Alysse Aallyn

Category: #Poetry

  • Inspired Pleasure – the Dance Diaries of Alysse Aallyn

    Shadowe Island 23 June 77 11 PM

          Walked around corner of my parents Cape Cod house to 

    The deck – there’s Devon sitting with his Mom and my Mom and Dad. 

    Waiting for me.  He is still dreamily beautiful; cut glass profile, 

    muscles shining through clothes;  a star. The understanding 

    between us electric as always – hope I did not gape too 

    obviously. 

             I felt a “reaching-out” from this shy man bubbling up 

    from the deep wells of his most secret personality. 

    Seemingly uncertain of his power and frightened by his own beauty, 

    Utterly obliterating poor hopeless, impossible Ryder, which is just what 

    The doctor recommended.  

              I must have babbled something as they gave 

    me a huge Tanqueray gin and tonic. Mom has that 

    wrinkle between her eyes whenever she looks at me 

    like there is no book I can publish, job I can take, no man

     I can marry to iron out that wrinkle. 

             We hear them talking about us as if we weren’t there:

     “1972 was such an important year for them, that Winter 

    Carnival;” “Why don’t they get together if they love each 

    other?” “Kids these days think marriage just a piece of 

    paper.”  Just a piece of paper?  You won’t get a rise out

    of me over that.  I pass my life in a blizzard of papers, 

    which may (or not) survive me. May (or not) bear any 

    ultimate meaning.

             His Mom offers me studio apt in their ski chalet – 

    $125 month utilities included.  Staking an early claim to 

    any progeny I may produce.  I say, No thank you,  I need 

    a city. Still, it gives one furiously to think.

             When Devon left he lifted up my chin to kiss 

    me – tight familiar “everyone’s watching” mouth and 

    prickly blond moustache. He says he’s going to England 

    for a week. Invited me to Boston after. I imagine us 

    unpeeling at the station, two nude souls confronting one 

    another. Rank terror. The body reacts first, hands trembling 

    violently.  All I could do to keep from just savaging him in 

    front of everybody. I could hardly hold my drink. 

             I am an easy catch, too.  He quoted from my poem

     “the one you wrote on the bus” when I visited him at Amherst –

     I had completely forgotten about that one. Quote to me from 

    my own work and I become your slave. 

            Poor Ryder! He never thought of that! I know he will “feel” 

    This moment, the moment I lose interest in him; he will lift his head – wherever he is and whatever he’s doing – and come after me.  Just when I don’t want him any more.

    (The quote: “memories like stones I’m free to choose and

     in life’s rivers, eventually lose”)

       Still true. 

     Barnacle Cabin – Sat June 25 – 77

                 I can tell it’s early by the light but can’t find out what time 

    it is without waking someone.  Health complete.  Walked the dogs all over Heath Island, ran into Paul Morris who just bought the Burnside Inn. He invited me back for coffee and brandy, to show me the changes he has made. He sneered when he asked me if I thought “exotic dancing” was “art”.  I said Sure, why not.? It can be. He read Boston Globe “exposé” on “strippers who are just little girls.  They were all molested by their fathers.” I told him they get better tips by calling people “Daddy”. 

             Paul has a mysterious live-in girlfriend who refers to herself as The Sinister Chambermaid. Helping him renovate the place, traveling with him from Boston where he is a university professor.  Since they are not married I wonder about their “financial deal”.  Let me guess, she invests her labor, you own title and cash?  But now I have a good excuse to stay at the Inn and I am considering it.  They have electricity for my typewriter and the Barnacle doesn’t.

                       New York City, 96th off the Park Sat June 25 77 ll PM

                       Suffered through my sister’s wedding – a day of hideous 

    rain forcing us out from the rooftop garden to huddle in the restaurant.  

    I wore a gray silk backless tuxedo pantsuit – halter-top and bare midriff 

    – Mom did NOT approve. (Looked ravishing if I do say so myself.) 

                  Someone asked Dad – about me – “How many of you are redheads? 

    And Dad answered, “Hardly any of us.” Bride tells me she chose Brett because he would make a good father.  Says she’s coming back pregnant from this honeymoon if it kills them both (they take temp, every morn, etc.) Mom all dewy eyed.  I feel like replaying a few “deleted” scenes from Genevieve’s past of which Mom is blissfully unaware but loyally refrain, thus retaining my title as Official Bad Daughter. Hey, it’s a pivotal job.

                       NYC 10:45 PM Sun26 June 77

                       Last night Avril came into my hotel room to stop my wailing and we talked till 2:30 AM. We both agree “fireplug sex” – you stand there while I spray you – is out of the question.  She says women 

    who expect nurturing from men are always disappointed because men lack the nurturing gene.  Hmm. This is not true of Ryder OR 

    Devon (it was true of Bruce.) If we’re going to talk about “nurturing” 

    we have to face the fact that plenty of mothers seem to lack the 

    gene too – they don’t care what you want or who you are they are just trying to smack you into “shape”.  That’s the kind Ryder is. 

    Devon?  Remains to be seen but the way he talked about my novel – 

    seeing me inside it – gives me hope. 

                       Went to see 3 Women tonight with Best Man (Brett’s 

    brother) on the Doobie Bros principle of “why you in such a hurry to be lonely one more night?” But he is still in college.  Immature frat 

    boy.  Any relationship speculative at best. There’s Genevieve’s bike to ride when the physical becomes overwhelming on my 3 wk housesit (while they are on their honeymoon & Devon is in Eng) will pass fast. 

    Hearing I was “house-sitting” in NYC parents’ friend at wedding offers me another outside Boston – perfect for seeing Devon whose theological 

    college is nearby. That’s a definite yes.

                       I REALLY miss dancing. Yet creativity heals all. Conquers 

    my fear of ultimate impotence.  The act of creation – even if others don’t agree – has a purifying effect. After all, we can’t live in other people’s heads

     (it’s dangerous to try). 

                       Tues. 28 Jun 77

                       Walk Genevieve’s miniature dogs, tend fish & plants, take bike

     ride, wash hair, see Swedish flick Man on a Roof (long Lincoln Mercury 

    ad). Bought huge-brimmed red sun hat with single rose in Greenwich Village. 

    Walked HUNDREDS of blocks to NY Pub Lib but they won’t let me take anything out. 

                   Planning next novel, A Demon Roused.  Need to give Jewell some past 

    crime. Infanticide?  But under sympathetic circumstances.  Or maybe murder

     of Stephen Ward-like pimp. Bad news at publisher: Harcourt acquires Pyramid and my editor dumped (lunch with her Thurs).  Could be good news for me (lunch with new editor tomorrow). Trying not to feel 

    dragged in to dumped editor’s hysteria.  

                       Out to dinner at Fiorello’s last night with Brett’s brother, 

    then Altman’s Images (which he knew I wanted to see.)  He is trying to figure “a way in”.  There is no way in.  Images  exquisite. Much better than 3 Women. Transitions so elegant they hardly existed. 

    Wish I could do that. Didn’t want to ruin it by talking about it.  Very 

    reminiscent of La Prisonniere. My previous all-time favorite.  Sent R. my Pevensey Old Farms address so he won’t harass M & D. That’s what I tell myself, anyway.                      

                       Listening to Vivaldi and reading Haskell’s From Reverence to Rape –anything I can find around here. Genevieve likes novels andI HATE other novelists writing (usually). New editor Lauren changed our Monk’s Inn lunch to dinner.

                       Chuck Kornowitz offered to read Secaire – I invited him to dinner here.

                       Wed 29 June 77

                       Disappointing meeting with “editor”.  I guess dinner went 

    as well as it could on the surface – but Lauren doesn’t like me and 

    eager to wash her hands of me.  Damned if I know why. Trying not to take it personally.  She is furious at being in “paperback division” (subtext: “throwaways” ) and says my new  novel being read by someone else – guy promoted over her who used to edit Westerns.  

    Think she enjoyed my panic at this news. 

                       Tried entertaining her with usually reliable Tales of Childhood but she was not amused.  Probably considered it all bragging.  She was what I expected, mousy bun, tortoise shell earrings, presumably raging hormones. Dinner with me was something she had to “go through”. 

     Work, not fun.  Said she is forced to read two novels a day but prefers memoirs!  That’s what she reads for pleasure. I ate snails with lots of garlic and I think she was a bit disgusted.

    I conjectured you could take out an eyeball with those special snail tongs.  Since she was not turned on by this idea I could see she is not the editor for me. 

    Snails were delicious, however. Anyone who loves mushrooms 

    would adore snails.

                       Lunch with on-the-way-out-editor Ruby a scary experience.  She made me meet her at a laundromat where her clothes were in drier!  Went to a Mexican restaurant around the corner, I ordered Sangria. She wore old jeans, ill-fitting shirt, had a price list in hand.  

    Trying to get me to hire her as freelance editor!  She showed me 

    her poetry collection (awful: title “Twitterings”.)  Says she has a 

    novel ¼ done. Praised me awkwardly by saying I am “a real writer”. 

    When I tell her I just want to find out what I need to write by patiently building house of cards in my head she tells me people like me are trampled underfoot by the thousand and I need her to make my novels acceptable.

    Her qualifications are that she has been fired by all the big publishers (they are “consolidating”!) But she also expresses disgust with them.  She is probably right on facts but she needs to work on her presentation. 

                       I was horrified.  Wanted to be friendly because she bought my book, but when I say why pay someone to rewrite your book in a way you might hate she say there are no guarantees in life.  You have to go with whatever “works”. That she is not working seems too rude to point out.  I agree the world’s a dark wood but I need to find my way out alone. She drank 3 bullshots, I order coffee frantically afraid I’ll have to drag her and her laundry home. We split the tab both probably thinking the other should have treated  (last time out was on Harcourt’s dime). I tried to act like I might be thinking about it but I don’t have a good face for hiding when I am absolutely appalled. 

                       Purged my mind at Visconti’s Conversation Piece.  

    Especially reveled in the beauty of our modern Dorian Gray 

    Helmut Berger and  the “footsteps of death” in apt. overhead. 

    Very Edith Wharton. Dinner at Old Ms. McManus’ Sutton Place apt. (whose Boston house I will sit next.) She shows off her latest antique acquisitions.

  • Inspired Pleasure – the dance diaries of Alysse Aallyn

        7:50 PM Sun 15 May 77 
    Justifiably proud –  paid ALL my bills and sent off my

    galleys. Nothing like money! (Stupid car needs a new clutch.
    It’s always something.) Able to refuse “help” from Mom and Dad
    who are dithering about whether I need to be institutionalized.

        Told them I was working at a “restaurant” (Let them

    assume waitressing. They know I can’t cook. PP does serve food;
    State of Virginia makes people who serve alcohol serve something to sop it up with. Good old Virginia. ) Sent M & D a DEVLYN cover.


    $57 left in my acct.; $100 in my purse. (Open a savings acct tomorrow).

        Ordered a beautiful Vietnamese print ($80) for Genevieve’s

    wedding gift (last time she got married I sent candy. Well, I wasn’t invited!) Horseback riding did make me horny however – Ryder & I made love like a pair of wild animals. He may be compact, but he’s beautiful.

    Cleaned the entire house. Now darkness falls .– it’s
    time to walk the dogs. How I love peering into people’s windows.
    When I get back, strong tea with milk and the “splendeurs et misères”of Monica Dickens. Or will I succumb to that modern master of the Grimm fairytale, Agatha Christie? No poetry, but plenty of trolls.

        10PM Mon 16 May 77
    Finally got a reaction from agent to Secaire.  I was

    physically sick when I opened it but she was full of praise. I could
    teach Poe, Verlaine and Mallarme a thing or two! She’s sending it
    to Harcourt but telling them it’s “too fine for a paperback”. Says it’s also readable, which is a thing more “precious than rubies”. I was really afraid of what she would say after our literary discussions and her poetry sneers.


    So elated! Hit the library today and hit it hard – Nancy
    Mitford’s novels, Hilaire Belloc’s Letters, life of Brontë. Delicious
    dreaming.

        5:35 Pm Broadcast Agency – 17 May 77 
    Enjoyed Helen Bevington’s The House was Quiet


    cuckoos and thrushes and loblolly pines.

        Bored to tears with this stupid switchboard job but you can’t say

    it’s “hard”. I’m the last happy dodo in a world of dinosaurs – all this
    equipment about to be ripped out. In 5 mins I get to disconnect
    phone, walk to Church St (parking’s free in Mafia territory). Drive
    to Arlington. Fish sandwich for dinner, read about Unquiet Haworth while wearing G-string & stockings. (So appropriate.)

    Expanding
    my house hunt to Rt 450. (Towards Annapolis; might need Dad to co-sign.) Obviously I can handle 45 min commute. (Don’t like rain, however.) Aware El Diablo is nothing but a hunk of junk. Future of American literature is fragile on some of these May nights.

        Broadcast Agency Thurs May 19, 77
    Only $134 in my saving acct and $7 in checking, curse that

    clutch. Crisis brewing with R. He is jealous and suspicious that I am out so much in the evening. He’s the one who wants to be non-exclusive so let him sweat. I have too many negative emotions about him – that he’s a coward, for example. Which would make him angrier – if I was dancing or screwing some other guy? (Which I have no desire to do and he should know me by now.) I think he sees my privacy and aloneness as infidelity. While he’s doubtless experimenting with “goofy chicks” who’ve “never been touched”; I’m only “unfaithful” with Shelley & Brontë.


    But that’s STILL too much for him.) After all this time if he still doesn’t realize I’m the best, the hell with him.

        Worry about the dangers of psychic scars. They can SEEM to heal,

    but sometimes they re-shape the life beneath. All I know, is, contempt is the ultimate relationship killer. To love is to be happy with! Boy scout methods won’t work with me, the sabre-toothed tiger. Our relationship may already be fatally spoiled by resentment and revenge.

        Last night audience bored and hostile, but who cares?

    Bouncers won’t let them show it! We are goddesses to be revered and if they won’t worship at the shrine they’re out. Compared to the Shalimar, Palace is sheer joy. We are never hassled. God forbid if they try to
    touch us! They are bounced on their heads in the parking lot.
    If I have plain grits when I wake up at 9:30 or 10 (also coffee and
    orange juice) I can last till 4. Hunger peaks at 5. Salad, then rush
    to work – when I get there I’m not hungry anymore. Would like to cut the burger habit.


    Need to sew my G-strings but Merribeth can see me
    through the glass and she won’t leave. Reading Robt Fish as an
    antidote for poor Charlotte Brontë’s pain.

        1:00 AM Plush Palace – 20 May 77
    Four dancers tonight. Less work, more intellect. (!) Fred,

    the cook, insists I try his potato pancakes and they are DAMN good.


    Can’t say no. Long wailing phone call from Maeve this afternoon. Why is it we can see other’s relationships so clearly? “Dump him”, I always say. Am I telling myself something? R & I make date tomorrow night.


    Now wearing black velvet, smoky eyeshadow, black stockings and glitter I look in the mirror and am astonished by my own beauty. Take that, Ryder, you poor bastard. Eight mins and I’m up – One more dance and home. Front table of impressionable navy cadets eminently shockable.

        11:30 AM – Sun 22 May 77
    It’s all over, baby blue.  Getting up my strength for our date

    tonight by sunbathing in back yard – literally cooking in coconut oil.
    R. complained on Fri he called me “all night long” and I wasn’t home.


    Aww. Could have told him I was writing but lying just postpones the inevitable (because next time he’ll come over.) So told him I would explain on our date. A poem came suddenly : In the Butterfly Pavilion.

    This evening you said you wished
    I was more conventional.
    I bowed my head. I did not speak.
    Outside the animals leaned together,
    Breathing lightly; waiting
    For my answer.
    Cats-tongue ferns
    Swelled up like swords, pushed out a stink
    Occluding fields of vision while
    The rabbit-bloodied lawn curled away. 
    Phlox flamed  
      Sows littered in the cyclamen
    Dwarf stars broke free as
    Frazzled molten ore raced across a sky
    Darkening to night.
    Summoning my power
    My hands stay folded in my sleeves.
    Nighttime is my kingdom.
    .

    Exhaustion from the violent motions of the pendulum.
    I made dinner, but he refused to eat. He said, “I think
    I know what you’re going to tell me. “
    I said, “I bet you don’t.”
    “It’s another man.”
    “No. I’m dancing again. I’m living here alone. I need the
    money.” (I should have said “it nourishes me UNLIKE
    SOME PEOPLE” but I’m a coward too.)
    He said very dismissively, ”Well, if that’s all you think you can
    do.”


    He who read my novel! Bastard! He said, “Well, the ball’s
    in my court.” So I guess, that means “Game on!” (Was it ever
    off?) And he left! Put his dinner carefully away in the freezer
    (I’m not made of money) and took the dogs on an hour’s walk.
    Now I lie here again in Paradise – baking, basting, trying to recall
    every detail of the last time we had sex. Because that’s all I’ll ever
    get from him.


    11:30 PM
    Session this aft with Chloe at Pacifica and a young PBS guy
    named John about writing a radio play for kids. I threw out some ideas.
    Then out for dinner with Chloe who complained that her husband has a mental illness given to him by the Army .

    And I think that I have problems. I reject “victim” AND “slut”. The
    poet alone in her lofty palace. Feels like an abscess has been lanced.
    Heard about a great apt in Takoma Pk that’s OK for dogs.

        Broadcast Agency – 4:20 PM – Mon 23 May 77
    Present tenant says do not mention dogs so I am out of

    love with Perfect Apt. Would rather have a house. Lots of calls today.


    I seem to be getting fat – but I look so good – much too good for 128. How I hate to starve but it’s the only way. Need to be a fine-honed racing machine.


    Considering entering Courtney in the Saxton fellowship.
    Can I get a readable copy? Lack of sex keeping me awake at night.


    Now I know why people take drugs. Devon writes to say he’ll be in
    Maine on the island but not at Genevieve’s wedding for “financial
    reasons”. I plan to do my best to seduce him. Reading Mitford’s
    Wigs on the Green – not as funny as it is sad. Pastiche, really –
    Wodehouse is better. But I feel that way about E Waugh’s humor
    too – that it is basically tragic – “this is all we can expect”.


    Asked me when I was moving, when going to wedding.
    He couldn’t be hinting for an invite – if I show up with him my family will have me institutionalized for sure. They never could figure out what I was doing with this hysterical little man.


    We’ve said our fond goodbyes. If the ball is in his court,
    it died there. Need to buy a dress for wedding. Macy’s? My mother criticizes me for:
    1) Making money
    2) Caring about making money
    3) Needing money AND
    4) Buying inexpensive clothes. AND fake jewelry. A lady
    never – etc.


    You figure it out. Finished Farber’s essays – very bad book.
    He seems to regard the female orgasm as some kind of personal insult –
    “Now I’ve got this to contend with!” We’re not doing it to annoy you.

    Hopelessness on the subject of sex a grave inadequacy in a philosopher I would say. Merribeth sent me to the bank today – I was thrilled to get outside – when I came back Keith called down to say he was having lunch at the Hyatt Regency and had seen me walking and wanted to say hi! Nothing to say after that. I thought of inviting him to the Palace but what would be the point? Everyone would think he’s my boyfriend and it’s a tips killer.

        12:50 AM Plush Palace – exhausted and bathed in sweat.

    Man tried to crawl onstage with me. He was in the mood to dance!


    Every dancer (except me and I guess him) is using Darla’s overdose death (suicide or accident? I say why not murder?) as an excuse to not dance. I like dancing. Passes the time faster and the tips are better. Steve managing tonight – he looks just like Dylan Thomas.


    I keep expecting a Welsh accent when he warns the old men with their balls hanging out. Great tales from new dancer Charmian –
    she has toured the entire country. Just dancing. (She has the body of a seven year old. Plasters pasties on her completely flat chest. )


    There’s a townhouse in New City I like the sound of but nobody
    EVER answers that phone. Tomorrow dinner with poor Avril and that awful Mason whom I loathe and despise. Couldn’t get through Babs Deals’ The Walls Came Tumbling Down – and Crystal Mouse was so good. Fortunately I have Steven Marcus’ The Other Victorians which is excellent. Pornotopia, indeed! Should have $1000 in savings by the 24th June.


    3PM Wed 25 May 77
    Weighed myself – I shouldn’t have. Lost two pounds but I
    can gain it back through thought alone. Reading Gore Vidal’s essays –like them better than his novels – unsettling man. Avril says Dad’s taken hotel rooms for everybody in NYC. New City townhouse a terrible shock – NOT to be thought of. R. called to invite me to the Emmys June 4. He had the nerve to say I’ll “always come back” to him. So I have to be careful not to, even when at night I howl like an animal.


    I can’t trust him to “take care” of me.


    7:45 PM Thurs May 26
    Who knew the worst was yet to come? I was talking to
    A at Broadcast Agency and a call came in and it was Ryder. “Hello
    Broadcast Agency”. I said, “You’re on the wrong line.” He said, “Your private line is busy and I’ve got to talk to you. Need to come clean and beg your forgiveness.” Uh oh.


    Yup. He invited another girl to the Emmys BEFORE me
    (that’s his story) she said she couldn’t afford to come, he invited me,then she contacted him to say she managed to get a plane ticket.

    So he’s disinviting me! I disconnected him immediately. He’ll be
    lucky if I ever speak to him again. I ought to be glad it happened –
    I was dithering. Needed a decision maker.


    I said to Charmian this evening, “Are you happy? I’m
    taking a poll.” She said, “Well, I feel all right. All that bothers me
    are asshole men.”


    So true! I think the pain is over if I decide it is. Struggling not
    to be feel ashamed of ever loving that man. Distance is required.
    Distance & discipline. Dancing makes me feel better. I kicked
    really high. Audience enjoyed it.


    3:10 AM
    Home dreading Ryder would be here – if so I was prepared
    to scream the place down. He wasn’t. Just a note – saying I was
    “right to get rid” of him. Calling himself a worthless shit! He said
    he’s “sinned” ever since he met me by refusing to admit how much I mean to him. The problem is it doesn’t matter. We are the wrong people for each other.


    8:30 PM Fri. Plush Palace May 27 1977
    The only place I can sleep is work, dozing off between
    sets. Not even masturbation knocks me out. Tempting to make
    Mon my last day but I should last out the week – I need the cash.
    Still have so much packing to do. Keith in my office the last day of
    Broadcast Agency work – I told him about the Emmys – he said it
    didn’t sound like a deathblow. Men! I had considered inviting
    him to the wedding – this decided me against it.


    3 weeks alone in NYC house-sitting for Genevieve
    while she’s on her honeymoon. Parents will take dogs. The Blessing is an awful book. Nancy Mitford not cut out to be a novelist; she’s really not interested in motivation. Only wants a forum for her retro opinions.


    4:30 PM Sat 28 May 77 – Plush Palace
    A girl left early so Laverne and I are splitting her sets.
    Courtly Jim of the hush puppy body and the Elvis Presley hair
    realizes he has to pay us more to keep someone onstage. Good tips –
    holidays make people feel richer. Only 3 days left.


    7:30 PM Sun 29 May 77
    Packed for six straight hours, ate yogurt and chicken,
    walked dogs now I’m lying on mattress more exhausted than
    I’ve ever been. Shoulders has agreed to store my furniture –
    we don’t need a van since his house is right across the street.
    Told him he can use whatever pieces he wants. Jim will be in
    to pay me Fri so I don’t need to trust the mails. Called phone,
    gas, water, elec people.

    Don’t think I like EM Forster
    (where Angels Fear To Tread) – Henry James without the
    Henry James. Edwardian didacticism makes me miss James’s
    scrupulous objectivity. Why did he write this book? Because
    he’s “The Literary Type”. Compare with Woolf’s Unwritten Novel.
    Stagger about forcing myself to gulp Yuban. So enjoying throwing things away.


    Wed. 1 June 77 – 8:30 PM Plush Palace
    $770 to take off with – not bad I think. Ryder tells me
    I am “fleeing.” Damn straight. Mom asked me what was going on –
    I said I proposed to Ryder and he turned me down. She was
    squeaking on the other end of the phone like a gerbil but I couldn’t help it. It’s almost true – I didn’t take her advice but showed him my true self! Too bad!

    Reading Forster’s Longest Journey. Still feeling another story
    trying to get through. Pretty sick of the glory that wasn’t Greece.
    Everyone in book sanctimonious prig.


    12:30PM
    Forster so foul I reread this diary. Deeply shaming.
    Maybe Forster is right: whatever you do, don’t write about what is actually going on – nobody may ever recover.


    Opal took me out to lunch at Apple Tree – painless. Crab
    quiche and 2 Brandy Alexanders. An elegant poem unspools in my head about the difference between hummingbirds and hawks.


    Will I go round in circles? Or will I fly high like a bird up in the sky?

    Like me the hummingbird
    Transcribes inner space
    Half wingtip pinwheel
    Leaving outer reaches
    To the ragged hawk that flies alone
    The hawk is:
    I am what shall be

  • Inspired Pleasure – the dance diaries of Alysse Aallyn

             Fri. 25 Feb 77

                       I fuss, I fume. I shriek and scream.  I circle my 

    desk warily. Cannot get into this awful novel. Stare hard at

     the clutching sisters in the Victorian photo for inspiration.

     None comes. Instead slapped together a first poetry collection

     – In the Vein.

                       5:20 PM Sun 27 Feb 77

                       Ryder will be here any minute. Driving straight 

    through from Pittsburgh because he “misses me so much.”  

    Flank steak marinating, turnips, parsnips & parsley, tomatoes

     & sour cream – everything ready but wine.  Too lazy to drive 

    to the Tick Tock. Day of ecstasy sorting books in new study.

     Sections are: crime writing, Victorians, Great Novels, the Occult, 

    Women Writers, Cinema, Politics, Science, Children, History &

     Murder Mysteries. (Move those downstairs.) Hating Orlando. 

    Why did Bowen write Afterword if she didn’t like the book?

                       Mon 28 Feb 77 – Broadcast Agency

                       Bad sex. Sore.  Feel like I’ve been run over. Something’s 

    up with him.  Mauled me again in the middle of the night. Guilt? 

    Surprise visit from landlord – heard about “violations” from 

    Montgomery County. Ha ha. Obviously only two people living here – 

    (nothing visible of Mason’s.) Landlord calmed.  Says he wants to 

    sell the place. Would we allow to be shown? I said sure. Everybody happy. Sorry to lose such a beautiful house but it is too expensive for one person anyway.

                       Thurs. 3 Mar 77

                       Long talk with Avril about Mason. He is a racist. 

    She says how is it possible to feel superior to and inferior to someone at the same time? Human condition, I say. Spring wind makes me long to shed my clothes! Poor Ryder! It’ll be halter tops and hot pants the minute temp hits 65. Finally got a V. Woolf poem –

    VIRGINIA WOOLF:

    The Membraned Sieve

    O bliss to be red admiral afeast

    Upon a rotten apple in the grass; she dreamed that guiltily

    Woke to Leonard bringing milk

    Nessa dancing bear-like on the lawn, woke

    To pain; cylindrical as seasons

    Burning white and burning blue like friends.

    The words fell fast, the blood fell faster;

    Split the membraned sieve.

    She raced the whitecaps out to sea

    Parting the waves with her mother’s hand.

           Keith and I still talk but he has made no moves. Relief.

          Mon 7 Mar 77

          Ryder says he talks so much about me associate director 

    Kerry’s asked to meet me. (He told Kerry he doesn’t deserve 

    me.  It’s the truth!)  I said he can’t come to our party at 

    The Plum – we have no room.  

              Sex too rough. Experimenting or letting his anger 

    out? Maybe I’ve stopped lubricating – my body’s ready

     to quit even if I’m not. Wants me to wake up and smell 

    the coffee. Lunch w/Maeve at Carmac’s, me splendid in

    orange leather suit, boots, bracelets. Bloody Marys. 

    I gave her phone bill – also letter from collection agency 

    about plane bill she said  boyfriend paid for. He’s obviously 

    running a scam on her.  She says she found a Bethesda 

    efficiency $180/month. Had to rush to get back to work – 

    then saw List of Adrian Messenger with A. Made up writing 

    schedule for Secaire. But the minute I start I get idea for 

    another work – story about father/ daughter/ stepmother war– 

    A Demon Roused. Who’s the demon? Reading The Ring,

     the Book & The Poet.

    11 Mar 77

              Sent home 3:30 because B’Nai B’rith under siege 

    by terrorists (3 blocks away). Police will tell us when to 

    come back. Real estate agent leads inspector thru house.  

    Bad letter from my agent telling me not to try to sell “old” stuff, 

    write in “new” vein – but she means “like Devlyn”.  No more 

    historicals for me!!!! Got to get out of this stalemated “love”

     relationship – when I tax R with things he’s said, he 

    claims he “doesn’t remember” so we never advance 

    and I feel diminished. Had to tell him sex is over – I can 

    see he doesn’t believe me.  Must ask for his key back, 

    that should do it. Dragged Avril protesting to Freaky Friday – 

    it was worth it. Barbara Harris Chaplinesque. Told Broadcast 

    I will work only one full day per week – must go back to dancing. 

            Read Ellen Glasgow’s The Woman Within. Trying to 

    rewrite Secaire in third person. Unsuccessful. Dreaming 

    about houses with deep, cool porches but tax people 

    giving me only $112. Avril crying over Mason’s “hideous brutality” 

    but she won’t break up with him. Ugh. (Feel my relationship mirrored.)

    13 Mar 77

            Made love with R for what I hope was last time 

    (he brought lubricant.) His body no longer a key to mine.  

    Think I’m started on Secaire Final Draft. God I hope so.  

    R will sulk for a while, then we’ll “talk”.  Prayed for the first 

    time, to the “life source”. Pray away panic and disorder, 

    pray for clarity, purity, calm. Beautiful long walk. Heat like July. 

     Storm burst 4:30.  Coffee, orange slices, do my nails. Re-

    read Great Gatsby, pitying Fitzgerald the while. Someone 

    should write this novel from Daisy’s point of view.  Exciting 

    way to get back into Courtney – but I don’t want to put it in the ‘20’s. 

         Told R I’m dating so had to invite Keith to All Night Strut – 

    he was pleased. Says he’s not hung up on men paying for everything.

    17 Mar 77

         Thank God for dancing. a fe moments of complete bliss each evening.

    Everyone fussing about Scenes from a Marriage.  It is excellent. 

    Reading good bio Dorothy Thompson.  Novel going swimmingly – 

    suddenly feel fearless. Sex scene perfect. Why elaborate? 

    Why elucidate? Need to be out of this house June 1 – can do,

     but should I return to dancing or take summer off? Undecided. 

    Mon. 21 Mar 77

                       Wish I hadn’t called Ryder but I did. He was very injured 

    by my sex comments.  I said I was very injured by the sex. (He says he fears me.) Goddamit feel like turning in my phone if this is how

     I am going to behave. Watched Upstairs Downstairs, Monty Python.  

    Felt better. All Night Strut amusing – Keith invited me to Voyage of the Damned. (He pronounces it Dam – NED. In a class by himself after all?) 

    Unfortunately not feeling the chemistry.  Trying to take what pleasure I can in high heels and see through blouses. Could we just date? Secaire solid, beautiful, disturbing. Avril says its very exciting. Found a shack in Virginia for $200/month.  But maybe I have to flee this state to eradicate R from my soul. 

                       23 Mar 77

                       Voyage classically awful. Majestically, stupendously awful.  

    Bad date. I talked too much. Goddamit dating’s awful.  Like those endless “teas” we suffered through in Girl Scouts.  Sex is less work (not that I indulged. He has a repellently gooey corpus.)  He took me to Alfio’s for dinner!  Scene of R’s & my first date!  Couldn’t resist telling him I used to dance at Shalimar next door. Keith invited me to his house in Potomac.  I said nix. Dumped on doorstep with closed mouth kiss. 

    Shudders of relief. Walked in on Mason in a rage over my “betrayal” of Ryder!! I said he’s dating other people. Mason said but he loves you! 

     I didn’t say his love is a septic condition. (Because Mason’s love is also a septic condition. Poor Avril.) Happily to bed with Becker’s Escape from Evil.

                       2 April 77

                       Crisis at work sending my first cablegram to France – Keith showed up looking extremely handsome.  Terrible suspicions novel is bad.

     Off to splendiferous bash – literary party.  Met Chuck Kornowitz, 

    editor from Athenaeum.  Acted interested in my work – where can we have dinner? Took him to the Serbian Crown.  He is NOT interested in my work he is interested in me. Damn. Told me the most erotic encounter he has ever had was with a stranger in an elevator!  Feels sex with complete strangers has not yet been fully explored!!! Not by me that’s for sure.

                       He drove me home, insisted on walking dogs with me, holding my hand! Weird but I don’t want to turn him off entirely. (He’s old and ugly – looks like a Gila monster.) Fighting the impulse to call R and yell at him.  Boy am I sick. Poor Keith does not know I need him for a rabies shot. Against hair of the dog?

                      Fri. 8 Apr 77

                       Agency offers me over-time while files are reorganized.  More cash. We celebrate Avril‘s new job as fake nurse at urology office.  She hasto buy a nursing uniform so patients won’t know. (Doctor not willing to pay over minimum wage.)  Still, it looks classy. Went to Black Tahiti where I had sweet & sour shrimp. Turns out I need to stay away from booze because called You Know Who came right over and we indulged in mad passionate sex all night long. R was delicate and gentle – brought me to the edge several times before finally pushing me off cliff.  Showoff. 

                       Talked about me like he’d read my work. (Praising it. 

    Thought I’d be pleased.) Then told me he’d “busy” this weekend. 

    Steeerike three!  Tragically I need a guardian, conservator AND a 

    bodyguard.  (Keith doesn’t have the build.)

                       Chloe apologized for bad writing workshop with dinner 

    after at Armand’s.  My advice to writers – learn what kind of writer 

    you need to be and get on with it. Found myself getting defensive about Devlyn – if I don’t want to write “that way” again it must mean there was “something wrong” with it!!!  Bad advice from Ted Hughes :

     “When you find yourself using someone else’s voice, stop at once.” 

    Nothing ventured nothing gained under that theory.  This is not making me eager to hit the “literary events” as Chloe advised. The “noise” interferes with my working mind.  

                       Hostile questioning from Mom and Dad who don’t know 

    why I don’t move closer to Devon!!!  They say “playing the field” is

    cheapening my brand. Reading Mrs. Starr Lives Alone.

  • Inspired Pleasure – the dance diaries of Alysse Aallyn

                       Fri. 24 Sept 76

                       Checked my acct – $54!! Don’t know where it came from 

    but I will spend it.  Sent poems to Chloe Aparo, borrow bike from 

    Shoulders. Ryder wants to go horseback riding, we went to see 

    The Tenant instead. (Cheaper).  R managed to discuss it intelligently. 

    Trying to research the occult for Secaire.  Reading bad suspense 

    novel – Geoffrey Turtons Devil’s Churchyard. I liked all his other 

    books. Dump it for Aleister Crowley’s Diary of a Drug Fiend. $10 

    to live on for 2 weeks. Mom & Dad sent emergency check.

                       6:25 PM – Sun 3 Oct 76

                       Fabulous dinner party last night. Steak tartare, crab 

    and cheese casserole, lots of wine. R and I fall asleep in each 

    other’s arms.  We have more sex “broken up” than when we were 

    dating. Got offered $3.50 an hour for 4 hr a day legal secretary!!! 

    Out of their minds.  Trying to sell my wedding dress for $150 – 

    got one porno call.

                       Tues 5 Oct 76

                       4pm appt with Environmental Defense Fund. Howard 

    Nemerov such a relief after Auden.

                       Thurs 11:30 PM 7 Oct 76

                       Typical Tyler St evening. Lying in bed (alone) powdered 

    and polished from bath. Maeve and Avril out on dates. R is working,

     I’m reading Quest for Theseus. Got too depressed reading 

    Shirley Jackson. Her life solutions: food and cigarettes – plenty 

    of both.  Lost EDF job –  as soon as they turned me down I 

    decide I want it!  To WTTG to apply for “production asst” job – 

    200 people spilling into street!  Didn’t bother.  How write about 

    love if it’s impossible?

                       I owe Maeve money – she doesn’t like it and I don’t

     like it. Tension almost unbearable waiting for my check.

                       R offered jobs in Pittsburgh & Detroit. (He says he 

    doesn’t ever want to leave though it’s the only way to make more $$.)

                       12:55 PM Wed 13 1976 These are the times that try 

    women’s souls. Desperately accepted switchboard job at Broadcasters Agency because it looks easy and I can think my own thoughts.  

    Replacing a girl going on maternity leave so I’m not stuck if I don’t 

    like it. Agent sent check told me not to cash it for a week!!! Thinking 

    they’re all scam artists. Reading Diane Johnson’s brilliant Lesser

     Lives. Avril depressed over Mason. Maeve depressed over George.

     I am buying diet pills because of sedentary job.

                       Switchboard – Broadcast Agency 9:15 AM – Fr. 18 Feb 77

                       New notebooks such a thrill. Always a fresh start:  

    I could almost become anyone. Worked 3 full days this week – 

    more $$ in the coffers. Avril coming in to Broadcasters Agency 

    to apply for Zelma’s old job – $8500/yr for 7 hr day.  Hope she 

    gets it. Brought in The Voyage Out today – I WILL finish it –

     bring it to its knees. Perfect example of everything usually wrong 

    with first novels. Don’t like her novels as much as letters and diaries.  

    Talk about peering through a glass darkly. Oh well. Still drinking 

    coffee and picking the fuzz out of my eyes. Period’s arrived with its 

    usual exquisite timing. Once I’ve finished Secaire (needs a final burst)

     can rewrite Find Courtney. Sort of a love story there.

                       10:30AM Sun 20 Feb 77

                       R and I went on ski weekend to Massanutten.  

    Didn’t work.  Never felt so far from him, and he realized it. 

    Opal & Garrett over for dinner last night – their relationship is 

    boring when I’m alone and don’t have R doing all the work for me. 

                      Drank too much out of sheer boredom and because I was 

    depressed over R, then I get depressed over being depressed 

    and drink more.  Clearly he’s worthless and I must be too if I can 

    get depressed over him. No good work on novel. Filing, cleaning, 

    paying bills takes up all my time and my room still looks like a filthy hole. 

    Hermiting seems only option (cheaper, too). Must learn to roll 

    with the punches.

    Fantasizing about Devon because 24th is his birthday. Bad sign.

                       1:00PM 21 Feb 77

                       Dizzy from dieting. Not dancing very bad for my body.

     Current weight 122. (Opal says I have the perfect body. Glad 

    someone appreciates it.) Ryder suggested jogging – bad mistake.  

    Instantly attacked by colds & flu. Instead of eating go to library on 

    my lunch hr to take out books. Went to see The Sentinel somewhere

     in the burbs with Avril and Mason, who drove like a crazy person 

    (“I’m not afraid of death!”) Never again. Ghastly flick. Mason moving in

     – his money is good.  Another secret to be kept from landlord. A guy 

    at work (Keith Dalrymple) is courting me. He looks all right, though 

    he has receding hairline. Kind of old.  Asked to read my novel. I gave 

    him my poems instead. He needs to hit the ground running.

                       Tues. 22 Feb 77

                       Mason trying to talk A into moving to Calif with him. Uh oh. 

    Maeve also wants to move out because I’m critical of her

     “dating” her married boss (they have sex in the supply closet). 

    She believes his tiredest lines.  “Drop him – he’s outrageous 

    and destructive,”  I say.  I’m one to talk. Will use her room for 

    my study.  Try to live without roommates. Sent Devon a long 

    grey silk scarf for his birthday.

                       3:40 PM Wed 23 Feb 77

                       Keith Dalrymple amazingly told me he loves my 

    poems. Wow. Having good literary taste definitely works with me! 

     Having a drink with him tonight.  Had to struggle to keep myself 

    from hurling cash at a gorgeous $50 suit in going-out-of-business 

    dress shop on Dupont Circle. Slogging through Mrs Dalloway –

     it’s her best book. But all this blind struggle not my thing. Require 

    some consciousness. I guess we were reptiles in those days just turning amphibious.

                       Thurs. 24 Feb 77

                       Can’t seem to write poetry anymore. Cocktail bar buffet 

    with Keith (Avril calls him a “dim bulb”. We are very critical of each 

    other’s honeys.)  He’s a Woolf novel – smooth glossy surface, 

    violence and trauma beneath.  He is intelligent – quoted Frost – 

    38 yrs old – divorced (was married 15 years!!!) I sat swilling 

    Scotch and giving him the hairy eyeball – do I have the strength 

    for this? He blanched when I ordered escargots chablisienne. 

                    Wouldn’t even kiss him. I demand exceptionality and refuse to settle for less.  Whatever else you can say about Ryder, he’s definitely one of a kind. I am in a unique position compared to other women writers. Given the chance to rise above sexual 

    strictures.  Bought an exquisite pair of very high-heeled boots. I tower over Ryder – in more ways than one. Heheheh. 

  • Inspired Pleasure – the dance diaries of Alysse Aallyn

    6:30 PM 9 Aug 76 – Shalimar

                     Writing carefully so as not to mess up my fresh 

    polish.  Got here early – Fessenden bus much better.  Rick 

    Marl in tonight talking about R’s divorce.  Said I should hear 

    his wife’s side of the story. (He’s met her.) I don’t want to hear 

    his wife’s side of the story – what would I do if I did know it. 

                    Sounds like they should get a divorce – she’s not resisting so 

    obviously she had as many problems with him as he had with her. 

    The fact that he spent so much time here is bad news for any marriage.

                     I was very impressed by his job – a TV news director 

    is a king – he sits in a the control booth with all the camera angles 

    in front of him and tells everyone what to do. I said nothing, but I 

    enjoyed the way they looked at me – very admiringly – where did 

    SHE come from. Little do they know – R won’t tell them. If they 

    dine at the Shalimar, they’ll find out. Fortunately, they’re all good 

    family men – eat lunch out of a cooler then rush home to fix the 

    automatic garage door opener and read a bedtime story to the 

    little ones. 

                     Reading Mortal Wounds and loving it. Fun to compare

     the George Sand period to the Notorious Woman TV series last year. 

    Went on a picnic with R. then saw Robert Shaw in Swashbuckler.

    Ghastly flick. I wasn’t too rude because R liked it. Told him he should 

    have seen Anne of the Thousand Days.

            Sent out 12 poems. But I’m trying to force myself to stop writing 

    poetry and concentrate on novel. There’s no financial point to poetry

     – Alas.

    11:35 am Thurs 12 Aug 76

                     I’d like to write but I must pack for the trip and it junks up my

     head. Mss, 2 ribbons (in case) correctype, The Romantic Egoists, 

    Zelda and Scott Fitzgerald’s Scrapbooks, and the wonderful 

    portrait by Julia Cameron of the two little girls clutching each other 

    which I see as the cover of my book. Sad to see the way Fitzgerald

     tried to force his wishes on the universe – force it to see things – 

    to be – his way.  No wonder he admired the rich – they’re the only 

    ones who sometimes – very infrequently –  get away with that. But 

    they are not enviable nevertheless – it’s always a naked emperor 

    situation.  Zelda’ s constant references to “not having a past” interest 

    me exceedingly – that way madness most definitely lies.  This is what 

    happens to people who insist on “living in the present”; they become amnesiacs.  Idea for a poem.

    F. SCOTT FITZGERALD:

    “To the Spoils Belong the Victor”

    The butler’s name is Gin;

    He never gets the girl.

    The Heart’s Café is terraced –

    Cantilevered exits exalt

    No core. At the Pony Bar

    Payment is upfront;

    Robert Service and Booth Tarkington

    Left prints on ice;

    The service is bad but

    There’s a reason for everything.

    Back at the Alhambra someone who might be Ernest

    Puts the moves on someone

    Who looks like Zelda or possibly it was

    The other way around.

    They never get these stories straight.

    Here’s the one they played last year:

    Sole is déclassé but at least

    There’s always caviar.

    Look on, look down, look it up or read

    The menu.

    Floorshow Tonight: Van Wyck Brooks &

    Edmund Wilson Debate:

    Artist = Self-destructive Sport?

    Or Fad? Or Fate?

                      I guess I’ll need  clothes – so I must do laundry.  I also should 

    clean house for poor A – it’s only fair.  No writing; circumstances militate. 

                     R working very hard to get to the point where he can take a 

    vacation – he didn’t get in till 2:45 AM.

    Shalimar – 3:30 PM –13 Aug 76

                     Was sitting on a box of Lite Beer sipping coffee and 

    reading Miss Read when Carmen warned me that the boss 

    might fire me for reading. Apparently writing he doesn’t mind 

    so much, probably because he can’t imagine anyone keeping 

    it up longer than 10 mins at a time. R. will be here soon, then 

    we hit the bank, pick up my stuff and we’re on the road for the 

    Finger Lakes.  Five hours alone in the car.  I find I have a lot 

    of inhibitions against voicing boundaries in our relationship – 

    mainly because I don’t want to be lied to.  I want to find out 

    how things really are. For example, he spent last night in 

    Gaithersburg with his wife. Now her I’m jealous of, because

     he used to love her, used to think she was a “catch” and 

    was surprised and gratified that she “descended” into 

    marriage with him.  

                     I probably won’t ask him if they had sex because 

    it would be making too much of it. He’s said before he wouldn’t,

     and she definitely wouldn’t. But I can’t believe a woman who 

    knows she’s losing a man might not change in her feelings – 

    just to see what power she has left. I would, if he wanted the 

    divorce and I didn’t. Will I be able to tell just by looking at him? 

    R feels the right to be jealous and possessive over me, which

     I don’t grudge him since I’m naturally monogamous. He feels 

    no discomfort making rules for me. But he should.

    6:00 PM Saturday 14 Aug 76 Finger Lakes

                     Lying on the bed in our tiny TINY two room cabin – 

    with just a curtain separating the rooms – I was going to write 

    here about how much I love my job (I really miss dancing so 

    much when I’m away from it – the ideal thing would be three 

    sets a day for life) – when R came in, threw himself on me,

     tore my clothes off, began kissing my breasts and exploring 

    my tan lines and pressing his beautiful valued body hard hard

     hard into mine – and you know what happened next.  If he turns 

    the fan on high I don’t think the other campers can hear our little 

    yips and screams.  At least I hope not. We spent last night in his

     grandmother’s house in Binghamton, New York. 

                     She bedded us down in separate rooms – he gave me a

     long lecture about how you have to respect the house rules of 

    whoever you’re staying with – and then who do you think showed 

    up in the middle of the night saying he couldn’t sleep. It is ecstatic 

    to have sex almost without moving – this must be what Tantra is like. 

    We were directly over her and the bed creaked so we didn’t move a 

    muscle – absorbed and shed each other like snakes. Wonderful.

                     Next stop was R’s cousins who own the cabins. I don’t know 

    what to say about them – plastic flowers and Sonny James. My state 

    of deep shock probably resembled mental retardation. Some people’s 

    houses are frighteningly ugly. Their clock has eyes,  they keep the 

    plastic on the lampshades. I just sat there while the ethnic and sex 

    jokes filtered around me.  Who could blame R’s first wife for 

    shunning this bunch? 

                     I would not choose them for buddies either. And the fact

     that they are renting us a cabin doesn’t appear to mean we will 

    also get privacy – so I have taken to wearing my glasses. Number 

    one – I don’t see as well – number two – it creates a kind of screen 

    between me and them.

                     The Lake is beautiful – but I don’t need to go in more than 

    twice a day – I also don’t have the patience for the fish-a-thons that 

    absorb the rest of them, dawn till dusk. 

                     Plus one time waterskiing was plenty.  Since dinner is a 

    vast barbecue down at the beach every night and we only have 

    sandwiches for lunch and cereal for breakfast there is not that 

    much to do, thank God. Sadly the dinners are followed by 

    hours of dancing, drinking and fighting.  I go to bed early to read 

    but R stays and plays “peacemaker”. Tonight he says he’s going 

    to let them kill each other and join me. Therefore I can set up my 

    typewriter on the kitchen table and get right to it. People keep 

    coming to bring me coffee and cookies – I think they really 

    want to see a writer “in action” – at the end of this trip I MAY 

    be 20 lbs heavier. The rest of my time is spent sunning and reading.  

                     Unfortunately St. Secaire going VERY badly. Complete

     horseshit, alas.

             I’ve started it four separate times. I think at this point I just 

    have to keep going and hope it’s possible to clean up the mess later.

                       Tuesday 17 Aug 76 7:30 PM

                     Outside a fair number of people, all high as kites, 

    revving their engines and swearing they’re leaving and never 

    coming back. I don’t know if anybody’s actually going to GO 

    or not but I wish they would.  No wonder R had nothing to do 

    with these people for four years – he may conveniently blame 

    his wife but the truth is none of them can stand each other. 

    Pack of wolverines. I’ve been left totally alone and am well 

    out of it – they may have forgotten I am even here. Last night R 

    was so depressed he just lay on the bed exhausted by them. I 

    tried to explain to him about resentment and the resulting succubae 

    and incubi thus created. (Subject of my novel, in fact.) 

                     He said something about “our next 25 years” that just 

    floored me. Even my husband didn’t talk like that.  Remember 

    saying to my father – I would be fine if I could only find a man who

     treated me as well as I treated him. Dad – so ready to take 

    anybody’s part over mine,  said, Has it ever occurred to you at 

    you might be hard to live with?  Such a typical Daddy remark – 

    the more you think about it the worse it gets.  

                     Well, R treats me better than anyone else so far. 

    He’s almost talked me into looking for a new job when I get back – 

    and that’s a lot. But if he wants to introduce me around, can’t lie 

    about what I do, etc etc. (This group – doesn’t know about my job –

     he says they’d eat me – and him – alive. I can scarcely believe 

    they would take the moral high ground with me but I suppose 

    anything’s possible.) 

                  Tried to read a Redbook someone brought – 

    shouldn’t do it.  So depressing.  Could never write like that or 

    be like that. If that’s the standard this whole thing is hopeless. 

    Then I picked up a book by Grace Livingston Hill.  I’m going to 

    include her in my article on female pornographers.

                       R told me he had the impression that if I didn’t have my 

    novel to write I would probably go bananas. I said probably. I tried 

    to prepare him for the very different kind of vacation he’s going to 

    get in Maine – where people very deliberately leave each other alone.

     If somebody sets off down the beach and you wanted also to walk 

    on the beach – you’d turn and go the opposite way. R says in his 

    family that would be grounds for a six-year grudge punctuated by 

    sobbing, screaming and threats of suicide.

    12:10 am

                       Went night fishing with R because he wanted me to.

     Wrote a wonderful poem about Coleridge – just came to me in 

    one piece. Couldn’t really share with R – he doesn’t know who 

    Coleridge is. So I showed him – Haunted Wedding. 

    HAUNTED WEDDING

    The pregnant car disgorges

    Only us. It’s winter.

    Drunk as silver fish

    We beat our gills as light

    As hummingbirds.

    In an amethyst ring

    Of drypoint trees 

    The half-built house

    Gapes and swells

    Its timbers stink of sap.

    Windrill fields occlude

    Our crossing, so you carry me

    High above the thorny osiers.

    We sleep aloft for safety

    Locked and levitating

    In this space of air 

    One season only,

    Unseen by angry outriders;

    Bloodless in our wedding robes

    Like the doubled membranes

    Of the frozen flowers

                     This triggered a fight because he says it wasn’t written 

    for him.  (If he jealously searches my work for other lovers 

    madness is assured.)  He almost talked me into thinking it a 

    bad poem.

                       I feel my mother’s disapproving stare on all of this – “

    don’t ruin what you have by trying to get something else” – as 

    if showing R this poem would  be a deliberate way of hurting him 

    by making him feel inferior – part of her larger accusation that I 

    channel so much energy into writing I’m no good with people and 

    that’s why my relationships suffer.  All I can say is, thank God for 

    my diary.  

                       Writing now with my feet in R’s lap while he plays cards. 

    He strokes my toes from time to time, as if I were a cat. We came in

     from fishing and he just took my pants down – such earthy 

    sexuality has never existed for him. He told me he’s never 

    been so happy.  And as for me? One side of my multi-prismed 

    personality is happy, but some of the other sides are complaining. 

    Difficult to contemplate an existence where I am not mentally alone 

    six hours a day. 

                       One of the reasons I like my job is that it leaves that part 

    of me remarkably intact – dancing is a lot like sleepwalking. If I get 

    another job there’s a strong chance I’ll have to interact with humans. 

    Hell. And we both know how humans can be. Then I might be too 

    exhausted emotionally and battered psychologically to have the 

    energy to write – it’s a serious risk.  Those architects ran roughshod 

    over me. 

  • Inspired Pleasure – the dance diaries of Alysse Aallyn

        9:45 AM Wed July 28 76

                                Anniversary of Toss Sheffield relieving me of 

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

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

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

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

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

    later than Weds. 

                       Reading Christina Stead’s wonderful Dark Places of 

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

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

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

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

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

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

    till I just can’t boogie no more.  

                       Club Shalimar– 30 July 76

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

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

     a lot younger. 

                     We had glorious talks on our way there and back – 

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

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

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

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

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

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

    I guess I could say the same about him.  

                     Wonderful abandoned sex – just crazy stuff – I came and 

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

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

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

    understand it when they married, assuming it was something you 

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

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

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

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

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

    mysterious yet crucial factor women have a tendency to discount 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    Love, the Magician.

    The Magician is a Capricorn

    Bleeding cock’s milk from nipples

    Pale like mine but

    Maler.

    Illusion, he says is memory

    Of things that should have been.

    Doves and rabbits he entices

    From sacred groves between my legs

    Placed by ruse, and freed by art.

    When he dies, passion turns his eyes

    To quarters.

    He hears the world but faintly

    Through his one good ear.

    The other turns to me,

    Safecracker’s daughter.

    Trust the magician, voices tell me

    He knows when to drop the dice.

    31 July 76 Shalimar

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

                       We took a walk between sets and talked about his 

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

    tell them anything (they obviously know his marriage broke up 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    she really envies me my pelvic wiggle.  

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    away government jobs. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    six months from now? 

                       Hope my gothic novel sells – I need an immediate 

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

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

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

    by side quietly – maybe after our vacation.

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

                     Across the street Shoulders, dressed in a skimpy football 

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

                     Sitting over my repaired typewriter with a cup of hot tea 

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

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

    a little Maine edge to it.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    have 50 vols.)

                       On the phone with Maeve my old Baltimore buddy – 

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

    borrowing from boyfriends.   I take a perverse pleasure that anyone

     is managing worse than me.

                       Shalimar – 10:20 PM

                     Called in tonight to replace another girl – great – that 

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

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

    but don’t want to.

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

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

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

     of course the food is more expensive here than just about 

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

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

     luckily it was the pisser Alicia instead of potentially scary 

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

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

    Washington. Wonderful poem potential. 

    Shalimar Thurs 5 Aug 76

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    He frequently wanders around the house in nothing but his 

    boxers –  we call them as his “huppa”.

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

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

    Sounds crazy expensive to me.  Wrote a good poem – 

    capitol ghosts – today from the book R gave me. 

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

    R coming over at 2.

    CAPITOL GHOSTS

    Pale Guiteau

    slants his disappointed child’s face

    downwards; the better to study bloodstains left

    by assassins more accomplished than himself

    who required benefit of anonymous surgeons 

    specially qualified for skewering

    the muscles of the mighty.

    The guard who saw him

    claimed also to hear demon cats

    and could not be relied upon.

    these portents once were matters of

    congressional dispute; now

    no matter; caught within the marbled lurch

    of history, victims

    of the uninspired mad; 

    those who pursue the corpse from whom

    the ghost escaped. He haunts our history

    like the villainous barber who sings as he slits

    both throats and wombs, a pure tune

    some say, picked clean of tragedy

                                   which only the dying hear.

    Shalimar 7 Aug 76

                     Sitting here in a stupor of exhaustion. We had an 

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

    and over. Presumably working through some kind of 

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

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

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

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

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

                     I have to admit R doesn’t seem to understand 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

                     Really worried about money lately – everything at 

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

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

                     How true it is that before you can love you must 

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

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

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

    the Times Detective Story competition anthology.  This is 

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

    of poetry – keep piling them up – got ophelia and 

    haunted house this eve.

    OPHELIA WAS A MAN

    The best revenge is growing up.

    Behold a street of suicides –

    Fringed lampshades &

    Mullioned windows where

    The dentist’s son grew dope

    From seed (they had eight bathrooms and

    The dentist couldn’t be everywhere)

    His wife was nowhere; we saw her leave

    With the cat in a suitcase clawing to get out.

    “Crazier than thou” averred my aunt.

    That boy blew the fruits of orthodontal science until

    The day he blew his mind –

    We traced the hissing-pissing-noise

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

    The one who stayed home from Yale to rewrite Hamlet

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

    Type-cast himself – since he saw ghosts.

    Two fine boys married to each other

    Rosy-cheeked and sightless

    In their parents’ wedding clothes.

                     Tomorrow R is taking me on a tour of the television 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    over his divorce.

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

  • The Demon Lover – a play for two voices by Alysse Aallyn

    3. LATIGAZO – WHIPPING

    EVAN
    Do you really love me?
    Why should you?
    I don’t any longer
    Believe In friendship.

    EVA
    It is a horror, an outrage
    That we should not be together. I struggle against
    The wound of not knowing where you are each minute.
    Everything you do is more important to me than my own life.
    The whole of me is with you.
    I see and feel you so distinctly,
    Your beloved cold hand in mine
    Your touch on the nape of my neck.

    Joy and agony
    – my insides torn by pincers.
    A double goodbye would have been awful
    – two bites on the bullet of pain.

    This love is like something we have given birth to.
    We must never blunt our imagination or tenderness.
    Don’t get a cold in your soul.

    EVAN
    Are these abortive suicide attempts?
    I disappoint everyone.
    Cut the cable. Set me free.

    I deliberately left one of your letters for Elayna to find.

    With me love is linked with
    A need to betray. I invite possessiveness.
    She made me promise our love would never be physical.
    I lied fluidly.

    EVA
    Even the thought of
    Such a loss of pleasure tears at my heart
    Like some medieval torture.

    You harrow me unbearably.
    My defenses are down.
    I’m filled me with a sense of ghastly injury.
    How I wish I were more beautiful –
    It’s my mouth that ages me.
    It reveals my greedy secrets.

    I want you seeing all of me –
    Even if it hurts. My work
    Is my legacy –
    You are your own child.
    You preserve your youth with the harm
    That you cause.

    I feel I am dead and already
    Interred – in you.
    You are my eternity.

    EVAN
    Repressed boredom causes blocks
    You can’t have everything.
    I am kept aloft by the conflict of
    Unbearables.
    It makes me happy.

    EVA
    If our dancing life is over –
    Should I enter a convent?
    There’s no point in being alive
    if we’re not together.
    I show my deepest self to you alone.

    EVAN
    Please – no more shaming conversations
    Over Irish whisky. Let’s cut our losses
    And get some fun from life.
    Your miraculous capacities awaken
    My belief in myself.

    EVA


    The gash in our love might close
    But I’ll never forget it’s there.
    Life with you is a remote happiness to which I cling

    EVAN
    And all this time you write such
    Fantastic books. If you were as unhappy as you say,
    You couldn’t write so well.
    I’m proud to be
    The whetstone on which you sharpen –
    I should be thanked for all your works.

    Writing to you
    Makes me itch with a beastly itch –
    Exhilarated, punch drunk
    Feeling your enthrallment
    Despite the day’s malaise.

    I can’t put my heart back in the hollow
    Where it used to be.
    You force me to see
    Myself.

    At the peak of my ambition,
    Beauty and power curdle within me.
    People are so easily fooled, so
    Satisfied with little
    identify my performance with my Soul.

    You’ve spoiled me for everything.
    Stop warning me you’ll take a lover –
    I don’t own your life and never aspired to.
    There is heartbreak here, but is the ghost in the house
    Or in me? We argue about who has the worst friends,
    But our friends are all the same. Please
    Send another psychic telegram, “You’re the One.”

    EVA
    Your last screed was a masterpiece.
    I believe writing it
    Creates that eczema from which
    You say you suffer.
    My friends at Tosca said it’s bad manners
    To make a depressing fuss
    And get other people down.

    EVAN
    Is the strength I draw from you a fairy tale?
    I am appalled by the joint misery we feel.
    Why should we not rebel?

    EVA
    You shed your light around me.
    If only we could stand each other.
    You’ll keep the blood
    Running in my veins
    Threatening to spill.

    EVAN
    Someone said I look ten years younger
    From drinking your life, I’m sure.
    I need my own room because I sleep badly and
    I like to roam at night.

    Tosca is too emotional to be good taste
    But I’m happy you enjoyed it.
    I feel far from you right now but
    Underneath
    I’m outrageously glad.

    EVA
    Your diplomacy fascinates me.
    Your mettle is the stuff of history.
    When young I resisted education
    Like a fool – But
    It makes everything comprehensible.
    What kills me is having to deal with people.

    I tie myself up writing
    Imaginary conversations with you –
    It’s possible you’re a creature of
    My invention. Our pattern seems set –
    Or is it?
    If treachery can’t break it,
    There is no death.

  • The Language of Butterflies – Walking the Path of Attachment with Alysse Aallyn

    Creativity : “Harness your Uniqueness”

      When searching for your soulmate this is no time to “blend with the crowd.” You need to discover exactly who you are so you can seek your complementary and missing elements. If you are uncertain or mistaken about your essential self, you won’t even recognize The One. You will be guaranteed to choose a partner based on false considerations of status or appearance. This requires you stop hiding your true self and allow it to emerge. Easier said than done! Turns out we all have been babying the shyly unique aspects of ourselves that don’t win instant recognition from the crowd. Well, we are going to have to experiment with taking Baby out for daily strolls and develop a bit of muscle. Don’t worry if the “likes” fall away – you are not trying to appeal to everyone. The creativity card means you will need to become imaginative in how you present yourself. You want someone accepting? Be accepting. You want someone brave? Be brave. You want someone who looks deeper? Look deeper.

      Fire In the Dust

      In photographs
      The ladies scream or laugh
      It’s hard to tell
      Heads back they bare their
      Grief or joy or
      Agonized relief
      It’s hard to tell.
      All that remains of them
      Tattered icons growing ever dim.

      The fountains of our fear
      Leap high at first, like dancers
      Frozen at first burst
      Of freedom
      Paralyzed abreast
      The arc
      We cannot see
      What tortuous sign these fossils
      Meant to be.

      In that first winter
      We thought the earth was dead
      Statues mated
      Trees erupted dragonflies
      The angry lonely
      Sang and cried.
      Somewhere some fetus twists and jerks
      Convergence of dynastic quirks

      So drop the toxic cloak of bitter spite that
      Melts the flesh and terrorizes night –
      Waiting out a cycle’s sum
      Spinning down to kingdom come.
      For nothing vain, came nothing plain
      This world was born
      To live again.

    1. The Language of Butterflies: the Path of Attachment by Alysse Aallyn

      The Language of Butterflies: the Path of Attachment by Alysse Aallyn

      Assess your potential to connect. We wake alone, but we are on the path of Attachment. Ask yourself; do you seek balanced, indestructible attachment, synchronous, not disharmonic relationship; a connection that is symbiotic, not exploitative. If the answer is Yes, you are on the path of Paradise.

      How can we achieve these goals? First, we must understand and accept our Self, our Ego, with all its quirks and flaws, needs and yearnings, limits and possibilities. Then we must understand the Other; the Lover. We must attune ourselves to the structure of their yearning to begin to construct our duet, our dance. After that we must negotiate the rapids of relationship with each other and with the outside world. Danger! Excitement! Ecstasy! Despair…Compassion.
      Union.

      We are caterpillars, you and I, attempting to learn the language of butterflies. We are unprepossessing creatures, daily absorbed in infantile needs of eating and excreting, but we have a firm promise of a future in which we stretch our gorgeous wings.

      Paradise

      Without eyes

      Ambitious goldfish float

      Dream of skies

      Where fins are wings

      Lily pads are clouds

      Swollen tight

      as seed pearls; gullets

      Safe forever from

      vengeful squid or

      Killer waves.

      Who can say if in their time of death

      Those dreams don’t live

      Bursting skin;
      Trailing comets,

      Scattering scales like stars

      Spilling the pond and soaring limitless

      To be whales

      To be gods

      To be free?

    2. The Dalingridge Horror – a play by Alysse Aallyn

      Following her honeymoon Virginia Woolf attempted suicide and was sent to recover at her half-brother’s estate, Dalingridge Hall.

      CHARACTERS

      Virginia Woolf: a sensitive young artist having a breakdown

      Leonard Woolf: her new husband, nervous, forceful, an “outsider”

      Dr. Craig: bluff, elderly, genial, doctor to the wealthy

      Dr. Hyslop: a fashionable eugenicist

      Two orderlies: rough & tumble Cockneys ALF & BOB (orderlies & doctors played by the same actors)

      (Scene 1: Dalingridge Hall, An ostentatious faux British castle with all the updated luxurious mod-cons. A pair of white-coated orderlies maneuver a stretcher into a sickroom.)

      ALF
      Hold up a mo, let’s have a fag.

      BOB
      Buckle her in, and then we’ll have a fag.

      ALF
      Now that’s right stupid, that is. Tie her up, the job is done. No time for a fag then.

      BOB
      Oh, right. I get you. Where can we stow her? She’s heavy.

      ALF
      Tall as a man and strong like one, so they say. Prop her up over here. Careful, now, you got me shin!

      (They lean the stretcher against the wall facing the audience. Fumble with cigarette packs. ALF sits on the bed.)

      BOB
      I don’t like her looking at us.

      ALF
      Oh, she’s well out of it. Off to dreamland. Took the mickey out of her, they did.

      BOB
      So what’s up with this one? Trying on hats and ordering jewelry too much for her?

      ALF
      I heard it was her honeymoon what sank her!

      BOB
      Oh, Lord!

      (they both guffaw)

      BOB
      Wonder it doesn’t happen routine-like, what with the shock and all. I mean, she’s not used to seeing the farm animals getting frisky in the spring. She’s not walking to church with the village lads. She’s not sharing a bed with the brothers and sisters. So everything seems right and proper until the big night and then –

      ALF
      All hell breaks loose!

      (they laugh uproariously)

      BOB
      So, you seen the husband?

      ALF
      Oh yes, he was hanging about. Wringing his hands.

      BOB
      So what’s he look like, then? One of them muscle-bound rowing blues?

      ALF
      No, no, no. Nervy bloke. Just back from the East where he’d been sorting out the blacks.

      BOB
      Oh, Lord! Used to carrying a big stick is he?

      (they gasp, cough, laugh and fall about)

      VIRGINIA

      (groggily)

      What is this place? What vast forces of good and evil dropped me here? I burn, I shiver. I turn, I tumble, I am stretched. I am nailed like a stoat to the stable door.

      ALF
      Oh my jugs and jiggers, she’s coming out of it. Look here, you take that end.

      BOB
      Hold her up, hold her up!

      ALF
      She’s heavy, I’m telling you. They feed them women up like Strasbourg geese. Look sharp now.

      BOB
      There’s hell to pay if she’s not buckled in.

      (They get her on the bed. Much buckling and strapping.)

      VIRGINIA
      Who are you? Where am I? I have been diving through seas of horror to come up rotting in dirty ditchwater. Don’t touch me!

      (She starts struggling when it’s too late. She’s already buckled in. The men rest, gratified but exhausted.)

      ALF
      Nothing to fear, my lady. You’re all right now. You’re safe here at Dalingridge Hall.

      (His last words reverential)

      VIRGINIA
      Dalingridge Hall! Now the agony begins, horror has seized me with its fangs! I am turned, I am tumbled, I am stretched and everyone pursuing!

      (She starts screaming)

      ALF
      Hypo! We need a hypo!

      (ALF and BOB rush about panicked. Enter LEONARD. Exit orderlies.)

      LEONARD
      What is it? What’s happened?

      VIRGINIA
      Dalingridge Hall! They’ve taken me to Dalingridge Hall!

      LEONARD
      Virginia, your brother Sir George and his wife Lady Margaret have kindly lent us this splendid mansion. They’re staying up in London and have left it all to us. Up to date comfort. Plenty of servants – French chef – the food is magnificent. Eleven bathrooms! Spotless, hygienic, – the nurses are impressed I can tell you.

      VIRGINIA
      Now this monstrous ugliness is explained. I hear the crack of antlers as if the beasts of the forest are rearing, plunging among the thorns. One has pierced me. One has driven deep within me. You have left me to undergo this squalid humiliation served out like soup by greedy, casual scullions, coarse, ogling, brushing, destroying everything, smearing even our love with impure fingers. “What is this secret sin, this untold tale, that art cannot extract nor penance cleanse?” Don’t you understand? ALL DEATHS ARE ONE DEATH.

      LEONARD

      Would you like to see Sir George?

      VIRGINIA

      George! That obese alligator who used to roll me round my bed of an evening as if I were a minnow shut up in a tank with a frenzied whale. I would rather touch a decaying dogfish than that man’s body.

      LEONARD
      Hush, Virginia. George is an Adonis, a true man of the world, adored by great ladies and parliamentarians alike.

      VIRGINIA
      George has the eyes of a sow! Or is it an elephant? Sows look so much like elephants on the Duckworth side of the family. He used to fondle me so I couldn’t read my Greek. The very locusts deform the trees with their lusts.

      LEONARD
      George claims chastity until hi marriage. That’s more than I managed.

      VIRGINIA
      What liars men are! George was a pig, snuffling, rolling, grabbing, calling me Beloved. How he tortured both of us, me and Vanessa alike, Greek slaves in the harem promised him by Eton. He smothered us with caresses until Nessa told Dr. Savage and Dr. Savage made him stop. George told Dr. Savage he was only comforting us for the illness of our father.

      LEONARD
      Virginia, you’re romancing. Dr. Head says longing for adult attention creates a wish-fulfillment leading to ideas like these. He says the only way out is the talking cure.

      VIRGINIA
      So it’s wish fulfillment that has trapped me in George’s house? Dr. Head is another booby, Leonard. We were right to dismiss him. He knows nothing.

      (she grabs him)

      Don’t you understand that we are poured to the very edge of the abyss, Leonard, where we shall be broken together into nothingness and flames? Help, help! Get me out of this thing!

      LEONARD
      Dearest, you threatened to harm yourself, remember? You attempted suicide.

      VIRGINIA
      You left the veronal unlocked. I thought it was an invitation. My father praised the Duke of Bedford for having the courage to shoot himself. Surely you longed to be rid of me. I’m a bad bargain all around.

      LEONARD

      No Virginia, no. I love you. I moved heaven and earth to save you.

      VIRGINIA
      But I’m already dead, Leonard. I am certainly in hell. Fallen in a duck pond and strangling in duckweed! Quack, quack!

      LEONARD
      Virginia, why do you reduce me to madness too? If you could only comprehend how insane you sound.

      VIRGINIA
      You can’t think what a raging furnace it is to me, madness and doctors and being forced. I am bent like a tree under a remorseless gale. The crass blindness that poisons childhood still threatens bitter storms. Children will be trodden under. Speech is false. The demand to submit must always be returned with cries of pain, hate and rage because that’s all they understand.

      LEONARD
      You were violent, Virginia. You attacked your nurses. Don’t you remember?

      VIRGINIA
      I was defending myself. They attacked me! Forcing food down my throat. I will go down with my colors flying. Father used to say, “Face the inevitable with eyes wide open.”

      LEONARD
      You vomited on Lily and you struck Susan with a platter of cold meat. You must eat to gain weight, Virginia. Then the voices will subside, the doctors say. That’s why they’ve ordered a rest cure.

      VIRGINIA
      Those doctors! My life is a constant fight against doctors’ follies. That cretin, Savage? He’s not fit to be about. Borrowed from another century.

      LEONARD
      Four doctors and all of them in agreement. You know this, Virginia. You chose Head yourself – because Roger Fry recommended him – Vanessa suggested Craig and I found Hyslop.

      VIRGINIA
      Really, a doctor is worse than a husband. I’ve given up expecting doctors to listen to reason. If only those pigheaded sawbones could see I speak the sober truth without excuse! Alienists know absolutely nothing. Their vanity is as profound as their ignorance. What does their “treatment” amount to? It is all eating and drinking and being shut up in the dark, sequestered with lunatics.

      LEONARD
      The food here is delicious. May I bring you some?

      VIRGINIA
      Once when we travelled by train to St. Ives the lemonade spilled on the sandwiches and turned them into mush but Nurse still made us eat them and I was sick and then I was punished. Leonard, don’t you see that when I am weighted with food I can no longer make the moments flow together. I become an excreter, an excretion. No, of course you don’t see. You’re in a conspiracy, plotting against me. I see your grinning, I know your subterfuge, I hear you sneering behind my back.

      LEONARD
      Virginia, the people who love you are trying to decide what’s best for you. I’m trying to make the best decisions I can.

      VIRGINIA
      You’re punishing me for disappointing you. For being a bad wife.

      LEONARD
      When you’re well, you admit you’ve been mad.

      VIRGINIA
      My sister wanted to be rid of me. While she threw away our father’s possessions I lay in bed and heard the birds singing Greek.

      “What bird so sings, so yet does wail?
      Tis the ravished nightingale
      Jug, jug, jug, tereu she cries
      And still her woes at midnight rise.”

      LEONARD
      You’re hurting yourself with all this wild talk. No one can understand anything you say.

      VIRGINIA
      People know very well enough but it’s a secret. King Edward spewed the foulest possible language amongst the azaleas and yet they crowned him. “Swallow, my sister, O Sister Swallow,” I sing. If I become king of the lunatics shall I escape molestation? God, I wish I were dead. I will soon have to jump out of a window.

      LEONARD
      These violent oscillations, Virginia! If I could only get you to see! A whirlwind brings madness in its wake!

      VIRGINIA
      How long can any man love a woman without driving her mad? How long can I protect my clean visions from the odious masculine point of view – from the egotism of men? You crack my brain like a thrush cracks a snail – hammer, hammer, hammer.

      LEONARD
      I am not your enemy, Virginia.

      VIRGINIA
      Then who else is? Why shouldn’t I be frightened? I wanted to spend my life innocently indifferent among the trees and rivers but instead men expose themselves whenever I step out doors. I saw a woman pinned beneath a car and horses falling in the street. Outside our scullery a man cut his own throat. His jowls were whitened as codfish. The human face is hideous. What are you doing? Don’t touch me!

      LEONARD
      Trying to loosen your straps. You’re getting excited. Doctor!