorce in the state of Maryland because he made me sign a “no contest” paperand then dropped his suit! Paralysis!
I know he was hoping to get out of this without paying –
(his last girlfriend proffered enough cash to get us this far then predictably abandoned him as soon as his True Colors became apparent.) Maybe –
I can establish residence in Virginia and start all over again.
Had an eye appt in Bethesda so went to that library where I’ve never been and got a TON of interesting books. Treasuring Patricia Beers’ Reader, I Married Him.
Plush Palace Mon 12 June 78 – 7:00 PM
Horrible experience last night at the Garland Dinner Theatre – we were seated with some couple where the male was obviously severely mentally ill –she fed him 1,000 pills throughout dinner to keep him from exploding. We could have “complained” and demanded to be seated elsewhere but it just seemed so cruel. Avril & I used every bit of our mother’s otherwise completely pernicious training and tried to act as if nothing was happening.
I’m trying to muster up the discipline to unplug my phone till six – I’m getting too involved in Avril’s job hunt. She told me to Butt Out. She’s right – I should just write. What the hell am I thinking being somebody’s “mother”? We have too much of a mother already –
for both of us. Martin Green’s Children of the Sun a survey rather than the illumination I’d hoped for. Now I need a real Brian Howard bio.
Yesterday excellent day – haven’t known such joy since April.
Sunbathing reading Ada Leverson & Her Circle – delicious. (Unfortunately she was a bit of an idiot.) Cleaned entire house yesterday so when I got back from dancing it was immaculate. (The dogs – who had been outside in the yard – messed it up again immediately.) Read Jane Rule’s excellent Lesbian Images at work. She’s dumb about Colette and Bowen but I agree with her that loneliness and bad experiences are the enemy, not homosexuality. But I don’t think I’m up for a lesbian experience – women too emotionally demanding. They do too much work (men do too little).
Hideously unsatisfactory choice – like having to choose between a ton of salt or none. Better to go without.
Peter called to say we “ought to get together”.
Seemed very halfhearted to me. Bet he wants to tell his mother he’d made
an effort. I doubt we can surmount this fundamental lack of attraction (we both prefer blondes) but Mom thinks just the opposite. Marry people you’re NOT attracted to so you won’t be “swept away” by “hormones” and you can make “reasoned decisions”! Is that pitiable or what? Avril says she’s LYING because EVERYBODY lies about sex. Suggested Mom handed Dad her wet underpants on their very first date. (At the ballet? I don’t see it.) Mom has also said the worse you are at sex the more likely you are to get a proposal.
Does this make sense to you? Ryder’s marriage (under these exact principles) lasted 2 yrs and he wanted to be anywhere but home.
Plush Palace – 22 June 78 – 3 PM
Second double this week. I hate them but I need
$80 for typewriter, $300 to pay back Avril, $100 to quiet the utilities people –
$200 Burnside Inn and at least $200 “Mad Money”. You know, in case I go mad. It could happen, especially the way things are going. Need extra cash for Vacation, which I approach as if it were a Sacrament. Secaire gets re-written NEVER under this regime. Oh well. There’s always poetry.
SYLVIA PLATH: The Festering Weight
I know you deceived me
With the bald-headed lady
My true kin;
My mother renounced
Your swollen giblets in my name.
See? I bleed tulips.
It’s happened twice before; I seed the earth
With children, little miracles.
I give them their inheritance – a
Carriage full of baby dung
Flung
Down the coal hole
To remind me of you.
Pearly maggots bee–like
Suck my lip to
Scent the fault that clings to me:
Heredity.
This enemy’s face shifts cleverly;
First male, then jew, then
blurred and unfamiliar, genitalia
like narcissi.
I reserve the right to reject
This choiceless life.
See? My body’s scarred by
Your refusals.
The blackbird sings out
Blackly.
Yesterday cleaned house, walked dogs, cooked fish stew. Avril & I read family letters, then went out to see A Different Story. Both liked it enormously.
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.
My whole body hurts from dancing 5 nights in a row.
It’s not good for tips, either.
Poor May Sarton is trying to exorcise Eliz Bowen.
Good luck with that! Elizabeth so contemptuous of “schoolgirl crushes”!
Real love in EB’s world seems strangely synonymous with corruption &
loss. Old fashioned view and more male really – “ejaculate” and die. We women get children, poems & novels out of it. Avril stood up for dinner by Shoulders. Uh oh. Beginning of the end. Apparently saying “yes” is fatally unsexy. She & I will be eating her pot roast tomorrow – fine with me.
Fatima came down early but Lori refused to go up,
Pointing to her watch! Much excitement & hissing.
7:45 PM – Mon. 24 Apr 78
Good scene in my novel – Miss Pruitt vs. Viv. Now I need a boathouse picnic. Every time you get to the mountaintop there’s just more mountain. Then you’re supposed to “prune” at the end – if you have any energy left. Trying to read A Literature of Their Own but Showalter too hard on poor old Woolf. Women have always owned literature, it’s the publishers, editors and critics we apparently can’t have. 60,000 words on my latest tells me it’s time to celebrate. No novel could EVER be this hard again.
I demand a party.
Strange letter from Devon – he is involved with some “Jewish woman” and it isn’t going well. She seems “inaccessibly foreign” –
and he is “losing faith” in his “ability to pick a friend.” Is this a plea for help?
He specifically asked where I would be this summer. Said he loved me.
Took his glamour pic out of the bin where it has lain and put it up, then went out with Avril and bought a hopeful bikini. She and Shoulders are so mired in excuses, lies and expectations no relationship seems possible.
Sunbathing season starts tomorrow.
1PM Thu May 4 -78
Comparing lovers. “It’s Devon in the stretch with
Jervaze fatally winded and Bruce fallen by the wayside”. Needs poetry.
Finished Gift last week. Letting it “perk”. It already feels “swallowed up” by the past. Avril read it, disappointed by the ending. Wants murder at the very least. But is that real life? I think I agree with her that it should be. People should kill themselves when you are done with them. Sadly, in reality they’re all whimper and no bang. How to fix?
When I’m not engaged on some important work my “real life” ceases. Car to its “first service” Mon – involved ferrying each other around and jockeying with one car. Why don’t Mom & Dad appreciate this? It’s like they want us to be ashamed of needing other people to survive. Mom staying in NYC with the new baby but then coming here Sat. to inspect our dissolute lives. Uh oh. I won’t have any trouble getting time off but I hate to. Certainly can’t work when she is here. Living two weeks off one paycheck canbe done. But I will feel obligated to battle Mom for financial freedom.
Finished Glendinning’s Bowen. A life rich and strange but hardly enviable. I’m being pestered by old “college friend” but I am officially “not home”. She sneaks around the house, sniffing.
Sat. 6 May 78 – 1:30 PM
Cleaned & waxed kitchen and bathroom floors, sitting with newly creamed hands and cup of coffee sunbathing 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 living on an 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 man 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’thonest – 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 actual pain
than Mom ever had – Avril says she “refuses to learn.” Creepy. Turns what pain she does have back on others somehow.
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 – just tell her what she wants to hear.”
I thought better of her than that but I’ve struck out so far. Since their definition of success
is so narrow, I don’t see how I can ever satisfy them.
Two more sets. I’ll live. Finished study of Mary McCarthy by Doris Grumbach. Much prefer that to actually having to read McCarthy who reminds me of Aldous Huxley – Is it possible to be toocontemporary? Trends of modern writing a little too sketchy for me. No book should feel like flipping through a magazine. Sensory overload sans enlightenment.
As for Angus Wilson – we are parting forever. I read all but two stories in Such Darling Dodos – back on the shelf he goes.
Wonderful day – up before 7, read New York Times, sent out poems – magnificent walk with dogs – explored abandoned house. Haunted by novel – so went back and got six pages – one good new idea.
Called publisher – ordered ten more books. Little self-promotion. While writing got call from the Plush Palace – would I come in two sets early for Glory, who is sick? Love to. Just feeling bankrupted by the drycleaners. I was justified too because first set got a big tip. ($300)!
Peter called – said he would have lovedto go to the Raitt concert with me but had to go to Vermont. He certainly talks differently when his girlfriend/housekeeper/telephone answerer person is not around.
He hinted that his love life is impossibly complex and he doesn’t want his parents to know. I’m guessing that she is married. He promised to get in touch when he gets back. I’m in the ladies room because the air-conditioning in dressing room not working – it is suffocating in there. Yesterday evening thoroughly enjoyable – steaks wine and hot fudge sundaes at A’s then watched Richard Brooks Happy Ending which really
was a bomb. Trying to read Anthony Powell’s Venusbergbut feeling nothing yet. Tried Sarton’s Miss Pickthorn– a hash of all her other stuff – very slight. Avril not home for past four hours – out on date with Jordan.
Can’t wait to hear the play by play.
11:45 PM – Thurs 13 Apr 78
Safe & warm in my gilt-canopied bed, happy in spite
of my cold. A & I got “El Diablo” inspected today – $70 – But at least she can take it to the MVA tomorrow and have it put in her name. That great feeling of “starting out fresh”. In spite of dribbles & wheezes, blissful dog walk followed by deep-dish pizza & wine at Armand’s. No painful memories.
Cherry blossoms are out.
Saw Coming Home with Jon Voigt & Jane Fonda. Good, if somewhat earnest. Bruce Dern acted like he was in a different movie. Rough role deserves a hero’s commendation. I stare at the casually interdependent couples – it’s been a year since I could lay a hand on another’s thigh with that proprietary air. Poor Avril dissolved in tears towards the end – too reminiscent of the “endless pain” of vets like Bruce and Mason.
I’d be more sympathetic if they didn’t take it out on others. What they learned apparently is how to “stage a war”. The people we love inflict the worst damage. Avril’s at the stage where she’s still haunted by Mason but feels it’s “boring” to talk about him so she bottles it up. I tell her get a diary. Hope to finish Powell’s
Agents & Patients tonight – but it is a little dull.
Plush Palace –Fri 14 Apr 78 – 3:50 PM
Only 3 more sets, with 4 dancers. Still, made
enough tips for groceries. Buy wild birdseed for the birds cavorting
outside my desk’s bay window. Daringly went on without stockings – such a savings if we didn’t have to buy them but Eddie told me No Cigar.
Too bad – they’re hot in summer. Alvera says Yvonne’s back at Mother Joe’s. I thought she wouldn’t be able to eat enough shit to stay in her music clerk job. We goddesses so spoiled by our pedestal. Called A in the afternoon to see how she was doing – Shoulders was there flexing his muscles at her and she is over the moon. Trying to be glad for her but in spite of his obvious beauty I’m afraid he is a bit of a shit. (See testimony of past burnees plus eviction notices.)
I feel I must disappear deeper into solitude and see what’s down there. Gift (new version of Courtney) coming along interestingly but slowly. I’m afraid it has no plot other than my own life, when what it needs is a couple of murders. (Same thing my life has always required.) Poems so much easier instead.
Tried to read Phyllis Bottome but she’s a fatal cross between a
didact and a pleaser; sort of like a barky little dog. Most unpleasant.
And that casual anti-Semitism pretty shocking.
Plush Palace – Sat 5:50 PM 15 Apr 78
Halfway through novel – can’t figure out if I’m
satisfied or not. All my discoveries so agonizingly slow. Can’t afford
fuckups – then I’ll have to go through it all AGAIN. Slept late, breakfast at Avril’s. We did laundry together, then played gin.
I was the first one here thank God (means I’m the
first to leave). Got my schedule – 4 nights in a row, 2 days off. Good.
Congratulate myself on my intellectual freedom as I wrap black lace around my throat, recalling all the put-downs I suffered back in the day when I was an “architect’s helpmeet”.
Reread Alvarez’ description of Plath’s suicide – I don’t agree her death was some “by-product.” Her mother raised her to be murdered by other people;
Nazis or husbands. There had to be a “bloodletting” – Mrs. Plath’s ulcer – Sylvia’s “suicides”. If you don’t “accept” martyrdom someone will have to die in your place. Kid yourself it’s” freedom” just because you choose time & place.
It bothers me terribly that Mom & Daughter shared a bedroom during Sylvia’s formative years. Death would seem inevitable just to get some privacy & distance. Poor Sylvia offered those magnificent poems to Alvarez and he
backed away terrified because Art is terrifying. $30 for lost contact that came out when a necklace scraped my eyeball while I was hanging upside down.
Teach me to wear contacts onstage. Who needs to see the audience anyway?
7:15 PM Sun 16 Apr 78
Spent the day in bed eating oranges, raisin bread, peanut butter. Avril’s spending the night at Shoulders’ new place – then tomorrow we’re going to the new Cassavetes film and I’m excited. Jervaze in for last set to invite me to his going away party. I slept nine hours.
Horrifying Who Made the Lamb – author really lost control of this one but I bet she would say she was just “reporting”. Books Do Furnish a Room much better than Powell’s previous – has a sense of direction. “Trapnel himself always insisted that a novel is what its writer is”. I would agree. Style follows taste, I think. Realize Dad and I don’t mean the same thing by the word “intellectual”. He means a person who knows specific things, (education) I mean a person who thinks a certain way (style).
Twain never meets. I am not respectful of artificially acquired patinas –
“points of view”. Wrote the infirmary scene – just what I wanted to say.
Maybe I need to give up sex and even male companionship –
– just can’t afford them.
Plush Palace – 6:45 PM Fri 21 Apr 78
Wonderful walk along Powder Mill Road thinking
about the mystique of money. I eternally fight a rearguard action. Mom & Dad call at noon – Genevieve had little girl – Belinda. Avril delivers my new lens– bounce notice in mail – I tear my hair in a frenzy. I get to dance 2 sets for GiGi – $200 – she tells me about her night of sin with Louie. And she wants another one. Life’s a soap opera. Management says there’s going to be a drug raid with dressing room search warrant. Panic among the girls – but not me. Check out the customers with a more intense interest. Are narcs here? Everyone planning to leave town except me. I offer to work tomorrow night.
Reading an interesting study of Iris Murdoch novels – the Disciplined Heart. Too much coffee – I’m switching to tomato juice.
Walked in and there was Jervaze, big as life, clearly NOT in Alabama at all.. He was quite plastered but acted very pleased to see me. I feel he has turned a definite corner. He could have been somebody, could have made choices, but he seems to have decided to live in an ever deepening blur. I am well out of it. I asked him what happened to my ring. He promised to look for it. He has a new plan of course. His brother is trying to talk him into returning to school. He’ll talk that to death for a while till his kidneys fail and his liver withers and his brain goes. Then it won’t matter anymore.But I must get a picture of him now while he still looks good so I can show my grandchildren. He was dressed all in white like an angel and is letting his silver gilt hair grow long. I can hear it now: “You dated Wild Bill Hickok?” Yes kids. And it was really wild.
Called my agent and demanded to know how much I am actually going to get from HBJ. The answer is $1993, so it’s a good thing I got that stock which I sold today. April 5 I pick up my new car – a Fiat. (Avril takes the Gremlin.) Money in the bank – need to settle in for a long writing session. Trying to concentrate on my book – Bowen’s
The Last September– but it just feels too distant from my own life. Feels like I’m slowly surfacing, like a corpse that has been in the water for three days. Last night I finished Anne Tyler’s Searching for Caleb. Her most beautiful novel in my estimation. Today A and I bought plants, put money down on car. I’m exhausted and out of love with my own life – don’t understand why I personally seem to need to do everything the hard way and backwards.
4:30 PM Fri 31 Mar 78
Barrage of criticism from Mom and Dad that I
spent stock money on car. How do they expect us to live in two different places and have one car? Doesn’t make sense. Avril has car today for her eye appt – will pick me up in 45 mins. I am struggling with Bowen’s The Little Girls. She uses writing for disguise. Last night A and I went to dinner at an Italian restaurant – she had the clams, I had the shrimp, we split a bottle of wine. Then we went to see what A described as “one concentration camp film too many.” I bought tickets to Bonnie Raitt concert – Mom and Dad suggested I “look up” their friends’ son Peter Pauley.
I may invite him, I do remember him as cool and handsome. But brunette.
Oh well, can’t have everything. Got check from agent – less her percentage –
which I forgot to calculate. So I hope I get paid enough Sat to have money for car. My future emerges through a glass darkly – don’t know yet whether I like it or not.
2:50 PM Sat April 1, 1978 – Starlight
Working a double. My latest realization is: I can never have enough money. Curse you, Marc Kramer for suggesting I invest in real estate. In spite of this I’ve decided not to take on doubles unless I’m in a jam (as I am over this car.) Interesting new dancer – big hips and no boobs but a wonderful attitude. Her laugh can be heard by fishing boats on the distant Chesapeake. Alvera. She works in a lawyer’s office during the day. I’m trying to imagine her in her suit typing briefs.
The Little Girlsis 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 PMTender 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 AnUnmarried Woman tomorrow – go out and have some fun. Monday after her classes we’ll watch The Oscars at my place. Bought 3 costumes from Kerry that I can ill afford – but they were a steal. Sent Harvey the Brownmiller book, Against Our Will. There’s no excuse for such ignorance.
Plush Palace – 8:50 PM – Thurs night 6 April 78
So ends one of the happiest days of my life. Woke
this AM two minutes before clock radio – breakfast in bed reading – good work at typewriter. Long walk with dogs – came back to find Green’s Mag took my whole “suicide” series. Avril showed up helped me play with my new car – first and second tough to get into and out of until the salesman professionally broke its little hymen. Seems all right now.
Bookgoing well. Most of the time I feel I have the ideal existence – plenty of sleep, plenty of exercise, plenty of time to write, plenty of privacy. Paradise.
Jervaze called. He is really going to Alabama this time. Said he loved me, thereby proving my point that the less of a relationship we are having the more important it is to him. If we never see each other again, I bet he will remember me as the perfect girlfriend. All future women in his life will curse my name.
Good letter from Mom and Dad apologizing for
their explosion about car. Part of the problem dealing with them is theytry to preserve a “united front” which means frantically
whispering and negotiating behind the scenes, then speaking awkwardly together like an ill-rehearsed Greek chorus. I can kind of speculate about who really thinks what – not that I want to.
A and I liked Unmarried Woman – much better
than Goodbye Girl. I tried Peter all day – no answer. Reading
Storm Jameson’s Journey From the North– it’s like watching a
slo-mo car accident the way she beats up on herself. Why this sense that honesty requires one must utterly disown all one’s earlier versions?
CS Forrester did exactly the same thing in Long Before 40– will I feel compelled to do the same some day about this life I am leading now?
Foolishness is youth’s necessary clothing methinks. Think I will dump this book without finishing. Try Angus Wilson’s The Middle Age of Mrs. Eliot.
9:25 PM – Plush Palace – Sat night 8 April 78
Beautiful day. Off to Columbia, testing my new car.
A & I had lunch at Clyde’s – talked about what fun it would be if we each had a full-time man – and they liked each other. We could double date.
Feels impossible. Walked around lake – bought baby clothes for Genevieve.
Home, walked dogs, then to work.
Boring evening. Few unenthusiastic customers.
GiGi brought in a bottle of champagne – I broke my rule and had some out of sheer boredom. A father in with his 2 ½ yr old daughter – sent her up to the stage with a tip for me. Depressing fact #2 – tried to read a short story about rape in Fictioncalled The Intruder – it was awful – turned me off the whole magazine. Angus Wilson’s Middle Agemerely stupid. Will I have a go at No Laughing Matter? Still no Peter and no explanation. If he is away on vacation his parents don’t know about it. Feels suddenly difficult to be independent and alone.
10:10 Pm – Sunday night 9 April 78
Avril met a guy she likes in one of her classes who likes her. Fingers crossed. As a result I spent Saturday alone, which I don’t mind. It would be OK with me if every day were the same, wake at 10,
write till 4, then off to work. On Sun we played in Adelphi Mill Park – swam in the falls – wonderful picnic of brie and cherries – played with dogs. Wrote poem about Devon.
Phoned Peter – a girl answered! He came on very brisk and businesslike – had been in Venezuela. I asked if she was “the housekeeper” – he hurried to get off phone – said he would drop by club. Always wanted to see me perform. I told him my schedule. I figure if he and she are seriously involved so that I shouldn’t move forward – he’ll tell me. Chloe’s friend Dennis called and tried to make me feel guilty enough to go out with him. Little does he know how far past that “Since I can’t think of an excuse you’ll accept I guess I’ll just be forced to go out with you” stage I am. He turned hostile – said I’d “led him on”. I refused to rise to this, portraying self as a naturally friendly but also naturally private person. I guess I’ll have more of this stuff with J gone. He was sort of protection. Everyone wants someone who doesn’t want them. Highly entertaining if one were bored enough. I am not.
Interesting conversation with Avril where we discussed the “courting rules” we’d learned. They were grim – we’ve had to ditch them completely. Got into another one of our “Is Satisfaction Possible” marathon debates. I always say it is, she says, what if it’s not. I refuse to consider this option. Mom’s advice to A is loiter around art galleries and art museums to get the right guy. This sounds expensive & time consuming.
Plus, I know too many artists to be in love with this idea. They are the worst.
I want someone stable.
I have to admit my chances of finding someone like that in the job I’m in seem small. But I only need one guy. I’m special –
so would he be. Avril insists things were better in the past – “pre-liberation” but I’m not buying it. Opal’s marriage very instructive on these points. They are both beautiful, can think and have work they love. So why do they fight and sulk nonstop?
Each feels the other does not truly “value them” and fusses for increased respect. Each thinks the other is “holding them back.” So they claim. With any encouragement I think they would jump into a threesome. Non merci.
Waiting for cocktails, I discover a flaw in the divine Miss Elizabeth Bowen. She doesn’t like to admit that she is of the same clay as her characters. Those creatures based on the Mosleys she repudiated utterly as if creatures from another planet. I’ve got news for her. Creatures from another planet are
not that interesting.
Last night was one of the most traumatic family
Evenings I have ever experienced – I think my eyes are still puffy. I heard we would be having Island People to dinner – he used to be a university president/professor so presumably would be good company – they met because somebody was the bridesmaid of somebody else’s bridesmaid so there is a connection. It started with me wearing a green silk shirt, my denim gauchos and hardly any makeup (yes I wore eyeshadow) and being told by Mom that my “get-up” was “more suitable for a bar.” (All of a sudden she’s an expert on bars.)
Harvey and Edna turned out to have “heard of my job” –I gather in some commiseration session on Incredibly Unsatisfactory Children – however they refuse to accept that there is any difference between being an exotic dancer and being a stripper (hello! I don’t strip) and somehow Harvey
segued from castigating “exotic dancers who try to feel superior to strippers” to criticisms of “ total sexual freedom” which apparently means that “everybody should jump on everybody.”
I tried to dignify this mess by explaining that it is actually the reverse – in the “old days” under the “ancien regime sexuelle” a dancer could expect to be “jumped on” by “anybody” because of her job (like poor old Degas’ ladies) but that actual freedom for women would mean a world in which one could be a barely clothed dancer (I would think anyone would admit nudity is at least an equally valid way of expressing the art of muscle –
line and form as heavily costumed artificial approximations) without it becoming some sexual signal that one has “lost caste” and therefore privacy and choice. I recommended Susan Brownmiller’s book to this painfully ignorant male (God knows what he taught – he had never heard of Brownmiller – seems to have her confused with Ti-Grace Atkinson assuming she mustwrite books no self-respecting intellectual would read (maybe he was the type of university president who just brings in wads of cash).
He challenged my premise that the ultimate societal freedom would be for unattached females to not to be under the threat of rape every minute. Harvey insisted – with a perfect straight face that women rape men every bit as much as the reverse – “psychologically of course” which he says is just as terrible – and in fact probably even more so since we all know the “physical thing is no big deal” and often does people a “favor”.
I must say this does not reflect very well on his wife Edna but she was smiling smugly so I think she may have just been too obtuse to follow any of the arguments.
I really could not cope with this free-for-all avalanche of idiocy especially when my parents played their trump card – if bars where women sit in front of a drink and watch barely clothed men cavorting don’t exist, therefore this is an antifeminist exercise and my claim to be a feminist is a
sham. I think it was at that point that I burst into tears. Which of course was
totally demeaning. I sorely missed Avril’s assistance – she refused to jump in
but made peacemaking noises like “you both have a point” (untrue – their “points” are a disgrace). Ugly Harvey apologized – what a monster! but there could be no satisfaction in it for me at that point. Avril went walking with me until they left.
Alas, waiting till they were gone did not end the discussion. Mom and Dad pounced on us to drive home their point that the male animal is a violent dangerous creature barely contained by the civilizing influence of the female. (Guess they can’t get behind Harvey’s “female rapist” idea.) Of course they are going to rape any female who lets down
her guard for a second and it will all be her fault. (Didn’t Ryder make this case?
I’m ashamed to share a world with these people.) Any kind of a sexual display (I guess the beach would certainly qualify) is a declaration of :
“Jump in boys! It’s free today!” At least they recognized Harvey’s
behavior as extreme (“Two drinks and he’s lost” was Dad’s comment.)
Basically, as long as I work at “that bar” I’m the
“lost cause” and if any decent male finds out about it our relationship will be over in a trice. This kind of thing makes me wonder why I bother to visit them. Fortunately, I’m escaping soon, but the whole ferry reservation problem means one loses the right to fight irretrievably with one’s hosts on this island. Dad’s bigmistake was giving me an example of a good marriage as Lillian Hellman and Dashiell Hammett!
Did I blow my top! He probably thought I’d listen to him if he produced a literary example. He wasn’t aware that not only were they not married but Mr. Hammett was married to someone else and cheated on poor Hellman whenever he could manage to stay stiff long enough. (I really didn’t want to “get in” to the alcoholism problem. Lillian tried to make him seem like a “mentor” but honestly she was just his keeper and bail bondsman.)
11:30 AM Friday, 24 March 78
Staggering down for my first cup of coffee when I heard Harvey’s voice in the kitchen. Thank God I heard it in time – if he had seen me in my baby doll nighty I guess he would have considered himself justified in pinning me immediately to the floor. He brought me a hibiscus flower as a peace offering.
A more significant peace offering came from Mom and Dad who gave us each 100 more shares of stock. I tried to refuse it– they insisted. I warned them I’ll only sell it. Maybe I’ll be able to buy a new car when I get back. I could use it.
Spent last night trying to read Welty’s Bride of Innisfallen, couldn’t get my mind around it. Read Faithful Are the Wounds instead.
Very like a stage play – which isn’t necessarily a bad thing.
Powder Mill Road – home – 8:30 PM Sun 26 March 78
Can’t describe the ecstasy of being in my own
place. On the island I am hideous – here I am beautiful. The loss of confidence there is so severe as to actually induce delusions. Now that I am back I am ready to tackle my existence brilliantly. As always.
We got in last night in the pouring rain – 11:30 PM
– Avril had coffee and left. I read a soppy love story and slept in my Own Bed.
Today we did laundry, went to see a bad movie – actors working madly away to no effect. Tomorrow I get mail – hope there’s lots of it.
Did get a beautiful poem out of the island –
Peacock Pavement: The Poet on her walk – submit to Denver
Quarterly – which has been very polite about me lately. They’ve shown an interest in my stuff though nothing has ever been exactly “right.
What a day. Lost a contact just before bed, which put
me in a hideous temper. 1 ½ hrs sleep, drove Avril to the Laundromat, did laundry, bought cosmetics, picked her up, went to 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 Avril, then off to work. Jervaze 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. Avril 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 theFar Islandwhich 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 – Avril 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 –
I just accept it. Said his body “hurt”. I wish I could convince him that caffeine, junk food and alcoholare 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 Jervaze is channeling myenergies 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 Jervaze has no influence on my life-plan. Ryder 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 Jervaze – 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 Jervaze will go after tests.
9PM Plush Palace – Wed 15 Feb 78
Jervaze quite drunk when he came into the club this evening – said he’s turning in his notice and returning to the South. (I wondered if they
fired him but didn’t ask.) 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. Avril 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 already read this because all the essays seem so familiar.Very unpleasant Gore 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 setwithout 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
Jervaze 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 Avril – 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 hada home and family but somehow lost them and now 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 really 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.
9:30 PM Mon 27 Feb 78
Love the drive between my place and Avril’s – taking not New Hampshire Ave but Riggs Road. Blind turns and non-sequential 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.
9:50PM – Plush Palace – Wed 1 Mar 78
Jervaze in to say goodbye – off 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 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. Jervaze 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 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 Jervaze 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 Avril’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.
Alysse Aallyn 