Category: Joy of Writing

Inspired Pleasure
Diary of a Dancer – Last Post

Party Castle – Mon 9 July 79 – 7:50 PM

26 hours without T. Spoke to him last night and
again this afternoon. His acceptance of me is total, but it comes from
a position of strength and I have fears of being annihilated. Last night
I experienced hallucinatory states – drove home the wrong way – felt
something was happening to the car – re-experienced my swallowing
problem. Resolved my panic by starting a poem.
```
            Sat night Toss and I read the diary passages where 
```
we lose our “divinity” (his word) together. He cried and told me what he’d
felt like from his “side”, wanting to be male & in control, feeling helpless
& immature. Agreed if we had married then we’d be divorced now.

11:05PM Trying to read Oneness & Separateness. Not well suited to me
right now! Much as I want to be a mother the thought of a demanding
infant between me & T truly horrifying. Insane fears of rejection and
abandonment – why on earth should I trust this man? Called T at work!
Complete craziness. He reassured me we will have private alone time
a real vacation in the Berkshires. He said champagne arrived.
Called A & we discussed Mom & Dad – how they rewarded “self-sufficiency”
and responded to neediness coldly. Makes it hard to be honest now but
I hate this weirdly formal relationship with my own parents. Avril says there
is no retraining them.

Sat 14 July 79 – StormFall Farm – 11:15 PM
Oh, my God who would believe it – here I am 11
years later! Told T about my uncle last night as we made sexual
“confessions”. He was completely calm about it so it’s no longer a
Big Secret. He insisted I read his ex-girlfriend’s letters. She was a
Piper Cub to his Concorde, believe me. He kept carbons of his letters
to her!!!! Not very loving – downright fatherly. In a bad way.
```
        T’s actual father and he smoked cigars last night 
```
after dinner leaning against the mantel – they were so beautiful together
I felt stunned. Wrote a poem:

MY HUSBAND SMOKES CIGARS WITH HIS FATHER
BY CANDLELIGHT

Your profiles cut my heart like glass.
Go ahead. I’m a bleeder, I’ll
Still be here when you look back.
Your father is a silver-headed
Walking-stick; his elongation glows with far less heat.
You’re his nemesis; and he’s used to it.
The wooden floors washed cornelian
Perhaps by sunset
Perhaps by jealousy of girls who
Lost you; judged too soon the temper of your eyes
Wrote too many letters or
Not enough; the wrong kind
Addressed to the pale law student with
The cinderblock heart
Traveling commentator with the hundred
Dollar bill rolled inside his shoe,
The long-haired Pinkerton guard.
You learned to suck the cherries
Scarless from the tree; it’s no mean art
Broke a few at first; we all did.
By what right am I the winner?
You chose me in thirty seconds leaving
enough time to smoke another cigar.
```
            Everyone wants us to marry before May. But I feel 
```
I need some time in Kentucky first. Toss told me last night that on paper
he is a millionaire. Here’s luck, because if I keep on keeping on, I’m a pauper!
Tom’s grandmother’s response was “I am not surprised.”
She committed herself to reading my “thriller”.
At dinner he announced I’m the only woman he’s ever
wanted to marry. Tom’s dad said he thought he’d be a bachelor forever.
Privately we affirmed absolute sexual fidelity forever. Will we be able to keep it?

Plush Palace – Wed 18 July 79 – 4:55 PM
Boring day but good tips. Magnificent party at
The Third Edition last night for Avril’s birthday. (I didn’t care for Avril’s latest
“honey” Vigo but was furious at myself – she should date as widely as possible.
Maybe I was affected by T who is a snob and a purist.) Drinks, fruit & cheese –
then dinner at The Old Angler & Frank Langella in Dracula. (Not a good version.)
“Finances” discussion with T. He talked me out of
selling my car. I worry about being dependent on him but he says it will be fine.
Sounds to me like he is living on a knife’s edge – working part time, going to
law school, selling stock when he needs money (which he is loathe to do being
naturally frugal.) Too tired to make love last night but we started up in the
middle of the night – both asleep. Doors keep opening – then there’s
another one.

Castle – 1 PM – Thurs 19 July 79
So happy I can’t take it all in. Feel like someone
recovering from a long illness. Read Cheever’s Goodbye My Brother –
as satisfying as a novel. Last night we made love for hours and hours but
I just couldn’t come – kept holding his face saying, “Is it really you”? Dancing
with Barbara the Kikuyu and blonde Joyce of the day-glo costumes.

3 PM Party Castle – 24 July 79
First real friction last night – very predictably, about
my job. I’m irritated over the assumption that its sordid and brutalizing.
It is totally NOT the same as the dancers in DC!!! LIFE can be sordid and
brutalizing – I like this club because it ISN’T and I’ve tried others. We
discussed HIS job which also has its sordid and corrupting aspects.
Duh. His last girlfriend gave him shit about it (and refused to read the paper!)
so it’s a sore point. He should get it. There was a horrible moment when
he felt foreign and alien – but I expected it – too much intimacy always
causes a backlash. Trying to read Sisters & Strangers. The Victorian
novel is not dead.

Castle – 2 Aug 79 – Wed
Seems hopeless to TRY writing in this book – things
happen so fast – a month is an eternity. Last night celebrated our 11th
“divinity loss” anniversary – and a difficult anniv. It was. T came to see
me dance for the first time – with Avril so it wouldn’t be so bad but had
to leave he was so upset. He didn’t like me smiling! Like I’m ENJOYING
myself! The PLACE didn’t bother him (“reverent & reserved” were his
words) just my pleasure in movement beauty & freedom! Uh oh! He goes
back to my parents’ argument: IT’S TURNING MEN ON. So what? I get
impatient with that – that way lurks the “hajib”.

We have to educate each other. At the end the
atmosphere seemed cleared and we both cried with relief. Even though I
know my love is in the larval stage, I’ve never loved anyone the way I love
him. We had our last dinner at 641 E street – steak and wine, fruit, cream,
brandy. He asked me if there were any boyfriends’ the report of whose marriage “depressed” me (he was referring to my marriage) and I had to say no.

He opened a letter from Mindy, ex-girlfriend he was
thinking of re-starting a relationship with except she went to Nepal. A letter
I would have thought perfectly reasonable two months ago now strikes me as
ridiculous – an ounce of love is worth more than all these pages of barter.

I got a wonderful letter from Devon – he’s found
“another girl” (with three more in reserve I’m betting) and wishes me the best.
But T was upset because he closed with “I love you” a word NOT thrown
around in his world! (Mindy and Cindy don’t say it!) He says it’s the only
part of the letter he believes – “the guy is a total phony.” I said his only victim
is himself. We then made love on the floor on top of all our exes’ letters.
Gloriously. Got a poem out of it.

The Bridesmaid
Yes, I know everything
You’re my poor
Relation.
I know of your daddy’s desk where you
Fucked with formaldehyde fingers
I know of your lonely
Rosary of abortions
I repeat, I know everything.
We made love on your letters undisturbed
As two icons.
She’s imperfect
He told me.
Unseated by mortality
We must take our place
With the king’s crazy mistresses;
Brewing menstrual blood coffee
And mandrake root tea.
Swim away, little bridesmaid,
You’re too young
I’m in love
We’ve got
Too much in common ever to meet.
Need to see dentist & gyno, overhaul bike,
pay bills. T. meets Ralph Nader at 6. Lucky me snagging someone so
ambitious and competent.
```
Castle Mon 6 Aug 79
                God I need Maine. I love T but I need to get away
```
from him. I am used to being alone 4-5 hours a day. Starving for that.
Wonder how many otherwise perfect relationships break up for this reason!
T. is a little TOO driven. A little TOO single-minded. Makes me argue with him
– I can’t help it. For example: he talked about the “ugliness of the desert
landscape.” It’s not my “thing” either – because I grew up somewhere else
– but O’Keeffe taught me to see the beauty of it. What he REALLY meant was
“I don’t like it” but he raises it to a religious principle “New England is better.” That’s embarrassing.

I constantly feel he’s trying to “re-educate” me
– for example he didn’t like my turquoise silk pants because he “doesn’t like colors
that don’t appear in nature.” When shown an aquarium of tropical fish he doesn’t “count” them, their colors are “cultivated” and somehow “wrong.” The truth is bright colors make him nervous. So say THAT.

Sat night we went to an office party of his people (to
which I wore the aforementioned pants) and praised the house over-
extravagantly. (He does NOT like my yellow velvet furniture. I’m giving it
to Maureen.) “One good picture” per wall, beige Danish oldern furniture –
unbelievably boring and sterile. A chipped china frog would have done
the place a world of good. Could warn of decorating problems ahead.
His younger brother Dominic in town – when I
complimented his Mazda sports car and said I’d love to have one someday
Toss said “we’ll see” as if I could never buy one for myself! These
flare-ups are important signs. Must work on my self-value.

8 Aug 79
Packing for Maine came across D’s letters. Not a
“good” one among them. “Phoniness” is NOT his problem – that’s not
the right word – he’s not even “tone deaf” which was Bruce’s disorder.
I think it’s a “temperature” thing – he WANTS all passion sexualized
(not that he would ever admit it) and doesn’t trust intimacy, closeness –
as if he doesn’t believe – doesn’t want to believe it exists. He fears never
freeing himself from the physical so he cultivates a lonely “spirituality” but
he’s mired HIMSELF in it. So that’s pathetic. I take responsibility – he
probably felt hounded by my love. Thank God I escaped is all I can say. I’m
betting he was geared up to torture me for a lifetime.
I let T read my short story about his mother. That was
probably a mistake. (In it he’s planning her death!) He made some idiotic
writing class comments – I said it wasn’t THAT far along – but there’s
something appealingly mythic about this undigested mass. Worry about
it in ten years!
```
Shadowe Island ME – Mon 7:30 AM 12 Aug 79
            Toss just left on the ferry so I can relax. Wish this 
```
diary ended here – I need a New Life. But Not Yet. Rainy with a gray sea. Dogs stretched out snoring on the Greek carpet.
This visit has been everything I wanted, but the first
night was classic in its ghastliness. Guests showed up at cocktails and stayed
through dinner – unexpectedly – this mob scene making our announcement
a bit tougher.
Toss whispered, “Want to go through with it?”
I said, “Sure.”

We opened the champagne. The guests loved it
– Mom & Dad really surprised. Dad started talking about his difficult
father-in-law and how things would be different but flat out calling me a
liar when I chimed in about how Wilbur returned his prison mail (he told
me this story HIMSELF last Christmas!) I kept my temper – oh I must have
got it wrong. (I didn’t. We’d discussed it later ad nauseam.) Avril attacked
me later for bringing it up and “embarrassing” Dad – but he’d been TALKING
ABOUT HIS DIFFICULT FATHER IN LAW. Toss was surprised at Avril’s hostility
– used to her as an ally. He said, “They obviously think you’re invulnerable.”
Probably. If so they’re all idiots! I thought A was upset
about her own out-of-his-depth boyfriend, Vigo.
Anyway T rescued the evening bringing tears to Mom’s
eyes by talking about how he’d always loved me. M & D apologized &
congratulated us.

Sunday the four of us toured the island – trying to
get along with Vigo. (A says he has just one testicle as if that’s all that’s
wrong with him.) At dinner watched slides of my growing up – T tremendously
moved – then lobster dinner.

Tues 13 Aug 79 – 5 PM
T called last night on his WATS line and we talked ½
an hour. Says he used to play an “airport game” of “Looking for his future
wife” but thought “I AM married!” Wow!

Sun. 19 Aug 79
T’s letter came! Glorious. I do not feel worthy.
Tension between A & V – he teases her too much – we all try to ignore it –
tough to figure out how to call him on it without opening up hostilities. Hope
she dumps him. T on phone!
Ex-island boyfriend visits. A says he acts like he wants to knock me to
the floor and French kiss me to death. Seems accurate. Glad T missed him.

Party Castle – 11 PM 22 Aug 79
Glad to go to Maine and thrilled to leave it. Mary &
Debby dancing. Today’s been eventful – T got my letters and was
enormously moved. He says the worst mistake he ever made was burning
my teenage letters. We should try to exist without this phoning but can’t
help ourselves. Diet going well: I feel good. Struggling with a pile of thank
you letters.

Castle – 7 PM Fri 25 Aug 79
T. and I separated 11 days already – feels like
eternity. Avril announces she wants her own apt so I should put house
on the market. Maybe its easier. Flooding small publishers with Blood
Memory – feel pessimistic however. 3 poems accepted – 2 by Colorado
Woman, 1 by Friends Journal. Doesn’t feel as good as I’d hoped.
Struggling with new novel where I try to tell the truth about Devon. But
why should anyone want THAT God knows. Moving costs $400. I still think
I should sell my Fiat. Rotten crowd. Bored and jerking like a marionette.
Dancing with crazy Robin and Anne who never stops talking. She says
June’s in the hospital in a full body cast – will never dance again. 2 more
sets – praise God.
Trying to read about Lewis Carroll. A says Zach
threatening to show up. Don’t show up, Zach. I have a headache.

2:30 AM Sun 27 Aug 79 –
There is a God. Zach didn’t show. Long phone call
w/T then walk dogs to think about it. He is such a powerful person
it’s a little disturbing. Said he read my poem (The Duel) to his most
erudite friend who was very impressed. We wound up in another
argument about my dancing. I can’t bear his slurs so I referred to his
past drug use – WE’VE BOTH EXPERIMENTED, ALL RIGHT? He
wants me to live without money then complains about selling stock. I told
him it’s a “schizophrenic bind.” Didn’t mention how I have to PRY my stock
(that’s in my name) out of Mom and Dad.

Reading an idiotic romance – its very idiocy is refreshing.
I see why people get addicted to these. Like looking at maps when you’re lost.
Ok they’re only two dimensional but its SOMETHING!

Party Castle Tues 28 Aug 79
Last night dancing. Celebrate with chocolates but I’m too
enervated to appreciate it. Finished I’m Radcliffe, Fly Me. Ultimately a failure.
Fails to explore the inherent corruption of institutional structures. Horrible
night. $5 in tips – they are sick of the sight of me and I refuse to buy new
costumes. I am scared to death of being dependent on T. I think he could
reassure me but doesn’t know how because if I really needed him would I
be so desirable? Is a puzzlement.

I feel like I’m unfastening my suckers from Avril and grabbing
onto T! Up here without a net! Then I get mad at myself for being so infantile.
Can I just write and feel powerful? We’ll see! Doubts creeping in! This time
next week I’ll be in Kentucky! Well, I’ve written some good poems lately.
Self-confidence atrocity attack. Feel & look rotten. Realizing
the extent to which I was fertile soil for my parents’ anxieties.

3:30 Thurs 30 Aug 79
Everything done, ready to leave. I’m in shock. Crawled
into the bath with a vodka tonic and now I’m feeling better. Trying to figure
out how to approach parents for money. Maybe they could give me my own
stock as engagement present? Feel I won’t be able to disguise my rage.
This “I’m All Right Jack” no matter WHAT – is mighty convenient for them.
I realize its any sense of helplessness that triggers all this
rage NOT a good sign for T’s and my relationship. He can’t “make” me
independent! I must not succumb, or Plath-ize. (She sacrificed herself
to the gods of rage.) I’m doing this guy no favors handing him a woman
on the edge of breakdown.

4:25PM – My darling just called! Relief! He borrowed a truck from
somebody so although we’ll have to drive separately we won’t have
movers or returns to cope with. He’s driving it out here so I can sleep as
late as I like which I really need. Impossibly intense happiness. Peace & joy. Feel we have been standing in a dinghy trying to balance. Equilibrium is everything. The irrevocableness of marriage. My children mutely regard my choice. The hopelessness of explaining myself to any of T’s friends. Rain. Any excuse not to take a walk (T lives in bad neighborhood.) Feel like a girl in a gothic novel except for the constant sex which makes it a different kind of novel. Break with the past.

Reading Robert Ludlum’s perfectly ludicrous Matarese Circle. In 100 yrs people will wonder how we stomached this stuff. A. and I going to Olney theatre to see The Bat tonight.

TOMORROW STARTS WOMAN INTO WOLF Alysse Aallyn’s thriller about difficult marriages & split identities

…a thrill-ride, unique and highly recommended reading.” –Entrepreneur.com
“deceit, rape, fertility, imprisonment and a mother’s grief…as each piece of the tightly coiled fiction was loosed I waited for the revelation to come…she couldn’t imagine the extent of the deception until it was spelled out. Neither could I.” –MyShelf.com
“one of the most unusual mysteries I have ever read…I loved reading Woman Into Wolf … kept me on the edge of my seat right through the end…I highly recommend this novel to fans of crime mysteries that also
enjoy some extra spice in their stories.” – Readerviews.com
“a very fine psychological thriller…
the characters in this book are as bright
as crystal and as sharp as shattered glass. Aallyn not only can describe them to a neo-noun, she can make them speak
true to those characters.
Quite a talent…a novel every bit as worthy as her first.” ArmchairInterviews.com

“Satisfying as hell.” -Quoth the Raven
January 28, 2023
Inspired Pleasure
Diary of a Dancer

Tues 28 Mar 78
Extraordinary spiritual experience. A haunting. Someone
standing behind me in the empty house. I turned and no one was there but
power only increased. At first I was afraid – then felt a melting richness of love
– coming at me, into me from outside of me. I realized it was Jesus. Relief.
Confidence.
Of course afterwards I question it all over the place.
How could I be so certain? Maybe just an ordinary haunting by a peculiarly
loving ghost? Maybe a thing in my head? But I do have that memory of certainty
and bliss to cling to. Very powerful. It’s out there – somewhere.

Starlight Thu 14 Mar 79 – 10:00 PM
Started out as a very bad night – trying to dance myself
exhausted – then some guy tipped me a $50 and I ate an orange and now
I feel better. (Feeling so unbearably fat I bought diet pills. Then “dinner” of
cashews and wine.) Finished Prayerbook for a Skeptic – I liked it. Fortunately,
I brought along a ton of reading. Had to dump Joyce Carol Oates’ Do With Me
What you Will when I became disgusted with zombie heroine. NOT as good as
The Hungry Ghosts (but reminiscent of McCarthy’s Groves of Academe.) I’m
in the mood for something different. Not, however, C.S. Lewis’ The Four Loves
which is deeply annoying. Women are “unqualified” to be “true friends”. Isn’t that
the “know your place” argument?

Maybe what I need is Thos Merton’s, Seeds of
Contemplation. How to switch the physical into the spiritual
– that’s what I can’t figure out. Sexual longings intense – my body on fire.
No wonder monks beat themselves. Peace and concentration in the dressing room
– we are all doing doubles. Yvonne is fine. She is more than a match for
Stockley – saw through him without a problem. She just acts interested in all
men regardless. On principle. She says if you want to choose, you’ll have to
compare offers. So sensible. Tomorrow a day of cleaning & working in my study.

Sun. 18 Mar 1:50 PM.
Terrible nightmare about Usher Glayne. His face
melted showing the skull underneath – two hideous holes of darkness. The
world is fierce, cruel, we are all hobbled. Wake to astonishingly gorgeous day.
Worked on expanding short story Erin – cleaning away deadwood – it’s only
going to be 30,000 words but the hell with it. Can’t “produce” to “compete”. Want
to find the intrinsic shape buried within. The secret meaning. Letting it speak for
itself makes me happy.

Adoring Pilgrim at Tinker Creek. (Wish I had written it.)
Then it’s off to the library á la bicyclette for more theology books. Obviously,
I should worry more about Success and the fact that I’m dirt poor. But I have
arranged my life so carefully to do exactly what I want. Seems a shame to ruin it now.

12:30 PM Mon 19 Mar 78
It’s a problem that I don’t like Usher’s poetry. At least
he talks about sperm and chastity so presumably is not yet dead from the waist
down. He’s successful and I am not, so criticism from me sounds like sour
grapes. I call to thank him for the books; a woman who is probably his wife
answers. Should I be embarrassed? We are NOT having A Thing. Out in the
yard with dogs trying to read Teilhard de Chardin. Hot sun.

Café Rabelais, Wed 21 Mar 79 3:25 PM
Pleasant 3 hr lunch with Usher discussing literature
– he had to run away leaving me with my coffee. Tried to get me to pretend
to date his friend who is wheelchair bound. I have a feeling this was the
whole point of the lunch. I want to talk about literature, he wants to give
me away to his friends. I said No. But couldn’t I just make nice? I said no.
I’m not that kind of nice. I took revenge by asking if he lives with his wife.
He said “sort of”. Their child is “a problem”. No one can write within a mile
of this child. (Poor wife. Luckily her life doesn’t matter!) Usher seemed
taken aback by my questions so maybe I won’t hear from him again.
Good lunch, though. Very cuisine minceur – lots of different dishes and
you don’t feel full afterwards. (Rabelais would have been very
disappointed.) I top off my coffee with a glass of blond chartreuse.
At the Phillips, I saw a Goya that made me want to burst into tears.
Note to self: reorganize Courtney entirely around paintings. But which
artist would be perfect to express my anti-heroine?

4:20 PM Thurs 22 Mar 79
Today a model for what all days should be.
I’ve passed unscathed through the financial hysteria of closing, even
have money in the bank. Sparkling weather; spring is definitely here.
A day of sunbathing – the first are always the worst – skin a white blubbery
mass. Reading Kroll’s book on Plath – gives one furiously to think. She
wants to find everything in the poems themselves – and of course – that’s
exactly where it all is. Plath controlled by potency symbols.

I am sick of Devon’s letters – he must “shield his eyes”
against my radiance”. Come on. I can’t believe he doesn’t want exactly
the life he’s got. Always hard for me to believe that one can reject the
sprinkles, the cherries, the walnuts on the sundae. My family always
lectured me for being attention-seeking and voracious – so it makes
me shy to advance myself into anyone’s purview. Plath seemed prepared
to be loved for her accomplishments rather than her being – a scary
compromise.

Although I do recognize that I am trying to
experience my own “wholeness” through the eyes of another with all
the danger that implies. Trying to kick my sugar cravings.
```
            11:30 AM Fri 23 Mar 79
            More sunbathing – my own skin smells 
```
intoxicating to me. Like pool water, like beach sand, childhood.
Dixie – “God’s lioness” stretches out beside me, wind ruffling her fur.
I write a poem about dogs.

Sticks

Peter’s dog
Went on fetching sticks
Long after it was dead.
We’d find them on the stoop
Arranged In patterns
Pete would sigh and say
That’s poor old Monk all right
Still missing people games
Heaven won’t allow
```
            Add it to my ghost story book.
            Unexpected tear sheets in the mail from Usher 
```
– his reviews of Plath. He says he didn’t think it “professional” to disclose
that he knew her – that seems unprofessional to me. Makes his comments
seem underhanded: pale. He says diplomatically about my poetry that I’m a “rare being.” Hmmm.
```
            11:40 AM Mon 26 Mar 79
            Ezra Pound’s last years (Nigel Stock) make very 
```
depressing reading. I wish “survivors” seemed more enviable, considering the alternative is Death at the Height of Glory. The good news about a long life
is, you can accumulate quite a body of work – the bad news is your instrument
is increasingly deranged.
Dreadful schedule this week – 5 shifts including one
double. Present of $2500 “house gift” from Dad means I don’t need to accept
but I would have to quit and I’m not ready. These are the best places to dance
with the best managers – I don’t want to get thrown into some of the compromising situations I’ve heard tell of. Plus they just let me up and leave for vacation
whenever I want. Can’t play that hole card too often.
Spent all day wandering the mazes of literature
– look at Lillian Hellman – surely she’s getting very bizarre. She’s a “history
fixer” and no one wants artists doing that.
```
                3:20 PM Tues 27 Mar 79
                A bad day doesn’t make a bad week thank God.  
```
Got drunk with Maureen last night, (too much sherry in our tea) but with
careful diet and lots of sleep I bounce back. Anne Lindbergh’s Flower &
Nettle a great improvement on previous volumes. Tantalized by Rosamond
Lehmann, who ought to be my next project. I AM HAVING ALL MY HAIR CUT OFF MAY 1!!!

Starlight 8:30 PM Thurs 29 Mar 79
Joselle plies me with Chablis – I succumb to get her
to spill her secrets – but her secret seems to be she’s thinking of turning
lesbian and her gaze on me seems somewhat fixed. Or am I imagining things?
Two glasses of wine on an empty stomach and I’m a goner. God knows I long
for the flesh – those “brown motherly furrows” as Plath calls them are in need of plowing. Would I have to exclaim over her body the way men exclaim over me?
It just doesn’t sound fun. If only she were less female. More boyish. Order a cheeseburger to snap myself back to reality. This is a dangerous world to be
hungry in.

Reading Randall Jarrell’s Third Book of Criticism.
I enjoy him enormously.

11PM – Shank of the evening. I am dancing superbly
but tips very bad. The approach of tax time or are they simply seeing too much
of me? The latter, no doubt. Went to the health club today but I won’t renew
when my experimental month is up. I was seduced by their sauna and masseur but need something closer to home.
```
                Starlight 2:30 PM Sat 31 Mar 79
                Hot day – sun behind clouds – the sky is violet 
```
and the air intense – looks like rain, but I’m overflowing with joy and luck
and good fortune. Just ate an enormous chef’s salad and two cups of coffee.
All I needed for returned confidence was one big tipper and a non-suicidal letter
from Devon. (He’s been depressed, is all.) Obviously it will never work out
between us. We would be in competition each trying to get the other to play
caretaker. I need too damn much care. It would be madness. Discuss this over
vod & tons with Avril. Invited back to Mulberry Island, but also got a card to the
Bullets opening (which I prefer.) Reading The World, the Flesh and Father
Smith. Dancing very well – what a pity I’m “sculpting in snow”. Feeling in
tune opens a clear lens to the soul.
```
            9PM Tues 3 Apr 79
            Buying spree with A.  Bought a pile of silk shirts and 
```
a satin whipcord coat & skirt (black). Immortal piece I should still be wearing
thirty years from now. We had a lovely lunch at Third Edition – reminiscing
about our lovers’ bodies – what we treasure most – I vote for the flock of
milky-white scars above Devon’s buttocks. Aaah. Intimations of glorious,
irreproducible mortality. I am also irate at not hearing from Usher and even
more irate at myself for being irate. He is obviously a no go so what’s wrong
with me? I think I may be like those explorers expiring for lack of vitamin C.
Need to force myself to eat raw blubber just to save my life. It’s a wonder anyone survives.
Reading 3rd vol David Garnett’s autobiog – what an
unlikeable human being.
Car pooped out on us will cost $250 to fix.
```
            Starlight 9:15 PM Wed 4 Apr 79
            I hate wasted days.  Drove all the way to White Flint 
```
Mall to pick up my rhinestone glasses – a pin broke on them – and all
the way back. Grrr.
Not liking Robt Frost’s letters and Christina Stead’s
House of Nations is even harder to get into. But things looking up on
diet front. Fewer binges. 5 days of rain, and a power mogul in the
audience who keeps instructing me on how to please him. I curtsy down
to the floor very gracefully and pretend I don’t speak English.
```
            Starlight 8:25 PM Sun 8 Apr 79
            Burst of freedom rescues me from inertia. My best 
```
moments are intense enjoyment of the present: must write and examine
everything. Revel in my own growth – including comprehension that Usher
Glayne can’t be my crutch. Lost 4 lbs eating apples and feel good – refuse
to take a guy’s tip because he licked his lips at me. Yuck. Jervaze came into
the bar last night, dragging his shame-filled self across the floor. I couldn’t
resist suggesting he come home with me – he was so excited – love poured
out of him like a dizzying force. I browsed greedily on his beautiful body. It
was like plugging into an electric current. He moaned, “You’re so good to
me” but when my orgasm came it was just a little pop – uncorking a bottle of
stale champagne. So goodbye to all that. Masturbation is really a lot less
trouble.

Out to China Syndrome movie tomorrow with Avril.
John Middleton Murray is a blubberer. Usher sent me a poem entitled “I
dream of starting off with you” which was obviously not written for me. Took
her name out and slammed my name in. What could go wrong? What a pity
we leave choice up to men when they so clearly have no idea what they are
doing.
January 24, 2023
Inspired Pleasure
Diary of a Dancer
```
2 PM 15 Feb 79 – Thurs
            Sleeting out. Feeling restless the way I do before I write 
```
a new book. Hauled out Bride & Wolves for a rewrite – tremendously
impressed with my own talent! Development always was my problem (as in life).
Greene’s Human has an odd, unfinished feel. Reviews did not prepare me for it
in the least. I think they reviewed Greene rather than his book. More impressed
by Margot Ruddock’s letter to Yeats in Ah, Sweet Dancer (which could be
retitled Dirty Old Man.) She compares the “fickleness” of men to the fickleness
of God! Can’t blame her if God insists on being male. Read Howatch’s Call
In the Night as a purgative. Going to see Country Wife tonight at U. Of Md.
Usher sent me strange Valentine collage of Playboy photos, couples kissing, etc.
Avril says “I give up on him. It’ll be a miracle if he can ever say what he wants.”

Starlight Sat 18 Feb 79 – 11:10 AM
Waiting for my bangs to curl at the start of a
double. Had a nightmare where Devon performed marriage ceremony between
me and some other guy! Right up to the end I kept thinking he was going to
“rescue” me. Naturally he did not. “Psychic” about him as usual I got a letter
saying he’s busy with this year’s Ladies Ski Team meaning he’s got 12 girls
passionately in love with him and he plans to take his time to savor the field.
Vengeful poem results:

Cloverleaf
Some roads lead nowhere;
They’re my favorites.
I held my breath while
You drew my face in
Blinding strokes and
Creamed my mouth with curling lines
Destroyed one picture; then another.
Left at dawn while I
Ran downstairs in circles, calling
Raging, spending
Nights without you,
No blue thigh to guard
My sleeping heart while yours looks out
To gauge the coming storm.
Now I’m trapped in cloverleaves
Sentenced to school figures
By endless angry judges.
Every face I paint is yours; balked by
An enervating past
Of unlived lives.
Open up the chilly ruffles
Of my breasts
To beauty; yours and mine and your
Strange spine’s;
A body so much lighter
Than the mountain that you loved
The course you learned
Much better than you learned me.
Overconfident that
you’ll come back
I float across the powdered snow;
In bird-winged silence
all-enveloping
Unless I’m
Lost and frozen like my heart?
```
            2 PM – Jervaze came in!  Ducked away momentarily 
```
from his fiancée. Glad he didn’t bring her in as I am having my period and feeling
particularly fat and grumpy. My poor body’s been unloved for a month now and
is falling to pieces. Still it was an enormous pleasure to see him. Someone
for whom I apparently remain The Holy Grail.

Tues. 6:45 PM 20 Feb 79
Struggling against a vast undifferentiated depression.
Going to treat it with diet and meditation. Reading Tapie’s Richelieu and Louis XIII.
History a great cure for all who feel unlucky. Even being an aristo was
no picnic. Avril accepted for both of us to go to Aunt Frederica’s party on
the shore where she’s rented a house. Hitchman’s bio of Dorothy Sayers
very bad book. Sayers wasn’t “in love” with Lord Peter, she was him!
Will-to-power and dream logic. Trying to “bind” her two halves together
when she made him marry Harriet. Had to re-read Sayers’ wonderful
Unnatural Death (my favorite) to get the taste out of my mouth. Ah. Such
pleasure. Painting till I’m exhausted then long walks with dogs through pretty
Queens’ Chapel Manor. Haven’t seen a neighborhood this satisfying
since Chevy Chase.

Starlight Wed 21 Feb 79 – 11:45 AM
Going through a phase where work feels like
being beaten. Think it’s because no one is caring for my body. Will warmer
weather turn the tide? I love my house but Marc Kramer is wrong – home ownership
NOT the cure-all promised. The only difference I can see is I can no longer
mess around financially. Nose permanently to grindstone.
Reading John Dickson Carr’s Blind Barber. It is so
awful. Why does anyone like him? Pass my time sewing red rhinestone
buttons to my pink satin blouse. Yesterday clutch cable snapped – pedal
became a dummy. Fortunately I was right NEXT to a gas station. Had to
take a taxi home. Financial nightmare – more doubles to get my car out of
hock? Turns out it’s not expensive. A. gives me ride to work, Eddy gives
me ride to car. Leaning heavily on inner life. Efforts to live “outwardly” all
seemingly result in hideous failure. Shopping list: pasties, carpet tape, stockings,
cotton balls, liquid plumber, string bikini.

Sat. 24 Feb 79
Devon turned 30 today. Great house party at bungalow
Aunt F rented on Mulberry Island. Interesting artist named Stockley there
with an exciting mind but unworkable body. Fun to talk to though. He wears
a hard hat and welds. Avril asked out by handsome redhead named John.
Fingers crossed. Jervaze called to say he broke off his engagement. Uh oh.
Macmillan says my novel “not their cup of tea”. Very sneery.

Starlight Fri 2 Mar 79 – 2 PM
Bought a pair of yellow overalls to write in. Hadn’t realized
how thin I’ve gotten – I look fantastic. House (closing) magically lifts depression
when it cost $900 less than I expected. I was fully ready to write these nice people
a rubber check – Thank God that’s not necessary.
Instead of wasting away in debtor’s prison, I get to compare
myself to Sylvia Plath. What if in a panic, I married a party boy who fails to love T
he Real Me? Wait, I did that. But I didn’t stay to wrestle with him and now I’m free.
Could be much, much worse. Hang in there and go it alone. See it as a strength.
Trying to apply for grants. There’s an art form all by itself. Avril’s redhead working
out nicely. I don’t like his comments about his mother though. Is satisfactory
sex possible with men who hate their mothers? Could be massive Red Flag.

12:35 PM Tues Mar 6 – 79
Sit down to chat with diary over lunch – can’t eat
because scolding letter from agent gave me a stomachache. Didn’t I know it was
unethical to allow several agents to consider me at the same time? I do see
it’s a very beneficial for the agents to drag this process out so they end up
doing all the choosing and not you. But since she’s the one I want I can’t say so.
Play dumb, promise to Be Good in Future and throw my affairs entirely into
her hands and let her speak for me. Silence frees the artist from “servile
bondage to the world”, says Sontag.
Letter from Devon saying he really respects me for
buying a house (the opposite of what Mom thought would happen. He says
it makes me more interesting. Or he’s just less scared I will show up on his
doorstep.) Also he says “it’s been a bad ski season” and asking particularly
about the men in my life, closing, ”I love you Alysse. Our relationship is the
most important thing to me.” Whew! What are the odds that every girl on that
team would turn out to be a lesbian? Or were they fooled by his aura of untouchable
purity? Most girls would consider it a challenge but some lack the three hours
necessary to defrost him. Still, they’re all out of their minds not to give him a
whirl I must admit. Interesting how very much we each fear the other’s loss.

11PM Starlight Wed 7 Mar 79
Very down night. Only $70 so far. Need $600 to
keep my bills current. Bryony wailing because the state took her children away.
Sometimes seems like the pain of the helpless is smothering the world. Tony’s
the bouncer tonight and he’s all for letting the men stick their bills down the girls’
G-strings! No thank you. Wait till Gentleman Randy hears about this. Reading a bad
German mystery – the mystery being why he wrote it, how it got published and
why I’m reading it. Fantasizing celebrating spring by getting all my hair cut off.
Hmmm. Jean Seberg? Could be sexy. Wish I’d brought Kafka’s Letters. Making
huge floor pillows for my housewarming party. Longing to sink into classical music
& bubble bath, followed by Oleg Cassini sheets & cup of diet cocoa. Having my
own house really is a dream come true.

Mon 20 Feb 79 – 12:20 AM
Such a depressing party I got drunk just to be “out” of it. Avril
& Ben making out in a corner all evening. Usher brought me books and a bird of
paradise flower, Stockley gave me a beautifully framed tiny drawing of crustaceans
but then cancelled that by attempting to corner me all evening. He covers up the
soul he doesn’t believe in with a repellant fleshy brutality – life is kill and conquer –
eat or be eaten. Honestly, now I’m scared of him. Afraid to even argue with him
for fear of launching something irreversible. Luckily, he next fastened his lasers on
Yvonne. Poor Yvonne. Save yourself, I should say. Plan to ask Paz to schedule
me for just two nights. On a self-dare, I sent my poem about Rossetti’s model to Usher.

LIZZIE SIDDALL: The Woeful Victory

Be still or I can’t paint you.
It is evening and
I almost recognized you. Who are you
Fair one? Your mouth is stuffed
With poppy hair
Fate coils between your breasts
Like snakes. But
Your tongue’s torn out.
You must be the echo of my thoughts.

(I am the motionless cradle.)

Your flesh takes fire from my setting sun.
Can you free me, O Lady of the Sundial?
My eyes are growing dim.

(Perfect love’s not found this side of heaven.)

I shall paint you vermilion
Butcher nightingales and use their tongues for brushes
Melting foil & verdigris
To the tune of Canterbury bells.
Stay awhile, Fair one.
I almost thought you spoke.

(I am the face that rises from the pool
to drag the drinker deep.)

I will bury you in manuscripts, I will
Visit when there’s time. Someday
We might marry, but
I am not whole, dear lady.
I am not myself.
Who are You?

(I am thyself. What hast thou done?)
January 23, 2023
Inspired Pleasure
Diary of a. Dancer
```
1:45 PM Wed Nov 9 –78
            I’m in need of a “carte d’identite” so I can look at it 
```
and figure out who I am. Read the first draft of The Speechless and the
accompanying comments of my college writing teacher. She bollixed it
up. Her deconstructive destruction seems purposeful – I don’t believe she
didn’t know how good it was. Can I save it? I know I should work on one
thing at a time but apparently my mind doesn’t operate that way.
In the mail a letter from a publisher offering to read
my poetry – for $50.00. Took me longer after that to sink to the necessary
depth to get some writing done. And it still probably wasn’t any good.
```
    Thurs night – Plush Palace – Nov 9 - 78
            Working tonight with Roulette and Jerry – wonderfully 
```
hilarious old hands. We laugh until we fall over.
“How Deep Is Your Love “ is throbbing through the walls, Maureen’s got me in a costume-trading whirl and Roulette is so heavily
into the Jack Daniels she is showing everyone pictures of her dog. (A
Doberman. Who looks exactly like every other Doberman I have ever seen.)
Suddenly I’ve acquired a whole new dancing wardrobe. But will it make me a
new person? That’s what I want to know.
With a view to listening to Marc Kramer for once in my
life because he’s rich and I’m not. Avril and I went house-hunting. The trigger
was a wonderful broken down old house in College Park (complete with
white pillars) so I called to ask the price. Real estate agent sucked me
effortlessly in, entering into our quest with gusto. I am almost 28 years old
and although I don’t make much money – apparently I make enough. The
house was hopeless. It needs $50,000 on the roof alone. But the agent has
plenty others to show us.
Bizarro letter from Ryder. He said “after that visit I
thought you’d never trust me again” and “I bow down to you.” Which visit?
The one where I allowed him to give me a massage? I refuse to inquire further because that’s exactly what he wants me to do. He is just needled that I have so obviously given up on him. Why am I attracted to these weirdos? I know the
problem between us is that I want a mutual relationship and he wants a pack
animal. I want to be with the person I love and “love” makes him want to
run away (because it makes him feel “out of control”). But where is the
fun in telling him this? He couldn’t use the maze clue even if I gave it to him.
So I write a short note telling him I’m busy with Zach and Buck. That should
fix his jealous wagon.
I didn’t tell him about the hours of sexual bliss Buck and
I shared last night! Buck is warming up nicely – invited me to his parents’ house
for the weekend – they will be away. Unfortunately, he snores horribly – sounds
like he’s strangling. A by-product of motorcycle racing. Needs that cartilage
cleared out with a vacuum hose. Trying to read Rumer Godden’s Breath of Air. Boring and unctuous. Put it down for Dear Scott/Dear Max, which is of course delightful.
```
    Mon 13 Nov 78
            Busted, wasted day. Avril called to borrow $90 so she can 
```
pick up el Diablo from Courtesy Motors – fortunately I had it so we went to bank,
then car dealer. Then I tried to get an oil change but they don’t do Fiats. Took long enough to tell me they don’t have the right wrenches. Real estate agent phoned
to say I qualify for special FHA loan. I had to call my landlord because apparently I don’t have heat.
Avril is having lots of trouble with Brady who is alternately
aggressive and suicidal. I think he is more trouble than he’s worth but admit he has very pretty, very long, long thighs. He and Buck went to high school then trade
school together – Buck exhibits a grisly picture of them at their prom with their
dates. B’s date is his soon to be ex-wife. Buck was also B’s best man but I was
spared those photos.
Zachary asked me out next Fri night but I’d rather be with
Buck – but if he doesn’t ask me in time I’ll tell him I’m ”going out with the girls.”
That’s what he tells me he does; “goin’ out with the guys” – so presumably this
is an OK excuse. If he says what girls I’m in a bit of a pickle. But I’m a writer –
I‘ll invent some. It can’t be anyone he knows. Fortunately he has no idea what
a hermit I really am.
Still stuck in the childhood of my novel. Can’t wait for
them to grow up. Re-read Le Ble en Herbe which helped a lot. (Aaaahhhhh…
Colette!) Off to Crown Books with A – then White Flint Mall for Christmas
shopping – had coffee at The Perfect Cup. Nice outing. I bought wonderful
rhinestone cat’s eye glasses. Saw Bergman’s Autumn Sonata – moving.
```
    Mon 27 Nov 78 - 1:35 PM
            Time to write in this neglected diary while waiting to have 
```
my snow tires mounted. This threatens to blow my entire day. They also had
to replace a fuse that apparently blew in the middle of a rainstorm so that my
wipers stopped working.
Visit with Mom and Dad very touchy. (They are staying
with Peter’s mother Rita and everyone’s slightly angry I’m not dating him
and I can’t narc on his Secret Relationship.) Mom casually accepted an
invitation for all of us to go out to dinner on a night I was going out with
Zachary, so I said I would have to invite him and got a tirade on my thought-
lessness. Then I pointed out she was the thoughtless one assuming I didn’t
have any plans. She apologized, I apologized. It blew over.
Then Avril had the nerve to ask Rita if she could
smoke – Mom exploded just as if it were her house. (Rita said No. She’s
trying to quit.) M & D piled on me – I’m insane to contemplate buying a
house – even if the mortgage would only cost what rent already costs.
Their real objection is that I might “choose wrong” – somehow encumber
myself with a property that will make me even less attractive (if that were
EVEN possible) to A Decent Man. Not even dragging in Marc Kramer’s
sacred name as Advisor helped at all.
Dad did come see a few houses with us. (We’ve seen
16 so far.) He had to admit it isn’t a bad deal as long as I can get that FHA
loan. Zachary behaved very well around M and D – the “Official Boyfriend”
– but of course he owed me. Fortunately the evening was over before they
could find out too much about him (or he offered them drugs) so his
cover wasn’t blown.
Conversation at dinner very boring. Psychology 101.
“Why don’t people say what they want?” “Why don’t people try to get what
they want?” “Why do people lose interest in what they say they want?” (Rita’s
going through her third divorce.) Since no one seems the least bit interested
in the complexities of achieving Actual Gratification by attempting to mesh one’s constantly evolving desires with those of someone else I can only shake my head sagely and flee at the first opportunity.
Mom and Dad actually tackled these questions and
struggled with them like a pair of marriage counselors. The truth is Rita’s ex
has found somebody else and she shouldn’t be so surprised – they were both
married when she hove onto his horizon.
Got a very stoned phone call from Zachary last night – he
was over at Rod’s and “something” was making him horny. (I’ll bet I can guess.) Fortunately, I managed to convince him he was in no state to drive – leaving him
prey to Rod, probably. Well, we all have to take our chances in this life.
Saturday night with Buck unsatisfying – he claimed his
non-breathing nose is preventing him from going down on me. I let him know his account is in arrears and he will have to do something about it sooner or later. He
chose later and fell immediately asleep. So I left. I’m not sure I will ever get to
Stage 2 with this guy. He made a point of tracking me down at Avril’s apt, calling to apologize. A and I saw 3 more unacceptable houses – but the real estate agent
says there are plenty more. Fun to be in a buyer’s market for a change.
```
    Sat 7 pm Plush Palace – 2 Dec 78
            Just recovering from some tremendous bout of food 
```
poisoning – must have gotten it from the Sleazy Restaurant Around the Corner
– but all I had there was a takeout salad. Still, it could have been the dressing.
No fever. I was throwing up all Wednesday. I called A to drop by after class but
she was so worried she came right over. I finally was able to keep down some
chicken soup. Then we went to Bethesda in the eve to see Zach’s Gordon
Lightfoot impersonation – I had a little wine to make me feel better. (Free
drinks always taste best.) Finally finished the childhood section but I don’t
feel good about it. Novels don’t want you to do anything in life but write
them all the time. I am only at p. 133.

I am already exhausted and needing a vacation.
Cheered myself up by wrapping Christmas gifts – baroque music and Victorian
gift-wrap did it for me. I especially love those chubby Victorian cherubs who
couldn’t become airborne without at least two brawny stagehands hauling
on a mighty hawser. Reading My Mother/Myself in between boogie-oogie-oogying. Dinner party with A, Buck, and A’s old boyfriend who happened to be in town. We ate stuffed Cornish game hen, played Clue and went dancing at
the Bastille.
```
    Thurs night – Plush Palace – 11:30 PM – 7 Dec 78
            Manic night – a dancer literally dragged off the stage by 
```
the police because her roommate is accusing her of stealing $3300 of furniture.
Thank God she came back so I only had to dance one extra set. Wed night
we found a house! It has 5 bedrooms, 3 bath perfect in every way except that
that it’s packed into a neighborhood of like houses so there are absolutely no
vistas. But the price is right. We made an offer but they accepted another offer
– ours is the “backup contract.” So, we still might get it.
```
    Thurs am 1:07 14 Dec 78
            Finished the novel in an insane burst of speed – 10 
```
pages a day for four days. Now I have to calm down and see what I’ve got.
I still feel pretty good about it – but probably reading it will depress me.
And Devon will probably never speak to me again since he is in it. His
Christmas card says I am a genius and he is in awe of me. Hey, it could
be true. My publisher’s statement arrived. $50. $50. There goes that Feb
vacation. Pretty sure I need a new agent. What did “stooping to genre”
achieve exactly? I didn’t get a living wage. I didn’t get a publisher,
agent or editor receptive to my work. It’s like I’m starting over – again.
On an up note: looks like we might get the house! It is SO perfect.
Fenced in yard and everything.
```
    Mon 18 Dec 78 – Plush Palace 6:30 PM
            Horrible day. Everything that can go wrong has. 
```
Mailing off mss wildly expensive. Drove Avril around because the Gremlin is
in the shop again. Reading Bodyguard of Lies – history having its usual
soothing effect. (Everything much worse for everybody else.) It looks like
I will have to work two jobs in Jan to pay for this house. Maureen the
costume designer wants to rent a room in our house – that would help.
She wouldn’t be a problem – getting a masters in textiles at U. of M so
not the usual flaky personality that finds itself onstage. Concluded I really
have to break up with Z. It won’t be hard – just stop seeing him.
One good thing did happen – I was lying in bed at
1:30 AM nodding off over Bodyguard – phone rang. I almost didn’t
answer it – how could it be anything good – but I thought it might be Avril
with some emergency. It was Jervaze! He’s coming back. He’s been
offered “crew leader” position in his old job at the Pentagon with a $5,000
bump. He wants to celebrate by taking me out – we can go to Clyde’s
where we partied for his birthday last year. I hung up feeling good –
until I thought this will give me a reason to give up Buck. There’s no way
Jervaze won’t find out about him. Ugh. Confrontations. Unless I can keep
J out of club? Doesn’t seem possible that he is off the sauce. Must make
sure he gets a place of his own – he will be living with his brother to start
with. He sounded sober, I’ll say that for him.
```
    Plush Palace Tues night 19 Dec 78 - 7:30 PM
                Wiped out my savings account to pay bills – well, 
```
that’s what it’s for. We got the Queens Chapel house! Target date
for the move is March 1. Avril and Maureen very excited. (It really is
huge. 5 beds, 3 bathrooms, divideable into 3 suites. Perfect. Huge
kitchen, dining room and fenced in yard.) I contemplate writing a book
of poems called The Lives of Dancers. Trouble is, I’d have to tone it
down to make it believable. Got one poem already – Impure Women.

IMPURE WOMEN

Between my breath and your breath
Beneath the phallic philanthropic statues on
The volcanic dragstrip of my city
The wounded in the scorched earth policy
Of love
Muster, linger, await
Embodiment.
Pills to make their hearts race faster have
Stopped their faces dead as clocks
That witnessed crimes unspeakable
To mothers versed in tabloid gore.
Who will bring them
Absolution now that I am gone?
In the fresh wounds of a
Seconal summer
The stopped children meet
And kiss.

Is it the approach of Christmas that’s bringing all
the old boyfriends back to me like elephants to a boneyard? Ryder
called. Marc Kramer refers to me his “dream girl” and can’t get me
out of his mind and we’ve been out what – three times? Buck gave
me my present at the club – he looked adorable – bath goodies.
Don-the-Patent-Lawyer who’s been hanging around the club lately
asked me out for New Year’s eve. I had to refuse because Merrill
and husband will be in town but I told him to try later. He seems interesting
– like to get to know him better. Mature. Always trolling for someone
presentable to take Home to Mom.
January 21, 2023
Inspired Pleasure
Diary of a Dancer Slash Poet Slash Novelist
```
            10:45 AM Sat 29 May 78
            Woke up this morning muttering about betrayal and
```
failure. Seems my life separates into two phases: pre and post ex-husband Bruce.
Pre-Bruce I was such an innocent – I think “goober” is the descriptive
expression. Schools should not let these pathetic characters out – but
we were so eager to roam free. There is no savagery to which people
will not descend to protect their egos. On top of all this, we have to battle
M & D who, of all people, SHOULD be in our corner. They’re pissed we’re
not more successfully infantilized. Determine NOT to do this to my kids.
Reading Hodgson’s Carnacki The Ghost Hunter (1900) heartbreakingly
dull. And it could have been so good – a combination of Gerard Manley
Hopkins and Sherlock Holmes is just what the doctor ordered.
```
            3 PM Tues 30 May 78
            Struggled through 2 bad pages on Demon that will 
```
have to be rewritten, then finished Sylvia Townsend Warner’s tragic
At the Stroke of Midnight. This beautiful short story almost finished
me. Yesterday Italian food made me & Avril logy – we tried going dancing.
Horrible place, bad band. (Tramps). Predatory males (who spoke bad English)
very difficult to get rid of.
Saw Greek Tycoon instead – worse even than we’d
been led to believe. Came home and read two bad detective stories by “good”
writers. Guilt-inducing cash from M & D – makes me feel inadequate but I
need it. Means I can buy new vac clnr AND summer dresses. Call Peter
like a dutiful child – this whole affair is tinged with doom. Thank God he is
“busy” with his Secret Married Woman (who turns out to Someone Big
in the Democratic Committee)! His parents and my parents should
just date each other. Dogs need walking and I need to check on
vandalism at abandoned house.
```
            2 PM Sat June 2 – 78
            Trouble opening latest letter from Devon – I had 
```
the weirdest premonition it would a marriage proposal! It was indeed
very loving – he has hit a summit of boredom and restlessness for which
I am doubtless not the cure. Praised my novel for its “mystical sense of altered consciousness.” Wow. I like that better than “brilliant satire”. A & I went to
Dillards concert at Cellar Door – they are so charming. Reminiscences of
seeing Bruce play there. First act was Scarlet Ribera and Black Rose Band –
liked her even better. Some attractive men, but casual sex seems to raise more problems than it solves. A & I agree that after the “healing” comes the “strengthening” period. Coltsville Community College asks me to teach seminar on gothic
novel – of course I said yes. Poor misbegotten bastards. But at least I
like watching the birds stuffing themselves at my feeder.
```
            Plush Palace Mon 5 June 78
            Perfect day – interesting stirrings inside – feel I am on 
```
the edge of some sort of breakthrough. Yesterday fresh sweet corn and
turkey salad at A’s, then we watched B Stanwyck’s Double Indemnity
on TV. Classic Chandler. “Aren’t you going 75 in a 30 mph zone?”
After that I dressed up in my satin 3-piece suit to see Helmut Berger at
the Kennedy Center. (Sigh). What a honey that man is. Then sent Bruce
a letter with the Unwelcome News that I am “estopped” from filing for divorce
in the state of Maryland because he made me sign a “no contest” paper
and then dropped his suit! Paralysis!

I know he was hoping to get out of this without paying
(his last girlfriend proffered enough cash to get us this far then predictably
abandoned him as soon as his True Colors became apparent.) Maybe
I can establish residence in Virginia and start all over again.
Had an eye appt in Bethesda so went to that library
where I’ve never been and got a TON of interesting books. Treasuring
Patricia Beers’ Reader, I Married Him.
```
            Plush Palace Mon 12 June 78 – 7:00 PM
            Horrible experience last night at the Garland Dinner 
```
Theatre – we were seated with some couple where the male was obviously
severely mentally ill –she fed him 1,000 pills throughout dinner to keep
him from exploding. We could have “complained” and demanded to be
seated elsewhere but it just seemed so cruel. Avril & I used every bit of
our mother’s otherwise completely pernicious training and tried to act as if
nothing was happening.

I’m trying to muster up the discipline to unplug my
phone till six – I’m getting too involved in A’s job hunt. She told me to
Butt Out. She’s right – I should just write. What the hell am I thinking
being somebody’s “mother”? We have too much of a mother already –
for both of us. Martin Green’s Children of the Sun a survey rather
than the illumination I’d hoped for. Now I need a real Brian Howard bio.
```
            Fri – Day One – 16 June 78
            Phone awoke me at one am – no one there.  Got back 
```
to sleep by sketching out plot for novel where woman hires P I to find out
who on list of names has been sending hang-up calls. Major Names of a
Lifetime. Yesterday excellent day – haven’t known such joy since April.
Sunbathing reading Ada Leverson & Her Circle – delicious. (Unfortunately
she was a bit of an idiot.) Cleaned entire house yesterday so when I got
back from dancing it was immaculate. (The dogs – who had been outside
in the yard – messed it up again immediately.) Read Jane Rule’s excellent
Lesbian Images at work. She’s dumb about Colette and Bowen but I
agree with her that loneliness and bad experiences are the enemy, not
homosexuality. But I don’t think I’m up for a lesbian experience – women
too emotionally demanding. They do too much work (men do too little).
Hideously unsatisfactory choice – like having to choose between a ton of
salt or none. Better to go without.
Peter called to say we “ought to get together”.

Seemed very halfhearted to me. Bet he wants to tell his mother he’d made
an effort. I doubt we can surmount this fundamental lack of attraction (we both
prefer blondes) but Mom thinks just the opposite. Marry people you’re NOT
attracted to so you won’t be “swept away” by “hormones” and you can make
“reasoned decisions”! Is that pitiable or what? Avril says she’s LYING
because EVERYBODY lies about sex. Suggested Mom handed Dad her wet underpants on their very first date. (At the ballet? I don’t see it.) Mom has
also said the worse you are at sex the more likely you are to get a proposal.
Does this make sense to you? Ryder’s marriage (under these exact principles)
lasted 2 yrs and he wanted to be anywhere but home.
```
            Plush Palace – 22 June 78 – 3 PM
            Second double this week.  I hate them but I need 
```
$80 for typewriter, $300 to pay back A, $100 to quiet the utilities people,
$200 Burnside Inn and at least $200 “Mad Money”. You know, in case I go
mad. It could happen, especially the way things are going. Need extra cash for Vacation, which I approach as if it were a Sacrament. Secaire gets written
NEVER under this regime. Oh well. There’s always poetry.

SYLVIA PLATH: The Festering Weight

I know you deceived me
With the bald-headed lady
My true kin;
My mother renounced
Your swollen giblets in my name.
See? I bleed tulips.
It’s happened twice before; I seed the earth
With children, little miracles.
I give them their inheritance – a
Carriage full of baby dung
Flung
Down the coal hole
To remind me of you.
Pearly maggots bee–like
Suck my lip to
Scent the fault that clings to me:
Heredity.
This enemy’s face shifts cleverly;
First male, then jew, then
blurred and unfamiliar, genitalia
like narcissi.
I reserve the right to reject
This choiceless life.
See? My body’s scarred by
Your refusals.
The blackbird sings out
Blackly.
```
            Yesterday cleaned house, walked dogs, cooked fish
```
stew. Avril & I read family letters, then went out to see A Different Story. Both
liked it enormously.
January 16, 2023
Inspired Pleasure
Diary of a Dancer/Poet
```
            Sat. 6 May 78 – 1:30 PM
            Cleaned & waxed kitchen and bathroom floors, sitting 
```
with newly creamed hands and cup of coffee in recliner. Muse time.
Emerge blinking like a ground hog into a new and spring-like world. A year
ago, I was a rat in a cage. It’s critical never to let the “merchants of neurosis”
trick me into limiting myself.
```
            Tues. 9 May Plush Palace – 9:15 PM
            Mom spent the last two nights at my place – sleeping
```
in my bed since guest room has no bed. Me on sofa – doesn’t matter
since I can’t sleep anyway when she’s around. Up at 7 to make breakfast get
Mom to airport for 10 o’clock plane thank God. Avril came over with blueberry
muffins and gazpacho to discuss the visit.
Everything Mom said felt like an attack. (She did give
me $100 but I spent – and lost – more than that on her visit.) Avril says the
island has been worse for Mom because she’s never confronted with a life
that would contradict her narrow-minded theories, so it’s all: “Why can’t
people get smart and live exactly the way I do?” She tries to make her
personal tastes “emotional law” – and if you don’t agree with her – or God
forbid, want to explore something different you’re “the sick one”. Rough stuff.
We took her to our favorite Ellicott City restaurant – she
wanted Avril to “explain” Mason and me to “explain” my clothes. She said
my clothes trigger “weirdos” following us – it was completely in her
imagination! She cries. No one decent will “have” me, she wails! I say,
what if I don’t want to be “had”? I’d ask her about her life but she isn’t
honest – she doesn’t know Dad has already told us that her ideology is
untrue. She insists when you find Mr. Right everything’s peachy, but Dad
says she was uncomfortable and unwilling about sex at first – didn’t care
for it. They had to “work hard”. I say we have more experience of pain
than Mom ever had – Avril says she “refuses to learn.” Creepy. Turns
what pain she does have back on others somehow.
```
            The best revenge? Write a poem:
```
THE RIGHT PART OF TOWN

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

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

HORROR STORY

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

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

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

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

Plush Palace – Mon night 27 Mar 78

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

LOVEWINGS

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

SEX CADETS

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

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

I have to admit my chances of finding someone like
that in the job I’m in seem small. But I only need one guy. I’m special – so
would he be. A insists things were better in the past – “pre-liberation” but I’m
not buying it. Opal’s marriage very instructive on these points. They are both beautiful, can think and have work they love. So why do they fight and sulk nonstop?
Each feels the other does not truly “value them” and fusses for increased
respect. Each thinks the other is “holding them back.” So they claim. With any encouragement I think they would jump into a threesome. Non merci.
January 12, 2023
Inspired Pleasure
Diary of a Poet Who Happens to be a Dancer
```
    9:30 PM Mon 27 Feb 78
            Love the drive between my place and A’s – taking 
```
not New Hampshire Ave but Riggs Road. Blind turns and nonsequential
lights give me that old country feeling. We had just seen The Parradine
Case. Interesting. Good jumping off place for other ideas. I like the form.
Could I manage novelistically the “outsides revealing insides” that film so
confidently assumes? Day started badly with non-working electric blanket
and slowly building headache – probably from finishing reading Helpmate
– what
a chronicle of lacerations.
```
    Tues. Feb 28 1:15 PM
            Left message with agent – why no check? I was 
```
thinking of going to England in two weeks, according to my old timeline.
Doesn’t seem possible now.

GOTHIC NOVEL

A woman alone is open and gaping, a
Button hole without a button hook.
She carries her muff held stiffly
Out before her like an offering
Flic, flic! The eyes of strangers
Slit the pause like razors.
This railway carriage stinks of creosote, wet fur.
“I prefer the window up, thank you”
“I prefer it down”.
She lights a Sobranie to remind her
Of Devon in the haying; the gentlemen
Lean forward, reading the initials
On her morocco case.
```
    9:50PM – Plush Palace – Wed 1 Mar 78
            J in to say goodbye – going to Alabama for a
```
few days to set things up for moving there. I did wonder if it was
the last time I would ever see him – but from the way he clutched
my hand and kissed the air (illegal to kiss customers here) that can’t
be true. But remember the way Devon carried on about me and then
disappeared for years? Men are strange. So who the hell knows.
3 sets down. Dancing superbly if I do say so myself. Ticking like a clock.

Friday Mar 3 – Plush Palace – 9:15 PM
I am forcing myself to write this. J came in tonight,
very drunk and crying. (Sold the Shelby. They gave him some kind of
middle of the road muscle car in return.) Would he carry on like this
about me? Now that he has the money to go to Alabama he doesn’t
want to. What made me think he would actually complete something
just because he acted so definite? I am hampered by my physical
passion for him – he is so gorgeous. Those dents in his thighs alone
are worth everything. But I can’t start mothering him – it would be the
end of the Life as We Know It.
Finished A Tyler’s Tin Can Tree – I see why she
likes it least. Characters blurred. Reading Wm Trevor’s Elizabeth Alone
– too many curlicues.
```
    6:55PM – Plush Palace – Mon 6 Mar 78
            Eventually everyone in this job gets bad knees – 
```
something to do with dancing in six-inch heels. I would be better off if
I just walked around like some of the other girls, but my narcissism
demands I be the best. I can see guys in the audience poking each other
when I come out – “that’s her” and that alone makes it worth it for me.
On the other hand the presence of J seriously diminishes tips – he needs
to go away so I can make some money.
A and I were restless after dinner last night and
went out dancing. Big mistake. Defensive boring, hostile men who
count like drill sergeants while pretending to “dance”. “Do the hustle!”
Much expense – no pleasure – after three brandy and sodas I was
content to rack out on A’s bed at 3 AM. I need to up my writing to 10 p
a day – I do NOT need to party.
Amazing letter from Devon about how lovely
and precious and gifted I am but he can’t see me because he’s too
deep in his own life. He’s still searching for the perfect lover and has
no clues. Well, I guess that’s honest. Should be flattered he’s trying
to preserve our relationship at all. London is beginning to ebb away –
looks like I’ll only get a few hundred dollars. There’s a downer. So
why aren’t I writing?
Reading Crucial Conversations by May Sarton.
You’d swear it was written by an eighteen year old with no experience
of life whatever. However, its very brashness gives me the courage
to jump back into my own book.
```
    12:55 PM
            Very tired. Shouldn’t keep working with this intensity 
```
but my new discovery of shaky financial position means I have to.
When I “have to” do anything it makes me feel soiled. Wild idea of getting
pregnant by J. He’s pretty enough. But what would that fix? Only my
biological clock and my finances – permanently. Fixed in a downward
direction if you get my drift. Finished Sarton’s Mermaids, starting
Tyler’s Caleb.

6:30PM – Plush Palace – Tues 7 Mar 78
A triumphant day. Like some manic-depressive,
I am in my high cycle. Probably from reading Elizabeth Bowen –
The Cat Jumps. Amazed at how much I like it – much better than
Death of the Heart. She leaves me feeling a writer can do anything.
I see my book now as thirteen short, sharp, clear scenes. Why can’t
I do it any way I want? Tonight I have To The North to look forward to.

Plush Palace – 11:PM Fri Mar 10 – 78
Wednesday I broke up with Jervaze. Thursday he
called me. I got the impression that in the South it’s when you break
up that things really start to get interesting. Apparently if I wanted wild
declarations I should have done this long ago. Fortunately, I can handle this
on the phone. It’s that glorious body dipped in platinum dust that I can’t
say no to.
Finished Bowen’ s World of Love and To the North.
I can’t believe she was ever popular – I like her too much. She suits me
exactly. What a stylist. OK, forget plot, character, those little appurtenances.
She makes them seem so unimportant. Imagine recasting Courtney in this
light. I guess her style is too forties, but would that be necessarily a bad thing?
A called. She and I are crutches to one another, but I like her better than any
man I have ever met. Watched Monty Python, steak dinner, then she helped
me paint my new four-poster bed. (Gilt, of course. Gives me a new title –
The Gilty Bed.) Watched La Femme Infidele sur le television while consuming
an appropriate wine.
```
    Plush Palace – 11:PM Sat Mar 11 – 78
            I was in too good a mood today. Bought a new costume from Maureen just when I AM JUST ABOUT TO LEAVE FOR THREE WEEKS, but it is yellow velvet and fake sapphires with armbands and everything – a beauty. Good work on novel, ate hamburgers (and eclairs) with A, wrote a good letter to Devon
```
in answer to his weird one to me. Struggling with Eva Trout and The Ponder
Heart. Nix on both. Fortunately, also have a June Thomson murder mystery
for a chaser.
A and I assembled my bed – canopy and everything, it
looks smashing with its hangings of brown lace. Then she called Mason in
Calif to see why he isn’t sending her stuff – he said he’s seeking another
estimate – they had a rational discussion but she was obviously very shaken
when she hung up. I teased her that he is wearing her clothes and probably
looks good in them.
```
    Plush Palace – Wed/Thu Mar 15 – 78
            No London in my future. I’ve accepted it. I need 
```
affordable breaks from this life – two weeks in Maine, one week in Boston,
etc. A and I going to Maine tomorrow. A spent the weekend comforting Opal
who is upset about the failure of her marriage – it’s the old story – when it’s the woman’s turn to be babied man withdraws, making frightened, threatening
noises.
Finished Sarton’s Kinds of Love. I can see why
some people like it. It kind of has a “National Geographic” feel to it – here’s
a guide to the “foreigners”. But it is not a good novel – it’s Faith Baldwin
through and through. Reading Sarton is like attending writing class – she
never loses the miasma of the eager student and she has a lot of interesting
ideas. But, remarkably for a poet, she is deficient on the mystery end. Perhaps
she doesn’t understand that a novel is another kind of poem. Lots of Ructions
here tonight: Gina and Jerrilee fighting and I have to play peacemaker (because
there’s nowhere to go from the dressing room other than the alley or the ladies
room and no guarantee rabid fans will stay away.) I haven’t packed – will be up
till 4.
```
    2PM – Shadowe Island Sat Mar 18 – 78
            Every time I come back to this beautiful island I wonder 
```
why I ever leave. Dogs are in paradise. Mom and Dad relaxed, involved,
charming. A all defensive about the “failure” of her life with Mason so I am
off the hook – temporarily.
I’m reading The House In Paris – restores my high
estimation of Bowen. The trouble with this island is that the rest of existence
vanishes totally when I am here. I am eating too much but the food is so
fabulous it would seem immoral to resist – roast lamb, new potatoes, spinach
quiche, sour cream gravy, stuffed mushrooms, strawberry trifle. We stayed
up late reading Ruth Rendell’s mystery stories aloud, then I fell asleep and I
had the most delicious erotic dream about J – much better than the real thing.
Felt what it would be like to be a deep-throated cello vibrating endlessly.
```
    Mon Mar 20 7:00 PM -78
            Why is it around my parents my self-confidence takes 
```
a nosedive? Every fingernail becomes deciduous. I had better call Plush
Palace and get put on next week’s schedule. Finished House and began
Heat of the Day. My mother asks questions that reveal her to be jealous
of all the reading I do. Her delicate hint – she would feel “lazy” doing so
much reading because there must be something that she would be
neglecting. I tell her I, on the other hand, if I were not reading, would feel
guilty. (As well as deprived.) Thus we must differ. The great thing about Eliz B
– she writes like no one else. To criticize her would be like saying the
plumed flycatcher has a little too much plume.
Managed to prevent Mom from inviting “young people”
to a “weenie roast on the shore” for me and A. We are here to HIDE. She
was very nice about it. Do imagine I could live here. Listening right now to
Haydn’s Clock Symphony. Now that would be a great title for a short story
about an unattached woman in her late twenties…
A and I have wonderful conversations in our twin beds
like a pair of teenagers home on holiday from school, listening to the distant
waves crash on the dark shore. I realize we could still be feeling like this
even when we are a pair of decrepit old maids – which is probably why
families like to stay together. You are timeless for each other. She asked
me which of my boyfriends had known me best. I think Toss Sheffield –
certainly better than my own husband. But this is not a flattering conclusion
since he seems to have run wildly in the opposite direction.

THE CENSOR’S CENSOR

Our childhoods were different. My
Parents didn’t believe in medicine
Yours worshipped Wall Street. You
Took ex-lax to reduce for wrestling, LSD
To see God, smoked Queen Anne’s Lace for lack
Of something better –
Rejected poetry that I wrote. I
Rewrote Melville, shiked to
The observatory – you
Tucked the bedsheets in so tight
I had to sleep with someone else.
You combed your hair to imitate Dick Diver
And were soon out of school. Looks like
I’ll be stuck in here forever.
For me it’s Leap Year every year
That seems to mean I do things backwards
Proposing to the boys and coming upside down.
I forget why I tried so hard to please you.
Save me a seat in the tobacco-brown Mercedes
Do you think you could forgive me now?
```
    Wed Mar 22 78 – 4:15 PM
            Waiting for cocktails, I discover a flaw in the divine Miss 
```
E B. She doesn’t like to admit that she is of the same clay as her characters.
Those creatures based on the Mosleys she repudiated utterly as if creatures
from another planet. I’ve got news for her. Creatures from another planet are
not that interesting.
Last night was one of the most traumatic family
eveningsI have ever experienced – I think my eyes are still puffy. I heard we
would be having Island People to dinner – he used to be a university president/professor so presumably would be good company – they met
because somebody was the bridesmaid of somebody else’s bridesmaid so
there is a connection. It started with me wearing a green silk shirt, my denim
gauchos and hardly any makeup (yes I wore eyeshadow) and being told by
Mom that my “get-up” was “more suitable for a bar.” (All of a sudden she’s
an expert on bars.) Harvey and Edna turned out to have “heard of my job” –
I gather in some commiseration session on Incredibly Unsatisfactory Children – however they refuse to accept that there is any difference between being an
exotic dancer and being a stripper (hello! I don’t strip) and somehow Harvey
segued from castigating “exotic dancers who try to feel superior to strippers” to criticisms of “ total sexual freedom” which apparently means that “everybody
should jump on everybody.”
I tried to dignify this mess by explaining that it is actually
the reverse – in the “old days” under the “ancien regime sexuelle” a dancer
could expect to be “jumped on” by “anybody” because of her job (like poor old
Degas’ ladies) but that actual freedom for women would mean a world in
which one could be a barely clothed dancer (I would think anyone would
admit nudity is at least an equally valid way of expressing the art of muscle,
line and form as heavily costumed artificial approximations) without it
becoming some sexual signal that one has “lost caste” and therefore privacy
and choice. I recommended Susan Brownmiller’s book to this painfully ignorant
male (God knows what he taught – he had never heard of Brownmiller –
seems to have her confused with Ti-Grace Atkinson assuming she must
write books no self-respecting intellectual would read (maybe he was the
type of university president who just brings in wads of cash).
He challenged my premise that the ultimate societal
freedom would be for unattached females to not to be under the threat of
rape every minute. Harvey insisted – with a perfect straight face that women
rape men every bit as much as the reverse – “psychologically of course”
which he says is just as terrible – and in fact probably even more so since
we all know the “physical thing is no big deal” and often does people a “favor”.
I must say this does not reflect very well on his wife Edna but she was smiling
smugly so I think she may have just been too obtuse to follow any of the
arguments.
I really could not cope with this free-for-all avalanche
of idiocy especially when my parents played their trump card – if bars where
women sit in front of a drink and watch barely clothed men cavorting don’t exist, therefore this is an antifeminist exercise and my claim to be a feminist is a
sham. I think it was at that point that I burst into tears. Which of course was
totally demeaning. I sorely missed Avril’s assistance – she refused to jump in
but made peacemaking noises like “you both have a point” (untrue – their
“points” are a disgrace). Ugly Harvey apologized – what a monster! but there
could be no satisfaction in it for me at that point. Avril went walking with me
until they left.
Alas, waiting till they were gone did not end the discussion.
Mom and Dad pounced on us to drive home their point that the male animal
is a violent dangerous creature barely contained by the civilizing
influence of the female. (Guess they can’t get behind Harvey’s “female
rapist” idea.) Of course they are going to rape any female who lets down
her guard for a second and it will all be her fault. (Didn’t R make this case?
I’m ashamed to share a world with these people.) Any kind of a sexual
display (I guess the beach would certainly qualify) is a declaration of
“Jump in boys! It’s free today!” At least they recognized Harvey’s
behavior as extreme (“Two drinks and he’s lost” was Dad’s comment.)
Basically as long as I work at “that bar” I’m the
“lost cause” and if any decent male finds out about it our relationship
will be over in a trice. This kind of thing makes me wonder why I bother
to visit them. Fortunately, I’m escaping soon, but the whole ferry
reservation problem means one loses the right to fight irretrievably
with one’s hosts on this island. Dad’s big mistake was giving me an
example of a good marriage as Lillian Hellman and Dashiell Hammett!
Did I blow my top! He probably thought I’d listen to him if he produced a
literary example. He wasn’t aware that not only were they not married
but Mr. Hammett was married to someone else and cheated on poor
Hellman whenever he could manage to stay stiff long enough. (I really
didn’t want to “get in” to the alcoholism problem. Lillian tried to make
him seem like a “mentor” but honestly she was just his keeper and bail
bondsman.)
January 11, 2023

Inspired Pleasure

Diary of a Dancer

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&nbsp;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.

PREPPY

Corseted with verbs
French teacher sweeps
Cherry blossoms from the tennis court
As she would like to french
The cherries, squelch them soundly
Beneath her soccer-spiking shoes

While the headmistress
Cello-breasted
Polishes graffiti carved upon her coffin
In Chaucerian High English,
And the girls –
Nun-white, nun-blue

Soar above the hockey fields like
Foul-mouthed angels, anticipated ecstasy locked
In narrow hope chests ripening on
Amphetamines
Free Love
Bad dreams.

        Called Chloe to see if I can get on the radio – she was excited to hear from me, but unfortunately gave Erika my number. Erika called – I was nervous that she wanted me to rewrite her manuscripts, but she just invited me to breakfast.&nbsp; 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.
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 R – 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 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. Vac 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 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 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.
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 he 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.

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
A losing battle choreographed for one.
None to explore or
Appreciate my line though now at last
It’s incontestably mine.

January 2, 2023

Inspired Pleasure
Diary of a Dancer

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 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
of them 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 an “R – flash”, 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. 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 let R see this new body, this new confidence?

He will hang on for dear life and I don’t want that. I want to go back
to dancing but R 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’m not afraid of 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 R 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. McManus’ 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 belief 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,
High 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
Slackened with exhaustion.
Touching things that once
You touched,
Listening to your apnea –
I turn away before you turn.
Making peace with all my choices.
It’s worth everything;
Winning in divorce my
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 simpatico character. However the period is a favorite with me. Mail
hideously dull. Nothing from Harcourt. Will my “Westerns” editor have the
nerve 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.
Trigger 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 – 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 fucking
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 “luring” me 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! Bike ride combined with cold shower doesn’t work.
```
4:15 PM Sun 31 July 77 Deck
        D 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 R – 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.
(When he comes he makes a little crying noise).

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.
D. Eden’s Deadly Travelers supposed to be fun but falls
apart totally at the end. Disappointed by thoroughness of
Gavin Lambert’s Conan Doyle study – he said everything –
nothing left for me to do. (The Dangerous Edge.)
Disenchanted with suspense mode. Maybe Demon should
just be a series of short, sharp scenes. I don’t like intrusively
officious writers – sacrificing character to story “You can’t let
your characters get away from you”. Not only can you – you
must. See where they run.

Just finished scene between Fawn and Deere’s cast-off “maitresse
en titre”. Needing a scene between Jewel and Fawn, Fawn and Del. Let them
accumulate like raindrops.

Dinner rice, chicken broth, onions. Coffee. Shouldn’t read true
crime in bed. (Shiver.) But I will. 2 months since I’ve seen R.
10PM Black Dahlia almost did me in, too! That poor girl!
The writing style in Infamous Murders is the most infamous thing
about it. Wm. Roughhead I adore. Soothe my insomnia with art books.

PLAYING HIDE & SEEK IN THE MUSEUM OF MODERN ART

hide & seek. It’s
my game but
you started it.
you be a cop and
I’ll be a museum – a
swollen storehouse
where even the walls are open
to more than one interpretation.
that’s me in dark glasses
waiting
round the corner for
the whick of teeth on bended elbow
the fateful kiss
where the blood lies gathered. So
lies rally; scars; a wound,
a bruise – a cut – a fever
a thing to call my own.
“You imagined it, lady”
there’s no one here.
powder burn
without the bullet.
December 29, 2022