Category: #Poetry

Inspired Pleasure
Diary of a Dancer Sometimes Poet
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    10:30 PM – Plush Palace – Mon night 10 April 78
            Two more sets. I’ll live. Finished study of Mary McCarthy 
```
by Doris Grumbach. Much prefer that to actually having to read McCarthy
who reminds me of Aldous Huxley – Is it possible to be too contemporary?
Trends of modern writing a little too sketchy for me. No book should feel
like flipping through a magazine. Sensory overload sans enlightenment.
As for Angus Wilson – we are parting forever. I read all but two stories in
Such Darling Dodos – back on the shelf he goes.

Wonderful day – up before 7, read New York Times,
sent out poems – magnificent walk with dogs – explored abandoned house.
Haunted by novel – so went back and got six pages – one good new idea.
Called publisher – ordered ten more books. Little self-promotion. While
working got call from the Plush Palace – would I come in two sets early
for Glory, who is sick? Love to. Just feeling bankrupted by the
drycleaners. I was justified too because first set got a big tip. ($300)!
Peter called – said he would have loved to go to the Raitt concert with
me but had to go to Vermont. He certainly talks differently when his girlfriend/housekeeper/telephone answerer person is not around.
He hinted that his love life is impossibly complex and
he doesn’t want his parents to know. I’m guessing that she is married.

He
promised to get in touch when he gets back. I’m in the ladies room
because the air-conditioning in dressing room not working – it is suffocating
in there. Yesterday evening thoroughly enjoyable – steaks wine and hot fudge sundaes at A’s then watched Richard Brooks Happy Ending which really
was a bomb. Trying to read Anthony Powell’s Venusberg but feeling
nothing yet. Tried Sarton’s Miss Pickthorn – a hash of all her other stuff –
very slight. Avril not home for past four hours – out on date with Jordan.
Can’t wait to hear how it went.
```
            11:45 PM – Thurs 13 Apr 78
            Safe & warm in my gilt-canopied bed, happy in spite 
```
of my cold. A & I got “El Diablo” inspected today – $70 – But at least she
can take it to the MVA tomorrow and have it put in her name. That great
feeling of “starting out fresh”. In spite of dribbles & wheezes, blissful dog
walk followed by deep-dish pizza & wine at Armand’s. No painful memories.
Cherry blossoms are out.

Saw Coming Home with Jon Voigt & Jane Fonda. Good, if somewhat
earnest. Bruce Dern acted like he was in a different movie. Rough part
deserves a hero’s commendation. I stare at the casually interdependent
couples – it’s been a year since I could lay a hand on another’s thigh with
that proprietary air. Poor A dissolved in tears towards the end – too
reminiscent of the “endless pain” of vets like Bruce and Mason.
I’d be more sympathetic if they didn’t take it out on
others. What they learned apparently is how to “stage a war”. The people
we love inflict the worst damage. A’s at the stage where she’s still
haunted by Mason but feels it’s “boring” to talk about him so she
bottles it up. I tell her get a diary. Hope to finish Powell’s
Agents & Patients tonight – but it is a little dull.
```
            Plush Palace –Fri 14 Apr 78 – 3:50 PM
            Only 3 more sets, with 4 dancers.  Still, made 
```
enough tips for groceries. Buy wild birdseed for the birds cavorting
outside my desk’s bay window. Daringly went on without stockings –
such a savings if we didn’t have to buy them but Eddie told me No Cigar.
Too bad – they’re hot in summer. Alvera says Yvonne’s back at Mother
Joe’s. I thought she wouldn’t be able to eat enough shit to stay in her
music clerk job. We goddesses areso spoiled by our pedestal. Called A
in the afternoon to see how she was doing – Shoulders was there flexing
his muscles at her and she is over the moon. Trying to be glad for her
but in spite of his obvious beauty I’m afraid he is a bit of a shit. (See testimony
past burnees plus eviction notices.)

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

MAN – FISH

My husband caught a walleye; I caught
A day-old baby
Trolling my Dalkon shield
On idle spinnerets I hooked him
He bore the wounds of other fishermen.
Through holes in his side I saw
His heart still beating
Shielded by a membrane tough
As duck’s egg.
I said I think I can save him
My husband said too small
And threw him back.

Tried to read Phyllis Bottome but she’s a fatal cross between a
didact and a pleaser; sort of like a barky little dog. Most unpleasant.
And that casual anti-Semitism pretty shocking.
```
            Plush Palace – Sat 5:50 PM 15 Apr 78
            Halfway through novel –  can’t figure out if I’m 
```
satisfied or not. All my discoveries so agonizingly slow. Can’t afford
fuckups – then I’ll have to go through it all AGAIN. Slept late, breakfast
at A’s. We did laundry together, then played gin.
I was the first one here thank God (means I’m the
first to leave). Got my schedule – 4 nights in a row, 2 days off. Good.
Congratulate myself on my intellectual freedom as I wrap black lace around
my throat, recalling all the put-downs suffered as the “architect’s helpmeet”.

Reread Alvarez’ description of Plath’s suicide – I don’t agree her death was
some “by-product.” Her mother raised her to be murdered by other people –
Nazis or husbands. There had to be a “bloodletting” – Mrs. Plath’s ulcer –
Sylvia’s “suicides”. If you don’t “accept” martyrdom someone will have to die
in your place. Kid yourself it’s” freedom” just because you choose time & place.
It bothers me terribly that they shared a bedroom during
Sylvia’s formative years. Death would seem inevitable just to get some privacy & distance. Poor Sylvia offered those magnificent poems to Alvarez and he
backed away terrified because Art is terrifying. $30 for lost contact that came
out when a necklace scraped my eyeball while I was hanging upside down.
Teach me to wear contacts onstage. Who needs to see the audience anyway?
```
            7:15 PM Sun 16 Apr 78
            Spent the day in bed eating oranges, coffee, peanut 
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butter. A’s spending the night at Shoulders’ new place – then tomorrow we’re
going to the new Cassavetes film and I’m excited. Jervaze in for last set to
invite me to his going away party. I slept nine hours.
Horrifying Who Made the Lamb – author really lost
control of this one but I bet she would say she was just “reporting”. Books
do Furnish a Room much better than Powell’s previous – has a sense of
direction. “Trapnel himself always insisted that a novel is what its writer is”.
I would agree. Style follows taste, I think. Realize Dad and I don’t mean
the same thing by the word “intellectual”. He means a person who knows
specific things, (education) I mean a person who thinks a certain way (style).
Twain never meet. I am not respectful of an artificially acquired patina of
“points of view”. Wrote the infirmary scene – just what I wanted to say.
Maybe I need to give up sex and even male companionship
– just can’t afford them.
```
            Plush Palace – 6:45 PM Fri 21 Apr 78
            Wonderful walk along Powder Mill Road thinking 
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about the mystique of money. I eternally fight a rearguard action. M & D
call at noon – Genevieve had little girl – Belinda. Avril delivers my new lens
– bounce notice in mail – I tear my hair in a frenzy. I get to dance 2 sets for
GiGi – $200 – she tells me about her night of sin with Louie. And she wants
another one. Life’s a soap opera. Management says there’s going to be
a drug raid with dressing room search warrant. Panic among the girls – but
not me. Check out the customers with a more intense interest. Are narcs here? Everyone planning to leave town except me. I offer to work tomorrow night.
Reading an interesting study of Iris Murdoch novels –
the Disciplined Heart. Too much coffee – I’m switching to tomato juice.
```
            Sat night – 22 Apr 78 8:30 PM
            My whole body hurts from dancing 5 nights in a row. 
```
It’s not good for tips, either. Poor May Sarton is trying to exorcise Eliz Bowen.
Good luck with that! Elizabeth so contemptuous of “schoolgirl crushes”!
Real love in EB’s world seems strangely synonymous with corruption &
loss. Old fashioned view and more male really – “ejaculate” and die. We
women get children, poems & novels out of it. Avril stood up for dinner by
Shoulders. Uh oh. Beginning of the end. Apparently saying “yes” is fatally
unsexy. She & I will be eating her pot roast tomorrow – fine with me.
Fatima came down early but Lori refused to go up,
pointing to her watch! Much excitement & hissing.
```
            7:45 PM – Mon. 24 Apr 78
            Good Gift scene – Miss Pruitt vs. Viv. Now I need a 
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boathouse picnic. Every time you get to the mountaintop there’s just more
mountain. Then you’re supposed to “prune” at the end – if you have any
energy left. Trying to read A Literature of Their Own but Showalter too
hard on poor old Woolf. Women have always owned literature, it’s the
publishers, editors and critics we apparently can’t have. 60,000 words on
Gift tells me it’s time to celebrate. No novel could EVER be this hard again.
I demand a party.

Strange letter from Devon – he is involved with some
“Jewish woman” and it isn’t going well. She seems “inaccessibly foreign”
and he is “losing faith” in his “ability to pick a friend.” Is this a plea for help?
He specifically asked where I would be this summer. Said he loved me.
Took his glamour pic out of the bin where it has lain and put it up, then went
out with A and bought a bikini. She and Shoulders are so mired in excuses,
lies and expectations no new relationship seems possible. Intensive
sunbathing season starts tomorrow.
```
            1PM Thu May 4 -78
            Comparing lovers.  “It’s Devon in the stretch with
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Jervaze fatally winded and Bruce fallen by the wayside”. Write poem:

The sideways smile

I heard you singing and remembered
things that you’ve forgotten
I see you clearly
Fish in a hailstone.
See your hands
Long for a man I always thought
And your upper lip too short
Like a lion’s in fact
You have an animal presence
Placing no trust in words
Placing no trust in love
Acting like you’d never met me
As you roll your joints with
private letters that I sent
islands undiscovered and
worlds unreachable.
You were the joke
I didn’t get; I recall
your sideways smile
blowing smoke between us
refusing to forgive the essential fragility that
Marks us humans;
Fated as you were
always to surrender
to the scornful cries of your
Invisible bystanders.
```
            Finished Gift last week.   Letting it “perk”.  It already feels “swallowed up” by the past.  Avril read it, disappointed by the ending.  Wants murder at the very least.  But is that real life?  I think I agree with her that it should be.  People should kill themselves when you are done with them. Sadly, in reality  they’re all whimper and no bang.  How to fix?
            When I’m not engaged on some important work my “real life” ceases.  Car to its “first service” Mon – involved ferrying each other around and jockeying with one car. Why don’t M & D appreciate this?  It’s like they want us to be ashamed of needing other people to survive. Mom staying in NYC with the new baby but then coming here Sat. to inspect our dissolute lives.  Uh oh.  I won’t have any trouble getting time off but I hate to.  Can’t work when she is here.  Living two weeks off one paycheck can be done. But I will feel obligated to battle Mom for financial freedom.  
            Finished Glendinning’s Bowen.  A life rich and strange but hardly enviable. I’m being pestered by old “college friend” but I am officially “not home”.  She sneaks around the house, sniffing. 
```
January 13, 2023
Inspired Pleasure
Diary of a Dancer
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Mon midnight 6 Feb 78
        Fri night J was in the bar getting slowly snockered. Very
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proud to take me home. We had our most passionate sex session yet
– 5 hours! Of course he couldn’t come. We finally quit because I was
exhausted. He told me the sexiest thing I do is play with my breasts
when we make love! I only do it because he doesn’t! The big lug.
He asked me what I would do if I accidentally got pregnant.
(He knows about IUD.) I said have the baby. Of course I didn’t
tell him that I might not inform him of the fact – depends on him
and the state of our relationship.

Which raises the important question: do I want
an alcoholic baby? Wouldn’t you be watching it throughout childhood
to see if it favored rum candy? He said he hoped we’d get married
because a child needs a father. I think this might be the way an
Alabamian proposes. Surprising how totally un-good it felt. I almost
got as depressed as he is. Jervaze, who has the beauty of an angel-god,
is no better than a drifter. Even I am shocked by my own taste. His life
is guaranteed to go from bad to worse because of his fatal Hamlet-like
inability to take charge. Clearly he needs to be the full time project of
some managing woman. This is bringing out all my masculine characteristics,
some of which, frankly, I was hoping never to see again. I am also
bothered by the fact that he can’t have serious conversations. I would
say he absolutely does not know me at all, and appears satisfied with that.
I probably also don’t know him, although I am beginning to face the fact
that there may be nothing to know.

The drama of my own existence is important to me.
There’s a full cast of characters and A LOT OF PLOT SURPRISES
and he hasn’t even opened the book. It’s frustrating because it makes
everything less meaningful. I feel I’m in a bind, though, because he’s
definitely the best of the bunch in all the bars I’ve danced. Most
attendees are married men looking for fun and excitement. They are
the dancers’ favorite because they’re established, generous and
sometimes they actually leave their wives. This happened with R
although he always insisted (and I believed) it wasn’t me, it was him.
(And her, presumably). The best you can do is “catch them on the cusp” of divorce. The “singles” men come in three kinds – total losers who can’t
manage a relationship and that’s what they’re doing in a bar like this, guys
who need you to quit the minute you start dating them because “no girlfriend
of mine” blah blah blah. (More R). The third is guys who are fine with you
dancing – in fact they want to be your manager. Several dancers have fallen
for these guys and often they marry them. He buys their costumes, drives
them to and fro, bargains with the club owner and even looks after the kids.
The good ones don’t just drain her money, date the competition or beat her up.
(Those are rare. But exist. I’ve met them.) Only now she can’t ever quit!
Take Lida for example. Lida’s in her 40’s and can’t be seen in
the light of day. Although she has a perfect body, she is real scary close up –
gets the worst clubs and shifts – here she is strictly a fill-in. One dancer and
her boyfriend live in a van, going from club to club. He sits in the bar for every
set and that has to be OK with the management.
This would seem to mean my parents are right that I can’t meet
nice men because of my job, and although I don’t want to go all apocalyptic, it
is hard to see how this can get better. I could meet someone through my writing
if I were a different kind of person but I just can’t seem to change. (I’m getting happier and happier Being Me.) Probably my best bet is to go back to college –
I’ve been wanting to – take a class here and there (a lot of dancers do this) and
date guys without letting them know what I do for work until I know them really well. Money is the problem there. More capital expense. I make good money and I should be able to afford it, however it doesn’t combine well with my plans to
take time off and travel. I would have to work constantly which so far I
have been too spoiled to do. A light schedule keeps dancing fresh for me
– it’s also good for my writing. So I should probably compromise and
take one class – something nice and cheap like adult ed at the community
college. I’ll think about it.

Sat night J was all withdrawn again. I don’t think he wants
me to coax out of him what the problem is; I think when he is in that mood
he really just wants me to go away. So I do. A says I’m being an idiot –
that he is clearly in love with me – in her definition, I’ve “arrived”. I could
get him to move in with me, structure his time and tell him what to do.
Maybe that’s what he wants but it certainly isn’t what I want. He seems
so depressed about his family — and it is too late to lie to them about what I do because his brother (whom I’ve still never met) “already knows”. Could I
change my name and get away with being someone else entirely? Tell me
again why should I go to those lengths?

He would just appall my parents. This would confirm every
bad thing about me they’ve ever said (and they’ve said a lot). It’s really one
of those tragic Victorian love stories (The Tenant of Wildfell Hall) except that
we’re not from different classes – so maybe its more SCI fi because we’re from different PLANETS. I’m beginning to think he’s actually “cast off” by his family

that’s his deep dark secret. His alcoholic behavior “ruined” him in his
hometown somehow. (He did graduate high school. He says.) He’s the
horrible albatross from the Coleridge poem (or he’s trying to shift it off onto
me.) Under the apparently inexorable rules of sexual attraction, once again
he’s a weird mirror image of me. But instead of being a drunk (which my
parents would prefer) I’m a poet. Probably in the South it all comes to the
same thing. In the North it’s almost the same. Here we’ve got actual mental
illness thrown into the mix.)

Can’t say my advice which is he ought to write them off . He
totally buys into their rejection and who knows, maybe it will save him in the
end. “Dump your family” was my advice to my husband, so possibly it’s
me who has the problem.

Mom and Dad asked if J was an intellectual and I said,
“Well, he’s reading my book.” I didn’t tell them he’s been reading it for the
past two months with no end in sight. I don’t dare even comment on it
anymore. It snowed about 20 hours – that’s another thing I like about J
– he lives right next to the club. It’s hard on my dogs – but so would my
death on the roads be.

R. Called today – 3rd time in a month. He acted very loving
and considerate – I don’t believe it for a minute. Now he’s worried about
my health – wants to bring me homemade chicken soup, etc. I don’t rise
to these flies any more and it feels so good. Any desire I may have had to
see the flesh ripped from his bones with red-hot razorblades has ebbed.
I take that as progress. I look forward to seeing him again because I think
it would be great to feel nothing.

11:30 AM Tues. 7 Feb 1978
Mom and Dad called – there’s another apt available on
the island. What once seemed so attractive is now an obvious ploy to
make me over in their image. This is the same island Mom referred to
when she said, “Eyeshadow is not appropriate here.” (She gets to
decide how people should dress for parties.) When I mentioned this to
Genevieve, she said, “Well it’s not.” Way to back me up sister. So the
question really is, would I be ready to sacrifice eye shadow for a sinkhole
of safety?

Could I end up wearing shawls and baking bread
without any ability to save myself? If I can ever afford a “get-away”
(and my royalties say no) I think it should be on the Chesapeake. And if
I want to afford that I should try to “get the market” to work for me, i.e.
be F. Scott Fitzgerald instead of Sylvia Plath. Both died young but she
died younger.

But hey, I want to be myself and I can live on so little.
I ought to be able to pull this off. On the other hand, if Dad’s fish
recover from their anal calcification and his latest aquafarm project
takes off, maybe we’ll make millions. Still, he won’t let me have the stock certificates so possibly it’s all blather.

Worked listlessly on Demon. Cold, strange little book,
and NOT what my new editor wants me to write, but I find the protagonist
interesting. Maybe someone else will. It’s working out to top off at 30,000
words or the worst length ever. Unfortunately I like it this way. Introduce
subplot? Submit it with other short stories? Can’t decide. Erin is exactly
the same length. Between the two of them aren’t they a book? Unfortunately,
they are too similar which I guess ruins it for the reader who has to be taken
by surprise.

R called hearing I had sniffles (from his spy?) but didn’t come
by. Said he didn’t get sick at all. Favored by God, I guess. He always acts
like I am just about to dump him totally. Maybe I already have. We are as
formal as people who have never even met.

Reading Waugh’s diaries and thinking a lot about my own life.
I try thinking about my writing as if it were acting: “do what the part demands,
try what other actors have done.” But it doesn’t work. It is the pure eccentricity
of uniqueness that the universe demands and nothing less. You’re either part
of the pursuit of ultimate meaning or you’re “against” it. What a pity, too, the
universe is not “the world”.

MOON-SOULED

The moon & my soul have
Too much in common;
Retreating to
Eclipses
Abandoning natives
Screaming in panic:
“Come back, come back
We never notice
When you’re here yet
Who can bear this darkness
Now that you have gone?”
January 9, 2023
Inspired Pleasure
Diary of a Dancer
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Monday 8 Jan 78 – 6 PM
        Twenty-four hours ago I was sitting in my red dress over 
```
a glass of port, waiting for Jervaze to arrive. Anxiety level high. Somewhere
– I think from Mom – I got the impression that my needs are so automatically
repellent to any sane individual that they must be hidden. Therefore, I have
to carefully think my way through to any honest approach – and then it isn’t
really honest any more. But I can’t just be impulsive. Prepared myself for disappointment – that he would be late or perhaps not show – because there
is something weird about him. Some deep dark secret perhaps? But he was
right on time.
This time I took him to my nearest neighborhood restaurant

where the waiter put on quite a show with Irish coffee till flaming liquor rolled
down his sleeves! Jervaze came inside my house without hesitation – I
fretting about how to best establish physical contact while he sprawled
comfortably on the couch. I turned off the overhead light and lit candles –
took off my jacket – he rubbed his face against my breasts acting calm,
respectful and not neurotic. Must be my experience with R that makes me
fearful of being “shamed” every second.
Jervaze kissed and kissed my face so long – tears
automatically filled my eyes. But he did not get upset. Got up like a
perfect gentleman “when it was time to leave” and I managed to resist
attacking him. I did one very strange thing that is causing me anxiety now.
We showed each other our class rings – he always wears his. I slid mine
on his little finger and left it there. He wore it home. Uh oh. 11:30 AM Wed 11 Jan 78
Experiencing sharp attacks of fear all day long at “being in a relationship”. What the hell was I doing giving him my ring? See, I agree that everything’s my fault! Story of my life! Currently enjoying two quiet hours
while A is at the gynecologist. It will be great when she gets her own place.
Plenty of private time and space to panic in.
Today I got a phone call from R and a letter from Devon. So,
I was able to line my relationships up, so to speak, contrast and compare.
Even lumped together they are not one full relationship! R’s “gamesmanship”
is down from its zenith, but, owing to my total nonparticipation, also at its most exposed. Lengthy chat about our vacations, and then he spent probably a
half hour telling me his “insurance setup”. Why? So I can tell everyone
where to find the will and the important papers when he runs into a tree on
his next ski trip! I should be worried about him dying apparently!!!
I let him talk, I didn’t cut him off and I asked no questions,
largely because this makes him the craziest and he deserves it. I know he’s
comforting himself now that I still care about his finances if not about him. Devon thanked me for the glamorpic (described me as “so lovely” and said he feels
like he’s talking to me when he writes his letter) and then launched into a long description of his and Gwynne’s relationship.
They have an “understanding” which seems to involve “being
there for each other” without “demands”. “Why won’t he admit he’s gay?” howls
Avril when I read this to her.
But I don’t think sex is even that simple for him. His approach
is much more diffuse – a constantly vibrating choice between “being sexual”
and “not being sexual”. He and I had such good sex, but if it all has to happen
in a sort of coma, if there can’t be any planning or god forbid, discussion
then the hell with it.
As for Jervaze, he showed up for the last three hours of my
first night back at The Plush Palace from the Starlight. He was wearing my ring.
I asked him if my work bothered him. He said, no, he was cool with it, but was
glad I asked.
Whereupon we went back to his place and made love for 3 hours. Whoo-hoo! I’m not kidding! The first test – home design – alas he
failed. His furnishings are truly HORRIFIC Spanish Mediterranean dreck. His
shower curtain consists of festoons of blue chiffon – it is INCONCEIVABLE
that a male could purchase such a thing. Guess I am not asking the right
questions. Old girlfriend? Mom? Sister-in-law? Some woman raised exclusively
on pirate films had a hand in here somewhere.
As to the sex – that test he passed. He’s a prizewinner there. Everything takes forever and that doesn’t seem to bother him in the least. Is
he some kind of reptile, living in a time zone utterly different from us mammals?
It took him 20 minutes to get my pants off working steadily. I got enough
comments about the beauty of my body to satisfy my ego for life.
He went down on me without a flicker – so much for all those
rumors about Southern men – and when he goes down he stays down. On the
other hand – he never did come. Calms fears of premature ejaculation but
raises other ones. His uncircumcised penis stayed stiff for 3 hours. This is a
first for me, and I don’t know whether I like it. I really can’t give myself
permission to come under these circumstances yet clearly I will have to –
I’ll just have to say, “forget you – let’s concentrate on me.” That could work.
But as I say, it would certainly be different. When I left, he gave me his key.

7:45 Pm – Plush Palace – Thurs 12 Jan 78
Called Jervaze and suggested we do something tonight –
he acted enthusiastic. I said, “Should I be calling you? Wouldn’t want to
call too much,” and he said, “Call all the time.” R–induced horrors dropping
away one by one. It’s snowing – I’ll go straight to Jervaze’s. (He’s close to club.)
```
4PM Friday, Jan 13-78
        I think Jervaze may really be an angel; one of Milton’s 
```
sexed up angels who took a wrong turn to our planet by mistake. Some
anxiety is relieved. We never did get to go anywhere – stayed in bed. Bliss.
But if this doesn’t work I will damn well marry Devon whether he likes it or
not – I can’t take much more of this.

I’m at my desk hammering out letters – trying to answer one
from the island realtor. The studio apt has “no cooking facilities”. I don’t care
but the realtor does, she has a house on the pond for $175 “long lease” she
wants me to take. Says it has a Franklin stove and I could “bike to town.” I admit
I’m interested. Jervaze has offered to come to the island with me in March –
I really shudder at the thought of introducing him to my parents, how to tactfully
say, Please don’t ask him about Ideas and only offer him one drink. Last night
I let myself into his apt, took a shower, tried to use his sparkingly hazardous
blow dryer, gave that up, crawled in bed with him. I had lots of Ryder-induced
fears that he wouldn’t be there, in bed with another girl, etc. But no. There he was, nude, gorgeous, asleep – and when he woke up, happy to see me.

5:25 PM Plush Palace – Sat 14 Jan 78
Snakes dropping into paradise one by one. First, although
Jervaze is incredibly easygoing – it is impossible to get him to state a
preference about a movie or a restaurant, for example – (had to drag him to Eastwood’s Every Which Way But Loose) I can tell he is nervous about
introducing me to his brother and sister in law. Should I just suggest we
lie about what I do for a living? I guess that wouldn’t really solve anything.
Sartre is so right. Hell IS other people. Then there’s my mother – the
latest demon fondling my ear. Once a woman has made herself
vulnerable to a man, she’s through. Uncommitted sex brings out
the worst in men, blah blah blah. Because it’s “too perfect” from his
point of view. I am “causing him moral hazard”. Yes, I tell the voice,
and it would be perfect from MY POINT OF VIEW TOO IF YOU WOULD
JUST SHUT UP. WE ONLY STARTED DATING A COUPLE OF WEEKS
AGO. But one can’t shut out THAT voice so easily.   Mystified by Willard Gaylin’s irritating Caring.    He acts like mutual dependence or
interdependence is some “failure” of personal autonomy.

Powder Mill Road – 11 PM Sunday 15 Jan 78
Jervaze “dropped by” this afternoon. Since it’s such a
long way from his place to mine I was astonished. Is it that I can no
longer believe a man will climb mountains for me? Or is it just my
sensitivities to Jervaze’s strangely inchoate “disabilities” warning me
and sending up red flags? We had a nice talk – he seemed faintly down –
then he had to leave because he needs to get up extra early tomorrow.
I was in too good a mood to work on my novel, bought clothes instead.
3 pairs of pants, sweater coat, five pairs undies, one gauchos. All clothes
size 7. Packaged MSS when I came home so as not to feel too unproductive.


Coleridge poem taken by Virginia community college
screed. No money. (Natch.)

DEEPER INTO COLERIDGE

“Music is beneath me” wrote
the fat man, angering his wife by stealing
her broom for walking
scattering the straw. He loved to
pack a nightcap and declaim upon the moors.
“I would have married a servant girl
could I but be sure of her affection.”
But be sure!
Some men are never fated to be sure.
Amidst politicking, pregnancies and
penny-pinching, he found the time
to fall in love with the Wrong Woman.
No wonder he took opium to distract him
from the faceless fiend that follows after
most of us but specially him
who knew so well to court it.
In his mildewed study he sits alone
clutching his bad heart and writing
“Ours is not a logical age”
January 7, 2023
Inspired Pleasure
Diary of a Dancer
```
Mon 27th Dec 77 11:00 AM
        See Dracula on Broadway – pure pleasure with some 
```
honest scares. Frank Langella very sexy. At Italian dinner Mom and
Dad push island hard, but I know the old people would never leave me
alone. They’d be worse than R. Still, there’s something magical about
being protected from the real world by the ferry – places you can’t get
to easily are wonderful just for that reason.
Mom and Dad say further I can’t be serious about my
writing or I’d have a job in publishing or magazines! I’m so rocked back
on my heels its hard to argue. It sounds so sane. But why won’t it result,
really, in another “hostage taking” of my soul, which, so, so regrettably,
appears to be so damn fragile? Becoming one’s self is life’s greatest
challenge – and so far it does seem necessary to abjure group (gang? Team?) endeavors. Writing doesn’t satisfy unless it comes out of the wild side of
me – my secret side. There’s always the temptation to rip open the spider
and get the silk out faster. Dad rolls his eyes – it’s the old “I’m an artist so
I can do what I want” argument again. How to tell him yes, he’s right. Yes,
I’m taking advantage of my education, my family, my “privileges”; it’s who
they made me. No going back to some invented Dust Bowl life of drudgery
just so THEY can “feel superior & good”. They insist they don’t WANT to
“feel good!” It’s about what’s “right!” My turn to roll my eyes.
```
Detroit, 11:05 PM, Thursday 29 Dec 77
        At the adorably, impossibly 20’s Tudoresque manse my sister 
```
Merrill is restoring – it’s lovely here. Merrill and her husband say dancing is
“sex work” and “sex work” is “OK” if its “regulated so “sex workers aren’t
exploited.” I get annoyed that nobody can tell the difference between dancing
and prostitution! Lots of things cause “erotic titillation” – breathing for
example. Still, I find I’m inclining toward taking a two-month break in March
and going to the island to write. Is this family management? But one of
the reasons I like dancing is because you can “pick it up and put it down.”
Well, we’ll see.
```
Thurs night 29 Dec 77 9:30 PM
            I find as I distance from Ryder I remember some good things 
```
and that makes me happy. He was so unique. It was fun knowing him,
watching him perform impromptu magic for street children and restaurant
patrons. More extraordinary really than poor old Jervaze who in spite of his
glamorous looks drinks way too much and hates his job. Also R knew me as
a “not dancer” which J doesn’t – maybe that persona obscures who I really
am. I remember the excitement of watching Ryder make his television show – unexpectedly sweaty physical labor in choosing camera angles and shots,
timing, music, close-ups – building the tape as the excitement was happening
– more in common with sports than some couch potato activity like editing.
Greek Town for dinner after the Renaissance Center, so the
night ended in a wild bouzouki. Day occupied with antiquing – especially fun
since I am reading Rumer Godden’s China Court, which is basically a love
song to things. It made me worry that there are not enough details in
Demon – what should I add? Perhaps buy a Vogue to see.
```
            Dreamed about Devon last night.  Wonder; what 
```
he’s up to. Maybe I’m being psychic again. Getting some peace of mind
about him as well. Merrill’s daughter comes to read over my shoulder,
then when I move to hide the diary says, “Don’t worry, I can’t read cursive. “
```
    Plush Palace – Tuesday, January 3, 1978 – 9:25 PM
            Back at work. Can’t concentrate on The Murder of Sir 
```
Edmund Godfrey, which is the book I brought because I keep thinking
Jervaze will drop by. Dead silence from him – no call on Christmas. I sent
him one card but of course I only got back yesterday. I can’t bear to take all
the initiative. Oddly (especially after my dream about him) had a card waiting
from Devon. Maybe I AM psychic. Evidently he regrets that love-letter –
encourages me to “hang loose”. Quotes from Sister Goldenhair. In other
words, don’t try to get him to plan to meet skiing, that’s just way more
planning than he can handle. Kind of a pathetic specimen.
```
Plush Palace – 10:05 pm Thurs 5 Jan 1978
        Jervaze came in Tues after my 10:00 set – with lots of little 
```
presents for me, perfume, bears, cards, pins – in a Christmas stocking. He
wore a gold-banded black cowboy hat covered with snow and a shiny black
down parka, his platinum hair swinging around his face – like a visit from an
angel. Or possibly a Chippendale dancer. He is too pretty; mine eyes dazzle.
He stayed till I got off at 1 then walked me to my car – one kiss – asked me
out very formally for Saturday night. I gave him directions to my place and
he wrote them in a book – tipped his hat, climbed into his Shelby and vanished,
leaving me wondering, is he gay? Is he even real? I continue to struggle
reading The Young Romantics – artists in 1840’s Paris.

PLACES I HAVE NEVER LIVED

From which house came my teenage lover?
I should recognize the one – where
As a sick moth haunts the moon he
Marked me in my blood.
He’s the one who died.
Women are more flexible
Turning shit to gold like
Earthworms; men are brittle
Sharp and angry, fall so
Easy out of tune. I sharpen
Ears these winter days
For all the sounds I never heard;
Screen doors slamming –
Secrets, arson,
Stolen kisses
Mustered music, borrowed
Penchant; Mayhem – trenchant
Terror – sentient.
```
        Avril and I found a perfect black sequin tube top while
```
we were out promenading yesterday – I’m going to wear it with my
black silk trouser suit. She thinks she found herself the perfect
apartment too – a studio in a skyscraper with a great kitchen, huge closets,
only $216 month utilities included, says she is going to look for another
week before she decides. Financial fount M & D don’t want her living with
me because I am a “harmful influence.” We saw Armon in a bit part on
TV last night – there weren’t any credits, but I knew it was him.
Listening out of one ear to gossip – Gina says the bartender
at the Starlight is bisexual and that Tony the bagman is her male lover.
She is big, he is little, I can’t imagine them together. He is called the “bagman”
because he runs between the clubs in a Lincoln filled with bags of money.
Gina also says that she is a priest in a mail order religion and that her
breasts are real and her ex-husband raped her nine-year-old daughter.
I can tell for a fact those hard breasts are fake so it does make it tough
to believe anything she says.
Last night went out with Erika to see the new Bunuel
(in spite of her claims to revere him she failed to notice he used different
actors for the same part) and to eat at Chateau Gesundheit. Depressing
conversation about how terrible men are – says her ex-husband is a cross
between a psychopath and a momma’s boy – she naturally assumed
because of R that this would be my favorite subject. She also says all exotic
dancers and showgirls were molested as children and as a result are lesbians who hate men. Asking or inviting? All I can say is that all little girls have unpleasant memories of Adult Men but this is just a chip on her breeze. A breeze I think
I better stay out of in future, perhaps. I also get tired of hearing the Marxist
slant on Life. Love doesn’t exist, people do everything for “self-interest”, etc.
etc. If that is true they are doing a piss-poor job of it. I think people live for
fantasy and some people’s fantasies are very, very cheap.
Hoping drinks with Maeve will be more fun.
```
        Midnight - 6 Jan- 78
        Crazy with love.  Jervaze and I had one of those unforgettable 
```
dates last night – Took him to my favorite restaurant in Ellicott City – Coco Lane
and we talked for hours. He loves dogs – wants to raise Grand Pyrenees. His
favorite cats are English blues. Wanted to be a vet except he always hated
school, so that’s how he got into working with his hands and he thinks there’s
no way back now. He loves WC Fields and horror movies.
The thing I love about him most (apart from his astonishing
beauty) is his natural courtesy, his dignity (he is very polite to anyone in a
service position – the exact opposite of R who acted as if being exigent
was the same thing as being discriminating. Status.) He has such an aura of gentleness and calm, just like those big dogs he loves so much. His isolation,
I like too – he’s the only male I’ve met in quite awhile who doesn’t travel in a
pack. He has a brother in the same job locally – that’s why he came up from
Alabama – but he plainly thinks suburban Virginia is the “fast lane” and I don’t
disabuse him.
He eats seafood by preference and wants to live on the water.
He probably drinks too much and could be an incipient alcoholic. My parents
would be totally, totally appalled but of course it doesn’t take much to appall them. Alas, he hasn’t finished my book – claims he’s “working on it”. I am
waiting for him to outright say he doesn’t understand it – maybe when he
knows me better.
When he kissed me goodnight he only kissed me – a relief
at the time, since it was one less worry. Now of course I wish I had some clearer indication from him that he finds me even attractive. Is he polite or am I resistible? Don’t want to be resistible – we’ll have to change that.
```
 Sat -1 pm 7 Jan- 78
        I’m at the Starlight – our club owner owns this one too – it’s huge.  
```
How I hate this stage. It isn’t a true stage but a runway winding through the
audience, which means you must keep walking all the time – and they try to
fill it by having several girls up at once. One can’t build any audience hypnosis – people pay less attention and have more business meetings – and tips
really take a nosedive. The bartender is a grizzled old lesbian who stares
right up my crotch – supposedly to see if my stocking seams are straight
(they aren’t. Fortunately she doesn’t offer to do them for me – but she still
watches.) Four of the other girls tried to get me to let them smoke dope in
the dressing room – I told them no. They’ll have to go out back with the alley
cats.
Thank God Glee – who has a lot of class – backed me up. So
the two of us had the dressing room to ourselves, which made a pleasant
change from watching the others trying to disguise the scars from their breast operations. Book I brought – The Pleasure of Ruins – does not go with this atmosphere in spite of its title.
R called me here – says he found me thru Randy who
was impressed because Ryder’s on TV! I flatly told him he is scaring the life
of out me with this behavior.
```
         But he seems to know just how far to push things, amazingly 
```
we had a wonderful talk! Gentleman Jim lets us talk in his office: very respectful
of our “privacy”. He obviously thinks we are dating. Wonder if he will tip
R to the fact that I have a “honey on the side” at the Plush Palace? Jesus!
I told R I am sick of his “psychotic twin brother” (good idea for a novel,
actually) and he really laughed – admitted he has “a Jekyll-Hyde” thing
going on. (It’s actually worse than that – it’s really Hyde and Mr. Nastier
Hyde – but didn’t say that. Keep conversation light.) He promised to stop
calling me at work.
January 5, 2023
Inspired Pleasure
Diary of a Dancer
```
 9:30 AM – 22 Dec 77
        Very dissatisfied with my life right now – trying to avoid
```
making out of sheer boredom some kind of major financial mistake –
like buying a house and filling it with furniture. Now that Avril has been
accepted as a “permanent student” at U of MD don’t see why we shouldn’t
share a berth somewhere. One of our dancers is a student there and she
says student housing is very expensive. Why couldn’t I rent out rooms?
But then what would happen to the three months of traveling I was promising
myself ? Wanted to spend March skiing in the White Mountains.
I need something more solid than Romance, that’s for sure.
Jervaze cancelled our last date so now I’m freaking. It is vital that he makes
the next move but my feminist soul revolts. Four months of celibacy appears
to be my limit.

Sitting in the bay window drinking a third cup of coffee and
watching a calico cat stalk the yard. Avril and I have been living rather high
lately, buying clothes for Christmas. Last night saw the movie Telefon
-very exciting but with an unbelievable ending – then watched Baryshnikov’s
delightful Nutcracker on TV. Avril says she’s finally starting to forget old
What’s His Face.

I’m trying to get her interested in the religious and meditation
books that have been such a help to me. She’s not that kind of a reader, alas.
No word from R. My latest “daymare” is that he will just
show up at the club. Should I talk to Randy? A says Ryder’s asked her
about it. I made her promise to say “We don’t think you should have
that information” even if he already knows. I try comforting myself
with my knowledge of his vanity – he wouldn’t want other men to see
Randy throw him out as an “unsuccessful suitor”.

(Angry exes show
up at club routinely and aren’t allowed in no matter how they behave
or how much money they have. They get On The Bad List.) Let’s hope
the sensitivity of his ”face” protects both of us. But he probably would
send a stooge – it is just like him – to spy out the land. Fortunately
I look good and this classy place has the Shalimar beat so no disgrace.
Jervaze and I are trying to keep people at the club from knowing that we
date. But it’s impossible to really disguise favorites what with the tripping,
drinks, flowers and etc even if we aren’t allowed to sit with the customers.
Stooge could probably figure it out. Maybe R would “give up” at the sight
of him. Search me.

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

a declaration of erotic war.

23 Dec 77 12:15PM
So in love I’m crazed. I’m at that stage where you can’t
honestly tell if the other person is even interested, you’re in such a
delirium. Jealousy of all the other dancers because he looks at them.
Jervaze says he liked my poems, his favorite being Nocturne.

NOCTURNE

Reveal

Yourself to me

To my inner palate

An artist’s palette

Moth-winged hands

Fluttering

Crescent thighs surging

Urging

Union undivided

Prickly venus flytrap hairs that guard

Your anis scented anus

Fleshy mandibles

Trembling sheaves

Snouting for your smoky-salted dinner

Double-snouted cock stiffening

My mango halves

O I will baste you when its time

Angelspit,

Lovespawn

Dipin my styx of roe your

Musky caviar

Sensate wanderer you

Suck

Ubus –

I dreamed you

Open me.
```
        I thought that might do the trick. I possess wiles 
```
unknown to other babes. He mentioned that his brother’s going back
to Alabama so he might be alone for Christmas – I invited him to New
York City but I could tell from his expression he’ll never do it. He thinks
Virginia is the north – calls the New Jersey Turnpike “undriveable” –
a lawless war zone. (If he could hear what we say about the South!)

We exchanged presents – he gave me a bottle of Irish Mist and
another one of my books (he keeps buying them for me) and I gave
him a very small glamour shot in an antique frame – so he can do
anything with it – hide it if he wants. Keep it in his car. He said he liked
it but in the bar light he really couldn’t see. The we went to breakfast –
had a wonderful conversation about ghosts and WC Fields. He believes
in one but not the other. I was hoping he would kiss me – regretted the
first time when “rocked out” on beer, he leaned forward to kiss me but
I pulled away.

But last night would have been completely unmanageable
– under yellowing lights and the stares of strangers (me in my stage
makeup) or out in the pouring rain. So we said goodbye, hopped in our
cars. We may not see each other for three weeks! I’ve got his address
(on his business card) so I can at least send him a card from NY.
Got to get up and face the day. Avril back from her final exam in ½ hour
– then off to Landover Mall to see Saturday Night Fever.
```
 24 Dec 77 - midnight – Plush Palace
        The Big Day. Go home, sleep, wake up, do laundry, take 
```
dogs for shots, buy snow tires. In a haze of infatuation – J was in for 5
hours tonight watching me dance with a sense of unmistakable pride.
He asked for my phone number so he could call me on Christmas Day –
I gave him all of them.

New York City Dec 25 77 – Fri night.
Life is so interesting, Wouldn’t miss it for the world.
Lovely intimate family talks – just what family should be doing for perspective
on past and future. In two days Avril and I drive out to Michigan to see
Merrill – 11 hours – tonight’s dinner in the Village then an early night.
Heard of a studio apt on the island – winterized – going for $200/month.
Of course I will have enough royalties for that…or won’t I? Harcourt royalty
dept uncooperative, editor Lauren very cagey. But won’t the island kill
my already comatose sex life? This is the longest time I’ve been away
from dancing and I miss it. It’s a great substitute for sex but not a complete
one alas. Physical activity vital to my peace of mind.
```
        96th St off the Park- New York City – Dec 77
```
This apt is triggering horrible flashbacks to how sick I was
at the beginning of last summer. Scary that a man could do this to me.
Don’t ever want to get that sick again. Makes me sorry this diary exists
– my trusty friend – because now misery has an actual corporeal reality.
Burn these sickening wails before I die. The Victorians always did.

Well I’m raring to get back. Not only do I miss the dancing,
I miss the bar. Ah, the nightlife. Always a party atmosphere but I could
feel superior for not drinking (or getting high). I like our status and
protections – I like getting paid for exercising, being admired and having
fun. This pleasure just cannot be shared – Mom’s face crimps closed – and
I am lost in the unredeemable beastliness and ugliness she feels certain
it must be. The fact that I am a feminist and consider myself spiritually in
tune with the universe also is incomprehensible to her. (Wives can get into
big spiritual trouble too, but I am too tactful to bring that up.)

Unfortunately
there is no way to defend myself except by attacking back – her “safe”, closed,

restricted world of handmaiden to Dad, feeding and burnishing
him like a racehorse, talking him “up” as if she were his sports coach, does
not seem to me more inherently saintly.

But to Mom self-loss is what “sainthood” is – you totally
do not regard yourself in your care for someone else. The fact that you
are puffing them up like a grampus, encouraging them to be completely
selfish, is I guess too shockingly cruel to mention. So I’m stuck in Patient
Griselda mode with undeserved imprecations heaped on my innocent head.
I wonder if it would be too nasty to talk about how I am sacrificing myself for
those poor lonely men who need to look upon a perfect feminine ideal while
they swill beer? Guess I better not.

Mom is fond of saying that love doesn’t work unless
you open your heart to the other but you can’t do it without marriage!
I say Jervaze and I are “courting” which is a very different thing. I don’t
think I will ever open my heart again. I think perhaps it opens by itself,
naturally. One might as well tear a flower open and complain about
the quality of the bloom.

Interesting being here with Brett and Genevieve and
watching someone else’s marriage from the outside. Does not look
too enviable. Reading “Eclipse of the Hero in Victorian Fiction.” He’s
in eclipse everywhere else, too, I may add.
January 4, 2023
Inspired Pleasure
Diary of a Dancer
```
        12:10 PM- Plush Palace – Wed 19 Oct 77
        Dance night, then dance the next day kind of rough. And 
```
days are bad when the weather’s good – no one comes in. I seem to have
a lot of bills – just turned on the heat – but I’m meeting them. Making some
inroads today on Thomson’s Life of Frost. Randy fired Robin – Yvonne
needs $300 immediately because she just bought a piano. Well good luck
getting it out of this crowd is all I can say. Paz’s “on call” because she left
her husband and moved into the motel across the street. Let’s hope she
shows up. Last time I saw her she was pretty depressed; said she gave
him “the best four years” of her life. I have to get this all down in case I need
it someday. R used to be especially pissed when I got nostalgic for
dancing. But dancing is its own little world.
```
        7:30 PM- Plush Palace – Thu 20 Oct 77
        This aft I was getting ready for work phone rang, I say 
```
hello and Ryder’s tight little voice says: (very meaningfully) Hello.
I turned the radio down (Lakmé) and said casually as I could, “How
are you?”

He said he should enroll in FBI school after all the
trouble he’d had tracking me down.

(It couldn’t have been that hard since Mom and Dad’s
house sitter has been giving my # to all and sundry.) Said he was
punished now for being a non-communicative procrastinator who
should fling himself off the 14th St Bridge. I told him I lived in Beltsville
and danced in Virginia, refused to give further details. I didn’t let him
get away with any of his garbage. He said I’d been in town since Sept 8
without contacting him. I said he’d made it pretty plain he didn’t like what
I had to offer. Then why did I come back? I said, I like it here. Creep!
Like he owns the world!
```
        He said, will you eat with me?  Hmmm.  Something rattling 
```
in Pandora’s box. While I hesitated he said don’t make me disguise myself
as a girl scout cookie salesman (he could get away with it, too.) He said he
hasn’t gone out to dinner since our last night at Alfio’s!!! (I guess the Emmys
don’t count but I said nothing.) Said he’s having to give back his furniture
and sleep on an air mattress because he can’t make the payments. Aww.
This is the idiocy of buying furniture on time, but I still say nothing. So we’re
meeting Babe’s Sun at 3:30. Seems fairly safe… Rushed to library and took
out every true murder book I could find. Just in case.
```
         2 Nov – Plush Palace – 6:05 PM.
        R called this morning to “report in!’  Just to chat about his 
```
day! No more of that, I said. I’m busy. Slam. I don’t chat and I’m not sorry
it’s too late to learn. Actually feeling amazingly happy. Kiki showed me
how to cut off my corn with an exacto knife. All better! Still in Vol I of Life
of Frost. He was a repulsive human being, all right. Nowhere near as fun
as Agatha. Precious equilibrium recovered.
```
        8:30 PM  8 Nov 77
        I gave him the full treatment, poor guy. Red Italian boots, 
```
glittery eyeshadow, tight, tight jeans. Deliberately drove Conn Ave but no
markers from the past reached out their claws. Felt strong and blissful.
I was first there (of course) so could order carafe of wine and think. Thinking,
I’ll just explain to him that my idea of friendship and intimacy requires a
degree of truth telling that appears to freak him out.

He wore his high heels, too. His hair is blonder, longer
and messier than I remembered and it suits him. Off to the Bahamas
next weekend, he says for a “dive”. He wore the pinky ring I gave him
(he says he can’t get it off.) But that holy glow, that shine he used to have
is gone for me. I get it that he doesn’t know the pain he caused –
shallow people can’t. And that’s pitiable, really. He’s not just deaf
in one ear, he’s deaf in his soul.

He has a carefully worked out a “barstool rationale” for
what happened to us; we became lovers before we became friends.
I have no comment. Postponing sex would not have helped – and it
might have made things worse dumping all the responsibility for timing
on me. I think when he saw how easy it was to draw blood he couldn’t
help doing it, and I was a fool and an idiot. I ordered the fruit and
cheese plate but left before it arrived. Realize how much I want all
this to be in the past. No future of any kind exists for us. Not even
in fantasy. The future is what matters. Told him to give my regards
to the folks at the Shalimar. He said he’d give me a buzz.
Bet I can finish Demon by Thanksgiving. Avril coming.
Lucky I have a second bedroom. Furnish it with Kliban posters, a
thrift shop bureau and a mattress on the floor.
```
         12 Nov 77 6:25 PM Plush Palace
        I finally called R. (He’s been leaving me messages.)
```
I said if we were going to have a relationship of any kind – the friendship
that he wanted – we would have to have rules (I got the idea from Nancy
Mitford.) He said he was so glad I called, he’d been having the most awful
day. Took my card out of his rolodex but couldn’t bring himself to destroy it
and put it away in a drawer. What rules he said. I said we’d have to think. No idle calls? No talk about past? He said, “Please forgive me” but of course I can’t. I said
“Forgive me.” He said there’s nothing to forgive,
```
        Dancing suddenly OK? I said we’re done with all 
```
that stuff. Starting over. But I’m very busy working a lot and writing a
lot and he said he’s very busy working a lot. No expectations. We
both said fine and I’m pretty sure he’s as relieved as I am.
We’re going to Looking for Mr. Goodbar Thurs –
I want to see it too. He knows how I love movies. It’s perfect
weather to pick up Avril at the airport and drive to Galesville tomorrow
for brunch with Mom & Dad at the marina. There’s a big white
farmhouse on Old Annapolis Rd I always look at longingly.
```
         Plush Palace 4 PM Wed 15 Dec 1977
        Shaking like a leaf. Ryder called the club saying he 
```
was called early into work tonight – change of plans. Called his work
immediately – “Mr. Arlen’s desk.” Left her a message saying I got his
message but do not call the club. Hope this stymies him till after
Christmas but I know he is going to say we need each other’s workplace

for last minute plan changes.

I say is THIS IS NOT DATING. WE ARE NOT DATING. You can’t be
trusted with my workplace #.

Then I start looking desperately for Jervaze to come in.
He’s supplying me lately with that all-important fantasy vitamin of which
I have been so deficient for so long. Can’t even THINK about R to the
background of Disco Inferno.
```
Sat – 18 Dec 77 9:30 AM
        Very dissatisfied with life and self and, as usual, in 
```
complete confusion as to what to do about it. I suspect I should not be
making any big investment decisions, like buying a house and furnishing
it but I am sick of being such a goddam wanderer. Avril has been
accepted at U of MD – my job is to finish this goddam novel. If I could
finish it maybe March, April and May could be my traveling months.
I thought March skiing could be nice – in Devon’s back yard.

I am in danger of making an idiot of myself over Phil
Jervaze – “Adonis” as I privately call him . He seems very attracted
but is not making the first move. I’ll have to bring him along somehow.
Going tomorrow to Renaissance Music at the National Shrine. Should
I wear my rhinestones or can I restrain myself? Avril says I’m doing a
good job taking her mind off of Dipstick, (my name for Mason). Bought
her $80 worth of clothes – she can pay me back when I need help with
the January rent.
```
        The Plush Palace 20 Dec 1977 – 4 PM                         Avril called to say that Ryder called again – trying to find out my 
```
holiday plans from her. Says he might have to work. I am surprised to
be shaking so much. I am very unhappy about this level of communication.
I was actually hoping not to have to deal with him till after Christmas.
Would prefer not to give him an opportunity to go into his act. I’ve learned
if I call his work I get his secretary. Left the message I will be “out of town”.
Favor, Alysse., The trouble is, telling a game-player you don’t play games
is all part of the game to them! There is absolutely nothing I can do to step
out of this thing except bore him to death. We will see each other fewer
and fewer times, the emotional content will be constantly plummeting,
and meanwhile, the chicks on the side he has summoned up for contrast and amusement will be clamoring for center stage. Let them have it.

And I have my own magic pill in reserve – Jervaze.
That anyone can drift through life so far unironically with shoulder
length platinum hair, platinum mustache and a white cowboy hat, drive
a 72 Shelby and work for the Pentagon titillates my Yankee soul. But
that’s what’s so much fun about the fine commonwealth of Virginia.
It’s full of these people. Uh oh. I hear the rhythm of Disco Inferno,
audience’s current favorite. Dust myself with body glitter and I’m up.
January 3, 2023
Inspired Pleasure
Diary of a Dancer
```
        2:30 PM Dunkin Donuts, Eelsboro, Maine Fri. 26 Aug 77
        Here I am again: have I changed? I like myself better, 
```
I think I can say that. Thurs night was a big success. Devon came in with
an IMMENSE bottle of white wine – he either needs it for himself or he’s
trying to turn me into an alcoholic (with my full cooperation.) The clam
and noodle thing I invented was quite good but he wasn’t ready to eat till
nine and we didn’t get to bed till midnight where he revealed a sexually
savage side to his nature that has been previously unseen. So maybe
he was nerving himself. (I loved it). We finished the housecleaning and
were off to the airport by 11.
Fairly silent in the car, though he was tender. When I
mentioned he might come down to DC he said he didn’t think there was
much of a possibility – so now I’m worrying that I’ve been pushed onto
Bad Girl Island while he pines for Pure Young Innocent Eng girl with who
he would NEVER do those enjoyably awful things. (She’s 21!!!! He knew
her 24 hrs!!!) I shouldn’t be silly. I really can’t ever “lose” him. I think he
loves me and everything else is just scar tissue. Devastating airport
goodbye – he asked me to “write soon”. I’m probably lucky he loves me
as much as he does. I was looking damn good if I do so say so myself in
backless red halter top and tight, tight jeans. I do want him to remember
me as beautiful.

11:30 AM Sat 27 Aug 77
M & D are on Ryder’s side!!! And they HATE him! In other
words, they will line up with anybody rather than me. They say of course R
“behaves badly” if I am having an “affair” (don’t you love the archaic term?)
with Devon! I say he doesn’t even know about Devon, plus we weren’t
exclusive BY HIS CHOICE plus we were BROKEN UP. All still seems to be
my fault. Incredibly, they think I am not SUFFERING ENOUGH. Here are
people who have lectured me all my life to find any excuse for other
people’s bad behavior – life has surely injured them somehow. They
didn’t have Advantages! According to them I am the only human being
alive who doesn’t get an excuse – I should just “be different”. How,
asks mom, can I meet “suitable young men” while dancing? Suitable
young men! (They like Marc Kramer who’s a complete horndog and a
political troglodyte. But at least he can afford me!) Am I living in a
Trollope novel? I am so annoyed I don’t want to accept their hospitality
but I really don’t want to rent a room in the House of the Damned aka
Burnside Inn. which doesn’t take dogs – who wept to see me again like
children – then immediately got over it.

Dad’s a very restless retiree I must say but don’t ask me
what to advise. I’m too ignorant. My advice to everyone is “write”; like
naturalists say “Be alone in nature” and religious people say “Find God.”
Reading Vol I. V. Woolf’s diary (so different from A Writer’s Diary) and
hitting the gin. Mom thinks I’m taking “bad” advice from messed up writers – “modeling” myself on failures and suicides – (Dad calls them “degenerates”)
– because it’s “cool”. That’s why I need the gin. I need the gin the first
minute I wake up. Must try not to be such a limp limpet. Told Mom if R
calls at night not to come get me.
```
        Sun 9:30 AM 28 Aug 77
        Mom washing windows.  God - I think I am supposed to 
```
offer help but I Refuse. I need to get the hell out of here. Mom says I
can’t add my laundry to hers but have to go to the laundromat in town.
So the Battle is On. I’ll just go around smelling bad so there. Mom and
Dad are sailing down the Inland Waterway but not till Oct. Have a horrible
feeling I’m not out of the woods on this Ryder thing. Maybe I can get
established in Wash without him knowing. If I go back to him I will despise
myself. Keep D as my lucky talisman.

9:45 PM
Drunk, fat and exhausted. Parents had cocktail party
inviting Island Poet. (Published in The New Yorker.) Tried to give her
the rundown on my summer but it sounds a complete waste – “Wrote
half of a no-good book, got my other book rejected”. Of course my summer
doesn’t sound like anything with the sex & love left out!!! Am I trapped
at the end of a cul de sac? No; there is something there. I just can’t
find it yet.

Dad said he’s sure my life provides a lot of stories, but
maybe what I need is a PhD in Eng Lit! Mom’s reaction to that is rigid
disapproval. (He’ll never make that mistake again.) To explore the
boundaries of one’s soul is Selfish. One Lives to Serve (or to Claim one
is Serving. So, if you’re too stupid to know you’re selfish its win-win for
the small-minded!) Tried to read The Clocks but its Agatha Christie’s
worst. Absolutely meaningless. Poor Virginia Woolf going through a
very bad, painful period. Obviously sick, recording only weather & food.
Now theorists act like she was “mental” not liking to look at herself but
Vita Sackville-West felt the same way. Couldn’t look in a mirror,
wouldn’t buy evening dresses or go to parties! (And she was on the
sexual prowl, unlike poor VW.) I think their era was actually worse
about beauty than we are – they gave it a “magic” “classical” quality so
it was very much restricted. We see more beauty – and in weird places.
Otherwise how explain Leslie Caron? Jeanne Moreau? Charlotte Rampling?
Hardly classic beauties but wonderfully, rightfully worshipped as
goddesses. I see hope for all of us.
```
        8:00 AM Mon 29 Aug 77
        It’s real Agatha Christie weather – fog so dense you
```
can’t see the water. Nevertheless the ferry’s running – Mom took
Dad down. I’m feeling successful, sober and sane. I’m doing exactly
what I want and will find my own way. I’m determined to be happy and
not develop some kind of “rejection phobia.” Not knock out the props of
my own happiness. Accept the fact that my pride has been hardest hit.

PHANTOMS

The ghost awaits his chance
Inside us all
Revenge de-bodies –
Anticipates the dark
Impatience ill-concealed
Grasps our foot
Beneath the turning of the stair
Reveals a face as blank as
Nightmare whose
Icy, seaweed coils entwine mistrust
Around our throats
Suppress our breath
While we dead live.
```
        4:20 PM Letter from the Folger Shakespeare Library 
```
inviting me to read Oct 13! Even Mom was impressed. 20 mins pays
$50! I’ve hit the big time! Wish I’d known this when Island Poet was
asking me why I don’t just kill myself and get it over with. M & D can’t
argue with me going back to DC now (they tell me Berthe Slaughter’s
condo is for sale on the cutest little road. Right on the waterfront. I say
I would rather have the art gallery next to the Atlantic Grocery $5000,
no bath or kitchen. In case they’re buyin’. They aren’t, in spite of the
fact that they are very flush with money right now. Got their $$ back
from
NY State bankruptcy but Dad always in a panic that we’ll figure out
how rich he is.)

9:00 PM Called Shoulders. He said dogs will be all right
for a couple of days but he’s being evicted at the end of Sept! Too bad,
such a nice house. (And in Chevy Chase!) So I’m spared kennel
fees for 2 days at least. R must be back at work (if he still has a job).
Reading old NY Times Book Reviews in front of a roaring fire.
Dishwashing break – I said I’d do them. Pick up Agatha Christie afterwards
– the preferred reading for “shock cases”. (She was a shock case herself.
Absent in the Spring is very fine).
```
          Island 10 PM Monday night, 5 Sept 77
            In bed in the Barnacle drinking coffee, eating bread 
```
with honey. Delicious solitude. Can’t go to the Main House because
Genevieve’s friends from Boston are there – they no sooner arrived for
this Fantasy vacation than they decided they need a divorce. Fortunately,
they are quiet about it. The one thing they can’t deal with is their dog –
tomorrow I have to drive him to the ferry. Oh well. I’ve been enraptured
by this delicious solitude – beachcombing is very healing. I guess I am
just a solitary sort – don’t really care for people at all, I fear. Last night
a bad dream about Ryder – treating me cruelly and me, paralyzed. In
the daytime – in my conscious mode – I remember everything good
about him, his lips mouth and fingers – his constant air of playfulness.
The way we fit perfectly together like interlocking puzzle pieces made
it nice that he was short – my mirror opposite, only male. My lost twin.
But nature abhors a balance, apparently.
Must remind myself how he had to try to turn it to his
advantage, throwing the whole system off and spinning my world into
frozen space. Now he doesn’t know where I am (although he might
suspect.) No phone in this building thank God.
Tomorrow goodbye Maine – back to DC to house-hunt.
M & D have been good about not dragging me to things – enjoyed the
Smythes sculpture show – parties not so much. Parties seem like
“consensus building events” where I’m fated to be perennially on the
outs. Ford Madox Ford made some kind of statement about how
people have to achieve a level of “ordinariness” to be “successful” –
I can’t remember the exact quote. Plus I lack the patience to look it up.
R felt I despised him intellectually, which of course, I did.
I don’t think of myself as stratified, but he is and when you’re with a
stratified person, you become so. Sometimes I am in mourning for the
part of me that died. I wish I could get my letters back – but they were
only love-letters. Must seem now like the ravings of an insane person.
Well, there’s no reason to see him again. I think the casual relationship
is beyond me. I hope in the future I’ll be careful of men going mach
one across the sexual barrier. I’ve got to stop looking at sex as a vitamin
requiring periodic intravenous doses.
```
Chevy Chase, MD - 10:15 PM Thurs 8 Sept.
        At Shoulder’s house. Not a bad drive down – (washing the 
```
dogs right before the ferry (I had to – they stank) put some time
pressure on me – but I made the ferry anyway. Larry – Shoulders –
looks different – has a moustache. Talks about needing a roommate –
does he mean me? He doesn’t know where yet and I don’t want to live
with him. His constant string of ignorant pickups would eventually get
me down. He doesn’t mention Ryder and I don’t look up his TV show.
Promising stuff in the classifieds – a garden apt in Landover, a townhouse
in Dale City, sharing a house in Kensington. Took the dogs on the old
walk – they remembered the route. Huge construction at my old house.
L’Escargot closed.

CURATRIX

Cold lonely core I was
Before you found me
Freed me from
Ambition’s boundary.
Now I’m a single facet on your stone
Most myself when I’m alone. But
Memories like stones I’m free to choose
And in life’s river,
Eventually, lose.
```
5 PM Sept 9
        Kensington House hopeless. You have to join some
```
kind of food co-op that’s like a cult religion and there’s a huge emphasis
on kitchen and cooking duties. They all eat together. Seems like
the worst of college and boarding school to me. I’m now sitting in a
real estate office which is really a garage waiting for a guy who’s already
an hour late. He’ll be here in 10 mins they say, then he’s going away for
2 weeks so I hope he will want to close the deal tonight, It’s described
as an old apartment, high ceilings, fireplace. $210 a month. So I’m just
praying the neighborhood’s not too bad.
7:00 PM
Bleak. Too bleak. Tried to imagine myself doing my
exercises on that floor, standing in that kitchen waiting for water to
boil, etc. Couldn’t manage. Feeling very stressed. Do I even want to
live in this city? It’s just that I know I can easily make a living if the
book doesn’t take off. Went to the library and loaded up on Agatha
Christies to help handle the strain. It works. Maybe I need to get a
shag haircut and spend the winter in Spain. Now why don’t I do that,
other than the obvious reason I can’t afford it and have missed my
dogs as much as I want to. Another guy says he has half of a house
I might want. With a fenced in yard.
```
8:15 AM Wed 14 September – Powder Mill Road
        Drinking coffee in my own kitchen from the mug that 
```
was my present to myself last morning on the island. The guy is
selling this house as a rental property and was amazingly cavalier –
needed a tenant – didn’t look up my refs or demand cosigner.
Absolutely cool when I described myself as a ”writer” so “dancer”
remains beneath the radar. (Dad would say that proves I know
dancing’s “bad”! I refuse to be unsafe just to convince my own father
I’m respect-worthy.) Yesterday very full day. Got up at 8 and moved
the dogs to their fenced in yard. Fetched the truck, loaded and
unloaded with Larry The Shoulders’ help – bookcases, boxes, mattress,
desk, sofa – had truck back by 3. A thousand robins on the weed-grown
lawn. I wonder how long I will be looking at this peaceful green view.
January 1, 2023
Inspired Pleasure
Diary of a Dancer

1:45 PM Tues 2 Aug 77
No damn mail for THREE DAYS. No stock certificate,
nothing from my agent. And I made sure she had my right address.
I think diets brew self-hatred. Reading about Simenon and
having trouble with sentences like “50 of his novels date from this period.”
Shouldn’t read about this guy.
Starting to dream about Dupont Circle.
10PM
Just back from a long bike trip down interesting country
road. Felt I was visiting my future self. Glimpsing dark houses,
lighted bow windows, Canada geese as tame as ducks.
Alice Crimmins – did she do it? Rorech’s theory pure
hogwash. I think there are people who can “talk themselves into”
feeling innocent. I’ve met lots of amnesiacs.
Plan to buy silk shirts (in Washington) and read all the newspapers.
Emerge from my cocoon. Read Graham Greene section of Dangerous
Edge.
```
    7 PM Wed Aug 3 77
        Sitting out on deck well pleased with self. Stock cert arrived
```
today. Called Chevy Chase Bank and Trust got girl who didn’t know anything
but relayed instructions shouted at her by someone else. Signed stock,
climbed in Volvo, sent the whole thing off certified mail. Money should be in
by 10th. Surely Inzar can’t drop below 9. I can manage on $900.
Long bike ride had me puffing like a grampus; feeling
extra hungry so had a bowl of plain grits. Orwell’s letters. Kipling
too boring. Never been able to stand anything he’s written. Reading
trashy gothic The Room Beneath The Stairs makes me think I can
do something with my old The Bride and the Wolves.
Conditioned my hair (oleocap.) Looks good in spite of sun
& chlorine and it’s nice & long.
Maybe R’s been fired. He’s a coward and that would shut
him up. Shouldn’t even think about it. I’m a nail biter looking for a
nail to bite. There’s a lot to be said for the joys of starting over.
Stomach shrinking & all that.

10:30 AM – Poolside – Thurs 4 Aug 77
Watching the kiddie swimming lessons while reading
Hog Tied in Babylon (That’s what it SHOULD be
called. Overpraised Hollywood reminiscences. It’s
like reading a “talk show”.) Had to return a Michael
Innes unread it was so ghastly. Critical look at body in
the mirror this AM. Losing my hips makes my waist disappear.
Hmm. Legs OK. Open swim!

5PM Boring, annoying mail. Threatening letter from
Motor Vehicle Admin. They are upset because name on license and
name on registry not the same. Blame my marriage when I used to be
Vill-Aallyn. Sort it out when I get down there. Nothing from R so I refuse
to write to him ever again. Two weeks since he phoned me. (He should
be used to this – he and his wife used to get into the long competitive sulking matches.)

10:26 PM
Lousy bike ride. I was so hungry and it seemed such
hard work. Maigret & The Loner senile yapping.

ANOREXIC

i long to be myself
without interference from
the likes of you; a
spindle of bone encased in lurex
or some pure substance;
an angel, a flame, a shadow of clear
fire; you have weighed me down
for years, encumbering me
with blood and collagen, depriving me
of my god-given right to become a sundial
on which is writ:
“it’s later than you think”

1PM Fr. 5 Aug 77
Woke up feeling so lousy made myself soup. Swimming
and coffee did make me feel better. Read Margaret Millar’s
Listening Walls – first half superb. Ruthless abuse of detective conventions – she misleads us left and right. The character of the Author
that is built up is that of a viciously uncaring person. Orwell’s
war years dull.

8PM Sat 6 Aug 77
Be careful what you want in case you get it. D and I are
suddenly in the midst of a very satisfying love affair. He called 5:30
yesterday – wish it had been earlier because I was in a psychic tailspin.
Immediately tidied the place up, anointed my body, put on my black silk
jumpsuit exploding with roses (last worn on date with R.) He came in
wearing tight jeans and a linen safari jacket – we had a very silly time
over wine. Christ he can look beautiful when he wants to. Out to a
restaurant – I ordered a “flaming volcano” and they had it! More silliness.
D. said, “Going out with you is an experience.” He couldn’t compliment
me enough on my general gorgeousness (heh heh heh.)
We saw The Deep which was just what we both wanted –
titillating glossy glop. D. kept initiating PDA’s (which he never used to
be able to do. Wow has this guy grown up! He used to act like the
Amherst PDA Police were everywhere! He suggested we go to bed!
No loitering on couch! Sexually he has all the time in the world and
he’s all out for my pleasure – his orgasm of no importance. He’s particularly
good with my ass and I LOVE that. (He treats every sphincter like
another pair of lips – I’m in a threesome with myself!) I always felt like
he was “holding back” – not any more.
Tendernesses and confidences growing. Nice to be loved!
He goes on and on about the beauty & sensuality of my body; my sexuality
“like a storm!”

Sun 12:30 PM Deck 7 Aug 77
Sitting over coffee, grits (to which Mrs. McManus has now
addicted me) and Dorothy Eden. (The Sleeping Bride – very good!)
Praying like mad for writing money. I could afford to get a divorce!
Lucky things worked out the way they did – keeps me from obsessing
over R.
Bike ride! It’s a form of prayer.
6Pm Hammering away – great scene – getting the good stuff
– typewriter ribbon gave out! Come on! At 6 PM!! It’s like having your
horse shot out from under you. I was going to spend the evening writing
Goddamit.
Starting to worry about R coming back from the Finger Lakes – he
knows where I am – would he show up here? Aack! No! Impossible.
He can’t be alone. Wouldn’t drive that distance without a captive ear.
Reading Jane Aiken’s study of Jane Austen. Don’t feel
a moment’s anxiety about D.
```
        Mon 8 Aug 77
        3 PM On deck loving the rising wind, reading The Scalpel 
```
of Scotland Yard (Spilsbury). A perfect day. Trapped here for a few
hours till the man shows up to fix trash masher – but at least I got my
“naked exercises” out of the way. Today’s a scorcher – using air-conditioning
for the first time. Cheated on my diet – ate a whole can of tuna.
Packed in water, fortunately. Body screaming for peaches and
almonds. Gutted the Pevensey library. They are running out of
books for me.

12:45 PM Tues Aug 9 – 77
Coming out of my coma to write agent a note.
After 3 months of not being “pushy” surely SOMETHING should
be happening. I decide I am suffering from a disease that should
be called “Dickensitis” marked by severe self consciousness and
complicated by “Plath syndrome” (brutal social induction flashbacks).
Freezes me in my path.
Loving Solzhenitsyn’s article on Shakespeare & Tolstoy.
But do I love Devon? Before all of this I would have said yes, very
casually but sometimes the better you get to know someone the less
you can love them. He was at pains to explain his theology – but it
doesn’t seem to involve God – it’s all interpersonal relations – which I
have to say I think is just weird! He wants to be “of service” to people
and he’s aware – but suspicious about – the “mysticism” athletes get into.
I hate to say this but it reminds me of my mother. Any “be wary of people
who have an inner life and try your best to get rid of yours” philosophy
is a major turnoff for me. When we talk about “self-perfection” and
“self-cultivation” we are talking about VERY different things.
I casually told him the more I get to know him the less
I know him – and he was very pleased! (Relieved.) He didn’t say why
but I know he doesn’t want to be “easy”. I didn’t tell him he’s still held
fast in Sleeping Beauty’s overgrown castle, in my opinion. Don’t think
I can get him out of there. I always try to plan my strategy if he tried
taking the relationship up a notch. But he can’t suggest we live together
while he’s a divinity student. Think I can relax about it and just enjoy his
magnificent body.
Take, eat. Old wounds between us are entirely healed.
If D is stuck in SB’s castle, where is R? He is unborn, a baby
dreaming in the womb. “When I grow up I’m going to have lots and
LOTS of girlfriends but they will all be PERFECTLY RESPECTABLE
and SEXUALLY DYNAMIC when I say so!”
I regret most working so hard to make him “certain” of
me, to make sure he knew exactly what I was thinking and feeling.
I put my cards not only face-up on the table, I handed them to the guy!
Not many people would be mature enough to handle that. Never
discuss what I am feeling with D – haven’t mentioned R after our
preliminary intros “what have you been up to”. I’m not sure he even
knows how I make money in Washington.

8:45 AM Wed 10 Aug 77
Like the alcoholics say, one day at a time! Exercises,
diet, sunbathe, bike ride, swim, etc. Doing a good job at that – horrible
job at writing – because I don’t hear from agent. Confidence completely
collapsed. Sitting on the deck feeding Ms. McManus’ Caesar salad
croutons to a squirrel. He really likes them. Reading Berckmann’s
A Thing That Happens To You. Finished Thalberg’s bio – ho hum.
No swimming – maybe bike ride in the rain (just a misting).
```
        3:30 PM 11 Aug 77 - Thurs
        Depressing letter from Chloe – she wants my help 
```
with her MSS. I agree with Henry James – all I can do is My Thing
My Way. But I have to seem really approachable if I want radio
work. Conundrum. Catatonia. Devon called. Do I want to get laid?
I think so! Reading about grave robbers produces a poem;

RESURRECTIONIST

Unearth me, lover
I’m a jewel now
Melted
In that crevice you once loved so
Well; it’s an ingot now,
a socket
For our mingled liquid
Essence
Suck it up with
Dust-lathered lips
Strip
The flesh as you once did
The clothes; I’m burning
Cinder-hot –
Let me astound you with
My time-perfected skill
December 30, 2022
Inspired Pleasure

Diary of a Dancer

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 A 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. A 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 he 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

December 26, 2022
Inspired Pleasure
Diary of a Dancer

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 and 
```
the World Was Calm. In my bloodthirsty way would have preferred
a better description of her husband’s death. Must make do with
cuckoos and thrushes and loblolly pines.
```
    Bored to tears with this stupid 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 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 – he only wants to fuck never
kiss. He fantasizes about “swinging” with another couple. I stolidly
drink red wine and eat bad doughy pizza. She says he’s always on
the verge of suicide, but she would never leave him. Play around,
OK, but never leave.
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”. R. called
this AM as I was rushing to get ready – I said I was surprised to hear
from him, he said he “knew I was upset”. We could have had a little
argument about who’s more upset but I said what have you been up to?
Horseback riding out in Sperryville. (Doubtless not alone. What would
be the point of that? He is such a pain.)
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.
December 24, 2022