When she opened the front door at Norfolk Crescent the delicious scent of roasting lamb assailed her nostrils at the same time as laughter struck her ears.
In the kitchen, she was surprised to encounter a mini-cocktail party – Enid chopping vegetables while Miss Bottomley looked on, enjoying a glass of red wine. Her withered-apple face glowed.
“I hope you had success?” she enquired. “Enid’s been regaling me with tales about Morocco.”
“There’s just a bit of hummus left,” said Enid. “Really you must try it.”
Scarlet was more interested in the wine.
“Sawditch is ordering couscous!” Miss Bottomley said. “Enid promises to cook us a mush-wee!”
“A meshwi,” Enid corrected, handing Scarlet a glass of wine. “How did your publishing encounter go?”
“Sadly, the man is a complete dunderhead,” said Scarlet, throwing the books on the table. “THIS is the sort of thing they publish! They expect us to accommodate ourselves to this ghastly drivel!”
Enid looked thoughtful but Miss Bottomley seemed so crestfallen Scarlet sat right down to comfort her before taking a single sip.
“They’re doing it for money,” she said. “They are on their beam ends – the place looks desperate – and remember, you are a very rich woman!”
Miss Bottomley’s face cleared. “Buy the series back? Of course!”
“These wonderful books deserve republishing, but I’m suggesting a lot more than that. What if you buy the publisher?”
Miss Bottomley looked appalled.
“Buy a PUBLISHER?”
“Your money is currently all in property, which you’ve stated you don’t really care that much about.”
“That’s true enough,” agreed Miss Bottomley. “But what if these dunderheads – as you call them – are correct and my books are such old hat no one will want them?”
“Impossible!” roared Enid and Scarlet enthusiastically together.
Scarlet said, ‘This Mr. Mountjoy is overlooking an entire market of mature women. They are the most enthusiastic readers of books, and Miss Clew has so much to offer them. Isn’t there a revival going on of the Golden Age of Crime?”
“But buying a whole publishing company – “
“Or you could simply become an investor. Bob Thomas will know how to set it up.”
Miss Bottomley’s face cleared. Obviously “Bob Thomas” had become a magic name for her.
“You’re right,” nodded Miss Bottomley. “Bob Thomas will know. Let’s call him.”
“Call him tomorrow,” said Enid, spilling wine on Rod the Spy as she swept him off the table.
“Dinner’s ready!”
The dinner was delicious enough, but for some reason Scarlet had trouble sleeping, and Nick, too was wakeful. Enid seemed to sleep like a rock – at least Scarlet didn’t hear her or encounter her on the way to the bathroom. That’s all right, thought Scarlet stolidly, I can handle the nights if Enid can handle the days. But she was worried. How did she know Enid was who she said she was? Even if her past was impeccable, what if she was, say, an alcoholic? Who had she really brought into Miss Bottomley’s home? She was surprised – shocked wouldn’t be too much to say – at the vulnerability of this old lady. She had handled the hiring of an editor much more expertly – though of course I think so, Scarlet admitted, because she hired me. Obviously, others might quibble.
Enid put Scarlet’s fears to rest in the morning with her vigor and drive. She made crepes with fresh fruit for breakfast – Miss Bottomley sat at the table expectant and eager as a child. Enid managed Nick and the cooking effortlessly enough, Scarlet had to admit. A pile of clean diapers was already whizzing around the modern dryer.
“Could you pick up a copy of Dr. Spock’s childcare book while you’re out?” Enid requested. “It had a wonderful recipe for infant’s milk I seem to remember. Probably get one at Foyle’s.” Any excuse to go to Foyle’s was welcome.
“I’ll take the afternoon,” Scarlet promised. “Pelham D’Arcy has an appointment available for you at three-fifteen.”
“That would be suitable,” Enid agreed. “I most concerned to protect the children from knowledge of – er – their father.”
“I’m sure your husband wants that too,” Scarlet comforted her, hoping it was true. Enid, who knew her husband best, didn’t argue.
Scarlet phoned Bob Thomas and asked if she could have a short word with him – he suggested she join him for his “elevenses.”
Scarlet dressed carefully, called, “See you later!” from the door and found herself out on a fashionable London street on a brisk winter’s day with the most blissful sense of freedom she had experienced since Nick’s birth.
Wonderful weekend in Horse Cave, Kentucky with our soon-to-be wedding officiant, T’s OTHER gay friend/Baptist minister. Came home to hear T’s grandmother Louise (whose house we will be living in) had a stroke in her nursing home. They are looking for blood in spinal tap but it seems her speech is returning. (She is 88 and very frail.) Hope this doesn’t cast a pall over our cork-popping evening with friends. A cup of leek & spinach soup then walk to library.
20 Feb 80 Feeling crazy – in potentially the worst distress of my life. T says he can’t leave before Ap 15 – Granma changing the date of her party – I get the creepy notion T doesn’t care how I feel as long as I get my housework done and shut up about everything. Last night – after 2 nights of dinner parties – he invited people over – I said I’d be upstairs. Couldn’t see anyone. He suggested I was “manic depressive” which I consider insulting. He said he can’t work worrying about what if I’m “committing suicide.” That I’m “undermining” him by leaving him alone with guests.
He said he will do all the cooking for tonight’s party and I can “do all the drinking”. I said No thanks. After guests left our worst fight so far. He asked me threateningly if I REALLY want to know what he thought of my novel. I said yes. He said my novel is terrible – for emphasis he shook a floor lamp at me and he set it down so hard, it broke!
Said the Erin part doesn’t work and I should read National Lampoon’s clever “takeoff” on a school girls’ diary where she discovers she has a penis – they captured “girlish chatter” perfectly in a way I could learn from. I stare at him ASTOUNDED.
I’ve got to get out of here before I become a basket case. As long as he insists my misery and fears are imaginary we are far, far apart. I shouldn’t have come here – should have stayed working in DC saving money till the wedding (and his MOVE.) But we were so I love and he didn’t want me to dance!
8PM Thu 21 Feb Last night we had it out – every last bit and he SAW. I worked hard all day rewriting the passages he objected to – I agree it’s too bumpy coming out of “nowhere” but taking National Lampoon’s advice on “schoolgirls” is OUT OF THE QUESTION.
I tried to get him to understand how INSULTING he is being – that he wouldn’t accept this behavior from me. First, he denied he’d said the things he’d said, then he denied being hostile and angry – all while shaking a chair over my head! It’s like he’s possessed! He says I make him “want to smash something”.
I asked him if I’m this crazy awful person that he says then how can he love me? NO NO he insisted – you’re wonderful! Finally he got tender and said, “You need a love-letter, don’t you?” And I answered, more than I need a broken chair!
He said what if things get worse this summer. I said they WON’T. You will have graduated and passed the bar! You’ll have the support of me and your family! EVERYTHING WILL BE FINE. We both fell together, relieved.
Fri 22 Feb 80 6:45 PM Dinner ready for T – he’s late as usual so I have a moment to reflect. Up to p. 200 – one scene to go.
Last night he asked about “the relentless floods of blood” in my work. I tackled his comment that I’m “suicidal”. First, he denied saying it – then eyes full of tears –admitted and apologized. He gets “so upset”. He reported an incident with a Reed college psychiatrist – it was an intervention – he was accused of being the college’s heartless heartbreaker and said he was so surprised. I said But I have the marks on my heart to prove it.
He admits he’s jealous of my writing because I can “write anything I want.” Tough to defend against that! I DO write anything I want and I expect to make it my life goal! But I absolutely accept that people don’t have to like it.
Parents offered to buy my car for a grand and give to Genevieve. But they would keep it in Mom’s name because insurance in Maine is cheaper! I can’t criticize a gift horse’s choppers.
Found Monica Dickens’ autobiography at library today – could hardly believe my luck. Reminds me of A. Christie’s however – seems bit muted. Most difficult thing of all is telling the truth about oneself. No doubt all the best story is left out.
12:50 PM Sun – 24 Feb 80 Toss sighing and groaning over my book like a martyr. Sounds like he hates it. I finished writing it yesterday in 4 glorious hours. Toss NOW angry because I won’t answer the phone when I’m working. We’re suffering from “Doll’s House Syndrome” – anything he wants to do is for US – anything I want to do is just selfishness.
He’s 21 p from the end. He says I “sneer” at his suggestions but I told him I’ve incorporated a lot of them.
T. says it’s “corrupt”. Uh oh. He means the teacher scene. I reminded him of the Professor Emeritus at Plumly who wanted to talk eagerly with the boys about how to get erections, what they looked like and how long they could stay up. “Corrupt”? Toss thought he was adorable!
Better prepare myself for the tirade. He says he’s the marketing expert and I won’t get published if I “dismiss” his ideas and he might be right. He yells, I cry and we’re both wounded.
This feathered dervish Is an endangered species, Always seeking center of the fire. Does he know what we don’t or Is he just trying to make us feel guilty?
Iridescently decrescent he’s Always fighting someone else’s battles. He wins quite a few because Celestial wing’s always Quicker than the eye.
Cuckoo’s darling Sphinx-lipped hound stink Springs a balance tipped by weakness Of the Mighty. Doing The Master’s dirty work For centuries now You should know your way around.
Sidereal astromancer Always smiling – Bone poor A busy employee Avoids the traps of the past. Someone else’s coffers you’re Lining now you hypocritical Suit of someone else’s armor.
God said, “Bring for the creeping things” It is you who are a creeping thing thinks Lord Julian Of his pasty priest, with the Underdone face.
Were he a fish I’d throw him back. Good thing his knees are flexible as his Scripture. The priest speaks Of dominion, something
His lordship understands. It means Possession without surrendering the Self. Power begs abuse. He’s the master, he alone
Understands that here. Necessity’s The chain that stops the dumb animal Straying. Lifting eyes to the Steepled trees he feels the boredom of fall
Fade into the dullness of winter. The animals would be fat Were any left – ripe for scissoring but He ripped too many out.
Life’s start and stop – a blood bath brings Renewal. These men could stand a wallowing. They await his pleasure with Lowered eyes.
His pleasure is not them. He needs Men glamorous as girls, hopes As high as fever but none Are to be found.
Like the animals, they are gone. Julian’s scarred hands twitch the reins – Each scar is named, he counts them proudly: Attempted usurpation
The burning brand, the bear that fought The dog that turned on him The boar defending young. Past pain surmounted
Makes him long for wounds – A cut so deep he looks into The creature’s eyes for Some sweet glimpse of freedom.
Lord Julian, the scorpion-hearted Scents a smell the dogs can’t follow – The jingling behind him should be men The silky shadow should be deer.
His horse afraid – the creature moves Too smooth – when he dismounts Avenger plummets off – now He’s alone in moss and slime.
This thing is stalking him! He sees it through the trees Smells hot stink – a tiger! What ghost is this?
The prickled hairs stood high – he threw His knife – a sailor’s trick but Useless. He saw boars Twelve deep, spirals snorting
Through their tusks. The trees Morphed into deer and every beast He’d ever killed surrounded him. Face forward in the muck
At least the mud was real. Fox feet pattered, the tiger whisked him With its ruff – he dreamed a lifetime Lying there – every friend a slight
And every promise broken. This dark that stops his ears is surely death. But when he stands it’s not hell he sees but Dripping swamp. The mare he kicked and drove
Now leads him home. His blood is dried But he must cleanse the blood of others. To be struck he understands, now he must Know what spared him.
Washerwomen lift their heads At his approach – they don’t recognize this man. Hiding faces not from fear but Some new glory.
Wish I didn’t have breasts. I don’t like them. They make me feel like Somebody’s Mother. I would prefer to be flat chested. No sex since JULY. Bought a bottle of New York champagne from Laura for $8 and locked it in my trunk. Not sure what I’m saving it for. Kate Moody signed me up for Operation Match. I got a list of 4 names and I told Casey “I’m going to get us a date. “ So I called the first name on the list – Craig Crawford, a U of Penn student with an apartment. So that’s good! He answered his phone! “Must be a loser if he’s home on Sat night” said the loser home on Sat night. He had company but told me not to worry, “I think she’s in the bathroom.”
He turned out to be absolutely charming, all American, ROTC. By no means a lost cause. Said he’d gone out with 2 girls through Operation Match and one of them spoke no English. I asked for a millionaire (Kate asked for me.)
I said, “Craig, will you be my millionaire?”
He said, “I want to be. Help me make my million.” Asked me out for Fri. I said sure if he can get a date for my friend. So – a reason for champagne.
Tues. 20 Feb 68 Mom came Sun night and took me & Casey out to dinner. Unfortunately she brought a Lame Duck Boarder – one of her “pretend children” some shockingly ugly girl she feels sorry for. I bewailed my barren existence. She told me I’m just “dissatisfied” not miserable. I told her about our date Fri night and she insisted Craig & Unknown Boy have dinner with the family! I told her Impossible. Not wanting to contradict her at dinner I called her up later and ruined it by crying. I SO want to be THERE and not HERE. She thinks I’m the worst spoiled child ever.
Paris Match said Bonnie & Clyde “encourages crime” and Pauline Kael said “those sawdust heads missed the point.” I like her.
1:15 AM Sun 25 Feb 68 The date was AWFUL. Just horribly, incredibly, irredeemably AWFUL. Craig was FAT (why didn’t Kate ask for someone thin?) and his friend was SHORT, with very glisteny wet slicked back hair. But still better looking than Craig.
The evening was so awful there’s no point in describing it. Shared a bottle of Almaden during a decent dinner (eggplant, mushrooms, chicken livers) but when the boys saw we were presentable all they wanted was to get us drunk. The only way this could have been worse would be if it all happened at Pewter Hill. Casey was no help – she’s been in that convent too long! She just went all glassy-eyed on me. The boys wanted to go to their apt and drink and she was all for it! I tried hard to talk them into The Electric Factory and thought I’d succeeded but they said, “Ha, we lied, we’re going to the apt.” Talked them into the Trauma – they stayed 10mins. So we ended up at their apt after all where Casey & Friend made out and danced while I parried pass after pass from Craig who finally gave us and lay with his head in my lap psychoanalyzing me. “You’re restless because you’ve never had roots.”
I had to call a cab before they agreed to take us home. Asked us to fraternity party Sat. Casey wants to go! (I talked her out of it later, thank God.)
We no sooner get home than Mom’s psychosis raises its ugly head, how starved and desperate I am so I will never get anyone good. That same woman who accused me of “going to meet boys” when I was trying to bike ride to Trevallion, who accused Merrill of “living in sin with Bill Saint” (they weren’t) and said Genevieve’s husband wasn’t “clean.” Just weird. So embarrassing with Casey there.
Then Dad came in and asked me “how’s school” like an uncle who hadn’t seen me for twelve years and I burst into tears. A mess all around. This dating stuff SHOULD be easy but its so not. You’d think Mom would be all for “Operation Match” – as long as people are honest it should work. (My advice: ask for a photo.) But no. It shows you want to date and that is evil.
Wed 28 Feb 68 Called Devon this evening – knew I shouldn’t have but I was so depressed. I’d invited Preston to the Mar 5 dance but he said he can’t go. Has to be in a play. Invited e to the play and asked me out for the 22nd instead. I agreed to that but it’s not The Dance. Called Devon to feel something – anything – he said he was glad I called and happy to speak to me. Thought I called to wish him happy birthday! (So I said I had.) He apologized for his letters said they were “written in moments of weakness.” I said they were very romantic. I felt better then, but worse after. He HAS a girlfriend (more than one) there is no point to this. Wrote a poem, Considering the Chill Factor. Hopeless couple who can’t connect.
CONSIDERING THE CHILL FACTOR Considering the chill factor As I always try to do The day was hot Too hot for love or war. We sit in restaurants. I pick The blue veined shrimp He picks the black-veined news. Outside drunkards Carom off the plexiglass like entertaining fish. “They envy us” and Andrew says “How nice.” I see a couple coming in; she holds him up As I so often upheld you. I know that touch surgeons who manipulate the dying. She wears my dress the one I wore the day you Shamed me Stuck me sizzling to the sidewalk Shamed us both with those red red stains. Andrew I don’t think I ever have forgiven you. Andrew says “How nice” he lays his coffee spoon upon the cloth I hate the brown stain it spreads like murder Like the bad smell of death Breeding fumes as we do Corpses in the sun. I rise to speak Shrimp spewing from my mouth like Parasites. “We have always been so happy, you and I.”
Mon 4 March 68 I’ve learned my lesson: when this huge book is used up I WILL GET A SMALL ONE. Gave up on March dance, called Preston and said I’d go to his play if he’ll go to the Electric Factory with me, Casey & Kip and champagne supper after at Pewter Hill. Mom likes Preston because his parents are her friends so she should behave herself. Rich parents used to give their sons peasant girls to practice the facts of life on and Mom is giving Preston to me. He has a nice bass voice, but something festers in his soul. I’m going to find it and poke at it. Mom wanted to invite Brice to dinner! I had to tell her the truth about him so she wouldn’t but if I thought I’d get points from her for spurning his dark desires I was wrong. Everything’s my fault because of clothes & personality. Past midnight – I write by flashlight. Casey talking in her sleep.
Hard to read Spark’s Mandelbaum Gate after Genet. Spark is trapped by her form, defeated by her subject and killed by her characters. Ho hum.
Casey & I started a film company – Gryphon Enterprises – to film my movie ideas. Marquis de Sade (of all people’s!) Eugenie de Franval is a terrific story (without the moralizing obviously) – also Donleavy’s Singular Man. Working on my scripts. Also wrote a short story – Odalisque – about a teenager robbing her own “Christina-esque” boat. Can’t use it for English because Master Gwill hates “plot” on principle. Gives the highest grades to character studies & mood pieces. For him I wrote To Bed In the Afternoon dialog of a frigid woman with her doctor. Sunday into the city to see Pinter’s The Lover – excellently done.
Tues 5 Mar 68 Benson builds a new philosophy in Defense of Homosexuality – happens to be my philosophy as well. One caveat: “the freedom of the subjective person to do as he pleases is overruled by the freedom of the responsible person to do as me must.” Who’s subjective and who’s responsible? For that matter, who’s free.
Benson knows he’s in enemy territory so he follows every argument to infinity: no loose ends. Do women take to lesbianism the way men take to homosexuality or are men just appalling lovers? Take Craig Crawford for example. #1 he’s hideous, #2 he WANTS to be drunk. Any rational sexy girl would start to look good if you’d had too much of that. At the moment I can’t imagine ever wanting to bear children but who knows maybe someday … At the moment 69ing sounds impossible. (Casey & I discuss.)
Merrill writes she “spontaneously aborted” after a month of pregnancy. Depressed her. I hastily replied that since all Aallyn girls are built to be Earth Mothers so she need have no fear. I can see my senior thesis needs to be a “book report: What’s Out There”. They will downgrade me for not expressing my view but they would downgrade me more if I did express it so Lesser of Two Evils…
Wed 6 Mar 68 Wonder if I can sit in a chair for auditions. Dr Gilmour says not. Don’t know what to do with this lump of a body of mine. I should be taking dance EACH DAY. What if I recite my poem?
Got a full weekend permission, there’s a wonder (before lowering of the financial boom.) I have overdrawn 3 times!!! Think of all the starving children in Asia and I spent $4 on a bottle of hair conditioner.
Like to think I am free from all the ridiculous dating taboos like “girls can’t call boys” so I phoned Preston. He’s an unpolished diamond – delighted to speak to me. He’s tall, intelligent, sensitive, thin, witty, friendly, etc. Plans to go to Harvard, run for everything & rule the world. So what if he doesn’t actually attend to this school? The less he knows of me the better, considering what people around here seem to think.
1 AM Sat 9 Mar 68 Twelve hours and my Wretched Audition will be over with. Numb with Dread. Chances very strongly that they will hate me, I will hate them, we will hate each other. I don’t see how I can stand any more rules. But everyone tells me I have to audition at Juilliard so audition at Juilliard I weakly do. Preston and I discussed it thoroughly fifteen mins ago. Nice to have someone to confide in. I impulsively invited him to the operetta and he impulsively accepted. Will he fear being Managed, like Shawn and chafe at it sorely? Insist on “spontaneity” while my calendar goes soggy from disuse? We’ll bomb that bridge when we come to it.
Thinking about Devon all afternoon. “So sweetly cold, so deadly fair!!!” (Byron) Really stupid. It’s like those chicks fixating on the first beak they see.
Plumly – Sun 10 Mar 68 “A character’s recognition, through the force of circumstance of the truth about himself is one of the classic themes of comedy” Walter Allen, NY Times Book Review.
Me at Juilliard. Get ready to laugh. I panicked at the institutionality of it all. Don’t want a building; was hoping for an ocean or a green field. Got through the audition but they’re going to hate me. John Housman told me to “pretend I was in the shower” and I froze. What the hell did THAT mean? Well, I didn’t figure it out. Should I strip? I sang instead which I’m fairly certain is NOT what he meant.
Depression not helped by Preston’s inept kisses, his damp limp hand throughout Guys & Dolls. Everyone envious of us as a “beautiful couple” but I couldn’t get him to apply pressure. Uh oh. This bodes ill, ill, ill for everything else. In memory Shawn tears apart my Lurex stockings to kiss my blue-veined legs.
I looked good I have to say. I wore a gorgeous white and silver glittery dress, white stockings and white six-strap heels. The most glorious part of the entire evening was fleeing this lousy institution in his father’s car instead of returning to my sex-starved roommate (same gender as me!)
We wander in the park at 1 AM in parka & boots over party wear. Steam rising out of the ground looked like Fall of the House of Usher. I climbed the rock wall to the art museum while Preston stared at me. Alas, he is no fun. A mad-haired spectacle was I. He says my nerves look like Francis Scott Key’s flag which is probably right. But I was NOT in the mood for psychoanalysis. Will I survive this place? Because it is winning.
Thinking about Devon all afternoon. “So sweetly cold, so deadly fair!!!” (Byron) Really stupid. It’s like those chicks fixating on the first beak they see.
“A character’s recognition, through the force of circumstance of the truth about himself is one of the classic themes of comedy” Walter Allen, NY Times Book Review.
That’s me at Juilliard. Get ready to laugh. I panicked at the institutionality of it all. Don’t want a building; was hoping for an ocean or a green field. Got through the audition but they’re going to hate me. John Housman told me to “pretend I was in the shower” and I froze. What the hell did THAT mean? Well, I didn’t figure it out. Should I strip? I sang instead which I’m fairly certain is NOT what he meant.
Depression not helped by Preston’s inept kisses, his damp limp hand throughout Guys & Dolls. Everyone envious of us as a “beautiful couple” but I couldn’t get him to apply pressure. Uh oh. This bodes ill, ill, ill for everything else. In memory Shawn tears apart my Lurex stockings to kiss my blue-veined legs.
I looked good I have to say. I wore a gorgeous white and silver glittery dress, white stockings and white six-strap heels. The most glorious part of the entire evening was fleeing this lousy institution in his father’s car instead of returning to my sex-starved roommate (same sex as me!)
We wander in the park at 1 AM in parka & boots over party wear. Steam rising out of the ground looked like Fall of the House of Usher. I climbed the rock wall to the art museum while Preston stared at me. Alas, he is no fun. A mad-haired spectacle was I. He says my nerves look like Francis Scott Key’s flag which is probably right. But I was NOT in the mood for psychoanalysis. Will I survive this place? Because it is winning.
Preston said he liked the sound of my dress. At least. He brought me the candy bar that used to be my favorite. It no longer is.
Tues 12 Mar 68 It is SNOWING outside. Final proof the world’s gone mad. Yesterday so spring-like Casey & I played tennis. Sat I lay in the lower field coated with Bain de Soleil! Vibrating like a wire over second mug of gray coffee.
Thurs. 14 Mar 68 Last day before vacances and I seem to have a fever. Sore throat ripped by endless scream, ears popping, the works. Getting out of class the only benefit. So no date for me. (Word for the day: Nacré. Means mother of pearl. Oh so beautiful. )
No date, but perhaps champagne. Casey and I looked at this enormous bottle (a magnum) and decided it was just what the doctor ordered. Invited Rob Severn (English exchange student) and Bob Burke (black eyebrows, long golden hair from Kenya or someplace) down to the Greenwood to drink it with us. They said they’d be delighted. Smuggled it in a Gimbels shopping bag. It was gone in about 10 mins! (Very grapey stuff.) Did make me feel better however. Unfortunately Burke threw me to the ground, tried to drag me to a shed and stuck his hand right up under my turtleneck. We are in the same weight class: I successfully fought him off.
Severn offered to show him how to behave, I said “please” and he kissed me beautifully. Very nice. I was regretfully forced to tell him I had probably given him typhoid but it was thoughtful of him to risk it. He invited Casey into the shed; she went. Burke said he would like typhoid too. I had to say no. I guess I am not as starved as I thought I was.
Pewter Hill – Sun. Midnight 17 Mar 68 Just read my diary for ’67 instead of writing my Special Project paper. Nauseating. What a boring idiotic little child I was. Pathetic. There is anguish associated with diaries and no mistake. This poor body is one raw nerve. Preston came over last night, I was too weak to make the first move so No Move Was Made. Shouldn’t there be SOMETHING between fighting for your life and fainting from boredom?
Saw his Yeomen of the Guard last night – Preston a very fetching spear-carrier. We saw Closely Watched Trains, came home, made coffee & hamburgers. I told him he didn’t miss anything with the champagne. Was a movie about a shy boy’s fear of impotence the best possible choice? (The best thing about it: Czechs don’t use extras, they use people.) Tried to discuss film (did not like it as much as Loves of a Blonde) but could hear Mom & Dad humping upstairs. Probably working on some kind of manual the doctor gave them. Thanks folks. Preston obviously embarrassed left early.
“We are but a moment’s sunlight fading in the grass…” Jesse Colin Young
Casey & I took a 2-hour walk past the Granolithic into the orchards and fields. Now I sit at my wobbly desk looking out of the window at a world warped by radiator fumes. Where will I be a year from now when some other poor wretch sits chained to this piece of lumber? Already I’ve escaped, imagining its spring and hot, and I’m wearing a short blue dress. It’s the tea party at Master Gwill’s after Hamlet (I played Gertrude) and Shawn and I are in love. Ah, memories.
McKenzie compliments me on my dress when I go into dinner – did I just buy it? God now, I said. I’ve had it 2 years.
Lucky you, she says, to have a closetful of beautiful clothes you never wear. I remember when you used to pull out eight things and ask me what to wear for Beales…
Shudder at THAT memory! Beales was constitutionally unpleasable. He used to get so angry! I now see that is a pathetic state of affairs.
Wed 24 Jan 68 Diaries are a horror. I could write and write and write and never get it all said. Plus I sometimes feel like a Current President forced to continue the policies of the Last President. Why can’ I be completely fresh & new? Original? Well, it wouldn’t be a diary, that’s why, it would just be a Notebook and guess what? I have plenty of those.
Diaries
I don’t remember anything I’m an amnesiac so I wrote it down Stuffed in my closet Among discarded ballgowns (smells much the same) utterly useless but too beautiful to throw away I only recall The act of writing An up and over downtime scrawl As I recall the surgeon Cutting at my face tugging splitting flesh he peeled the wastage out. I recall fierce Liftoff In the writing Too much dig is waste It’s only what remains that’s Valuable.
Three tests in my next three classes. I don’t have to worry about French – no matter how poorly I do everyone will always do worse – but History – “Manifest Destiny” – I have not studied at all.
Then there’s the outrage of philosophy where I have to pander to a lot of theories I can’t accept.
Contrary to Plato there is no actual “truth”. Some things are just truer than other things. It is truer that I am at Plumly than In Paris, for example. Also, meaning changes – a fact that bothered Plato but does not bother me in the least. I mean, of course.
Plato is deeply obnoxious. He says somewhere exists a “perfect” everything – a perfect cat for example – yet “beauty” is a matter of opinion. This makes my brain bubble. I suspect my perfect cat and Plato’s cat are different animals. My perfect cat would eat his perfect cat.
Don’t even get me started about math; the only part I respect are Imaginary Numbers. Socrates said it best: to hell with the universe.
Reading Huxley’s Point Counterpoint about which the only thing I like is its name. He falls into every literary trap there is; too many places, people, names. Everyone seems to want to write a Panorama of Modern Civilization. This is Tolstoy’s fault. Cakes & Ale made me gnash my teeth. Yesterday I finished Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up to Me (Shawn’s recommendation). Feel sorry for the guy; a brilliant boy suffering from over education. He seeks freedom, meaning and – women, who have to wear high heels while they make love. They HAVE to! Otherwise he’ll TANTRUM!
Dinner at Master Gwill’s. The boys are punishing me for what I “did” to Dan. Except for Ed, Chip & Martin. They are always nice. Unfortunately my efforts to become a Noble Savage fail. Can think about nothing but food & sex. Worked Miss Lissome over at coffee, disagreeing with everything she said.
Sat. 27 Jan 68 – Pewter Hill
Movie orgy! Casey and I awake to NO bells, NO workjobs, NO faculty screams of abuse. Instead, peace, classical music, fresh grapefruit, good coffee, English muffins. (At Plumly only seniors are allowed to have coffee. You wait for four years lusting in you heart and then when you get it you realize it’s AWFUL. But you’re too proud and exhausted to tell the others.)
Last night we saw The Graduate – true true true plus wild & romantic. (Dustin Hoffman dead ringer for Beales.) This afternoon How I Won the War with John Lennon. Then Casey wants to run around Rittenhouse Square Seeing and Being seen and I want to sit in a café and stare. I don’t get my identity back that fast, is all. “You always ruin my fun,” she pouts.
Mon 29 Jan 68
Listening to Mendelssohn’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream Casey starts sobbing incoherently. She says she waits and waits but no one ever comes. I know what just what she means. Instead of protesting my fate I draw thirteen flowers on my upper thigh. Thirteen. “The thing of it is” – fine Pinteresque phrase – the thing of it is I should be DIETING but my only joy is food. Conundrum.
Trying to do my senior thesis on Sex Offenders (Kinsey) but they are the dullest people you can possibly imagine. (Psychopathia Sexualis way more interesting.) “6% attempted intromission”. Learned one good word: “pudenda”. “Dearest Theobald, the spring pudenda are in full flower! How I wish you could be here to see them!” Or possibly, “Pudenda Pottencrest felt a premonitory shiver as she crossed the threshold of the old house…”
Bertrand Russell says we need sex so we can concentrate on our studies but who listens to him? Insomnia. Ginger Man nauseatingly self-conscious. Tried Growing Up Absurd but Paul Goodman (author) told me it was only for boys because girls don’t have problems. News to me. He keeps wailing about advertising but in my view (judging from New York Times Mag & New Yorker) the ads are a lot more interesting (and subtler) than the articles.
Several interesting letters from Devon in one envelope. The first, “written in a moment of weakness” looks like he was drunk. He’s romantic, I’ll give him that, in an Elvira Madigan kind of way. Dad was furious that those two committed suicide. He said if you really loved somebody you’d do anything to keep them alive and I think I prefer his philosophy. For Devon everything is Hopeless. Hopeless, hopeless, hopeless. He is in search of Plato’s perfect mountain, perfect skis, perfect run, perfect physical conditioning and its nothing but failure, failure, failure. Cheery. Do I love him only because he’s beautiful? No, he’s intelligent, too. (Amherst.) But he’s TOO beautiful…I don’t need to pursue Plato’s Perfect Skier. Think I found him. But can a boy from an all-boy family and a girl from an all-girl family be friends? I think I want to love someone who knows nothing of my past. When I say, “I was such an ugly child,” I don’t want them chiming in, “You sure were.”
I won’t write back. (Tactics.)
Fri 2 Feb 68
Silenced. No library “privileges”. Can’t ask Miss Womrath for a favor, my parents for money or discuss “college plans” with Miss Liveright. This school stopped being “the school for me” long about my sophomore year but my parents refuse to hear it. If only Mom were more like Daddy – if I got expelled he would just accept it. How to rip the lid off all this fake coziness? Plumly hates artists (on principle! “Self indulgent!”) Well, they can mete out punishment (detention hall) but my mind is mine alone. Genevieve hated this place by the time she left (attacked me for believing the very things she spent freshman – sophomore year drilling into me!) but she wasn’t honest about it (and she got into Wellesley) so M & D think it was “a big success”. (At Wellesley she studied psych; calls M & D “schizophrenic”. But not to their faces.)
Just recovering from a long crying session (as you can probably tell.) Hate all my classes and slept through study hall. “We shouldn’t have all these warped people in charge of everything” says Casey. Amen, sister. Detention hall’s in the collecting room – no one can sleep in there. Rush hour at the Gare St Lazare.
Mon. 5 Feb 68 Pewter Hill Sunday lunch, Avril helping me learn Aston’s lobotomy speech. Acting like skiing, building from the inside out. Horrible cold bath – water-heating system not working (as usual which Mom the Masochist refuses to believe. “You need to let it run,” she says. Believe me I have let it run.) Marcel Marceau in town – we got to go. Some new pieces. Ran into Dr Gilmour on the way out, she said she was HOPING I would get to see this!!!
Called into Miss Womrath’s office for cutting Vespers. She says the Student of Yesteryear would Never Have Dreamed, etc. She just wants me to grovel, which she won’t get. I am appalled that this place is run by these strange inhuman beings. (Miss Beeston is senile but since she “only teaches French” they don’t care.) Boys are suspended for long hair and thirty years ago they were suspended for crew cuts!! Finished Avalon – everybody settled for less than they had dreamed of in their youth. And Quiet Flows the Don next.
Wed 7 Feb 68 Liked Pinter’s The Basement so much I want to make a movie of it. Such insane simplicity!
Sun 11 Feb 68 Casey was babysitting for Master Gwill – went over to watch Jean Claude Killy ski in the Olympics. Exciting! Le Superman! Everyone comparing him and Karl Schranz but I say there’s no comparison. Sat NYC trip! Everything that COULD go wrong yesterday, WENT. Unfortunately station wagon had no heat and my feet were freezing. 12 degrees outside!!! Refused to sit with Peter who called me an “incorrigible bitch”. (Like all shy boys once you finally get them talking you can’t get in a word edgewise.)
Toured the Met, saw all the Greek stuff and more medieval stuff than is good for me then met with the others for lunch. Bought two candy bars to beef up boxed lunch. Then the Ballet of Don Quixote. The plot is: Quixote & Panza watch everybody dance! I kid you not! Costumes pretty good, but bordering on Tyrolean as if extras wandered in from another show. Still, I’d go to the theatre every night if I could.
Vol I of “The Don” NOT making me want to plunge into Vol II. Prefer Genet’s Our Lady of the Flowers (unreadable intro by Sartre. Turns out I am not an existentialist.)
Mon 12 Feb 68 2 Plumly students killed & 2 injured in bad accident on the turnpike yesterday – truck jumped the median. People I talked to are lying dead in a morgue someplace. First class was a “memorial” – we sat silent. I try to think holy thoughts — difficult looking right at the harpies on the facing bench.
11:20 PM Fifty pages into The Golden Bough. Don’t see how his logic operates. And it’s the source of my Bible Independent Study!!
Tues 13 Feb 1968 Third period study hall. Struggling with Bible. Do not believe in God or an afterlife but if I was blind would I disbelieve in the world others tell me is there? But religion I reject utterly.
Thurs 15 Feb 68 A typical Thurs morning meeting – exercise in amateur rebellion & spiritual emptiness. Girls Collection seated first. On Sundays we can sit co-ed, on Thursdays we are segregated. Casey and I sit together (illegally- you’re supposed to sit the way you came in.) I guess we’re supposed to be grateful we don’t have to kneel on peas on the frozen flagstones.
My “prosperity” Chinese medallion chain (probably not real gold) is in hundreds of knots so at least I have something interesting to occupy myself. (Usually I sleep). “No fingernails” I think disgustedly as I pick at the chain.
DeeDee shoots to her feet; she wants to talk about Vietnam; has to get it right out or she’ll be too nervous. (She’s against it.) Drone, drone. Tries to tie the Viet Cong and our Recent Dead in some kind of incomprehensible pretzel.
Deep silence follows. I finish the chain and put it on. Susie Thos ahead of me is pretending to be bent over in deep meditation but is secretly conversing with the girl next to her. People shuffle, sigh and scratch their necks.
Maggie Brown drawing a flower on her leg while the harridans seethe. Sarah Gould leaps to her feet. She is a “kook” and dates “kooks”. Rambling question (to God?) about how “making out is an expression of love and how can love ever be wrong?”
Miss Womrath tries to re-start her heart, discovers she doesn’t have one. I admire Sarah for laying herself open to attack. Also for her athletic body, which we are all, admiring. Somebody else stands up to distinguish between “kissing” and “making out.” Kissing good, making out bad. Lips good, hands worse.
Charity Dellabrook vaults to her feet. She was all happy this morning she says but she feels guilty about being happy around all these somber faces.
Fri 16 Feb 68 Finished Our Lady over breakfast; turning it over in my mind. I think it’s one of the most exciting books I’ve ever read for it insights into the creative brain. Honesty and originality are the only words for Genet. I neither thought these characters depraved nor pitied them. I’d call Maggie of Mill on the Floss more “perverted” than Divine. Readers deserve to be trusted (Pinter is expert at this.) So exciting makes me want to rush to the typewriter and work on “Dr Stavanger.”
I am doing a bunch of special projects – Harold Pinter, American Foreign Policy and Konrad Lorenz. Probably ought to be a way to blend these so I can write the same paper for each. How about a play about the Vietnam War performed by ducks?
Toiling on my poetry. Sneaking into the Tower at night to write poetry in black magic marker on the inside of the bathroom stalls. Something “cultural” to look at. (Mostly Millay and Frost but some John Lennon. Plus my Plumly poem sans attribution.) Krissy says everyone knows it’s me because my handwriting is so distinctive.
Verb-Corseted The French teacher sweeps The cherry blossoms from the tennis court (As she would like to sweep the cherries) French them soundly beneath Spiked shoes; printing red marks Like kisses On their half-grown thighs While headmistress Cello-breasted Measures with her thumb The Bath Wife’s heft; Polishes graffiti carved upon her Coffin in Chaucerian High English And the girls, Nun – white Nun – blue Soar above the soccer fields Foul-mouthed angels High on fetal wings; Anticipated ecstasy locked in narrow hope chests Ripened on amphetamines Free love Bad dreams.
1 Dec 67 Cheering letter from penpal Dell Rynehardt, the one who saw me at the Stratford play and asked for an introduction because I was so beautiful! Reading Territorial Imperative and On Aggression. Interesting. So glad to find a valid argument against the conditioned reflex.
Worry that I’m prostituting my mind in this place; Plumly Academy for Losers. My teachers may be well-meaning but they are trying to drag me down the wrong road. Their “good intentions” are dangerous for me. Reading Knut Hamsun’s Growth of the Soil for my “non American novel”. Good to be a senior: these days I do nothing but read which is all I ever did anyway.
Nothing human is alien to me, says Terence. Doesn’t need to be human from my point of view. Fri. study hall, I’m in the library studying for test on the Constitution. Can’t wait for THAT to be over. Casey and I off to dinner at Pewter Hill.
Wed 6 Dec 67 Back at Plumly. Bad birthday – me, Mom & Avril all endlessly menstruating. Auntie Beulah creaking like a shutter in a gusty wind, probably jealous that she can’t menstruate too. I admired Mom’s bracelet and she took it off and handed it to me in an annoyed way! I don’t want it like that!
Now I’m so high strung and bitchy these days it’s a wonder anyone can stand me. I bite my nails, claw my face, pick my hair and my hands shake. I trip over furniture. How will I make it till June? Prognosis: grim. I was SO looking forward to that Pewter Hill dinner, then missed two buses trying to get back to school. Mom kind but irritated underneath; I shot myself to pieces with mental recriminations.
Received two bad shocks; first; Brice Harbreath will be along on our Christmas ski vacation. Ugh. His lewdness & diseased morality seep a constant vicious poison and since he talks a good line about “freedom vs license” M & D don’t realize it. It’s one of those things where you can’t expose him without making yourself look bad. I know he will cling to me like a limpet. Ugh! That laugh! I shiver at the thought. And he dumps ME for being “sexually inadequate” because I wouldn’t take it for granted that all dates should end with a hand job! Ugh, ugh, ugh. “Frigid,” my foot!
Second shock; Mom offered me skis for my birthday and I said I didn’t need them. But when I reconsidered and said I thought new skis would be nice she snapped at me that I don’t need them! I thought it was my choice but guess not! “We’ll rent,” says Mom, “Or you can borrow from Devon.”
Devon the ski coach! That would be great. Put me on the wrong track with him from the start; I was counting on him to protect me from Brice. Hell. The real joke is I’m the only member of this family who can actually ski! (Owing solely to Devon.)
Thurs. 7 Dec 67 Six girls received the same KOB last night – only difference is name printed in block letters on the outside. Inside in crayon: DOESN’T IT SEEM RATHER FOOLISH TO LET YOUR PRIDE BRING YOU DOWN?” One glance and I knew it was Shawn Kobler. Proved it to Casey from his writing sample in my notebook. Everyone else thinks it refers to the Christmas dance; the demand that the guys dress up, buy flowers and act decent. I think the others are camouflage and I am the real target. He has a point, but I’m not admitting it, because sometimes pride is all there is. Was dozing through meeting when Shawn spoke up at the end about how emotion embarrasses everyone. People worry about “self-revelation.” That was brave! But I’m not going to the dance without a date and just “meeting” him there. I would rather go with a guy I DON’T LIKE. So there.
Reading The Man Who Was Thursday, which should definitely be called The Man Who Was Sunday.
Wed. 13 Dec 1967 Ate like a wolf at dinner – like a COVEN of wolves. What is to be done? Flirt with Blair Manteo till I saw Shawn staring at me. Decided to send him an “anonymous KOB” saying “Doesn’t it seem rather foolish to send anonymous KOBs?” Serves him right. But he already confessed to Aynsley so it would be beating a dead boyfriend.
D & M in Vietnam and I’ve heard nothing for 2 weeks. I SUPPOSE they’re all right. Just read the most appalling Newsweek – all they get out of Dr Zhivago, Bonnie & Clyde and Darling is the cut of the clothes.
Casey studying by the window. We were caught for Late Lights so have to study downstairs in the Monkey Cage. Discomfort (no tea) but plenty of company. This is a very Disrespectful Senior Class. Either that or it is unrealistic to expect ANYBODY to finish ANYTHING by 10 PM. Off to Girls’ Locker (to pee) I trip over Bob Burke & Susie Thomas all over the floor (and all over each other.) There may be snow on the ground but it’s spring in our hearts!
On my way back I trip over Renda Swayne & Bill Johnson Doing the Likewise. It’s enough to drive one into the Girls’ Parlor to watch TV with the Uglies and the Morally Fucked Up Council Robots.
I know what I want for Christmas. Print of Breughel’s Hunters in the Snow. As soon as the bell rings Casey and I are making soup.
Tues. 19 Dec 67 – Pewter Hill Advanced state of 20th cent rot clearly observable on Johnny Carson show. I give up and come upstairs. Told Dad I’m thinking I want to be an actress but worry I’m not pretty enough. He says, “Judith Anderson is an actress!”
Have you SEEN Judith Anderson? I have – (MacBeth.) Suicide is preferable. Thanks a lot, Dad!
THINGS ACCOMPLISHED IN THE LAST 3 DAYS: 1) Read Helen Bevington’s When Found Make a Verse of 2) Taught Avril 3 French Christmas carols 3) Took Phinney on 20 walks, brushed him, cleaned up 900 messes 4) Washed every dish I could not talk my way out of 5) Slept & ate continuously
Something’s got to give!
Fri 29 Dec 67 just after midnight – Pinkham Notch NH Past, present & future all mingle. Driving home from a party with Devon Duvall – he keeps kissing my hands. Can’t kiss mouths because we are laughing too hard.
“Goddam it” I say and he says, “What kind of pillow talk is that?”
The kind you have with someone who already has a girlfriend. (or 6.)
Luckily skiing is good for sexual frustration.
Mon. 1 Jan 68 My sex life has nowhere to go but up. My dreams have been INCREDIBLE!! Writhe & pant all night. Reading Achilles His Armor in between doses of The Decline & Fall of Practically Everybody. Wonder if my life will ever be a joke someday to somebody. Left the New Year’s Eve party (Brice kept asking if I was a virgin); faced the fact there would be neither sex or champagne to be had; donned my golden caftan and cleaned my room.
Ever been climbing stairs and you suddenly noticed what your body was doing and you couldn’t do it anymore? That’s what happened to me at the mountaintop, feeling cold and tired and hungry and I thought, what if I suddenly forget how to ski? Devon says beginners have to be taught not to sit on their heels – now the new racing theory is to sit on your heels, so NOBODY knows how to ski. And I don’t like things that work only when you DON’T think about them.
Wed 3 Jan 68 1:10 AM Nietzsche was surely right when he said of all the treasures life unearths, self-knowledge is the last. I am nowhere near it. Find other people a whole lot easier to understand. Mother speaks of auditions and my liver freezes but I was the one who suggested it! Do I want to be endlessly “inspected”? Seems so repulsive. Plus I hate hassle and Plumly is working my last nerve. Do I want to bothered while laboriously constructing my house of cards? Imposserous. Maybe I should join the Peace Corps or lock myself in a room and Write a Novel.
Somerset Maugham says only a writer is truly free and this book shows me how it can be done. As soon as I touch it I’m flushed back into the maelstrom and lost again.
Philosophically I am closest to Hindu. (Dr. Gilmour says I’m a mystic.) That right there separates me hopelessly from Devon who was raised a Hysterical Christian so now has a bad case of Borderline Religious Disorder. He says I’m a Pantheist which is NOT technically true since I believe in the supernatural. Metaphysics are the ONLY physics I have time for.
According to everybody I project confidence, which shows how blind everybody is. Avril told me she sees me rich & famous and herself a housewife married to a 9-5er. (She’s only 13.) She insists she has no talent, which I told her is UTTER BUNK. It’s the other way around: anything seen that young is a flashing pan for sure. Thurber obviously can’t draw and Basil Rathbone obviously can’t act but look at them!
The challenge always is to deepen the imagination.
Plumly Home for Incurables Mon 8 Jan 68 School station wagon met me at Paoli and I was back in jail in time for Vespers. We all bow our heads and I pray to Sredni Vashtar The Magnificent . She answers my prayer; I get an excellent letter from Devon saying how much he misses me! This boy shows promise! And another from penpal Dave saying he can’t find anyone as beautiful as me. Heheheh. He sounds so lovelorn you’d never guess he hasn’t seen me for four years! What a nut! I’m just friendly, I’m not actually encouraging him. Let’s hope he’s not some kind of a serial killer. Help!
In my jail cell complete with high chipped blue walls, iron bedstead and junk bureau I write a story called A Very Private Invasion. Spent a lot of time on it but now I can’t show it to anyone or use it for anything. It’s a fantasy about Devon and me after he gets killed by an avalanche (Heheheh.) It’s always a mistake to cross us writers.
Reading Unicorn can’t figure out why they rave about Iris Murdoch so. Hackneyed plot. Horribly afraid “they” would tell me “That’s the point! Isn’t it a gas!” It’s a gothic so I suppose I should be pleased. Still, literary criticism feels like a moving target.
Sat next to Master Gwill in meeting but didn’t have anything to say to him after. He’s so weird. What is he? Man? Woman? Floating hair? God only knows. Miss Cluny telling the whole junior class how REVOLTED she is by the IDEA of sex! And she’s like twenty-five! Should we be under the instruction of these mentally disabled people?
Casey playing Francoise Hardy. The minute she went to the Tower to take a shower I put on good old honest Stones.
Tues. 9 Jan 68 Last Fr I slept from 7;30 to ll:15 AM! I was so tired I wrote “combinining” instead of “combining” on my poster! Slept through dinner and study hall – Casey covered for me with Wienand. Wienand unscary these days – she has troubles of her own. Senior class pretty certain she left Miss Womrath (who has a broken leg) stuck in the dumbwaiter behind Senior Stairs for an hour and a half. On purpose! As who would not, if given half a chance?
Have to finish my five posters and do some French sentences but bed still looks inviting – as inviting as Plumly sheets will ever be when you’ve forgotten to pick up your laundry two weeks in a row.
College boards an oppressive seal upon my future. Seems a grubby deal with the affluent race. Couldn’t I go to Geneva instead? You know, where there are snows, storms & sailboats? Blame my father for teaching me to be a noncooperator with life and blame Chocolates for Breakfast for teaching me to be a noncooperator with my dad. A little reading is a dangerous thing and a LOT of reading is profoundly liberating. Someday I will be dead and everything I touched and loved will be dead. What will college boards matter then? I’d rather have a boxed set of “Complete Works” so I’d better get started. I love the smell of ink.
Finished Huxley’s Crome Yellow. A charming antique.
Tues. 16 Jan 68 Rather afraid of Colette. She is praised for her “humanity” but her impassivity doesn’t seem especially “human” to me. So the “corpse” of society has maggots! According to her, all relations between the sexes a disaster. Where is the perfect love of Joseph for Sidonie, of Sidonie for baby Sidonie? In her memoirs Colette’s more honest. I guess sometimes life doesn’t satisfy us by being as horrible as it has a right to be. Some salmon make it up the stream.
Fatally shocked Mrs. Liveright by telling her I don’t want to take college boards because I only want to apply to theatre schools. Thought she’s die right there. Now I have to prepare auditions – ugh – 5 pieces in all, 3 contemp & 2 classical. Wonder if they’ll let me be a man in Pinter’s The Caretaker. I don’t think it matters what sex he is.
Lovely letter from Devon worrying about whether we are soulmates! He’s always certain he’s missing some bus or other. I love his letters. Sweet, but confounding.
Thurs 18 Jan 68 Still shuddering from the spell of Colette. Chained to her mother’s fireside she heard the horses coming for her down the echoing road…what is the mystery? What is the secret? I try to get at it by writing a story, Death of a Great Actress. She basically wastes her deathbed trying to please her audience with one last show. Can’t submit it to any class so showed it to Toss Sheffield editor of the lit mag, ProSem. He says No. Why not a Real story about Real things like cows in a field? Shows me horrible photos of bums & train tracks. Says that’s art. I’m aghast. Is he reacting to being kicked off the Religious Life committee for his suggestion that a school bus parked sideways at a drive-in would be a Religious Outing? (He says he’s had his best orgasms – so far – in a school bus. Yet maintains he is a virgin.) Curses be upon them; their little gods are blind. The sooner I blow this dive the better.
Casey & I going into King of Prussia to see Genevieve and shop on Saturday. I will wear my new fur hat & muff and buy a poster of The Rolling Stones. Anything to break the ennui. In the evening, the faculty play, Importance of Being Earnest. I tried to talk senior play committee into Strindberg’s Dream Play; Shawn voted me down! He is still angry about that dance in the marble tunnels under the school where the eyes of glass-caged birds stare us down. There I dared to dance with Blair: girls meant to be “strictly monogamous” here. (Boys are a different story.) Shawn says out loud I only want to be an actress so my “beauty” will be admired. Find a way to turn THAT into an insult! Casey comes in wet and panting from swimming, says her senior project’s been approved. Hope mine will be.
Sat 20 Jan 68 Give me the earth! Give me the world! Will there ever be a book in which I am born on the first page and die on the last? Where if I wanted to know what will happen to me I can just read ahead? Rattling back in the station wagon I was stupid with desire.
Alysse Aallyn 