Alysse Aallyn

Category: #Poetry

  • Inspired Pleasure – the dance diaries of Alysse Aallyn

                     

                                        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 sheerfrustration and exhaustion; then  couldn’t sleep.  Intermittent nightmares that someone was trying to break into my car and throw acid in my face. Decided to kiss the novel off and let it go – just get an opinion.  Concentrate on something else. Weather depressing – no sunbathing – four day monsoon!  

    Trying grumpily to live without booze. I can see myself becoming Lida, the Alcoholic.

                                         2 AM Mon 22 May 78

                                         Exhaustion follows mania.  Yesterday couldn’t keep my 

    eyes open long enough to read the NY Times, but refusing to go to bed dragged out my notebooks to arrange beside my desk.  Horrible old valentines, photos of Ryder, dreadful wailing screeds fall out.  I have so many drafts of Flycatcher –

    it’s ridiculous. Purging isn’t easy – I totally understand hoarding. How can you be certain you’ll never need something again?  Must get to bed – tomorrow meet Avril at College Park Library to see Dear Detective and listen to Couperain.

                                         Fri. Plush Palace – 26 May 78 – 7:20 PM

                                         Dancing badly.  Reduced to eating saltines (bad girl!) 

     Feel I can see the end of all this and it’s a cold cold chill.  Apparently nothing pleasurable lasts forever – as soon as it’s a “job” it’s over.  Poor me!  What’s the next incarnation? Tending art gallery on windswept rainy isle? Living 

    drunken and obese in a trailer on the edge of the estate? 

                                         Lovely “date” with Avril.  We went to Sea Fair 

     (corner Calvert & Conn) for drinks, scallops, mussels at the outside

     café.  She says Shoulders is a total washout.  Looks like Mom succeeded all too well in convincing us romantic love is the most important thing in life – I say let’s blame her.  A having horrible insomnia troubles so before movie we bought six classical records to soothe and stun.  I really hesitate to go out with Peter – why cultivate new people when they’re so likely to turn out just as awful as the old people?  I like him now  but… he’s on his best behavior.  

    Really feeling shy and buried in myself.  Instead of new man, start a new novel.  Something crazy. 

                                         Avril tried Barbara Ellen (exercise studio) but was put off by their insulting sales techniques.  It’s like being chained to a TV listening to a half hour of ring around the collar commercials. Too bad. 

                                         I say she’s got to stop telling prospective employers she has “no experience”.  She worked for hotline, courier service, horrible fake gyno, etc. We need to construct a resume out of this – we are too damn honest.  Better to project even a witless confidence.  I don’t want to have to tell people about myself, either. 

                                         Dear Detective was superb!  Followed it up with 

    gold rush sundae and coffee at Swensen’s.  Trying to get into bestsellers 

    – reading Velda Johnson’s ghastly Etruscan Smile. Would rather read theology (and Secaire shows it. Alas.) My novel is terrible. It stinks. 

     It needs to be rewritten from the bottom UP. Plot beyond help.

                                         10:45 AM Sat 29 May 78

                                         Woke up this morning muttering about betrayal and failure.  Seems my life separates into two phases: pre and post Bruce.

     Pre-Bruce I was such an innocent – I think “goober”  is the descriptive expression.  Schools should not let these pathetic characters out – but we were so eager to roam free. There is no savagery to which people will not descend to protect their egos.  On top of all this, we have to battle M & D who, of all people, SHOULD be in our corner. They’re pissed we’re not more successfully infantilized.  Determine NOT to do this to my kids.  

    Reading Hodgson’s Carnacki The Ghost Hunter (1900) heartbreakingly dull.  And it could have been so good – a combination of Gerard Manley Hopkins and Sherlock Holmes is just what the doctor ordered. 

                                         3 PM Tues 30 May 78

                                         Struggled through 2 bad pages on Demon that will have to be rewritten, then finished Sylvia Townsend Warner’s tragic At the Stroke of Midnight. This beautiful short story almost finished me. Yesterday Italian food made me & Avril logy – we tried going dancing. 

    Horrible place, bad band. (Tramps). Predatory males (who spoke bad English) very difficult to get rid of.

                                          Saw Greek Tycoon instead – worse even than we’d been led to believe. Came home and read two bad detective stories by “good” writers.  Guilt-inducing cash from M & D – makes me feel inadequate but I need it.  Means I can buy new vacuum cleaner  AND summer dresses.  Call Peter like a dutiful child – this whole affair is tinged with doom. Thank God he is “busy” with his Secret Married Woman (who turns out to Someone Big in the Democratic Committee)!  His parents and my parents should just date each other. Dogs need walking and I need to check on vandalism at abandoned house. 

                                         2 PM Sat June 2 – 78

                                         Trouble opening latest letter from Devon – I had 

    the weirdest premonition it would a marriage proposal!  It was indeed very loving – he has hit a summit of boredom and restlessness for which I am doubtless not the cure. Praised my novel for its “mystical sense of altered consciousness.”  Wow.  I like that better than “brilliant satire”.   Avril & I went to Dillards concert at Cellar Door – they are so charming. Reminiscences of seeing Bruce play there.  First act was Scarlet Ribera and Black Rose Band –

     liked her even better.  Some attractive men, but casual sex seems to raise more problems than it solves.  A & I agree that after the “healing” comes the “strengthening” period.  Coltsville Community College asks me to teach seminar on gothic 

    novel – of course I said yes.  Poor misbegotten bastards. But at least I like watching the birds stuffing themselves at my feeder.

                                         Plush Palace Mon 5 June 78

                                         Perfect day – interesting stirrings inside – feel I am on the edge of some sort of breakthrough.  Yesterday fresh sweet corn and turkey salad at A’s, then we watched B Stanwyck’s Double Indemnity on TV.  Classic Chandler.  “Aren’t you going 75 in a 30 mph zone?”  

    After that I dressed up in my satin 3-piece suit to see Helmut Berger at the Kennedy Center. (Sigh). What a honey that man is. 

     Then sent Bruce a letter with the Unwelcome News that I am “estopped” from filing for divorce in the state of Maryland because he made me sign a “no contest” paperand then dropped his suit!  Paralysis!

                                          I know he was hoping to get out of this without paying –

    (his last girlfriend proffered enough cash to get us this far then predictably abandoned him as soon as his True Colors became apparent.)  Maybe –

    I can establish residence in Virginia and start all over again. 

                                         Had an eye appt in Bethesda so went to that library where I’ve never been and got a TON of interesting books. Treasuring Patricia Beers’ Reader, I Married Him.

                                         Plush Palace Mon 12 June 78 – 7:00 PM

                                         Horrible experience last night at the Garland Dinner Theatre – we were seated with some couple where the male was obviously severely mentally ill –she fed him 1,000 pills throughout dinner to keep him from exploding.  We could have “complained” and demanded to be seated elsewhere but it just seemed so cruel.  Avril & I used every bit of our mother’s otherwise completely pernicious training and tried to act as if nothing was happening.

                                         I’m trying to muster up the discipline to unplug my phone till six – I’m getting too involved in Avril’s job hunt.  She told me to Butt Out.  She’s right – I should just write.  What the hell am I thinking being somebody’s “mother”?  We have too much of a mother already –

     for both of us.  Martin Green’s Children of the Sun a survey rather than the illumination I’d hoped for. Now I need a real Brian Howard bio.

                             Yesterday excellent day – haven’t known such joy since April. 

    Sunbathing reading Ada Leverson & Her Circle – delicious.  (Unfortunately she was a bit of an idiot.)  Cleaned entire house yesterday so when I got back from dancing it was immaculate.  (The dogs – who had been outside in the yard – messed it up again immediately.)  Read Jane Rule’s excellent Lesbian Images at work.  She’s dumb about Colette and Bowen but I agree with her that loneliness and bad experiences are the enemy, not homosexuality.  But I don’t think I’m up for a lesbian experience – women too emotionally demanding. They do too much work (men do too little). 

    Hideously unsatisfactory choice – like having to choose between a ton of salt or none. Better to go without.

                                         Peter called to say we “ought to get together”. 

    Seemed very halfhearted to me. Bet he wants to tell his mother he’d made 

    an effort. I doubt we can surmount this fundamental lack of attraction (we both prefer blondes) but Mom thinks just the opposite. Marry people you’re NOT attracted to so you won’t be “swept away” by “hormones” and you can make “reasoned decisions”!  Is that pitiable or what? Avril says she’s LYING  because EVERYBODY lies about sex.  Suggested Mom handed Dad her wet underpants on their very first date. (At the ballet?  I don’t see it.)  Mom has also said the worse you are at sex the more likely you are to get a proposal.  

    Does this make sense to you?  Ryder’s marriage (under these exact principles) lasted 2 yrs and he wanted to be anywhere but home.

                                         Plush Palace – 22 June 78 – 3 PM

                                         Second double this week.  I hate them but I need

    $80 for typewriter, $300 to pay back Avril, $100 to quiet the utilities people –

     $200 Burnside Inn and at least $200 “Mad Money”.  You know, in case I go mad. It could happen, especially the way things are going. Need extra cash for Vacation, which I approach as if it were a Sacrament.  Secaire gets re-written NEVER under this regime. Oh well.  There’s always poetry.

    SYLVIA PLATH: The Festering Weight

    I know you deceived me

    With the bald-headed lady

    My true kin;

    My mother renounced

    Your swollen giblets in my name.

    See? I bleed tulips.

    It’s happened twice before; I seed the earth

    With children, little miracles.

    I give them their inheritance – a

    Carriage full of baby dung

    Flung

    Down the coal hole

    To remind me of you.

    Pearly maggots bee–like

    Suck my lip to

    Scent the fault that clings to me:

    Heredity.

    This enemy’s face shifts cleverly;

    First male, then jew, then

    blurred and unfamiliar, genitalia

    like narcissi.

    I reserve the right to reject

    This choiceless life.

    See? My body’s scarred by

    Your refusals.

    The blackbird sings out

    Blackly.

                                         Yesterday cleaned house, walked dogs, cooked fish stew. Avril & I read family letters, then went out to see A Different Story.  Both liked it enormously. 

                                         8:45 PM Plush Palace – 24 Jun 78 – Sat

                                         Bad mood. OD’d on junk food then lost my favorite hairbrush and other people’s plastic versions break my hair.  Growl.  I can 

    write it out.  It’s a dirty job but someone’s got to do it. Emotional roller coaster continues.  Just when I declare myself a Celibate Slave to Art a very handsome –

     (and very blond) man comes in tonight.  He works in radio, considering story about dancers; wants to interview “somebody”.  

                                         “You hit pay dirt, my friend.”  I tell him but I insist on pseudonym. I was wearing my silver lamé outfit with the see-through silver sleeves so looked tiptop if I do say so myself.

                                         His name’s Rod Avery (I’m not kidding) and although he’s newly divorced he lacks the Rip Van Winkle leer. He works for a reputable national outlet. I can work with this.  Mom would just eat him up. Bought tix to an Agatha Christie play – maybe I’ll invite him instead of Avril. 

  • Inspired Pleasure – the dance diaries of Alysse Aallyn

            Sat night – 22 Apr 78 8:30 PM

                                        My whole body hurts from dancing 5 nights in a row. 

    It’s not good for tips, either.  

                                      Poor May Sarton is trying to exorcise Eliz Bowen.

    Good luck with that!  Elizabeth so contemptuous of “schoolgirl crushes”!  

    Real love in EB’s world seems strangely synonymous with corruption & 

    loss.  Old fashioned view and more male really – “ejaculate” and die.  We women get children, poems & novels out of it.  Avril stood up for dinner by Shoulders.  Uh oh.  Beginning of the end.  Apparently saying “yes” is fatally unsexy.  She & I will be eating her pot roast tomorrow – fine with me. 

                                        Fatima came down early but Lori refused to go up,

     Pointing to her watch!  Much excitement & hissing. 

                                        7:45 PM – Mon. 24 Apr 78

                                        Good scene in my novel – Miss Pruitt vs. Viv. Now I need a boathouse picnic. Every time you get to the mountaintop there’s just more mountain.  Then you’re supposed to “prune” at the end – if you have any energy left.  Trying to read A Literature of Their Own but Showalter too hard on poor old Woolf.  Women have always owned literature, it’s the publishers, editors and critics we apparently can’t have.  60,000 words on my latest tells me it’s time to celebrate.  No novel could EVER be this hard again.  

    I demand a party. 

                                        Strange letter from Devon – he is involved with some “Jewish woman” and it isn’t going well. She seems “inaccessibly foreign” –

    and he is “losing faith” in his “ability to pick a friend.”   Is this a plea for help?  

    He specifically asked where I would be this summer.  Said he loved me.  

    Took his glamour pic out of the bin where it has lain and put it up, then went out with Avril and bought a hopeful bikini.  She and Shoulders are so mired in excuses, lies and expectations no relationship seems possible.   

    Sunbathing season starts tomorrow. 

                                        1PM Thu May 4 -78

                                        Comparing lovers.  “It’s Devon in the stretch with

     Jervaze fatally winded and Bruce fallen by the wayside”.  Needs poetry.

                                        Finished Gift last week.   Letting it “perk”.  It already feels “swallowed up” by the past.  Avril read it, disappointed by the ending.  Wants murder at the very least.  But is that real life?  I think I agree with her that it should be.  People should kill themselves when you are done with them. Sadly, in reality they’re all whimper and no bang.  How to fix?

                                        When I’m not engaged on some important work my “real life” ceases.  Car to its “first service” Mon – involved ferrying each other around and jockeying with one car. Why don’t Mom & Dad appreciate this?  It’s like they want us to be ashamed of needing other people to survive. Mom staying in NYC with the new baby but then coming here Sat. to inspect our dissolute lives.  Uh oh.  I won’t have any trouble getting time off but I hate to.  Certainly can’t work when she is here.  Living two weeks off one paycheck canbe done. But I will feel obligated to battle Mom for financial freedom.  

                                        Finished Glendinning’s Bowen.  A life rich and strange but hardly enviable. I’m being pestered by old “college friend” but I am officially “not home”.  She sneaks around the house, sniffing. 

                                        Sat. 6 May 78 – 1:30 PM

                                        Cleaned & waxed kitchen and bathroom floors, sitting with newly creamed hands and cup of coffee sunbathing in recliner.  Muse time.  

    Emerge blinking like a ground hog into a new and spring-like world.  A year ago, I was a rat in a cage.  It’s critical never to let the “merchants of neurosis” trick me into limiting myself.  

                                        Tues. 9 May Plush Palace – 9:15 PM

                                        Mom spent the last two nights at my place – sleeping in my bed since guest room has no bed.  Me on sofa – doesn’t matter since I can’t sleep anyway when she’s around.  Up at 7 to make breakfast get Mom to airport for 10 o’clock plane thank God.  Avril came over with blueberry muffins and gazpacho to discuss the visit.

                                        Everything Mom said felt like an attack. (She did give me $100 but I spent – and lost – more than that on her visit.)  Avril says living on an island has been worse for Mom because she’s never confronted with a life

     that would contradict her narrow-minded theories, so it’s all: “Why can’t people get smart and live exactly the way I do?”      She tries to make her personal tastes “emotional law” – and if you don’t agree with her – or God forbid, want to explore something different you’re “the sick one”.  Rough stuff.  

                                        We took her to our favorite Ellicott City restaurant – she wanted Avril to “explain” Mason and me to “explain” my clothes.  She said my clothes trigger “weirdos” following us – it was completely in her imagination!  She cries.  No one decent man will “have” me, she wails!  I say, 

    What if I don’t want to be “had”? 

                                        I’d ask her about her life but she isn’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 actual pain 

    than Mom ever had – Avril says she “refuses to learn.”  Creepy.  Turns what pain she does have back on others somehow. 

                     Can’t wait to resume my privacy and my routine, 

    reading book about Forster (The Cave & The Mountain) in my own bed.

                                        I think realizing your mother’s limitations is part of maturity, and I’ve been slow because I’m unwilling to adopt Genevieve’s methods – “Don’t give her anything – just tell her what she wants to hear.”  

    I thought better of her than that but I’ve struck out so far.  Since their definition of success

    is so narrow, I don’t see how I can ever satisfy them.

                                        The best revenge? Always: 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

    She summons cabs; closer –

    Closer – always –

    To death;

    The constant suitor never accountable

    For gentlemanly behavior.  

  • Inspired Pleasure – the dance diaries of Alysse Aallyn

                 10:30 PM – Plush Palace – Mon  night 10 April 78

                                         Two more sets. I’ll live. Finished study of Mary McCarthy by Doris Grumbach. Much prefer that to actually having to read  McCarthy who reminds me of Aldous Huxley – Is it possible to be too contemporary?  Trends of modern writing a little too sketchy for me.  No book  should feel like flipping through a magazine.  Sensory overload sans enlightenment.  

    As for Angus Wilson – we are parting forever. I read all but two stories in Such Darling Dodos  – back on the shelf he goes.

                                        Wonderful day – up before 7, read New York Times, sent out poems – magnificent walk with dogs – explored abandoned house. Haunted by novel – so went back and got six pages – one good new idea. 

    Called publisher – ordered ten more books.   Little self-promotion. While writing got call from the Plush Palace – would I come in two sets early for Glory, who is sick?  Love to.  Just feeling bankrupted by the drycleaners. I was justified too because first set got a big tip. ($300)!  

    Peter called – said he would have loved to go to the Raitt concert with me but had to go to Vermont. He certainly talks differently when his girlfriend/housekeeper/telephone answerer person is not around. 

                                        He hinted that his love life is impossibly complex and he doesn’t want his parents to know. I’m guessing that she is married. He promised to get in touch when he gets back. I’m in the ladies room because the air-conditioning in dressing room not working – it is suffocating in there. Yesterday evening thoroughly enjoyable – steaks wine and hot fudge sundaes at A’s then watched Richard Brooks Happy Ending which really 

    was a bomb. Trying to read Anthony Powell’s Venusberg but feeling nothing yet. Tried Sarton’s Miss Pickthorn – a hash of all her other stuff – very slight. Avril not home for past four hours – out on date with Jordan. 

    Can’t wait to hear the play by play.

                                        11:45 PM – Thurs 13 Apr 78

                                        Safe & warm in my gilt-canopied bed, happy in spite 

    of my cold.  A & I got “El Diablo” inspected today – $70 – But at least she can take it to the MVA tomorrow and have it put in her name.  That great feeling of “starting out fresh”.  In spite of dribbles & wheezes, blissful dog walk followed by deep-dish pizza & wine at Armand’s. No painful memories. 

    Cherry blossoms are out.  

            Saw Coming Home with Jon Voigt & Jane Fonda.  Good, if somewhat earnest.  Bruce Dern acted like he was in a different movie.  Rough role deserves a hero’s commendation. I stare at the casually interdependent  couples – it’s been a year since I could lay a hand on another’s thigh with that proprietary air.  Poor Avril dissolved in tears towards the end – too reminiscent of the “endless pain” of vets like Bruce and Mason.

                                         I’d be more sympathetic if they didn’t take it out on others. What they learned apparently is how to “stage a war”.  The people we love inflict the worst damage.  Avril’s at the stage where she’s still haunted by Mason but feels it’s “boring” to talk about him so she bottles it up.  I tell her get a diary.  Hope to finish Powell’s 

    Agents & Patients tonight – but it is a little dull. 

                                        Plush Palace –Fri 14 Apr 78 – 3:50 PM

                                        Only 3 more sets, with 4 dancers.  Still, made 

    enough tips for groceries.  Buy wild birdseed for the birds cavorting 

    outside my desk’s bay window. Daringly went on without stockings – such a savings if we didn’t have to buy them but Eddie told me No Cigar.  

    Too bad – they’re hot in summer.  Alvera says Yvonne’s back at Mother Joe’s.  I thought she wouldn’t be able to eat enough shit to stay in her music clerk job.  We goddesses so spoiled by our pedestal.  Called A in the afternoon to see how she was doing – Shoulders was there flexing his muscles at her and she is over the moon.  Trying to be glad for her but in spite of his obvious beauty I’m afraid he is a bit of a shit. (See testimony of past burnees plus eviction notices.)

                                        I feel I must disappear deeper into solitude and see what’s down there.  Gift  (new version of Courtney) coming along interestingly but slowly.  I’m afraid it has no plot other than my own life, when what it needs is a couple of murders. (Same thing my life has always required.) Poems so much easier instead.

    Tried to read Phyllis Bottome but she’s a fatal cross between a 

    didact and a pleaser; sort of like a barky little dog.  Most unpleasant. 

     And that casual anti-Semitism pretty shocking.

                                        Plush Palace – Sat 5:50 PM 15 Apr 78

                                        Halfway through novel –  can’t figure out if I’m 

    satisfied or not.  All my discoveries so agonizingly slow. Can’t afford 

    fuckups – then I’ll have to go through it all AGAIN. Slept late, breakfast at Avril’s.  We did laundry together, then played gin.  

                                        I was the first one here thank God (means I’m the

     first to leave).  Got my schedule – 4 nights in a row, 2 days off.  Good. 

    Congratulate myself on my intellectual freedom as I wrap black lace around my throat, recalling all the put-downs I suffered back in the day when I was an “architect’s helpmeet”. 

                                      Reread Alvarez’ description of Plath’s suicide – I don’t agree her death was some “by-product.” Her mother raised her to be murdered by other people; 

    Nazis or husbands.   There had to be a “bloodletting” – Mrs. Plath’s ulcer – Sylvia’s “suicides”. If you don’t “accept” martyrdom someone will have to die in your place. Kid yourself it’s” freedom” just because you choose time & place. 

                                         It bothers me terribly that Mom & Daughter shared a bedroom during Sylvia’s formative years.  Death would seem inevitable just to get some privacy & distance.   Poor Sylvia offered those magnificent poems to Alvarez and he 

    backed away terrified because Art is terrifying. $30 for lost contact that came out when a necklace scraped my eyeball while I was hanging upside down. 

    Teach me to wear contacts onstage. Who needs to see the audience anyway?

                                        7:15 PM Sun 16 Apr 78

                                        Spent the day in bed eating oranges, raisin bread, peanut butter.  Avril’s spending the night at Shoulders’ new place – then tomorrow we’re going to the new Cassavetes film and I’m excited.  Jervaze in for last set to invite me to his going away party.  I slept nine hours. 

                                        Horrifying Who Made the Lamb – author really lost control of this one but I bet she would say she was just “reporting”. Books Do Furnish a Room much better than Powell’s previous – has a sense of direction. “Trapnel himself always insisted that a novel is what its writer is”. I would agree.  Style follows taste, I think. Realize Dad and I don’t mean the same thing by the word “intellectual”.  He means a person who knows specific things, (education) I mean a person who thinks a certain way (style). 

    Twain never meets. I am not respectful of artificially acquired patinas –

    “points of view”. Wrote the infirmary scene – just what I wanted to say.

                                        Maybe I need to give up sex and even male companionship –

     – just can’t afford them.

                                        Plush Palace – 6:45 PM Fri 21 Apr 78

                                        Wonderful walk along Powder Mill Road thinking 

    about the mystique of money.  I eternally fight a rearguard action. Mom & Dad call at noon – Genevieve had little girl – Belinda.  Avril delivers my new lens– bounce notice in mail – I tear my hair in a frenzy.  I get to dance 2 sets for GiGi – $200 – she tells me about her night of sin with Louie. And she wants another one.  Life’s a soap opera.  Management says there’s going to be a drug raid with dressing room search warrant. Panic among the girls – but not me. Check out the customers with a more intense interest.  Are narcs here?  Everyone planning to leave town except me.  I offer to work tomorrow night.   

                                        Reading an interesting study of Iris Murdoch novels – the Disciplined Heart. Too much coffee – I’m switching to tomato juice. 

  • Inspired Pleasure – the dance diaries of Alysse Aallyn

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

                                        Called my agent and demanded to know how much I am actually going to get from HBJ. The answer is $1993, so it’s a good thing I got that stock which I sold today.  April 5 I pick up my new car – a Fiat. (Avril takes the Gremlin.) Money in the bank – need to settle in for a long writing session.  Trying to concentrate on my book – Bowen’s 

    The Last September – but it just feels too distant from my own life.  Feels like I’m slowly surfacing, like a corpse that has been in the water for three days.  Last night I finished Anne Tyler’s Searching for Caleb. Her most beautiful novel in my estimation. Today A and I bought plants, put money down on car.  I’m exhausted and out of love with my own life – don’t understand why I personally seem to need to do everything the hard way and backwards.

                 4:30 PM Fri 31 Mar 78

                                        Barrage of criticism from Mom and Dad that I 

    spent stock money on car.  How do they expect us to live in two different places and have one car? Doesn’t make sense.  Avril has car today for her eye appt – will pick me up in 45 mins.  I am struggling with Bowen’s The Little Girls.  She uses writing for disguise.  Last night A and I went to dinner at an Italian restaurant – she had the clams, I had the shrimp, we split a bottle of wine. Then we went to see what A described as “one concentration camp film too many.”  I bought tickets to Bonnie Raitt concert – Mom and Dad suggested I “look up” their friends’ son Peter Pauley. 

    I may invite him, I do remember him as cool and handsome. But brunette. 

    Oh well, can’t have everything.   Got check from agent – less her percentage – 

    which I forgot to calculate. So I hope I get paid enough Sat to have money for car.  My future emerges through a glass darkly – don’t know yet whether I like it or not.

                 2:50 PM Sat  April 1, 1978  – Starlight

                                        Working a double. My latest realization is: I can never have enough money.  Curse you, Marc Kramer for suggesting I invest in real estate. In spite of this I’ve decided not to take on doubles unless I’m in a jam (as I am over this car.)  Interesting new dancer – big hips and no boobs but a wonderful attitude.  Her laugh can be heard by fishing boats on the distant Chesapeake.  Alvera.  She works in a lawyer’s office during the day. I’m trying to imagine her in her suit typing briefs.  

                                    The Little 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.   Monday after her classes we’ll watch The Oscars at my place. Bought 3 costumes from Kerry that I can ill afford – but they were a steal.  Sent Harvey the Brownmiller book, Against Our Will.  There’s no excuse for such ignorance.

                 Plush Palace – 8:50 PM – Thurs night 6 April 78

                                        So ends one of the happiest days of my life. Woke

     this AM two minutes before clock radio – breakfast in bed reading – good work at typewriter.  Long walk with dogs – came back to find Green’s Mag took my whole “suicide” series. Avril showed up helped me play with my new car – first and second tough to get into and out of until the salesman professionally broke its little hymen. Seems all right now.  

                                  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. 

     Jervaze called.  He is really going to Alabama this time. Said he loved me, thereby proving my point that the less of a relationship we are having the more important it is to him. If we never see each other again, I bet he will remember me as the perfect girlfriend. All future women in his life will curse my name.  

                                        Good letter from Mom and Dad apologizing for 

    their explosion about car.  Part of the problem dealing with them is theytry to preserve a “united front” which means frantically 

    whispering and negotiating behind the scenes, then speaking awkwardly together like an ill-rehearsed Greek chorus. I can kind of speculate about who really thinks what – not that I want to.

                                         A and I liked Unmarried Woman – much better 

    than Goodbye Girl.  I tried Peter all day – no answer.  Reading 

    Storm Jameson’s Journey From the North – it’s like watching  a 

    slo-mo car accident the way she beats up on herself.  Why this sense that honesty requires one must utterly disown all one’s earlier versions?  

    CS Forrester did exactly the same thing in Long Before 40 – will I feel compelled to do the same some day about this life I am leading now?  

    Foolishness is youth’s necessary clothing methinks.  Think I will dump this book without finishing.  Try Angus Wilson’s The Middle Age of Mrs. Eliot.

                 9:25 PM – Plush Palace – Sat night 8 April 78

                                        Beautiful day. Off to Columbia, testing my new car. 

     A & I had lunch at Clyde’s – talked about what fun it would be if we each had a full-time man – and they liked each other.  We could double date.  

    Feels impossible. Walked around lake – bought baby clothes for Genevieve.  

    Home, walked dogs, then to work.

                                        Boring evening. Few unenthusiastic customers. 

    GiGi brought in a bottle of champagne – I broke my rule and had some out of sheer boredom.  A father in with his 2 ½ yr old daughter – sent her up to the stage with a tip for me. Depressing fact #2 – tried to read a short story about rape in 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.

                                        Phoned Peter – a girl answered!  He came on very brisk and businesslike – had been in Venezuela. I asked if she was “the housekeeper” – he hurried to get off phone – said he would drop by club.  Always wanted to see me perform.  I told him my schedule.  I figure if he and she are seriously involved so that I shouldn’t move forward – he’ll tell me.  Chloe’s friend Dennis called and tried to make me feel guilty enough to go out with him.  Little does he know how far past that “Since I can’t think of an excuse you’ll accept I guess I’ll just be forced to go out with you” stage I am.  He turned hostile – said I’d “led him on”.  I refused to rise to this, portraying self as a naturally friendly but also naturally private person. I guess I’ll have more of this stuff with J gone.  He was sort of protection.  Everyone wants someone who doesn’t want them. Highly entertaining if one were bored enough. I am not. 

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

    Plus, I know too many artists to be in love with this idea.  They are the worst. 

    I want someone stable. 

                                        I have to admit my chances of finding someone like that in the job I’m in seem small. But I only need one guy. I’m special –

    so would he be. Avril insists things were better in the past – “pre-liberation” but I’m not buying it.  Opal’s marriage very instructive on these points.  They are both beautiful, can think and have work they love. So why do they fight and sulk nonstop?  

    Each feels the other does not truly “value them” and fusses for increased respect. Each thinks the other is “holding them back.”  So they claim. With any encouragement I think they would jump into a threesome. Non merci. 

  • Inspired Pleasure – the dance diaries of Alysse Aallyn

                 Wed Mar 22 78 – 4:15 PM

                                        Waiting for cocktails, I discover a flaw in the divine Miss Elizabeth Bowen. She doesn’t like to admit that she is of the same clay as her characters. Those creatures based on the Mosleys she repudiated utterly as if creatures from another planet. I’ve got news for her.  Creatures from another planet are 

    not that interesting.

                                        Last night was one of the most traumatic family 

    Evenings I have ever experienced – I think my eyes are still puffy. I heard we would be having Island People to dinner – he used to be a university president/professor so presumably would be good company – they met because somebody was the bridesmaid of somebody else’s bridesmaid so there is a connection.  It started with me wearing a green silk shirt, my denim gauchos and hardly any makeup (yes I wore eyeshadow) and being told by Mom that my “get-up” was “more suitable for a bar.”  (All of a sudden she’s an expert on bars.)  

                                   Harvey and Edna turned out to have “heard of my job” –I gather in some commiseration session on Incredibly Unsatisfactory Children – however they refuse to accept that there is any difference between being an exotic dancer and being a stripper (hello! I don’t strip) and somehow Harvey

     segued from castigating  “exotic dancers who try to feel superior to strippers”  to  criticisms of “ total sexual freedom”  which apparently means  that  “everybody should jump on everybody.”   

                                        I tried to dignify this mess by explaining that it is actually the reverse – in the “old days” under the “ancien regime sexuelle”  a dancer could expect to be “jumped on” by “anybody” because of her job (like poor old Degas’ ladies) but that actual freedom for women would mean a world in which one could be a barely clothed dancer (I would think anyone would admit nudity is at least an equally valid way of expressing the art of muscle – 

    line and form as heavily costumed artificial approximations) without it becoming  some sexual signal that one has “lost caste” and therefore privacy and choice. I recommended Susan Brownmiller’s book to this painfully ignorant male (God knows what he taught –  he had never heard of Brownmiller – seems to have her confused with Ti-Grace Atkinson assuming she mustwrite books no self-respecting intellectual would read (maybe he was the type of university president who just brings in wads of cash).  

                                        He challenged my premise that the ultimate societal freedom would be for unattached females to not to be under the threat of rape every minute.  Harvey insisted – with a perfect straight face that women rape men every bit as much as the reverse – “psychologically of course” which he says is just as terrible – and in fact probably even more so since we all know the “physical thing is no big deal” and often does people a “favor”.

     I must say this does not reflect very well on his wife Edna but she was smiling smugly so I think she may have just been too obtuse to follow any of the arguments.  

                                        I really could not cope with this free-for-all avalanche of idiocy especially when my parents played their trump card – if bars where women sit in front of a drink and watch barely clothed men cavorting don’t exist, therefore this is an antifeminist exercise and my claim to be a feminist is a 

    sham. I think it was at that point that I burst into tears.  Which of course was 

    totally demeaning.  I sorely missed Avril’s assistance – she refused to jump in

     but made peacemaking noises like “you both have a point” (untrue – their “points” are a disgrace). Ugly Harvey apologized – what a monster! but there could be no satisfaction in it for me at that point. Avril went walking with me until they left.

                                        Alas, waiting till they were gone did not end the discussion. Mom and Dad pounced on us to drive home their point that the male animal is a violent dangerous creature barely contained by the civilizing influence of the female.  (Guess they can’t get behind Harvey’s “female rapist” idea.) Of course they are going to rape any female who lets down 

    her guard for a second and it will all be her fault.   (Didn’t Ryder make this case?

      I’m ashamed to share a world with these people.)  Any kind of a sexual display (I guess the beach would certainly qualify) is a declaration of :

    “Jump in boys! It’s free today!” At least they recognized Harvey’s

     behavior as extreme (“Two drinks and he’s lost” was Dad’s comment.)  

                                        Basically, as long as I work at “that bar” I’m the 

    “lost cause” and if any decent male finds out about it our relationship will be over in a trice. This kind of thing makes me wonder why I bother to visit them.  Fortunately, I’m escaping soon, but the whole ferry reservation problem means one loses the right to fight irretrievably with one’s hosts on this island.  Dad’s 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.)

                 11:30 AM Friday, 24 March 78

                                        Staggering down for my first cup of coffee when I heard Harvey’s voice in the kitchen. Thank God I heard it in time – if he had seen me in my baby doll nighty I guess he would have considered himself justified in pinning me immediately to the floor. He brought me a hibiscus flower as a peace offering.

                                        A more significant peace offering came from Mom and Dad who gave us each 100 more shares of stock.  I tried to refuse it– they insisted. I warned them I’ll only sell it. Maybe I’ll be able to buy a new car when I get back.  I could use it.

                                        Spent last night trying to read Welty’s Bride of Innisfallen, couldn’t get my mind around it.  Read Faithful Are the Wounds instead. 

    Very like a stage play – which isn’t necessarily a bad thing.

                 Powder Mill Road – home – 8:30 PM Sun 26 March 78

                                        Can’t describe the ecstasy of being in my own

     place. On the island I am hideous – here I am beautiful. The loss of confidence there is so severe as to actually induce delusions. Now that I am back I am ready to tackle my existence brilliantly.  As always. 

                                        We got in last night in the pouring rain – 11:30 PM 

    – Avril had coffee and left.  I read a soppy love story and slept in my Own Bed.

     Today we did laundry, went to see a bad movie – actors working madly away to no effect. Tomorrow I get mail – hope there’s lots of it.

                                        Did get a beautiful poem out of the island – 

    Peacock Pavement: The Poet on her walk – submit to Denver

    Quarterly – which has been very polite about me lately.  They’ve shown an interest in my stuff though nothing has ever been exactly “right. 

  • Inspired Pleasure – the dance diaries of Alysse Aallyn

                 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 Jervaze.  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, startingTyler’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 to make him finally go home. 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?

      Avril 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 Avril, 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.

                                        Avril 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.  Avril 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.   Avril  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…

                                        Avril 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 thiseven 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

  • Inspired Pleasure – the dance diaries of Alysse Aallyn

                      12 Nov 77 6:25 PM Plush Palace

                              I finally called Ryder. (He’s been leaving me messages.)

     I said if we were going to have a relationship of any kind – the friendship that he wanted – we would have to have rules (I got the idea from Nancy Mitford.)  He said he was so glad I called, he’d been having the most awful 

    day.  He took my card out of his rolodex but couldn’t bring himself to destroy it so put it away in a drawer. What rules he said.  I said we’d have to think.  No idle calls?  No talk about past? He said, “Please forgive me” and I said 

    “Forgive me.”  He said there’s nothing to forgive,  

                              Dancing suddenly OK? I said we’re done with all 

    that stuff.  Starting over. But I’m very busy working a lot and writing a

     lot and he said he’s very busy working a lot. No expectations. We both said fine and I’m pretty sure he’s as relieved as I am. 

                              We’re going to Looking for Mr. Goodbar Thurs –

     I want to see it too.  He knows how I love movies.  It’s perfect 

    weather to pick up Avril at the airport and drive to Galesville tomorrow for brunch with Mom & Dad at the marina. There’s a big white 

    farmhouse on Old Annapolis Rd I always look at longingly. 

                              Plush Palace 4 PM Wed 15 Dec 1977

                                Shaking like a leaf. Ryder called the club saying he 

    was called early into work tonight – change of plans.  I called his work 

    immediately – “Mr. Arlen’s desk.” Left a message saying I got his 

    message but do not call the club. Hope this stymies him till after 

    Christmas but I know he is going to say we need each other’s workplace 

    # for last minute plan changes. I’d better have something to say – which

     I think is THIS IS NOT DATING.  WE ARE NOT DATING. You can’t be 

    trusted with my workplace #. 

                                Then I start looking desperately for Handsome Jervaze to come in. 

    He’s supplying me lately with that all-important fantasy vitamin of which I have been so deficient for so long. Can’t even THINK about R to the background of Disco Inferno.  

        Sat – 18 Dec 77 9:30 AM

                                Very dissatisfied with life and self and, as usual, in 

    complete confusion as to what to do about it. I suspect I should not be 

    making any big investment decisions, like buying a house and furnishing it but I am sick of being such a goddam wanderer. Avril has been 

    accepted at U of MD – my job is to finish this goddam novel. If I could finish it maybe March, then April and May could be my traveling months.

     I thought March skiing could be nice – in Devon’s back yard.

                                I am in danger of making an idiot of myself over Phil 

    Jervaze – “Adonis” as I privately call him .  He seems very attracted but is not making the first move. I’ll have to bring him along somehow. 

     Going tomorrow to Renaissance Music at the National Shrine.  

    Wear my rhinestones or can I restrain myself? Avril says I’m doing a good job taking her mind off of Dipstick,  (my name for Mason). Bought her $80 worth of clothes – she can pay me back when I need help with the January rent.

                                The Plush Palace 20 Dec 1977 – 4 PM                                                                               Avril called to say that Ryder called again – trying to find out my 

    holiday plans from her.  Says he might have to work. I am surprised to be so quivery about this. 

                      I am very unhappy about this level of communication.  

    I was actually hoping not to have to deal with him till after Christmas. 

    Would prefer not  to give him an opportunity to go into his act. I’ve learned if I call his work I always get his secretary. Left the message I will be “out of town”. 

                            Favor, Alysse., The trouble is, telling a game-player you don’t play games is all part of the game to them! There is absolutely nothing I can do to step 

    out of this thing except bore him to death. We will see each other fewer and fewer times, the emotional content will be constantly plummeting-

    and meanwhile, the chicks on the side he has summoned up for contrast and amusement will be clamoring for center stage. Let them have it.

                              And I have my own magic pill in reserve – Jervaze. 

    That anyone can drift through life so far unironically with shoulder length platinum hair, platinum mustache and a white cowboy hat, drive a 72 Shelby and work for the Pentagon titillates my Yankee soul. But that’s what’s so much fun about the fine commonwealth of Virginia.  

    It’s full of these people. Uh oh. I hear the rhythm of Disco Inferno, audience’s current favorite. Dust myself with body glitter and I’m up.

         9:30 AM – 22 Dec 77

                              Very annoyed with my life right now – trying to avoid

     making out of sheer boredom some kind of major financial mistake – 

    like buying a house and filling it with furniture.  Now that Avril has been accepted  as a “permanent student” at U of MD don’t see why we shouldn’t share a berth somewhere. One of our dancers is a student there and she says student housing is very expensive. Why couldn’t I make money renting out rooms?

                         But then what would happen to the three months of traveling I was promising myself ?  Wanted to spend March skiing in the White Mountains.

                              I need something more solid than Romance, that’s for sure. Jervaze cancelled our last date so now I’m freaking. It is vital that he makes the next move but my feminist soul revolts. Four months of celibacy appears to be my limit.

                              Sitting in the bay window drinking a third cup of coffee and watching a calico cat stalk the yard. Avril and I have been living rather high lately, buying clothes for Christmas.  Last night saw the movie Telefon –

     -very exciting but with an unbelievable ending – then watched Baryshnikov’s 

    delightful Nutcracker on TV. Avril says she’s finally starting to forget old What’s His Face.

                              I’m trying to get her interested in the religious and meditation books that have been such a help to me. She’s not that kind of a reader, alas.

                              No word from Ryder. My latest “daymare” is that he will just show up at the club.  Should I talk to Randy about this? Avril says Ryder’s asked her about it.  I made her promise to say “We don’t think you should have that information” even if he already knows.  I try comforting myself 

    with my knowledge of his vanity – he wouldn’t want other men to see Randy throw him out as an “unsuccessful suitor”.  (Angry exes show up at club routinely and aren’t allowed in no matter how they behave or how much money they have.  They get On The Bad List.) 

                               Let’s hope the sensitivity of his ”pride” protects both of us. But he probably would send a stooge – it is just like him – to spy out the land. Fortunately I look good and this classy place has the Shalimar beat so no disgrace.  

                              Jervaze and I are trying to keep people at the club from knowing that we date. But it’s impossible to really disguise favorites what with the tripping, 

    drinks, flowers and etc even if we aren’t allowed to sit with the customers. 

    Stooge could probably figure it out.  Maybe Ryder would “give up” at the sight  of him.  Search me.

                              I’m at the stage with Jervaze where I hunger for some 

    symbol of his caring, that he’s broken through the surface status and glamour of “dating a dancer” and has some deeper regard for me as a unique human being.  He buys copies of my book whenever he finds them, but of course that’s status and glamour too, even though it’s just a paperback. I have forbidden him to tell anyone at the club about my book – he finds that a little weird, but I don’t see how being “a dancing author” could do me any good. The thing I most love about this job is that you don’t have to talk. Gave him a book of my poems for his birthday: a declaration of erotic war.

        23 Dec 77 12:15PM

                              So in love I’m crazed. I’m at that stage where you can’t 

    honestly tell if the other person is even interested, you’re in such a delirium. Jealousy of all the other dancers because he looks at them.   

    Jervaze says he liked my poems, his favorite being Nocturne.

                              I thought that might do the trick. I possess wiles 

    unknown to other babes.  He mentioned that his brother’s going back to Alabama so he might be alone for Christmas – I invited him to New York City but I could tell from his expression he’ll never do it. He thinks Virginia is the north – calls the New Jersey Turnpike “undriveable” –  

    a lawless war zone. (If he could hear what we say about the South!)                                             

    We exchanged presents – he gave me a bottle of Southern Comfort and another one of my books (he keeps buying them for me) and I gave him a very small glamour shot in an antique frame – so he can do anything with it – hide it if he wants. Keep it in his car. He said he liked it but in the bar light he really couldn’t see. The we went to breakfast – 

    had a wonderful conversation about ghosts and WC Fields.  He believes in one but not the other. I was hoping he would kiss me – regret the first time when smelling of beer, he leaned forward to kiss me but I pulled away. 

                              But last night would have been completely unmanageable-

     – under yellowing lights and the stares of strangers (me in my stage 

    makeup) or out in the pouring rain. So we said goodbye, hopped in our cars.  We may not see each other for three weeks! I’ve got his address –

     (on his business card) so I can at least send him a card from NY.  

    Got to get up and face the day. Avril back from her final exam in ½ hour – then off to Landover Mall to see Saturday Night Fever.  

  • Inspired Pleasure – the dance diaries of Alysse Aallyn

                     4:20 PM Fri Oct 14 – 77

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

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

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

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

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

    Insomniac

    I can’t sleep

    Because you’re gone

    My muscles wake

    My mind goes spinning on

    And where your fingers

    Plied and pruned my face

    Night air is cold and

    Caustic in its place

    And where we turned and woke

    In complex rhyme, I’m left

    To face the music frayed by time

    A waltz which once we won

    Losing battle choreographed for one.

    None to explore or

    Appreciate my line though now at last

    It’s incontestably mine.

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

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

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

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

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

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

                              He said he should enroll in FBI school after all the 

    trouble he’d had tracking me down. 

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

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

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

    Like he owns the world!  

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

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

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

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

                               2 Nov – Plush Palace – 6:05 PM.

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

                              8:30 PM  8 Nov 77

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

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

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

    degree of truth telling that appears to freak him out.

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

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

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

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

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

                              Bet I can finish Demon by Thanksgiving. Avril coming. 

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

    thrift shop bureau and a mattress on the floor.

  • Inspired Pleasure – the dance diaries of Alysse Aallyn

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

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

        Mon 3 Oct 1977

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

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

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

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

        Sat 8 Oct 1977

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

                              7:30 PM Tues 11 Oct 77

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

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

                              2PM Wed 12 Oct 77 – Plush Palace

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

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

                              9:20 PM Thurs 13 Oct 77

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  • Inspired Pleasure – the dance diaries of Alysse Aallyn

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

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

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

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

     L’Escargot closed.

        5 PM Sept 9

                              Kensington House hopeless. You have to join some

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

        7:00 PM

                              Bleak. Too bleak. Tried to imagine myself doing my 

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

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

        8:15 AM Wed 14 September – Powder Mill Road

                              Drinking coffee in my own kitchen from the mug that 

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

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

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

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

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

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

                             Yesterday very full day.  Got up at 8 and moved

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

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

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

        8:30 AM Thurs Sept 15 1977

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

        Fri 16 September 1977

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

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

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

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

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

         Sun 18 Sept 77

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

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

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