Alysse Aallyn

Category: #Healing

  • Inspired Pleasure – the dance diaries of Alysse Aallyn

                     4:20 PM Fri Oct 14 – 77

                              Blessed book!  The joy, the solidity, the security this diary has afforded me all my life can’t be measured.  Bizarre letter from my dentist thanking me for referring “Mr. Arlen” to them!  Apparently Ryder is stalking me. Now I have to wear makeup to the dentist!  Hope I don’t run into Ryder while wacked out on Novocain.  Usual day of quotidian pursuits, washing lingerie & hair, filing, letters.  Avril writes that Mason is moving in with a friend! He thinks it will be “better” for her. Bet the “friend” is female! Sure sounds like death knell to me – he dragged her all the way out there, ran busily through her money & lost his spark.  Still other’s relationships are always so much clearer!  Now we can be glad she’s not going to school – she needs to get out NOW. 

                              Plush Palace – Mon – 11:40 PM 17 Oct 77

                              4 Dancers on tonight but Cindy and Linda walked out, ticked about my raise (I didn’t tell them.) So more dancing (and $$).  Plus coffee machine broken and we need to order out so I treated myself to 2 Krispy Kremes. Ah, the simple joys.  Five-year plan guy is back.  His fave play? “Love is Alive” – unfortunately.

                              The most gorgeous autumn weather tonight driving here – my heart soared. ONE MORE SET! Then fling on fake fur “Shakespearean” coat, jump into El Diablo, off into the night. Bar deserted, tips unspeakable. Asked if I could cash a check with Randy he just handed me a $20 bill, so there’s gas. Kiki says she’s getting married, worked the whole evening on her guest list for Big Event in Fredericksburg. Reading Hardwick’s Seduction & Betrayal and appreciating it although something’s “off” about her. Why won’t the ventriloquist put down the dummy and just talk?  And she’s just flat wrong about Woolf and Plath.

                              I brood about letting R. know where I work. Brave or stupid?  Stupid, I think.  Better class him with “dead end relationships”. I have plenty of people I’d never want to see again – Bruce and Kyro springs to mind.  Other people I feel good about like Toss Sheffield. He’d be fun to see again. Could he handle my dancing? He had a fun “hitchhiker’s guide to the galaxy” attitude in general towards effort & enterprise.

    Insomniac

    I can’t sleep

    Because you’re gone

    My muscles wake

    My mind goes spinning on

    And where your fingers

    Plied and pruned my face

    Night air is cold and

    Caustic in its place

    And where we turned and woke

    In complex rhyme, I’m left

    To face the music frayed by time

    A waltz which once we won

    Losing battle choreographed for one.

    None to explore or

    Appreciate my line though now at last

    It’s incontestably mine.

                              12:10 PM- Plush Palace – Wed 19 Oct 77

                              Dance night, then dance the next day kind of rough. And tips are bad when the weather’s good – no one comes in.  I seem to have a lot of bills – just turned on the heat – but I’m meeting them. Making some inroads today on Thomson’s Life of Frost. Randy fired Robin –

    Yvonne needs $300 immediately because she just bought a piano. Well good luck getting it out of this crowd is all I can say. Paz’s “on call” because she left her husband and moved into the motel across the street.  Let’s hope she shows up.  Last time I saw her she was pretty depressed; said she gave him “the best four years” of her life. I have to get this all down in case I need it someday.  Ryder used to be especially pissed when I got nostalgic for dancing.  But dancing is its own little world. 

                              7:30 PM- Plush Palace – Thu 20 Oct 77

                              This afternoon I was getting ready for work phone rang, I say hello and Ryder’s tight little voice says: (very meaningfully) Hello.  

    I turned the radio down (Lakmé) and said casually as I could, “How are you?”

                              He said he should enroll in FBI school after all the 

    trouble he’d had tracking me down. 

                              (It couldn’t have been that hard since Mom and Dad’s 

    house sitter has been giving my # to all and sundry.)  Said he was punished now for being a non-communicative procrastinator who should fling himself off the 14th St Bridge.  

    I told him I lived in Beltsville and danced in Virginia, refused to give further details. I didn’t let him get away with any of his garbage.  He said I’d been in town since Sept 8 without contacting him. I said he’d made it pretty plain he didn’t like what I had to offer. Then why did I come back?  I said, I like it here. Creep!  

    Like he owns the world!  

                              He said, will you eat with me?  Hmmm.  Something

    rattling in Pandora’s box. While I hesitated, he said don’t make me disguise myself 

    as a girl scout cookie salesman (he could get away with it, too.) He said he hasn’t gone out to dinner since our last night at Alfio’s!!! (I guess the Emmys don’t count but I said nothing.) Said he’s having to give back his furniture and sleep on an air mattress because he can’t make the payments. Aww.  

    This is the idiocy of buying furniture on time, but I still say nothing. So we’re meeting Babe’s Sun at 3:30.Sunday.  Seems fairly safe… Rushed to library and took out every true murder book I could find.  Just in case.

                               2 Nov – Plush Palace – 6:05 PM.

                              Ryder called this morning to “report in!” Just to chat about his day!  No more of that, I said.  I’m busy. Slam. I don’t chat and I’m not sorry and it’s too late to learn.  Actually, feeling amazingly happy.  Kiki showed me how to cut off my corn with an exacto knife.  Instantly better!  Still in Vol I of Life of Frost.  He was a repulsive human being, all right.  Nowhere near as fun as Agatha.  Precious equilibrium recovered. 

                              8:30 PM  8 Nov 77

                                I gave him the full treatment, poor guy. Red Italian boots, glittery eyeshadow, tight, tight jeans. Ho ho ho. Deliberately drove Connecticut Ave but no markers from the past reached out their claws.  Felt strong and blissful. 

    I was first there (of course) so could order carafe of wine and think. Thinking,

     I’ll just explain to him that my idea of friendship and intimacy requires a 

    degree of truth telling that appears to freak him out.

                              He wore his high heels, too. His hair is blonder, longer 

    and messier than I remembered and it suits him.  Off to the Bahamas next weekend, he says for a “dive”. He wore the pinky ring I gave him (he says he can’t get it off.) But that holy glow, that shine he used to have is gone for me. I get it that he doesn’t know the pain he caused – 

    shallow people can’t.  And that’s pitiable, really. He’s not just deaf in one ear, he’s deaf in his soul. 

                              He has a carefully worked out a “barstool rationale” for what happened to us; we became lovers before we became friends.

     I have no comment. Postponing sex would not have helped – and it might have made things worse dumping all the responsibility for timing on me. I think when he saw how easy it was to draw blood he couldn’t help doing it, and I was a fool and an idiot.  I ordered the fruit and cheese plate but left before it arrived. Realize how much I want all this to be in the past. No future of any kind exists for us.  Not even in fantasy. The future is what matters. Told him to give my regards to the folks at the Shalimar. He said he’d give me a buzz. 

                              Bet I can finish Demon by Thanksgiving. Avril coming. 

     Lucky I have a second bedroom.  Furnish it with Kliban posters, a 

    thrift shop bureau and a mattress on the floor.

  • Inspired Pleasure – the dance diaries of Alysse Aallyn

    Plush Palace – 11:20 AM Sun 24 Sept – wrote a fourteen page letter to Avril tonight. There’s a very pretty blond here who looks just like Ryder – they could be mistaken for each other – but it’s not him. 

                              9:40 PM  – walls dry so I  could hang paintings. What a difference.  Reading Redinger’s bio of George Eliot, The Emergent Self. Like it very much. Turns out I love driving to work – 5Pm is rush hour on the Beltway – everyone’s coming home but I’m going out for the night!  Makes me feel weirdly close to all those people.  And apparently they feel close to me – though they could just be reacting to my bumper sticker (Colette was a Nudie Dancer). They don’t seem to get the literary reference.

        Mon 3 Oct 1977

                                I hear only from my sister Merrill who declares my book a “brilliant satire”.  She wants to know why I work?  Shouldn’t I tour with book? Sigh. Give me the money and leave me alone I say.

                              Spent the AM phoning around trying to find my book in all the stores. Only found it one place. Dropped note to publisher. 

                              Out for Courvoisier with Erika who lectured me on my book. I ended up defending the Victorians saying everyone now thinks “honesty and openness” are going to save them but we don’t know enough about ourselves for real honesty and our lives are still based on “smothered panic” as far as I can see.  (See Janet Case’s strictures to V. Woolf.) Well off to my double life. When I pull into the Plush Palace parking lot I have such a good feeling.  Everything coming together. Down the old runway.  

                              Bought the most wonderful gold stripper shoes that tie with ribbons and have clear Lucite six-inch heels. I finally have enough costumes to feel really professional – every set should be good. Randy always compliments me. I am slowly phasing my hair from red to blonde – seems to help with the tips. I can live on fruit and cream of wheat –  only buy groceries with tip money. Little man down front muttering “fuck me-fuck me-fuck me” over and over but not loud enough to be evicted. Randy said I am the best dancer in Washington area.

        Sat 8 Oct 1977

                              Giving a dinner party. Bought 8 old-fashioned glasses for 50 cents apiece, five floor pillows, peacock chairs and a glass dining table. Now I’m looking for a silk eiderdown (for my bed) in some violent color. Bought beautiful rose-lilac fabric for curtains. Randy gave me another raise without my even asking for one.  I love my body again!  After the long estrangement caused by Ryder…he deliberately tried to undermine my faith in my body. He would prefer bad sex with a slave as long as he can be boss. Wait – isn’t that the marriage he just got out of? Guess we all repeat ourselves.

                              7:30 PM Tues 11 Oct 77

                              I’m too fucking fragile.  All my problems come from pretending I’m not.  I look forward to old age when presumably throbbing metabolism, soaring hormones and plunging brain waves will have smoothed out. How to describe this scrambled day?  I’ve been vibrating like a cilia ever since I got up this morning.  Made dentist, gyno appts, shots for dogs, dog licenses, took angel puppies on an hour’s walk. Divorce lawyer on the 26th: “John Love”: seems appropriate. Clear the decks for writing.

                              My area of Beltsville very rural. Poetry in all directions. Reading Mildred Savage’s A Great Fall and getting lots of ideas. Vacuum cleaner to repair shop they say they can fix for under $15.  I hate errands, a disgusting dribble of irreplaceable time.  Rewarded myself by getting Sleeping Murder at the library. Already know Dr Kennedy is the murderer.

                              2PM Wed 12 Oct 77 – Plush Palace

                              Some men seem to interpret the fact that I’m a dancer as some sort of personal challenge to them.  You can feel the spike of hostility. “You’re making me think about sex again!”  Is it fear of rejection?  Any aura of professionalism bothers them also.  I always curtsy especially low to the hostile tables – they can never figure out whether I am mocking them or not AND THEY THINK I PROBABLY AM!  I save them a lot of money by getting them thrown out early.  One guy asked me how long it would take to get in bed with me. His erection was so obvious I almost asked, “And what is your little friend drinking?” but instead I said, “5 years.”  He showed up next night, saying, “Day one of the five year plan!”  I like those guys much better. 

                              Final R conclusion: What a JERK!  Jerk’s absolutely the right word – in instinctual reflex – no brain activity involved.  Will I ever find a gorgeous man (blond, please) whose soul is connected to his brain?  

                              9:20 PM Thurs 13 Oct 77

                              Shopping Loehmann’s yesterday with Maeve. 3 sweaters, silk jumpsuit with jacket & scarf, lime-colored silk jersey blouse, socks, boots, shoes, gloves – $140 cash. Nice. Saw a wonderful fake fur coat I’d like to come back for. It has a priceless air of Ken Russell camp. Buy it with my Folger money – Shakespeare would understand.  

                              Maeve bought nothing.  Couldn’t find one thing she liked, reading labels with the expression of Queen Victoria viewing a slum.  And the free-for all dressing rooms full of naked people just astonished her.  (Stuff I see every day.)  

                              She wants to know exactly why Wealthier People rejected this clothing at its first price?  They must know something we don’t.  (Wondrous rhinestone earrings to dance in, too.  M. expressed pious horror.)  People like this amaze me.  Why is your own taste of so little importance? Then went out to dinner at a Middle Eastern restaurant – my choice – heavenly lamb shish kebab and a belly dancer! I loved it but Maeve had to rush out before dessert. But as it seems I can never be with ANYONE – even lovers – longer than 3 hrs it was just as well.

                              Folger morning started badly, hair looked mangy, face requires immediate skin graft. Dog hair even on NEW clothing (How is this possible?)  Running an hour behind schedule (compulsively early me).  May Miller gave me worst intro I ever hope to have, misquoted my poems and said I was a grad of the U of Minn. I thought I would sob with emotion 52 times during reading.  My “woodcunt” poem did not go down well (even though it is definitely my most Shakespearean). 

                              Damn.  Then I could have strangled Erika Gelbfisz  (at the after party) who is so scornful and cynical about everything you can’t even have an ordinary conversation with her. I felt like throwing my wine in her face saying, “Suppose you actually succeed in making us all feel rotten, what then?  Fighting in the streets?”                                            

    Nothing’s worth anything in her opinion, so why is she alive exactly? This is what gets my hostility going but because I am at a party I DON’T WANT TO GET INTO IT.  So I just growl and stew. I don’t care for Cocktail Party Standing Around – my right boot was trying to extinguish my left toe, a toe already threatened with extermination from dancing.  This is real Italian leather so SHOULD ultimately fit my feet – I can see each boot slowly outlining my toes – if I don’t come down with gangrene first. Will try Wet Washcloth Stuffing tonight. (Still, I looked ravishing, my dear, in a blue gaucho three-piece suit and my red, red, high-heeled boots.) Poet Usher Glayne seemed impressed with me – but he’s an old man. 

                              To bed with my main squeeze, Agatha Christie.  Thank God for that woman.  She has pulled me single handedly through the last three months. 

                              I was just drifting off when Marc Kramer called. We talked ½ hr.  He bought a sailboat and a BMW and wanted to be sure to let me know. I like the sailboat and the car but the desire to “impress” me diminishes him in my eyes.  Sad to say.  He’s presently at risk of being filed under “has no conversation”.   Well, he did talk about work.  They wanted to fire him from The Washington Project, then admitted he had been right all along. He’d love to have dinner sometime, “see how I live”.   Uh oh. Can I keep this relationship out of the sexual? I don’t want to go to bed, even experimentally with someone Lacking the Necessary Spark.  Could they make up for it by enthusiasm or step-by-step instructions?  I hesitate.  Is it ever possible to just date?  It was AWFUL with Keith.  Marc, however, has a gift of humor. And my parents like him.  “No expectations?” I finally say.   And he promises. 

  • Inspired Pleasure – the dance diaries of Alysse Aallyn

        Chevy Chase, MD – 10:15 PM Thurs 8 Sept.

                              At Shoulder’s house. Not a bad drive down – (washing the dogs right before the ferry (I had to – they stank) put some time pressure on me – but I made the ferry anyway. Shoulders looks different – has a moustache. Talks about needing a roommate – does he mean me?  He doesn’t know where yet and I don’t want to live with him. His constant string of ignorant pickups would eventually get me down. 

                             He doesn’t mention Ryder and I don’t look up his TV show. 

    Promising stuff in the classifieds – a garden apt in Landover, a townhouse in Dale City, sharing a house in Kensington. Took the dogs on the old walk – they remembered the route. Huge construction at my old house. 

     L’Escargot closed.

        5 PM Sept 9

                              Kensington House hopeless. You have to join some

     kind of food co-op that’s like a cult religion and there’s a huge emphasis on kitchen and cooking duties. They all eat together. Seems like the worst of college and boarding school to me. I’m now sitting in a real estate office which is really a garage waiting for a guy who’s already an hour late. He’ll be here in 10 mins they say, then he’s going away for 2 weeks so I hope he will want to close the deal tonight, It’s described as an old apartment, high ceilings, fireplace. $210 a month. So I’m just praying  the neighborhood’s not too bad. 

        7:00 PM

                              Bleak. Too bleak. Tried to imagine myself doing my 

    exercises on that floor, standing in that kitchen waiting for water  to boil, etc. Couldn’t manage. Feeling very stressed. Do I even want to live in this city? It’s just that I know I can easily make a living if the 

    book doesn’t take off. Went to the library and loaded up on Agatha Christies to help handle the strain. It works.  Maybe I need to get a shag haircut  and spend the winter in Spain.  Now why don’t I do that, other than the obvious reason I can’t afford it and have already missed my dogs as much as I ever want to. Another guy says he has half of a house I might want.  With a fenced in yard.

        8:15 AM Wed 14 September – Powder Mill Road

                              Drinking coffee in my own kitchen from the mug that 

    was my present to myself last morning on the island.  The guy is 

    selling this house as a rental property and was amazingly cavalier – 

    needed a tenant – didn’t look up my refs or demand cosigner.  

    Absolutely cool when I described myself as a ”writer” so “dancer” 

    remains beneath the radar.  (Dad would say that proves I know 

    dancing’s “bad”! I refuse to be unsafe just to convince my own father I’m respect-worthy.) 

                             Yesterday very full day.  Got up at 8 and moved

     the dogs to their fenced in yard. Fetched the truck, loaded and 

    unloaded with Shoulders’ help – bookcases, boxes, mattress, 

    desk, sofa – had truck back by 3. A thousand robins on the weed-grown lawn. I wonder how long I will be looking at this peaceful green view.

        8:30 AM Thurs Sept 15 1977

                              Up early spending the last of my money on necessaries – hardware, lampshades, contact paper.

        Fri 16 September 1977

                              My books arrived at Larry’s!  I spent the morning sending them out. Then drove to the Landover Mall, bought two g-strings and pasties and off to the Plush Palace. Steve was there – (Randy the bouncer just hired) thrilled to see me. 

                              Wanted to know where I’d been but I turned that easily away. Vacay! Who wouldn’t!  Told me to come to work Saturday night and they’d give me my schedule.  So that’s settled. I don’t like trying to live without money.  Took the landlord my paint color selection – he buys the paint and I do the work. Probably will take me the next week. Every now and then am attacked by that claustrophobic feeling of restlessness and purposelessness but I am able to keep it at philosophical bay. Working at my poem index made me feel strong and soothed. 

                              Called Chloe to see if I can get on the radio – she was excited to hear from me, but unfortunately gave Erika the Pest my number. Erika called – I was nervous that she wanted me to rewrite her manuscripts, but she just invited me to breakfast.  After that she has another appointment so she can’t swallow up my day. Letter from Avril saying she is coming end of Oct.

    10:15 PM Sat 17 Sept 77 – The Plush Palace, Alexandria Virginia

                                Ego lift.  Nothing’s changed. I’m still the best dancer in the place. Four dancers on and I know two of them. The gossip, the Costume exchange, the curling irons, the dope in the dressing room – it’s all coming back to me. They’ve introduced some weird rules, like customers get to play the music, but it’s still a fun and relaxed place to be.  Steve the floor manager says I can have all the work I want so I might be able to put money away.

         Sun 18 Sept 77

                              Opal comes to over to say “hi” but really to complain about her incipient divorce.  Not the best company. Not the best climate for me either – I found myself sobbing over Ryder (fortunately was alone by then). Why does it seem a lost paradise?  So I can still get into that sort of mood. 

                              Nice phone call with Mom and dad, not too pressured.  They are coming to a boatyard in Annapolis  to look at a boat – will see me then.  One of the best things about this house is the month-to month lease.  Feel I can leave any time but if I behave well they won’t kick me out. Gorgeous location but forty-five minute highway commute to The Plush Palace.  Still wish I could live in Virginia.

                              Wed AM 20 Sept  77                                    Sent out a ton of poems. Replied to a woman who wants pieces for an anthology. Got a beautiful love-letter from Devon!  His usual length – both sides of one page.  Talked about how much fun we had in August, dressing up and going out and “afterwards…!” Made me smile. I said to hell with money and called Avril because I wanted to share – Mason is not there during the day.   She is in a bad place. Providential I called. He has taken to staying out at night without explanation – she is frantic. Thank God she is coming here. I told Randy since I’m your best dancer, how about a raise. He gave me one! Only flaw to this house – they need to fix hot water. I had to heat water to wash my hair. Bought 2 more costumes bringing my total up to six  – the bare minimum I’d say

  • Inspired Pleasure – the dance diaries of Alysse Aallyn

            2:30 PM Dunkin Donuts, Eelsboro, Maine Fri. 26 Aug 77

                              Here I am again verging on home: have I changed? I like myself better, 

    I think I can say that. Thurs night was a big success. Devon came in with an IMMENSE bottle of white wine – he either needs it for himself or he’s trying to turn me into an alcoholic (with my full cooperation.) The clam and noodle thing I invented was quite good but he wasn’t ready to eat till nine and we didn’t get to bed till midnight where he revealed a sexually savage side to his nature that has been previously unseen.  So maybe he was nerving himself. (I loved it).  We finished the housecleaning and were off to the airport by 11. 

                              Fairly silent in the car, though he was tender.  When I 

    mentioned he might come down to DC he said he didn’t think there was much of a possibility – so now I’m worrying that I’ve been pushed ontoBad Girl Island while he pines for Pure Young Innocent English girl with who he would NEVER do those enjoyably awful things.          (She’s 21!!!! He knew her 24 hrs!!!) I shouldn’t be silly.  I really can’t ever “lose” him. I think he loves me and everything else is just scar tissue. Devastating airport goodbye – he asked me to “write soon”. I’m probably lucky he loves me as much as he does. I was looking damn good if I do so say so myself in backless red halter top and tight, tight jeans. I do want him to remember me as beautiful. 

                              11:30 AM Sat 27 Aug 77

                              Gobsmacked! Mom & Dad are on Ryder’s side!!! They 

    HATE him!  In other words, they will defend anybody rather than me.  They say of course R “behaves badly” if I am having an “affair” (don’t you love the archaic term?) 

    with Devon!  I say he doesn’t even know about Devon, plus we weren’t exclusive BY HIS CHOICE plus we were BROKEN UP.  But everything still seems to be my fault. Incredibly, they think I am not SUFFERING ENOUGH.  Here are people who have lectured me all my life to find any excuse for other people’s bad behavior – life has surely injured them somehow. They didn’t have Advantages!  According to them I am the only human being alive who doesn’t get an excuse – I should just “be different”.  

                      How, asks mom, can I meet “suitable young men” while dancing?  

    Suitable young men! (They like Marc Kramer who’s a complete horndog and a political troglodyte. But at least he can afford me!) Am I living in a Trollope novel? I am so annoyed I don’t want to accept their hospitality but I really don’t want to rent a room in the House of the Damned aka 

    Burnside Inn. which doesn’t take dogs – who wept to see me again like children – then immediately got over it. 

                              Dad’s a very restless retiree I must say but don’t ask me what to advise.  I’m too ignorant. My advice to everyone is “write”;

    Naturalists say, “Be alone in nature” and religious people say “Find God.”

     Reading Vol I. V. Woolf’s diary (so different from A Writer’s Diary)

     Hitting the gin.  Mom thinks I’m taking “bad” advice from messed up writers – “modeling” myself on failures and suicides – (Dad calls them “degenerates”) – because it’s “cool”. That’s why I need the gin. I need the gin the first minute I wake up.  Must try not to be such a limp limpet. Told Mom if R calls at night not to come get me. 

                              Sun 9:30 AM 28 Aug 77

                              Mom washing windows.  God – I think I am supposed to offer help but I Refuse. I need to get the hell out of here.  Mom says I can’t add my laundry to hers 9she sends it out)but have to go to the laundromat in town.  

    So the Battle is On. I’ll just go around smelling bad so there. Mom and Dad are sailing down the Inland Waterway but not till Oct. Have a horrible feeling I’m not out of the woods on this Ryder thing.  Maybe I can get established in Washington without him knowing. If I go back to him I will despise myself. Keep Devon in secret as my lucky talisman.

                              9;45 PM

                              Drunk, fat and exhausted.  Parents had cocktail party 

    inviting Island Poet.  (Published in The New Yorker.) Tried to give her the rundown on my summer but it sounds a complete waste – “Wrote half of a no-good book, got my other book rejected”. Of course my summer doesn’t sound like anything with the sex & love left out!!!   Am I trapped at the end of a cul de sac?  No; there is something there. I just can’t

    find it yet. 

                              Dad said he’s sure my life provides a lot of stories, but 

    maybe what I need is a PhD in Eng Lit!  Mom’s reaction to that is rigid disapproval.  (He’ll never make that mistake again.)  To explore the boundaries of one’s soul is Selfish. One Lives to Serve (or to Claim one is Serving. So, if you’re too stupid to know  you’re selfish its win-win for the small-minded!) 

                        Tried to read The Clocks but its Agatha Christie’s 

    worst.  Absolutely meaningless. Poor Virginia Woolf going through a very bad, painful period. Obviously sick, recording only weather & food. 

    Now theorists act like she was “mental” not liking to look at herself but 

    Vita Sackville-West felt the same way. Couldn’t look in a mirror, wouldn’t buy evening dresses or go to parties! (And she was on the sexual prowl, unlike poor VW.)  I think their era was actually worse about beauty than we are – they gave it a “magic” “classical” quality so it was very much restricted.  We see more beauty – and in weird places. 

    Otherwise how explain Leslie Caron? Jeanne Moreau? Charlotte Rampling?  

    Hardly classic beauties but wonderfully, rightfully worshipped as goddesses. I see hope for all of us.

                              8:00 AM Mon 29 Aug 77

                              It’s real Agatha Christie weather – fog so dense you

     can’t see the water.  Nevertheless the ferry’s running – Mom took 

    Dad down. I’m feeling successful, sober and sane. I’m doing exactly what I want and will find my own way.  I’m determined to be happy and not develop some kind of “rejection phobia.” Not knock out the props of 

    my own happiness. Accept the fact that my pride has been hardest hit.

    PHANTOMS

    The ghost awaits his chance

    Inside us all

    Revenge de-bodies –

    Anticipates the dark

    Impatience ill-concealed to

    Grasp our foot

    Beneath the turning of the stair

    Reveal a face as blank as

    Nightmare whose

    Icy, seaweed coils entwine mistrust

    Around our throats

    Suppress our breath

    While we dead live.

                              4:20 PM  Letter from the Folger Shakespeare Library 

    inviting me to read Oct 13!   Mom was impressed. 20 mins pays

     $50!  I’ve hit the big time!  Wish I’d known this when Island Poet

    asking me why I don’t just kill myself and get it over with. M & D

    very flush with money right now.  Got their $$ back

     from NY State bankruptcy but Dad always in a panic that we’ll figure out how rich he is.) 

                              9:00 PM Called Shoulders. He said dogs will be all right for a couple of days but he’s being evicted at the end of Sept!  Too bad!

     Such a nice house. (And in Chevy Chase!)  So I’m spared kennel 

    fees for 2 days at least.  Ryder must be back at work (if he still has a job). 

    Reading old NY Times Book Reviews in front of a roaring fire.  

    Dishwashing break – I said I’d do them. Pick up Agatha Christie afterwards –

    – the preferred reading for “shock cases”.  (She was a shock case herself.  

    Absent in the Spring is very fine). 

                               Island 10 PM Monday night, 5 Sept 77

                              In bed in the Barnacle drinking coffee, eating bread 

    with honey. Delicious solitude. Can’t go to the Main House because Genevieve’s friends from Boston are there – they no sooner arrived for this Fantasy vacation than they decided they need a divorce. Fortunately, they are quiet about it. The one thing they can’t deal with is their dog –

     tomorrow I have to drive him to the ferry. Oh well.  I’ve been enraptured by this delicious solitude – beachcombing is very healing.  I guess I am just a solitary sort – don’t really care for people at all, I fear. Last night a bad dream about Ryder – treating me cruelly and me, paralyzed. In the daytime – in my conscious mode – I remember everything good about him, his lips mouth and fingers – his constant air of playfulness. 

    The way we fit perfectly together like interlocking puzzle pieces  

    – nice that he was short – my mirror opposite, only male. My lost twin. 

    But nature abhors a balance, apparently. 

                              Must remind myself how he had to try to turn it to his 

    advantage, throwing the whole system off and spinning my world into 

    frozen space.  Now he doesn’t know where I am (although he might suspect.)  No phone in this building thank God. 

                              Tomorrow goodbye Maine – back to DC to house-hunt.  

    M & D have been good about not dragging me to things – enjoyed the Smythes sculpture show – parties not so much. Parties seem like 

    “consensus building events” where I’m fated to be perennially on the outs.  Ford Madox Ford made some kind of statement about how 

    people have to achieve a level of “ordinariness” to be “successful” –

     I can’t remember the exact quote. Plus I lack the patience to look it up.

                              Ryder felt I despised him intellectually, which of course, I did. 

    I don’t think of myself as stratified, but he is and when you’re with a stratified person, you become so.  Sometimes I am in mourning for the part of me that died. I wish I could get my letters back – but they were only love-letters.  Must seem now like the ravings of an insane person. 

    Well, there’s no reason to see him again. I think the casual relationship is beyond me.  I hope in the future I’ll be careful of men going mach one across the sexual barrier. I’ve got to stop looking at sex as a vitamin requiring periodic intravenous doses.  

  • Inspired Pleasure – the dance diaries of Alysse Aallyn

                              2PM Sun 14 Aug 77

                              Sitting on the deck even though it’s just about to rain – 

    back from long bike ride watching family barbecues.  Will I ever have children? I feel so exactly balanced between Ryder and Devon like a ball in the air 

    – but could fall at any moment.  Finished The Edwardians – made me long to read Trollope.  Vita Sackville-West’s work is like a death wish. 

    Maybe Pevensey Library can rise to some Trollope. Downy woodpecker 

    2 ft away.

                              Finished The Dark Island! An outrageous howl of 

    self-pity!  Mom & Dad called all worried about Avril. She & Mason had to borrow money after selling $4500 worth of stock in June! Dad wants to deal financially with Mason instead of his own daughter!  I was cool and stayed out of it.  

    I don’t even want to imagine what they say to the others about me. I sent Avril a letter that said I would buy her a round trip plane ticket any time she wanted – even for just a short visit. Talk about work and suffering!  I’m sure she feels stuck in every way with this guy. Down to a dinner of bouillon & smoked oysters. 

                              Tues 16 Aug 77

                              D’s & my relationship “plateaus.”  Each of us may have 

    given all we can spare. At least there’s no Mutual Punishment.  

    Womantried to get me into conversation at mailboxes – she’s an accountant whose boyfriend works on missiles.  God they both sounded like the dullest people imaginable.  Tried not to blanche.

                              6:00 PM  Couldn’t resist $10 phone call to Avril. She’s 

    hanging in there but doesn’t like Calif so far. She’s not going to school because Mason thinks he ought to be able to pay for it!  So, so sick after using her money to live on.  She’s looking for some clerk job. Still thinks 

    this guy might be The One, even though sex is once a week and she’s not satisfied.  After that I called Devon who should be back from psychomotor class but he wasn’t in. 

                              Midnight – Could get psychotic about D not returning my call – however I refuse. Let the poor man live. He lacks time for an ACTUAL other girl (although I know there are plenty of letters & phone calls with girls he cultivates.) 

                              10AM – Wed 17 Aug 77

                              Devon woke me up in the middle of the night, wondering if I was “psychic”.  He’d had a horrible day –  had to take a “pregnant friend” to the clinic for abortion (not his kid.) This is a new one. Can’t imagine him lying about something so bizarre – I didn’t ask for details –

    just told him it was a “sudden impulse” (true).  Called the bank – my money was in but only $987 (it’s never  as much as you expect.) From shit comes flowers, as they say. Called Marc Kramer and left message whether I can hitch a ride to Maine with him (he goes almost every weekend). 

    Finished Life of Waugh.  Cramps.

                              Sat 20 Aug 77 

                              Poor Devon!  He brought pizza and a very good brandy –

    (too good –  drinking it woke me up in the middle of the night) suggested a movie.  I said I wanted to Talk.  Told him all about my week; everything – 

    novel, phone call with Avril, breaking up (mentally) with Ryder because I “realized there’s another way”. Felt it was time to share. He asked if it had anything to do with him I said it did but he shouldn’t panic – it’s a good thing. He asked did I want to know about other girls? I said yes. Would I be jealous? 

    Maybe – but it wouldn’t impact on him.  He talked about his friend who had the abortion – she’s ready to take him on but his feelings for her are “clinical”.

     (Uh oh. She’s in trouble. He could be lying to me about Who’s the Daddy or lying to himself, most like.) She’s 2 yrs older than him.  

                              Then there’s a girl he met on the train – they’re just friends so far so he doesn’t know her well – but he’s curious.  Then there’s the English girl – he definitely wants to bring her over but neither of them can afford it so far. He seems to have a sex/romance dichotomy going so 

    I’m not jealous exactly – it would be like being jealous of someone’s fantasies. However, it doesn’t make me respect him more.  And he instinctively knows that – he can’t be the daring demon lover or swaggering ski coach 

    with me when I know too much about him. Fortunately, I suggested we bring the mattress up to the deck – we had a big, hilarious struggle through the house but it was worth it. Wonderful making love in the fresh night.  

    Gave him the full treatment making him yelp like a coyote. 

                              Cold in the AM like Maine – hard to get out of bed but he was worried someone would see us so we had to push mattress through 

    sliding doors to dining room floor at 6 AM.  Layers of secret lives!  He is SO DIFFERENT from the way he seems but aren’t we all!  Drove to the Idyllwild Mkt for breakfast – got lost as least six times but who cares it’s a glorious day – bought peaches, blueberries and mocha java beans.

     Then we went swimming – stopping after at the mailbox.  Rejection of Secaire from HBJ!  What a blow and in front of Devon of all people!  

    Worst of all was editor’s comment – I had fallen between 2 stools – “straight” and “gothic.”  Ugh.  Lowers my opinion of myself in my own eyes. 

    Fortunately, I didn’t cry.  

                              Devon did his best to comfort me. He compares it to 

    skiing which is 4,000 failures to one success. Said it’s ridiculous to consider myself a failure. I thanked him said he really cheered me up –

     he said it made him look forward to ministry!!!  (He can’t wait to get his hands on some “troubled young women”.) He’s going to a 3 day 

    retreat at Peterborough.  Period coming on. It doesn’t faze Devon. Reading Harold Nicolson’s diaries which are quite a treat.  I was afraid he would 

    be all Churchillian. 

                               2;30 PM Mon 22 Aug 77

                              Can’t write, so ready to return to Maine.  So desperate I 

    watched TV (Rhoda: Apotheosis of the Career Girl). Feeling crushed about Secaire and Demon is not far behind. When your mind is divided it’s hard to go on.  I always feel genre works actually have the potential for highest dramatic quality – mystery, discovery, transformation, revelation – telling the complete truth about everything but I just don’t know how to convey that. Also, I’m kind of worried that Devon will see my departure as  “because” we punctured the fantasy with honesty ; ie I’m “punishing” him –

    (that’s what Ryder would think, plus he would howl “I deserve it” then behave even worse) and of course it sort of is true . “New data” does affect everything.  But I miss the dogs & worry about them.  Dad has yet to figure out their gender (calls them both “boy”). 

                              Went clothes shopping got GOREGOUS skinny jeans! 

    Look so good.  Called Devon but had to leave an awkward message with Random Guy (ugh I hate that.) Thank God for diaries!   Best therapy 

    possible. So much cheaper than a shrink. Diagnosis? Sheer greed.   I always want everything.

  • Inspired Pleasure – the Dance Diaries of Alysse Aallyn

    8PM Sat 6 Aug 77

                                Be careful what you want in case you get it. Devon and I are suddenly in the midst of a very satisfying love affair. He called 5:30 yesterday – wish it had been earlier because I was in a psychic tailspin.

     Immediately tidied the place up, anointed my body, put on my black silk jumpsuit exploding with roses (last worn on date with R.)  He came in wearing tight jeans and a linen safari jacket – we had a very silly time over wine.  Christ he can look beautiful when he wants to.  Out to a restaurant – I ordered a “flaming volcano” and they had it! More silliness. 

     D. said, “Going out with you is an experience.” He couldn’t compliment me enough on my general gorgeousness (heh heh heh.)

                                We saw The Deep which was just what we both wanted – titillating glossy glop. D. kept initiating PDA’s (which he never used to –

      Wow has this guy grown up! He used to act like the Amherst PDA Police were everywhere!  He suggested we go to bed! 

     No loitering on couch!  Sexually he has all the time in the world –

    he’s all out for my pleasure – his orgasm of no importance.  He’s particularly good with my ass and I LOVE that. (He treats every sphincter like

     another pair of lips – I’m in a threesome with myself!) I always felt like he was “holding back” – not any more.

                              Tendernesses and confidences growing. Nice to be loved!

    He goes on and on about the beauty & sensuality of my body; my sexuality

     “like a storm!” (Like dancing.)

    Sun 12:30 PM Deck 7 Aug 77

                              Sitting over coffee, grits (to which Mrs. McManus has now addicted me) and Dorothy Eden. (The Sleeping Bride – very good!)

    Praying like mad for writing money. 

    Lucky things worked out the way they did – keeps me from obsessing 

    over R.

                                Bike ride! It’s a form of prayer.

                     6Pm  Hammering away – great scene – getting the good stuff –

    – typewriter ribbon gave out! Come on! At 6 PM!! It’s like having your horse shot out from under you. I was going to spend the evening writing. 

    Goddamit.

                       Starting to worry about R coming back from the Finger Lakes – he

    knows where I am – would he show up here? Aack!  No!  Impossible.  

    He can’t be alone. Wouldn’t drive that distance without a captive ear.

                                Reading Jane Aiken’s study of Jane Austen. Don’t feel a moment’s anxiety about D. Miss dancing terribly.

                                Mon 8 Aug 77

                              3 PM On deck loving the rising wind, reading The Scalpel 

    of Scotland Yard (Spilsbury). A perfect day. Trapped here for a few hours till the man shows up to fix trash masher – but at least I got my “naked exercises” out of the way. Today’s a scorcher – using air-conditioning for the first time. Cheated on my diet – ate a whole can of tuna. 

    Packed in water, fortunately. Body screaming for peaches and 

    almonds. Gutted the Pevensey library. They are running out of 

    books for me.

                                12:45 PM Tues Aug 9 – 77

                              Coming out of my coma to write agent a note.  

    After 3 months of not being “pushy” surely SOMETHING should 

    be happening.  I decide I am suffering from a disease that should 

    be called “Dickensitis” marked by severe self consciousness and 

    complicated by “Plath syndrome” (brutal social induction flashbacks). 

     Freezes me in my path. 

                              Loving  Solzhenitsyn’s article on Shakespeare & Tolstoy.  

    But do I love Devon?  Before all of this I would have said yes, very 

    casually but sometimes the better you get to know someone the less 

    you can love them.  He was at pains to explain his theology – but it doesn’t seem to involve God – it’s all interpersonal relations – which I

     have to say I think is just weird!  He wants to be “of service” to people and he’s aware – but suspicious about – the “mysticism” athletes get into. 

    I hate to say this but it reminds me of my mother.  Any  “be wary of people who have an inner life and try your best to get rid of yours” philosophy 

    is a major turnoff for me.  When we talk about “self-perfection” and “self-cultivation” we are talking about VERY different things.

                               I casually told him the more I get to know him the lessI know him – and he was very pleased!  (Relieved.) He didn’t say why –

    but I know he doesn’t want to be “easy”.  I didn’t tell him he’s still held fast in Sleeping Beauty’s overgrown castle, in my opinion.  Don’t think 

    I can get him out of there. I always try to plan my strategy if he tried 

    taking the relationship up a notch. But he can’t suggest we live together while he’s a divinity student.  Think I can relax about it and just enjoy his magnificent body.

                                 Take, eat. Old wounds between us are entirely healed. 

    If D is stuck in SB’s castle, where is R?  He is unborn, a baby 

    dreaming in the womb. “When I grow up I’m going to have lots

    LOTS of girlfriends but they will all be PERFECTLY RESPECTABLE 

    and SEXUALLY DYNAMIC but only when I say so!” 

                              I regret most working so hard to make him “certain” of

     me, to make sure he knew exactly what I was thinking and feeling.  

    I put my cards not only face-up on the table, I handed them to the guy!  

    Not many people would be mature enough to handle that. Never

    discuss what I am feeling with D – haven’t mentioned R after our 

    preliminary intros “what have you been up to”.  I’m not sure he even knows how I make money in Washington.

                              8:45 AM Wed 10 Aug 77

                              Like the alcoholics say, one day at a time!  Exercises, 

    diet, sunbathe, bike ride, swim, etc. Doing a good job at that – horrible 

    job at writing – because I don’t hear from agent.  Confidence completely collapsed.  Sitting on the deck feeding Ms. McManus’ Caesar salad

     croutons to a squirrel.  He really likes them.  Reading Berckmann’s A Thing That Happens To You. Finished Thalberg’s bio – ho hum.  

    No swimming – maybe bike ride in the rain (just a misting). 

                              3:30 PM 11 Aug 77 – Thurs

                              Depressing letter from Chloe – she wants my help 

    with her MSS.  I agree with Henry James – all I can do is My Thing

     My Way. But I have to seem really approachable if I want radio

     work.  Conundrum. Catatonia.  Devon called.  Do I want to get laid? 

     I think so! Reading about grave robbers produces a poem;

    RESURRECTIONIST

    Unearth me, lover

    I’m a jewel now

    Melted

    In that crevice you once loved so

    Well; it’s an ingot now,

    a socket

    For our mingled liquid

    Essence

    Suck it up with

    Dust-lathered lips

    Strip

    The flesh as you once did

    The clothes; I’m burning

    Cinder-hot –

    Let me astound you with

    My time-perfected skill

                              Sat. 13 Aug 77

                              7 good pages writing, then bad letter from Ryder asking is our “living together” a ”condition” of “my return”?  Where the hell did he get that?  He just wants something to react against.  He can’t imagine a relationship that isn’t controlled by implied threats. He believes in

     working and suffering so much then – let him work and suffer. What would annoy him most?  If I don’t respond!  Ha ha! Let the panic begin! 

    Need to become more private – simply to protect myself.  For all I know he’s relishing the torture he goes through.

                              Devon and I had a glorious date – splendid dinner (steak!) 

    then made love all over the floor. He played with my body until he got it roaring and pulsating like an express train.  The way he handled me, 

    gripped me, held me, crushed me even – made me ask about his other girlfriends.  He said no, he never gets as much “touch” as he wants.  I said, 

    “Except with me”.  He said, “Except with you.” Over dinner he said 

    matter-of-factly that we are so alike loving me has always felt “narcissistic” to him.  I bet!  Happy, happy, happy… Picked up The Edwardians –

    I can’t get into it.  Keep seeing Devon’s body plying me, bending me…I know somewhere out there lies perfect happiness, waiting to astonish me. 

  • Inspired Pleasure – the dance diaries of Alysse Aallyn

        7PM – Sat 23 July 77

                              Devon and I went for a long walk today, had a great 

    talk.  He told me all about his passionate relationship with

    English girl – asking “Do you really want to know?” I did – I managed to 

    be very hands off.  Said he’d written her “lyrical love-letters” and 

    she is saving money to come to US at Christmas.

                                Bit of a downer to find other people have split 

    minds like me. I told him a little about Ryder and even more about my husband. I had to hope he wouldn’t see it “retaliation” for what he’d told me.  (R would have.) Fantasies can be ugly if they prevent you from experiencing reality.

                                We hugged – he left – I know he thinks I’m too 

    “intense”.  I was stupid enough to read him my peach poem.  On 

    the other hand, if a guy can’t handle my poetry where am I? R only likes poems he knows are about him.

                                Wrote a whiny letter to Avril (who usually can handle 

    whiny letters).  Good today – bike, swimming, plus my walk with D. Long letter to Mom and Dad.

                                Reading Stella Gibbons’ Cold Comfort Farm – 

    can’t stay grumpy – laughing too hard.  Settling into my spaceship – 

    my own body – first day of the rest of my life. Listening to wonderfully crazy modern opera on the radio.

        Sun 24 July 77

        4PM

                                 Wrote 4 pages of A Demon Roused. Horribly

    dissatisfied. Patricia Highsmith on the suspense novel no damn 

    help at all. Everything I’ve ever written pure dunder written by a 

    dunderhead. Restrained myself from calling Ryder to yell at him.

                                Face facts.  Left DC June 4. This coming 

    month has to be gotten through. Feel I my “breakdown” I suffered last spring was a crisis of identity.  Attacked by the writing thing 

    (no money, no approval, no relationships) attacked by the relationship thing (R too critical, wanting to “change” me.)  Starving myself. Long mad midnight walks rampaging thru Chevy Chase with dogs. The ENDLESS  Devon situation only  explicable when seen in this light. 

    (He’s TOO good looking – too much fantasy.)

                              Now about my book. New beginning ALL wrong and

     I couldn’t figure out why. The characters seem alive.

    1. First Person Difficult. My husband always said 
    2. omniscient narrator no longer possible, making 
    3. me want to do it. However, I have to admit you 
    4. need to be somebody – an extra character and that’s a
    5.  bigger pain in the neck.

                                      2)    Scene Problematic. I’ve GOT to get these people out of England.  

            It’s artificial.  How about if I don’t say where it is?  Will the specificity cops come after me?

                                       3)    Format (Suspense novel) rough because I have to be

     the one who knows what’s going on and I want to write my first draft in a narcoleptic state. Means I have to be happy making a huge ness with a million 

    false starts and then write the thing ALL OVER when I know what’s going on. 

    But I feel time running out on me. Goddam it.

                             I should be happy to explore. Why all this pressure?  Two novels unaccepted, why write a fourth?  Am I deliberately trying to drive myself to the 

    brink of insanity? Also I HATE Sunday because the pool is packed, no stores are open, and there’s no mail.

                              Devon and his roommates Blair & Brian drop by and I 

    struggle to appear sane. Hard for me. 

        6PM

                              Called R.  to yell at him. He wasn’t there – thank GOD. 

    Maybe I just want to punish him.  He certainly deserves it. 

                                 1:30 PM Mon 25 July 77

                              Dark night of the soul finally over. Very athletic today – 

    feel deliciously tired. Decide I should go back to Washington no 

    matter what.  My choices are my choices. My happiness can’t be dependent on how people treat me. I plan to use my time to become powerful – to be the person I’m supposed to be.  In the drugstore line I was reading up on the showbiz personalities – nobody interesting before 30 and I have a few years yet.

                              Forget about weight – just follow & learn to love 

    “virtuous routine”. (I’m a size seven – that’s pretty good.) Today it 

    POURED rain –  night baseball Devon wanted to attend out of the 

    question.  He suggested we switch to a movie when he called this am. 

    Still feel stilted with him unfortunately.

                              Assault on library. Planning to ransack the place. 

    Leafed through Helen Hayes (poor woman); enjoying Thurber’s 

    My World and Welcome To It .

        Tues. 26 July 77 9:40 AM

                                Sitting on stonewall in full sunlight in my black bikini 

    waiting for pool to open. Swim and sunbathe till ll:30 when mail comes. 

    After 7 pm I can return – that way I miss the crowds.

                              Exercise, coffee, 3 glasses water. The Regime.

                              I’m down to $4. Embarrassing to be taken out last night 

    by Devon & his roommates. (We saw Star Wars. Childish, but they were into it.) Sent letter to Mom & D asking for stock certificates. They 

    won’t like it.

                              Dinner should have been nice but barbecue very messy. 

    Wore my tightest jeans and my pink French “Trés chic” t-shirt.         Devon surprised me by talking on and on about how beautiful I am.  Started to get stoked  – in fact I was horny as hell. I would have taken the three seminary students on if I could have avoided the interpersonal madness that would result. They all have beautifully athletic bodies. But I’m starting to get a feeling that if I just sit in my deer blind a bit longer Devon will come to me.

                              Every now and then I get a bad “Ryder – flashback”, like some synaptic slipup. What will I think of this years from now? Mirror images ache, then fade.

                                Cold Comfort Farm exactly 100 pages too long (but I 

    think most books are).  Take a long hot Jean Nate bubble bath and read The Thornbirds.

        2:30 PM Wed July 27 – 77

                                Masturbation is the better part of valor. Don’t make 

    decisions ruled by sex. Bike ride combined with cold shower doesn’t work.

    Must husband my wattage (joke). Too bad  sex is 

    such a fast way to get to know someone.

                              First draft of Demon so far bony and spare. Neatly 

    boxed “components” = “write your own novel”.  Trying to exterminate “dead” patches.  Wish I had done this with The Mass at St. Secaire – 

    but in those days I was in the “throw in everything you think of and 

    take it out later” school.  I like constructing this awkward armature better. Lean and mean superior to flagellate and winnow.

                              Will I ever let Ryder see my new body, my new confidence?  

    He will hang on for dear life and I don’t want that.  I want to go back to dancing but Ryder prefers I have neither security NOR money.)  Think I’ll look for a sublet – easier to impress a private owner than a credit union.

    I prefer living alone. Painstaking cultivation of intense privacy in the midst of a crowd has always been my forte.

                                Mom and Dad called – acting all worried. Apologizing

     for giving Ryder my number. I put on a good show of being completely ”over” him but I can see they don’t want me moving back to Washington and prefer Mrs. Duvall’s ski chalet option.  (My cynical side tells me it’s just cheaper.)  I act like I have connections to the literary life in DC and they don’t know any better.

                              Thornbirds is teaching me the great unpleasantness of 

    what publishers define as “a good read”. Contrary to my previous belief unfortunately the Victorian period has not ended. Forced to skip the war, potted history and scenery descriptions just to keep  going. 

                              7:30 PM Finished Thornbirds.  Neither Dane’s death nor Justine’s love affair rang true for me. Uh oh.  Danger signs.  My taste thoroughly out of kilter with the market.

                              Couldn’t swim – 3,000 spectators at some sort of race 

    in the pool. So went to library – checked out twelve books – bio, history murder mysteries. Alec Waugh, Somerset Maugham, Vyvyan Holland, –

    Hugh Walpole. Evelyn Waugh, of course. At this very moment R is 

    doing his very last show of 7:30 Live. Will they have a party or wake? 

     Probably go out drinking at the Shalimar, try to pick up dancers he can hector and assault. Time for me to go walking and see how the other (99%) live.

    HOT PROWL

    Don’t wake up.

    I surveil by night

    Your chiseled torso

    Slacken with exhaustion.

    Touching things that once

    You touched,

    Listing to your apnea –

    I turn away before you turn.

    Making peace with all my choices.

    It’s worth everything;

    Winning in divorce a

    Hard-won superpower:

    Invisibility

        2:45 PM Thurs 28 July 77

                              Loving myself today. I am very tan.  Hair strawberry 

    blond and my stretchmarks look like silk moiré. Any sense of inadequacy must be pounced upon and shored up – work like a beaver at his dam. 

    No worries, few fears. Daddy sent $ which I deposit in my acct. Since I can’t cash a check anywhere I eat what’s here; pickled beets and plain grits. Gallons of water to even it all out. Shake the old body out after 26 years.

                              Decide two people create love – I refuse to do it alone.  

    Reading Ford Madox Ford and grooving on his Violet versus Elsie 

    problems.  Schadenfreude. Years later poor Elsie says,  “I should have ignored everybody and divorced him.”  Alas, Ford is a self-centered fool.  

    Not a simpatico character.  However the period is a favorite with me. Mail hideously dull.  Nothing from Harcourt. Will my “Westerns” editor have thenerve to turn down an author they’ve got 105,000 copies of?  Yes. They’re all a bunch of weenies, frankly. Bike ride.

                              8:45 PM Finished article for the McManus mag about 

    Shadowe – “Island in Common” – 750 words – sent it off with letter.  

    Mission accomplished. Thinking of substituting a night ride for my walk.  

    Triggers fewer yearnings.

                             Ford’s moved to the US and I’m at the end of my tether with him. Tried 

    reading Jane Novak’s Razor Edge of Balance on V. Woolf – but she’s no threat –

    – Lingo Academico virtually impenetrable.

                              Loved reading Fowles on the Fr Lt’s Woman – even though he has a “tin ear” about the Victorians – their “failure” to depict “a man and woman in bed together” ! (How about My Secret Life!!!) He’s the real thing all right even though he launched 1st draft without any research. (It shows.) 

    I’m going to stop freaking out about how little I know London.

                                Full of joy & life & strength & immortality & pep.  Now thinking fondly of DC.  Resist the impulse to call myself a turkey for even MENTIONING living together to R. (I said in my phone message I had to have a house for dogs.)  

    I can see him crying over his beer at the strip club. Insisting his wussdom is independence. I feel and look mighty thin – but refuse the temptation to weigh 

    myself. Size seven is good enough. Took my walk looking indulgently at couples with children thinking, “This too is within my reach.”

                                Mail full of dull rejections NO interest or acceptances. But the UNITY MITFORD I’d ordered came which I’m reading now.  Must write about  sisters someday. It’s a trip.

      11:12 AM Sat 30 Jul 77

                                Going out tonight with Devon to see Annie Hall, that laff riot he hasn’t seen.  This is one of the things I love about life – it’s so unpredictable!  Give these guys space to stew they will eventually DO something. We had a nice phone conversation. I can tell he has “traumatized” himself by thinking he “lured” me fruitlessly here.  I tell him hardly, I’m writing 8 p. a day (of course it will all have to be thrown out) getting a tan and reading piles of books.  (All true.) Too cold & overcast today for pool though and now its raining.

                              Starting to get a feeling D and I will end up in bed. 

    It’s inevitable. How I crave that tight young flesh…Bet you $5. Will 

    wear my faded cerise linen jumpsuit, high heels and Nefertiti necklace. 

    Stoking! 

        4:15 PM Sun 31 July 77 Deck

                                Devon found Annie Hall so painful it took awhile for him to speak.  I was surprised but patient.   I couldn’t have dreamed up a movie more likely to focus all our reservations.  The scene where Annie tells Alvy she misses him made me think of poor Ryder – the separate fragile uniqueness of each human soul – and I could tell Devon was “feeling” his memories too.

                              We sneaked a pizza (a whole pizza) into the theatre 

    so we could come right back here for wine and coffee and more wine – 

    took three hours to get to the point of making love. 

                              In a fairly daring move D opened the buttons of my jumpsuit and stroked my stomach pulling down first one shoulder and then another to play with my breasts. Lovely feeling our bodies surge together. He’s good with his hands and has the most sensitive nipples of any man I’ve been with. At last I suggested we go to bed – the couch was really too uncomfortable. D went down on me – his body is the most gorgeous since the history of time – mountains, valleys, crevasses 

    – it’s like rock climbing making love to this man. He insisted on coming outside me which startled me somewhat, but after asking about my “protection” (IUD) fortunately abandoned this technique the second time.

                              He looks at me in a funny way like he wants to say 

    something but he doesn’t say it. I tried to tell him I’ve learned so much from our 5 year friendship – he seemed unable to take it in. He obviously fears the future and his memory is so bad – after the terrors of his childhood he thinks the whole past is all bad news.  It’s like he’s afraid to remember ANYTHING.  That would be the worst thing for a writer. 

    You dare not fear the past. Rhythms can’t evolve from longing alone.

                              We woke up, grapenuts & coffee, went swimming, sat on deck, watched tennis on TV.  Every time I changed clothes he said “the sight of you naked turns me on” and we made love again.

                              Tomorrow is the first of August – whole new beginning. 

    Try to see myself at 33, with a lawn and a bra and a trash compactor. 

    Freedom is key. No mail. Reading Geo Woodcock’s critical study of Orwell.

                              6:45 PM  Dark as night and pouring rain. Obsessing 

    about  D’s body – can’t get it out of my mind and our 22 hours together.  

    Welcome obsessions; R’s slate cleared. Did I use him? Is he “Brand X?”

     Thinking of all the things I wish I’d said to Devon.  He’s so intellectual yet so impermeable.   Strange delicate kisses – as impossible to get inside his mouth as his mind.  Loud thunder, lightning. 

  • Inspired Pleasure – the dance diaries of Alysse Aallyn

    11:45 AM  Sun 1 May 77

                                Keith softened me up by calling to ask if I’d been in 

    his office. He smelled my perfume. (I hadn’t.) Agreed to go out with him 

    Sat night.  Just awful.  Awful. Keep wishing he was literally ANYONE 

    else. Dating someone who doesn’t interest you sexually is like trying 

    to diet by ordering food you dislike. (I actually tried this. Ordered tripe.) 

    Howlably  stupid. Yet no one to howl to.

                                R. says he’d “hate” to think I “needed” him and didn’t 

    call. Am I the stupid one here? I think so. Sucker for punishment. Upstairs, 

    Downstairs cheers me up a little. Considering renting little house in the 

    wilds of Virginia. Or garden apt. utilities included. Dogs would like it – 

    close to clubs. Read Eliz Savage’s Good Confession – very minor. 

    Cleaning. Laundry, dishes, garbage.

                           Thinking about Sylvia Plath and the problem of panic 

    attacks. It’s all about learning to steer into the skid.

                        Wed May 4 – 77

                           Made illegal copies of novel at work, drove to Plush 

    Palace in Virginia to audition. (10 Mins down Rt 1 from Woodrow 

    Wilson bridge. 1 HR commute). VA pays better, mandates pasties 

    & stockings, Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco & Firearms (I’m not kidding) 

    makes sure you don’t sit with or talk to clientele. Amen! I was hired 

    immediately $90 day plus tips.  So pleased.  Got a car appt Fri 13th

    so El Diablo won’t die on Beltway. Working Thurs, Fr. Sat and there’s 

    no holdback, they pay you immediately.  Buy G-strings & pasties

    Landover mall. 

                           Avril says R “betrayed” me.  But do you “betray” someone 

    by having a weak character? He can’t help it. A says he’s behaved 

    so badly there’s no hope for him.   I think he can’t make up his mind – 

    he wants me only if I don’t want him.  Plus if he finds out I’m dancing 

    again he’ll want to “convert” me.  (He’ll think I’m doing it just to torture

     him. I don’t plan to tell.) Gave A a copy of my novel to read – feeling 

    insane – got to get reaction from SOMEBODY. Broadcast asks me to 

    stay “on call” so Mr. Pierce has forgiven me or is desperate. 

                       Plush Palace – 9 PM Fri 6 May 77

                       Very nice dressing room. Girl I’m dancing with (Darla) is just 

    awful. Find the comparison very cheering. A gobbled my novel up, says

     it’s “deep” but “obsessive”;  made me feel on right track.  How much can 

    I torture my audience? I‘ve GOT to stop blubbering and start fantasizing. 

    Who CARES about the pathos of my existence? Make something up.

                       Sat. 7 May 77

                     House is mine! Everyone moved out.  (A’s & Mason’s new 

    place just what they wanted – skyscraper urban nightmare.) Listening 

    to opera, reading NY Times, feeling like a Big Success. Dog across 

    my chest in blissful rapture. ($100 in tips last night!!!) R called to say

     I “always have a place with him” and He “has never taken my heart 

    ring off”. Is he nuts or am I?             

                     Realize for the first time he says things he KNOWS aren’t 

    true just to hear himself say them!!  Just like the Victorians – 

    mouthing something is halfway there!  Because you’re making an 

    effort! You could not imagine anyone more opposite from me. Hopeless, 

    hopeless, hopeless, as the rock musicians say. 

                       Reading Bottle Factory Outing – so wonderful. (But liked 

    The Secret Glass better.) Trying to numb weird longings to write ghost 

    stories by eating chicken potpie (regression). Wrote first draft of a short 

    story about a grandmother telling her shocked granddaughter about 

    “the time I almost committed suicide”. Very matter of fact.  Feel I’m 

    recovering from “mono-soul-iosis” – not just R but my first marriage, 

    Devon and everyone between.   Shoulders asks to borrow lawnmower – 

    asked me if I want to watch him use it.  (He knows he’s pretty.)  I do. 

                       7:15 PM 8 May 1977

                       Feeling much better, like I’ve passed a turning point.  Wasn’t 

    sure how much I could trust myself in the past, but if I’ve come through 

    this, my core must be solid, instead of the jelly mass I fear. Sitting in my

     far-from-clean study beneath my poster of Blake’s God & the Angels

    enjoying an after dinner cup of coffee. Sanity returns. A. is coming tonight

     to get her flokati rugs – that will make the downstairs look empty.   Trying 

    to finish Household’s Courtesy of Death, so I can take all these silly books 

    to the library, dump them, and get a lifetime supply of Peter de Vries. The 

    only proven painkiller is laughter. My damn novel’s made a fool out of me.

     Time to admit it.

                       3:15 PM 9 May 77

                       Called into Broadcast to sub for Loretta.  Working on Devlyn

    galleys. The main scary thing about this place is that no one works 

    here willingly. “Morale” is a poisonous miasma.  Kind of like the 

    architects’ office.

                       Mom & Dad raise hell over A’s living with Mason.  I thought 

    they were so worked up about “commitment”!  Sharing an apt is a 

    commitment, isn’t it? Not according to them. Glad poor A is taking

     the storm for once and not me. Couldn’t cope with them on top of

    everything else. R. and I are trying to evolve into a “friendship”. It

      sounds stupid but there has to be some third place between 

    attraction and avoidance because each of those is obsession. 

    When I ran this idea past R he said I was his “best friend”.  This is 

    why he is so impossible to deal with.  Best friend? He wouldn’t 

    treat a pet the way he’s treated me (the SPCA would come and get him.) 

                       Speaking of Ryder, he just called. Finished my book, 

    found the Black Mass a little short otherwise liked it. Didn’t say a 

    word  about “who’s Hank based on.” Thank God. He did ask who 

    the baby’s father is – I said even Nilssa doesn’t know.  According 

    to R.  I have “no problems”. (He doesn’t know about the dancing.  If 

    he was REALLY my best friend I could tell him.) He says we have 

    the whole rest of our lives to talk.  He’s uncannily good at saying 

    what I want to hear (unfortunately).  Seeing him tonight.  Take the bus 

    home, buy wine, wash & set my hair.  If only we could get to the stage 

    where we no longer fear each other.

                       4:50 PM Tues 10 May 77

                       Well we’re not out of the woods yet but perhaps have 

    found a path.  Last night was like losing my virginity all over again 

    – we were both so shy. Slept wrapped up and embracing. Many 

    compliments on my body (no tell-tale glitter in the bed.)  He said he

     was so upset by me breaking up with him at McDonald’s he can’t 

    go to any McD’s anymore.  Pledges of love somewhat ruined by 

    an argument during breakfast about whether a novel can be “good”

     if no one will buy it. Uh oh. I tried keeping it philosophical, not 

    giving historical examples he wouldn’t recognize (which would be

     “one-upping”.) Finally stopped when he got a call from a “goofy 

    chick.” Should I be worried, I ask, and he says no. But I can’t avoid 

    the sinking feeling that I don’t dare hitch my wagon to anyone 

    so dependent on mass psychology – even as a friend – without losing my way

  • Inspired Pleasure – the dance diaries of Alysse Aallyn

        9:45 AM Wed July 28 76

                                Anniversary of Toss Sheffield relieving me of 

    my impacted virginity (as I relieved him of his.)  R came yesterday at 2 – 

    left at 3 – came back at 5.  Another watershed in our relationship – Fears. 

    He’s afraid to lose the hearing in his good ear. He speaks sign 

    language but doesn’t want to live in a world without sound. I made 

    him promise to go the doctor. He agreed to make an appointment no 

    later than Weds. 

                       Reading Christina Stead’s wonderful Dark Places of 

    the Heart. Considered inviting Ryder to live with us – rejected 

    the idea. I need too much alone time. So important to establish 

    amour proper. I am so impoverished from setting up the house 

    (though I’ve made enough in tips to pay my taxi ride home tonight) 

    I am barely going to make the rent. Need a windfall.

                       Sweaty and smelly. I think I’ve boogie –oogie-oogied 

    till I just can’t boogie no more.  

                       Club Shalimar– 30 July 76

                     Cookout at Ryder’s parents – I met his folks – two 

    roly-poly people who are nothing like him –  one sister who is

     a lot younger. 

                     We had glorious talks on our way there and back – 

    about having our own space – (we agreed he needs to live alone);  

    our hopes and dreams (he used to write music, wants to do that 

    again someday – I told him I have an agent shopping a novel around) 

     first impressions (I discovered he was in the bar when I auditioned! 

    Horrors!) He said what intrigues him most about me is that he 

    can’t figure me out – still can’t – everything about me is a surprise. 

    I guess I could say the same about him.  

                     Wonderful abandoned sex – just crazy stuff – I came and 

    came.  He told me he spent last night at his old house – he and 

    his wife had to have a “meeting”.   I was jealous until he told me 

    that his wife is sexually dead – and always has been. He didn’t 

    understand it when they married, assuming it was something you 

    get over.  I suggested she was probably molested as a child – 

    he didn’t want to believe it. He thinks some people are sexually

     just asexual. I thought – but didn’t say – there’s a self-protective 

    concept. He doesn’t want to think she is turned off of him but in

     my experience – such as it is – chemistry is a completely 

    mysterious yet crucial factor women have a tendency to discount 

    it when choosing a life partner.  So they end up married to the 

    “perfect” person, except they’re not sexually stirred. 

                     2:00 AM. He tucked me in – kissed me – left – then 

    I was wakened with his hands all over me. When he got to his 

    car he realized our clock had stopped and he didn’t have time 

    to go home before work. So he snuck back in the sliding door.

     We had sex again, and the whole night became a snake

     eating its own tail. This morning got a wonderful poem: 

    Love, the Magician.

    The Magician is a Capricorn

    Bleeding cock’s milk from nipples

    Pale like mine but

    Maler.

    Illusion, he says is memory

    Of things that should have been.

    Doves and rabbits he entices

    From sacred groves between my legs

    Placed by ruse, and freed by art.

    When he dies, passion turns his eyes

    To quarters.

    He hears the world but faintly

    Through his one good ear.

    The other turns to me,

    Safecracker’s daughter.

    Trust the magician, voices tell me

    He knows when to drop the dice.

    31 July 76 Shalimar

                       R came in but I managed to get rid of him. Sandy 

    brought in a huge bag of string beans, squash and tomatoes 

    from her garden – I told Ryder to take them home and cook them. 

    My job is turning into a source of tremendous conflict – he is the 

    snake in his own paradise.  Plus, tips really fall off when he is 

    here. I am already looking at a very tough month financially – 

    trying to take so much time off.  He said he’ll be back at the end 

    of the night to pick me up – he’s hurt when I’m “in need” and 

    don’t call him. So that saves cab fare anyhow.  

                       We took a walk between sets and talked about his 

    parents – second generation immigrants,  lifelong Army. He doesn’t 

    tell them anything (they obviously know his marriage broke up 

    and now he’s with me – but they don’t know about his deafness, 

    for example or about his classes at Gallaudet.)  He said to me, 

    can you believe I’ve only seen these people twice in the past 

    four years? And we live in the same state.  Wait till he meets 

    my parents – shudder. I’ll put it off as long as I possibly can.

                       Dancing tonight with Alicia. Poor Alicia. She’s a 

    “dripper” (constantly leaking pee) but blames it on hypoglycemia. 

    She hates dancing when there are so few people in here. 

    It’s kind of interesting.  She sort of has a whorish appearance and 

    doesn’t realize she’s trapped in a vicious cycle – audience thinks 

    she’s a loose woman, she thinks they’re perverts.

                     I’m trying not to fall into the super-loving, super-giving

     trap but Ryder is the first guy I’ve ever met who would obviously 

    be a wonderful father. Rare among men under thirty?  Or something.

                     Talked to Avril on the phone – she was bored to tears at home

     so I suggested she come in. We shared a burger basket and she 

    saw me dance for the first time. She wasn’t grossed out at all by 

    the semi-nudity – which is good – told me I’m a great dancer and 

    she really envies me my pelvic wiggle.  

                     Also told me I have a terrific body – which really cheered 

    me up because I still feel too hefty around Ryder.  (At his parents’ house 

    we went over his old scrapbooks – he was the star quarterback in 

    high school football.  They described him as 5’4”!  That’s a lot 

    shorter than he admits to these days. His boots have at least two

     inch heels.)  A left after one set because all the guys of course 

    came on to her. Obvious losers, alas, including the one who insists

     he’s a hitman for the CIA and another who claims to be giving 

    away government jobs. 

                     Unfortunately I’m dependent on the tips of these characters.  

    Ryder has been telling them all that I’m a writer (instead of a call girl,

     presumably) which gives me a lot of explaining to do.  

                     I wish I had money to buy things the house needs – 

    flashlights and fuses and drainers and shelving and all that stuff – 

    but I’m saving every bit for our trip to the Finger Lakes. Aug 5 will 

    mark one month in the house and six months since I quit the 

    architects. Seems like much longer than that. Where will I be 

    six months from now? 

                       Hope my gothic novel sells – I need an immediate 

    hundred grand. I really can’t write with R sucking up all my free time. 

    I’ve been struggling with another poem about him – even that isn’t 

    coming. Hopefully we’ll settle down into being able to work side 

    by side quietly – maybe after our vacation.

    6:00 PM, Chevy Chase Tyler St, 2 Aug 76

                     Across the street Shoulders, dressed in a skimpy football 

    undershirt, is mowing his lawn. He is a sight to behold.

                     Sitting over my repaired typewriter with a cup of hot tea 

    and a case of writer’s block. I could write a poem about Shoulders – 

    already R is interfering with my life. Beautiful day – a little chilly – 

    a little Maine edge to it.

                     Finished Stead’s Dark Places – which I adored – absolutely 

    one of a kind.  Another bothersome thing about R – he really doesn’t 

    read. He’s been dragging around a sleazy paperback “heist comedy”  

    he pretends to read from time to time. At this rate it will take him six 

    months.  I am struggling with All Authors are Equal but I may give 

    up on it and read Famous Washington Ghosts which R picked up 

    for me to add to my considerable collection of ghost stories (I must 

    have 50 vols.)

                       On the phone with Maeve my old Baltimore buddy – 

    she is behind in her rent but looking for a new job. In the meantime 

    borrowing from boyfriends.   I take a perverse pleasure that anyone

     is managing worse than me.

                       Shalimar – 10:20 PM

                     Called in tonight to replace another girl – great – that 

    means I work 5 times this week.  Just that small amount makes a 

    big difference. A is in the chips right now and I could owe her 

    but don’t want to.

                     When I came in they told me R had been in 30 mins

     before. That was a little unsettling – I didn’t realize he would come in 

    if I weren’t here. Of course it is really close to his job – but equally

     of course the food is more expensive here than just about 

    anywhere else he could choose.  I look at who was dancing 

    to see whether he would think she was in any way better than me –

     luckily it was the pisser Alicia instead of potentially scary 

    competition like, say, Gloria. He didn’t know I was coming in, 

    because Carmen didn’t tell him.  Reading the Ghosts of 

    Washington. Wonderful poem potential. 

    Shalimar Thurs 5 Aug 76

                     R dearer every day, in spite of the fact that he’s 

    been checking up on me. Called and called last night – wondered 

    where I was – I wasn’t too sure how to tell him A and I were 

    over at Shoulders’ drinking, so I just said we were visiting 

    the neighbors.  Standing in their yard, which wasn’t true. He is 

    jealous of Shoulders and I don’t blame him – such lush male 

    beauty makes women helpless. A is a complete mess over him. 

    He frequently wanders around the house in nothing but his 

    boxers –  we call them as his “huppa”.

                       R. finally got an apt and can stop “crashing” with

     friends –  one bedroom at the top of a Rockville skyscraper. 

    Sounds crazy expensive to me.  Wrote a good poem – 

    capitol ghosts – today from the book R gave me. 

    Trying to think where to send it. Tomorrow’s my day off – 

    R coming over at 2.

    CAPITOL GHOSTS

    Pale Guiteau

    slants his disappointed child’s face

    downwards; the better to study bloodstains left

    by assassins more accomplished than himself

    who required benefit of anonymous surgeons 

    specially qualified for skewering

    the muscles of the mighty.

    The guard who saw him

    claimed also to hear demon cats

    and could not be relied upon.

    these portents once were matters of

    congressional dispute; now

    no matter; caught within the marbled lurch

    of history, victims

    of the uninspired mad; 

    those who pursue the corpse from whom

    the ghost escaped. He haunts our history

    like the villainous barber who sings as he slits

    both throats and wombs, a pure tune

    some say, picked clean of tragedy

                                   which only the dying hear.

    Shalimar 7 Aug 76

                     Sitting here in a stupor of exhaustion. We had an 

    Al Green fan in here tonight – kept playing same song over 

    and over. Presumably working through some kind of 

    relationship crisis. They don’t realize coming here and blowing 

    their money kills any relationship – and I am not going to tell 

    them. Anyway I hate Al Green.  Missed my bus this AM so 

    took the Fessenden bus and walked across. A better way to go – 

    I like the walk – to hell with this transfer business. 

                     I have to admit R doesn’t seem to understand 

    poetry. He’s very suspicious of all ease, elegance, lightness. 

    Too much Nature!  “Work” should make you grit your teeth, 

    groan and bulge your forehead veins.   The easier it comes, 

    the less valuable it MUST be.  (He would hate Picasso’s very 

    best stuff!)  I’ve tried getting him to understand by comparing 

    art to athletics – it only looks easy – it’s the training beforehand 

    that’s so hard. The trick is to render training invisible. But he 

    seems to think modern poetry is a plot to make him look stupid. 

                     Really worried about money lately – everything at 

    Unibank is bouncing.  It doesn’t take much to set off a chain 

    reaction.  Guess I’ll have to borrow from Avril after all.

                     How true it is that before you can love you must 

    love yourself. My love for myself is wavering.  Just finished 

    Sean Stiles’ Occam’s Razor. I hate to see a good idea wasted. 

    Mostly I am depressed by the poor quality of the stories in 

    the Times Detective Story competition anthology.  This is 

    something I should aspire to?  I’m on a wonderful streak 

    of poetry – keep piling them up – got ophelia and 

    haunted house this eve.

    OPHELIA WAS A MAN

    The best revenge is growing up.

    Behold a street of suicides –

    Fringed lampshades &

    Mullioned windows where

    The dentist’s son grew dope

    From seed (they had eight bathrooms and

    The dentist couldn’t be everywhere)

    His wife was nowhere; we saw her leave

    With the cat in a suitcase clawing to get out.

    “Crazier than thou” averred my aunt.

    That boy blew the fruits of orthodontal science until

    The day he blew his mind –

    We traced the hissing-pissing-noise

    To the garage of the stockbroker’s son; he’s

    The one who stayed home from Yale to rewrite Hamlet

    (Made it better – put in people you could recognize)

    Type-cast himself – since he saw ghosts.

    Two fine boys married to each other

    Rosy-cheeked and sightless

    In their parents’ wedding clothes.

                     Tomorrow R is taking me on a tour of the television 

    station and out to lunch. This is a biggie – see where he works.  

                      So I had to buy a gorgeous black linen jumpsuit (size 5!) Should 

    be worn with high red heels – but needless to say, can’t around 

    R. So instead, flat sandals. Fortunately everything is on sale.  

     A and I have decided to ask Maeve to move in with us – we can’t 

    seem to manage alone and we do have three bedrooms, but 

    she’ll have to hide from the landlord. I hate to do it.  Letter from 

    D today – he’s in love with the 18 yr old virgin daughter of his minister. 

    Didn’t do a thing to me. God bless ‘em.

                     Rick the gambler in tonight. He’s a friend of R’s – cheered 

    me up by telling me I’ve done so much for R who was really “hurting” 

    over his divorce.

                     Ryder – I love you – but I don’t really know who you are.  Hope you are who you pretend to be. 

  • Sleeping Orchid – Creative Boot Camp for Sensitives & Empaths with Alysse Aallyn

    Miracles – Love

    If This Archetype Chooses You – You are surrounded by magical possibilities. Are you dreaming of eternal bliss? Floating in connectedness? In Love the boundaries of the other disappear, all is forgiveness. Merge fearlessly, knowing you will be able to get yourself back any time, soothed, improved, and healed.

    We Are Creatives for Love – Love is the spirit that animates the empty spaces between humans. Once charged, these spaces become a powerful force for growth and change – uncharged they are so much dead air. This is the space that creatives protect. Love is the longing to be truly alive and to share life with the Blissed, Blessed Others.

    Our Yearning Defines and Connects Us – As children we thought we knew about miracles but it seems we have forgotten. As creatives we fight for our ancestral memories of trust and closeness. How we long to be reminded of the ecstasy of selflessness, to re-experience the borderlessness between creatures that makes a dead universe come alive.

    Love Is Our Armor – It’s a spiral, our labyrinth, remember? We can’t go back, we can only go forward. We practice techniques and invent others as we design and redesign purposeful maps in a threatening and uncertain world. We have the collective confidence of all the brilliance of the creatives who came before us. Someone loved us once, eternalizing the golden moment, now we can re-create and perpetuate that magic by creating our own miracles.

    Creative Danger – Danger lies in narrowing, exclusionary definitions of what ‘can’t” happen, what “won’t” work. Creatives explode restrictions all the time. Love must ever open outwards. As soon as we turn Love into a zero-sum game with a shut-off valve focused on our own narrow gratification, Love dies.

    Creative Opportunity – Love Is always a Miracle – It can restore the dead to life. It can open minds, it can awaken hearts. The possibilities of a creative are endless because we have chosen, with our flexibility and our sympathetic understanding, to be endless. Close your eyes and assume yoga’s starfish pose. We are open to what the universe longs to teach and once we commit to pass it on, we form an unbreakable chain, free at last from the bonds and the limits of selfishness. Clasp the hand (or paw) that generously, trustingly takes hold of yours. Let’s venture forth together.

    Models & Mentors – ‘to love and be loved is to feel the sun from both sides”
    – David Viscott

    “Miracles don’t happen to you, they happen through you.” – Mary Davis

    “Love has nothing to do with what you are expecting to get, only what you are expecting to give, which is everything” – Katherine Hepburn

    “Love gives you a piece of your soul you never knew was missing” – Torquato Tasso

    “You’ve got to see the miracle to be the miracle.” – Jandy Nelson

    “Love is the gift of oneself” – Jean Anouilh

    “I love you for who I am when I’m with you”
    – Elizabeth Barrett Browning

    #Haiku: Love Transfer

    The secret of breaking
    Any bad habit
    Is to love
    Something more