Category: #Poetry

Inspired Pleasure
Diary of a Dancer
```
            Party Castle 8:20 PM Fri May 18 - 1979
            Fasting all day so feel much better. Two more sets. I am 
```
the only dancer willing to dance to Baker Street so they keep playing it for
me and it is a tiring song. However all that stretching is good for my muscles
probably. Reading A Time to Keep Silence. Secaire has got me on a
religious kick.
```
            Genevieve’s Apt. off the Park – NYC – Sun 20 May 79
```
It’s me laughing and joking and eating a whole box of
Entemann’s cookies – and it’s not me. Family. The constant ache of having
so little of myself accepted. It’s like being with people like Usher, really – they
want such a little piece of you. The worst part is, you get so used to the pain
you can’t imagine life without it. Thank God I am usually content to be alone.

Went to the Whitney – gave me some ideas to recast
Memory – unfortunately not ones people will like. I want to make it even
more choppy and episodic– rather than “telling the story –“ which is what
everyone seems to want. But that’s the only way I can get excited about it
– I would like reading it to be like visiting an art gallery.

Queen’s Chapel Rd – Tues 22 May 79
That trip helped. I feel better, more focused. My
new agent submitted Memory to Putnam who loved it but said they had
just published a book with incest theme! Goddamn it all to hell. But their
reaction cheered me up – they didn’t say anything about choppy, episodic, incomprehensible motives, etc. So maybe I’m a real novelist and not just
a bad poet hungry for money. Making plans for The Lives of the Dancers
– a poem for each one. Fun. More fun than novelizing with such a hideous plot
– can’t seem to get my people out of the airport.
```
            Write a haiku BECAUSE THEY’RE EASY. Relief.
```
Harness UP – ON WEARING A BRA

Two kinds of clothes –
Comfortable and un:
Two viewpoints:
Supportive and –

Fasting again today. So horribly fat right before my period
it would not surprise me to go into labor onstage. Apparently no one else has
noticed I have lost my waist. Have agreed to see Devon in Boston next month.
I am going off birth control so we will see what happens. I feel sure I can get
him into bed. But never telling him he is a father? Can I pull it off? I will try.
Getting past block in my novel by having different characters tell different
parts of the story.

I give up on Pamela Hansford Johnson. Holiday Friend
is The Perfectionists all over again– but not as good.
```
    Party Castle 12:35 AM – Fri 25 May 79
            Funny how it all comes together sometimes. Dancing 
```
tonight has been ecstasy – is it the fasting? I am cutting my schedule at the
Plush Palace – the audience here is so much better. They are really quiet
and intense. Probably because it’s so close to the FBI. They get the same
relaxation from watching us that you get from a tank of tropical fish. Except
of course with a sexual frisson that reminds you you’re alive. Read Laura
Hobson’s The Tenth Month – pretty shocked by a doctor who would prescribe Nembutal to a pregnant woman. But that’s the way they were back in the
Dark Ages.

Now I’m on Highsmith’s Edith’s Diary – which is
fabulous – the review in New York Times was downright immoral. Books
should not be reviewed by the stylistically tone deaf. Reviewer should be
open to many styles – I don’t think that’s too much to ask. The idiot. Went
on stage glittering with body jewelry – big stones. Big tips.
```
    Queen’s Chapel Rd – 28 May 79 – Memorial Day
                Very staid and old-lady weekend working on the 
```
house. We have a wonderful big backyard with gas grill – A. and I “broke it in” yesterday for shish kebab. Last week’s trip seems months ago already.

Thought about getting pregnant by poor D all day. Am I using him? Is it
wrong? Nah. I am giving him a chance to be more than he is – and he
doesn’t need to know if he can’t handle it. I haven’t even told Avril about this
– and I won’t unless it actually works. With my irritating body I might not be
able to get pregnant just because I want to.

A and I saw Peter Sellers in The Prisoner of Zenda
– just awful. Sun went back to the Unitarian Church – unfortunately it was
a downer. The worst memories of childhood surfaced as we were lectured
on current events as if we were a class of high school students. I would
rather hear about personal fascism than international fascism – that is the
real spiritual problem. Bullying a captive audience seems eminently fascist
to me. We recovered at Ms. K’s Toll House – such a fun place. Spent the
afternoon trying to write a poem about how beauty and finiteness are the
same thing – when we love someone’s beauty it’s their mortality we are
in love with. Not laying a glove on it.

Saw Alien in the eve – the treat of our lives – what
a rollercoaster ride! We both adored it. I’m now officially giving up on
reviewers – the Washington Post said it wasn’t as good as Star Wars.
What is wrong with people!!! Apparently reviewers have to pass some
sort of idiocy test.

The “cure” was completed when I crawled into bed with Bloomsbury Portraits. Fabulous people. These are the ones my father
refers to as the “sexual degenerates.” I adore their interior decorating.
Sex lives not so much. Going to ask Maureen to make me a dining room mural.
```
            By sheer good luck I don’t work till Wed.  So I get a 
```
real rest. That feeling of pressure negatively impacts my work. Slept
twelve whole hours – which means I may be up half the night – but I
don’t mind if it’s productive. I especially like walking the dogs in the
middle of the night so I can ignore the leash law. They are so good
about voice command.
```
    2pm 30 May 79
```
To my surprise novel goes well. Finished first
bloodletting scene. Reading Flannery O’Connor’s The Habit of Being –
love it. Dreading work tonight – not ready to get back.

1:15 AM 31 May 79
Hard night. Feel like I have had some protective
coating scraped off my eyes and I can see everybody’s pain. Everyone
is in pain. Not pleasant.

Plush Palace Fri night 1 June 79 7:50 PM
Had to stop at dance store to buy fishnet Danskins
on my way to work. (Kristi darns hers but I’m too lazy). Horrible traffic jam
coming and going – then they were out of the ones with the seams which
are the only kind that properly shape the buttocks. So I bought a black pair.
They only look good close-up. So I arrived in an automatic bad mood – put
on my black costume with the little mirrors. I’ll go to the Maryland Danskin’s
tomorrow. Feel better after a couple of bourbons. I can see how dancers
get into the booze not to mention the bute. I am trying to do too much.
Working, fasting, writing the Great American Novel
(it’s turning into the Great Canadian Novel) – something’s got to give.

Two bagels, two bourbons, then I’m cutting myself off. Zachary coming in
tonight. I feel I’ve had it with the purely recreational sex (with quarrelsome underpinnings) that is all he has to offer. At least I have a good excuse to turn him down till June 22 – I’m booked solid.
Idly reading George Weinberg’s Self-Creation. Ho hum.

Working with Kristi tonight. She has the most perfect
body I have ever seen but is totally neurotic about it. She can’t appreciate
it herself. I speak to her in monosyllables because I don’t want to get sucked
into her game of “How can we improve me” that she lays on other dancers.
She’s a “yes, but”, never pleased with anything. Fatima came in hawking
her used makeup. She is so bizarre. Claims she needs to sell everything
for an “important medical operation.” Won’t say what it is – she probably
just wants to ruin her breasts as is the fashion lately. Maggie’s breasts
are hard as stone. She’s destroyed her own body. The air is heavy
with female paranoia. Specific personal worries degenerate at a moment’s
notice into far-flung government conspiracies.
Nervous about upcoming visit with D – at least
twice a day I decide not to go. If he knows me better than I think he may
guess what I’m up to.

8:30 PM Sat 2 June 79
Rescued today – got four nights work instead of a
possible six. Thank God. Bought wonderful music on the way to work at
discount store – all Tchaikovsky’s orchestral music and Purcell’s Fairy Queen. Therapeutic listening after boogy-oogy-oogy.

My parents finished Memory – want to know who Oz
is based on. Uh oh. That rattled me. Should I tell? Decided not to and feel
like a coward. But they wouldn’t believe me any way and that would be way
too painful. They translate any vulnerability or sharing into “no wonder you’re
so sick”.

D’s most recent letter suggested canceling our date
– he’s about to be ordained and must “purify”. He wants to escape from
his past – which I’m a part of. Get it? He knows me so well he psychically
intuited where I’m at, or more likely he inhaled a whiff of neediness and we
can’t have that. He must be the needy one.

Zachary and I went out to breakfast after work last night.
For an “artist” (I use this term very loosely) he has less intuition than a stone.
His compliments are so over the top I am filled with disgust but he doesn’t
appear to notice. Had a horrible insight I now can’t get rid of. I am his Devon
– the Great White Whale. Horrors! Will he now try to get pregnant by me?
Thank God, the sexes AREN’T the same.

Feeling a little slowed up by O’Connor’s prejudices in
Habit. She seems too content to be a creature of her era. Tried to read
Caroline Gordon because of friendship with F – but not my cup of cappuccino.
She is Edith Wharton strained painfully through Somerset Maugham. Instead
I am branching into a self-help jag – brought a book tonight called The Gift
of Grief. Is this a gift anybody wants?

Avril and I trying Silver Spring Unitarians tomorrow.

Party Castle Tues 5 June 79 – 12:35 AM
Devon ordained Sunday. I blew up under all the pressure yesterday – sobbed and sobbed. Avril said she would go out, get a part time
job and just give me the money. I am so jealous of her for being a full-time
student I guess. What an idiot. I apologized. I am experimenting with giving
up writing. Why force myself to do it? I just won’t do it – enjoy life and job at
least for awhile – till I have to write. We’ll see when that is. Trying to read
bio of HP Lovecraft. There’s an object lesson wrapped around a cautionary
tale.

Thurs 7 June 79 2:40 PM
Foolishly agreed to go to the Belmont Stakes with Don,
my patent lawyer who is now a regular at the Castle. (He has forgiven
me for my hair.) Now I want to back out. He says we can have separate
rooms, he’ll pay for everything, etc – he is going up with a whole party of
people. I can’t believe I am going to get into this whole ordeal of having to
get to know someone again. What would he do if I said absolutely
nothing about myself? He doesn’t even know I’m a writer, for example. And
if I go to Belmont, can’t see Devon. It’s all too stupid – have to think of an excuse
to get out of this. If I ruin him as a big tipper what a dope I am. I guess this
means I have gone through the whole dating thing and emerged out
the other side. Ready for the next stage – whatever that is. Invited again to
present at the Writer’s Conference at Coltsville. Shall I tell them I’ve given up on
writing?

Castle – 11 PM – Thurs. 15 June 79
Don came in wearing tennis whites (purple in the
black light) complete with racket like a Noel Coward character. I told him
I was emotionally involved with someone else and just couldn’t go. He just
sort of nodded and left without getting a drink – or tipping me – so he probably
came in only to see me. Relief. Freedom beats money any day. I secretly
hope he never comes in again. I will live without the tips. I applied for a
MasterCard – hoping that will give me a backup way to manage emergencies. Dramatic scene with Jordana tonight – she came in sobbing – her boyfriend
wants her to marry him and go to Florida and she doesn’t know what to do.

I said what I always say, take the risk. So she quit. Managers are furious
with me.
```
    Queens Chapel Rd – Sun 17 June 79
            Exhausting weekend at seminar. I was supposed to 
```
give a reading from Blood Memory. I was a nervous wreck beforehand,
sweating, had to switch my breathing to manual – the works. It went fine.
There was so much silence and building tension – then at the end, the
release was cathartic. Bravos. That was the good part of the conference.
The classes were the bad part.

Students disappointed that I’ve had only one book
published and I’m still poor – they feel I might not be a “real” writer and I
don’t blame them. Lamely told them about switching agents. I could have
used some more stage presence or at least some bald-faced lies. My lack
of confidence was broadcast far and wide. Having my period. Damn.
```
    Starlight – Sat night – 23 June 79
            What a week! I have discussed it with Avril in depth 
```
but I still don’t understand it – I’ll just write it out and see what happens. Got
a letter from Toss Sheffield of all people – my blood-mate from high school – a wonderful letter. He read my poem in the Alumni Directory and noted I was
“divorced”. (Of course, technically I’m still just separated because of Bruce’s malfeasance.) Toss is working with Ralph Nader on Three Mile Island in DC all summer and wants to see me. The rest of the time he is a prizewinning
journalist studying law in Kentucky. Woo hoo!

Timing could not be better – my restlessness desperately
seeks somebody new – someone I don’t have to explain my childhood,
schooling and family to. The Boy Next Door! At the very least I could use
him as a cat o’nine tails on Devon (which he royally deserves). Last Wed
night Devon showed up in the middle of the night on his way out to California.
More push me – pull you. Very unsatisfying night as we finger each other
gingerly like priceless objects pre-smashed, badly glued and inexpertly set. He
invited me out to Calif. in Sept. Long wait, big ticket, which is the story of Any
Girlfriend of Devon’s Life. Might be able to manage if I get that MasterCard.
On the other hand said our parents were “hoping we’d get together” which is
major turnoff.

GiGi came in again. She obviously misses us. Said she
saw Buck the other day and he spoke of me fondly. There’s a load off my
mind. Leave ‘em sighing, that’s my motto.
Toss Sheffield put the phone number of the house
where he’s staying in his letter – I’ll call him tonight around ten. Wait till he finds
out what I do for a living. Or I might not tell him. It all depends on him.

He said he missed me at our tenth reunion – only went
because he thought I’d be there! I didn’t go because I didn’t want to “explain
my life” – and if I tell him, there’s a possibility everyone might know. Can I
handle that much exposure?

Struggling to read Joan Didion’s Slouching Toward
Bethlehem but she is pretty depressing. Read Millheiser’s The Mirror.
Absolutely stank. What was Putnam thinking of to choose that novel over
mine? Shows there’s a factor here I don’t understand. Wish I was a
multizillionaire with my own publishing co.
```
    Castle 26 June – Tues – 10:30 PM
            How to describe my ecstatic dinner with Toss? He 
```
opened himself up to me like a book. “Take. Read”. He loves the universe
but in a healthy way – vibrates to it and wants to be overwhelmed, then
empowered by it. Just like me! He explores the DC area with the zest of
one “learning” a foreign country – touchingly amazed that one eats the
whole of a fried crab – “Even the eyebrows!”

We discussed everything – politics, theology, my
marriage – his parents’ divorce – his horrifyingly determined Catholic virgin
of a high-maintenance girlfriend – he chose her because she reminds him
of his grandmother. And he admits it!

This is all scary but I feel I must ride with it. He is so
intelligent – such a relief to talk to someone who knows the difference
between a prodigal and a prodigy and can tell a scherzo from a schizo.
He showed up for dinner at Queens Chapel Road,
driving an immaculate yellow Rabbit. I was frightened to so much as look
out the window – I said to Avril – “Tell me what he’s like.” She said, He’s
exactly the same.

And he was. Gorgeous poet’s face (Rupert Brooke)
long blonde hair – wrestler’s body – maybe a little too thin. (He’s had a
rough hardworking year of self-denial following Bad Relationship.) He
wore a white cotton sweater and what looked to be the same corduroy
pants he wore throughout high school. I wore tight white capris and my
pink gauze blouse. He noticed my body immediately – how hard and
slender – asked if I was a runner. I told him my doctor says I have a
runner’s heart – but no, I’m a walker. I like taking my time to see all
there is to see.

We had swordfish prepared on my new gas grill.
We responded to each other in exactly the same way we did right before
he left for college – his eyes feasting all over me – so humbling and
overwhelming to realize someone loved me so deeply at such a painful
period of my life. We marked each other in every meaning of the verb. I feel chastened and grateful to have such an effect on another person. We
have so many similarities – both listened to Miss Goggins as children!
We can each quote whole skits, tossing back bourbon in brandy snifters.
As soon as I was drunk enough I declaimed my poem about how we spent
Class Day in the treehouse.

He didn’t remember the frickin’ treehouse! The
memories of people who don’t keep diaries are appallingly patchy. I showed
him the trunk under my bed – decorated with flowers and my childish
handwriting – and gave him the diary that described those nights!
He was open mouthed; he stared at me as if I were a witch.
Who knew diaries can come in so handily to resurrect the dead? He told me
I am a fabulous writer and should never give up. That the purpose of
existence is to find what you were born to do and do it. No one else in my
life talks like this!

There was no lingering hostility over our unfortunate
parting – our fundamentally dishonest Dear John – Dear Jane letters. No
game playing – none of that. I can’t even recall who touched who first –
my guess is we lunged at each other – it must have been mutual.
Well, if I’m a witch, he’s a knight in shining armor.

Only he can rescue me from this hellish situation I’ve fallen in with Devon –
with all of them. That he could make love to me that way and not want to
see me till Sept has been playing tricks with my mind. Devon uses me to
flagellate himself and I can be so much more than that.

It’s definitely fun to talk to someone who has
exactly the same background as me – someone who reads and gets
all my references. I was beginning to feel like an exotic (about to become
extinct) rarity. He wants to date me solidly the whole time he’s here –
(he leaves in Sept – that mystic date). Fri we’re going out – and
probably Sun and the fourth of July. He says he’s never gotten over me,
never loved anyone else the way he loved me. He wants me to come
to his family’s place in the Berkshires in August – where I last went at
18 years old – why not say yes? I turn down work joyously while the
managers gnash their teeth. It’s only money.
January 26, 2023
Inspired Pleasure
Diary of a Dancer
```
3:30 PM – Dumbarton Oaks – Sat 14 Apr 79
            Enjoying a day of full sun. Beautiful carved stone bench
```
– azaleas in full bloom – peace. Woke up determined to finish taxes – offices
closed! When can people go if they work all week? Beats me. But it would take
more than a late filing to bother me – feel blissful. Approaching Plath from the question of her reputation. Determined to write and to learn to see movies alone.
Last night awful sets with Zach – I don’t like his new band.
He couldn’t seem to play guitar and sang off-key. Promises of a future have taken
his present away. My heart went out to him – ordered a bottle of champagne
to cheer him up. Late dinner – I ordered catfish in a spirit of adventure (not good) he ordered what he always has – chicken & fries. He told me about the times he’s
been mugged and his belief in magic – I didn’t believe any of it. He was
full of insecurities about Usher – I decided to act like we have a relationship
to make it easier to get rid of Z later on. He “retaliated” by describing his affair
with his friend’s 48 yr old divorced mother back on the coast. Sure, sure. Asked
to come home with me. I said no.
```
Plush Palace – Mon 23Apr 11PM
            God Malcolm Muggeridge is unpleasant (Jesus
```
Rediscovered) and not even Christian. Makes Waugh look like the author
of Sermon on the Mount. Trying to figure out how I would address God:
what would I say?
Beautiful note from Devon saying, “I love you dearly”.
Sweet. The silenter I am the more he adores me. Sent a copy of my Plath
essay to Usher – we’ll see what he says. Agent passed along a very flattering
rejection on Memory – I am “too much” of a poet! Since I have just concluded
(with Usher’s help) that I am no poet at all this cheered me up enormously.
Airborne today – dancing really well. It’s the fasting. Feel a shimmering force field all around me.
```
            Starlight – 12:45 AM – Thurs 25 Apr 79
            Dragging myself around this AM –  my own fault for indulging
```
in Irish coffee and caramel ice cream last night. 2nd anniversary party at the radio station and I thought, That might be fun! It was a disaster. I took Avril and we were immediately cornered by the club bore. (I had to give him a fake phone no just to get rid of him.) Plus they charged us for our drinks! Rod was there – tight and prim – fearful I would attack him about his nonexistent dance story – I put him at his ease.
Left after an hour and Avril and I “drowned our disappointment” in the usual way
(it felt good at the time.) Ross & Tom should be required reading for egomaniacs.
```
            Plush Palace 9 PM Mon 30 Apr 79
            Had my hair cut today and dyed platinum blonde – like the 
```
color not the cut. I wanted it all off – she asked to “try something” and if I didn’t
like it she would “fix it for free”. Of course, I don’t like it but I didn’t have the time
to stay and have it re-done. I think it’s almost too much trouble to go back – get somebody else to fix it. Everyone likes color however; I needed a boost. But it’s
not what I pictured – looks like a medieval “bowl” cut to me. Fistfight! Guy dragged
out of the club in handcuffs. Joselle says too bad; he was such a good tipper.
Feel too old tonight – I obviously need a vacation but the only
one I can take is in my own mind. I love the house but it always needs something.
I was perched on the edge of celibacy but Jervaze showed up
last night. Fabulous sex! Turned out to be worth it! 2 Hrs (I counted!) Oh, bliss. Reading very bad romantic suspense – A Relative Stranger. It’s a serious
problem that I hate everything popular.
```
            2:30 PM Wed May 2 79
            Perfect day at home. Worked on poems listening to Mozart. 
```
Got my “medieval bowl” changed to “little boy” haircut – it’s wonderful! Do nothing
to my hair anymore! Don’t have to wash it, brush it or even look at it! Of course, I have to deal with all the sobbing men at the clubs. Turns out long hair is a powerful masculine fetish. I consider pretending I’m a different person – but I have the same
old costumes. New stage name? Wonder if “Colette” is taken. Guess I didn’t plan
this very well.
Yesterday overeating so today it’s a fast – only coffee. Phone keeps ringing I refuse to answer. It’s probably Paz begging me to come in and sub
for some dancer who had an onstage breakdown. Reading Wagenknecht’s “psychograph” of Nathaniel Hawthorne. Interesting.
```
            Sun 6 May 79 -1:50 PM
            Avril and I drove to St Michaels yesterday – such a pleasure
```
– I remember sailing into that port. It’s so beautiful I fantasize about buying a
house and “retiring” there. I tell A, you get the country house, I’ll have the town
house we can go back and forth. She says she does not want to live with her
sister FOREVER! Why not when I’m so perfect?
Delicious lunch of soft-shelled crabs and homemade
coconut cream pie. Didn’t get to work till 6:40 and I was the only dancer till
9 PM! Apparently previous dancer unconscious in dressing room and
ambulance was called. Sorry I missed it. Eddy gave me extra $$ but told
me I can’t wear my black jade rosary on stage (too many complaints). Too
bad – it looks so good with white collar and cuffs. He says the place has
been sold again and we will be getting new management. Hope it’s not Tony.
```
            Plush Palace – 10:10 PM – Mon May 7 – 79
            Would like to break my 2 day fasting record but I got up 
```
at 5:30 AM this morning and was just too hungry. Cucumber sandwiches
with lots of pepper on whole wheat bread…mmmmm. Here’s my latest plan
– rewrite Secaire and Blood Memory – get pregnant Sept 1 1980, have baby
May 81! Father as yet unknown. Crazy, huh? Reading The Restless
Journey of James Agee.
```
            Tues 8 May 79 – 4:45 PM
            Great day’s work on Secaire.  Not “done” but better.  
```
Completely new scene showing why Hank and Nilssa are attracted to each
other. 10 P!!! Celebrated by going out to buy new notebooks. Sniff the paper
hungrily. New lighting at the Palace very bad – guess who came in to audition? Brandy! I told manager she was lying about her age so he wouldn’t hire her.
Nobody wants to work with her. She’s a grenade with the pin removed.
Interesting book by Louis Cassells about the differences between religious
faiths. So far I like Unitarianism best but want to expose my kids to as many
different ones as possible and let them choose. Joselle keeps asking me if
she’s going to be in my book. (I’m afraid she thinks I cut my hair for her.) I start
instead a poem beginning “the chaste warrior sleeps only with his prey…” Bad! Sad.
```
            3PM Thurs 10 May 79 – Plush Palace
            New manager Jasper comes in. Seems nice. I curtsy 
```
very low. Yesterday fasted till evening – wrote 7 pages – walked dogs then
Avril & I saw Truffaut’s Love on the Run and went out to dinner. White pizza
with plenty of garlic. Usher is reading at a NJ college – invites me to go with
him. Hmm. Needing a pair of hot pink pants to visit this college in.
```
    9:30 PM Fri night 11 May 1979
            No hot pink pants. Did find a nice pair of aqua polished 
```
cotton jeans and matching high-heeled shoes. Usher phoned and we
commiserated about publishing. Avril and I went to see the movie, A Little
Romance. Very good. Long walk with dogs, further exploring our new
neighborhood. People keep their lawns very tidy around here. Since I refuse
to do ovens, windows or lawns, house-pride like this could present a problem.
Must hire out. I’m bored with my job, but it pays the bills so well I don’t think
I can make changes till July. But who knows what lies just over the horizon? Reinventing oneself could be the greatest pleasure there is.
```
            Plush Palace – Sat night 12 May 1979
            Another exhausting goodbye with Jervaze.  I wore see-through 
```
chiffon bell-bottoms and flowered Qiana shirt – gratified to see they had
their effect. He said he will always feel the same about me, always be jealous
of the person I marry. I must say I now wish he would just go away. Which he’s supposed to do – off to Alabama. Again. I am not, shall we say, invited to this on-again, off again wedding. Awww. Feeling emotionally drained – only 30 short
hours till I see Usher and I want to be witty and “on.” As opposed to slack-jawed
and twitching.

Queen’s Chapel – 4:30 PM Sun May 13 -79
Dragged Avril to Unitarian church. There was a woman
minister. I found the service satisfying enough and the church (River Road)
very beautiful. They seem to have a lot going on – discussion groups, plays,
theology class. I could be interested if I had the time. Unfortunately everyone
seems old. Could I overcome my misanthropy to go alone? Remains to be
seen. The church has a bookstore – I bought an interesting book
on female contemplatives. I’m contemplating a future as a single parent.
Feel a faint hormonal stirring. (Avril says it’s the house.) Who’s the lucky guy?
Jervaze would have been perfect if it wasn’t for that alcoholic gene.
And I don’t think I could hide a baby from Devon for the rest of his life. Usher
probably has some impressive genes along with the vast millions to which he
constantly alludes. On the other hand, the kid he does have sounds defective.
Need to get clear about his marital status.

Queen’s Chapel – 9:30 PM May 15 -79
Bad visit to NJ with Usher. Thank God it wasn’t an
overnight. First he showed up in a Mercedes he described as “the color of Lena
Horne’s skin”. UGH! Next – brace yourself – he wanted to hide me from his
audience!! Dumped me at an antique bookstore (that part wasn’t a total waste
– bought the diaries of Cynthia Asquith) then took me out to an apologetic dinner.
I was so annoyed I commanded everything to be set on fire – fondue, oysters,
and 2 desserts. (He chose a very good wine. It was the least he could do.)
He didn’t want to talk about his reading – said if I had attended there would
have been “too many questions”. And as artists, aren’t we SCARED TO
DEATH of questions? Aren’t we?

Castle – Wed 1:15 AM 16 May – 79
Unspeakably rotten dinner at the Cosmo Club with
Usher. Forget him and his majestic New England genes. He is simply
“collecting” me as his latest oddity. He has “so many” “warm, women artist”
friends but no dancer yet (he’s way overdosed on poets) and he drifts from
one “presence” to another, sucking wattage like some radioactive swamp
monster. He and his wife have an “understanding” which probably means she
has no idea where the hell he ever is and nobody’s had sex in eons. Can’t I
do better than this?
In spite of the fact that I’m a degraded person who doesn’t
know where her next sexual or emotional meal is coming from I think I must
insist on a note from wifey before taking this matter further. According to his
poetry he associates sexuality with evil – not that I’m physically attracted to him,
it’s just so piquant to be with a man who gets a fresh barber’s shave right before
seeing you. (It’s been awhile). I don’t think he listened to a thing I said, just
gazed at me rapturously. I tried getting him interested in helping me write a
screenplay for Faulkner’s Mosquitoes – to me a completely ignored,
obviously filmable work. He dismisses, “It’s been done.”
Well it may have been “treated” BY SOMEBODY but the
point is, it hasn’t been treated by us and it hasn’t been filmed and it would be WONDERFUL. Couldn’t ignite him. He really doesn’t want to talk about writing
with me – I guess he has other people for that. I was so happy when our “date”
ended I could have wept for joy. On the other hand I am sorry to see these
millions slip away. My children could have used them, not to mention all my
fantasies of early retirement busted. Looks like I have no one to depend on but myself. Enjoying Monica Dickens’ enchanting The Moon was Low. But had
to buy a Quaalude from Maureen to get to sleep.
Finished V. Sackville-West’s The Devil at Westease.
I can’t figure out why she wrote it. She speaks entirely in lost codes.
I really dragged myself in to work today. That’s how
you know you’re working too much. Letter from Devon – he’s off to California
to “find himself.” What he really wants is any way to figure out how to be a
minister in a state of sexual abandon and he instinctively knows if the answer
is anywhere, it is in California. On the other hand, will this really turn out to
be what he wants? Not if I know him. The only good news about him is that
his genes are impeccable. Plus, I’m very depressed about my writing.
Spreading myself too thin – thinking about one project
while working on another. My St Secaire book is starting to get ridiculous,
but I want to follow up this “satanic rites” thing to see where it goes. Why did
I come up with it? What does it mean? Who knows? Cheap and derivative
everyone would probably say at this point. Yet it holds some interest for me.
Love and sex as hostage-taking. The question is, who’s the hostage and
who’s the keeper?
Could it be hours of research, prose and bitching produce
only a single poem? Lucky if so.

The Chaste Warrior Sleeps Only With His Prey

My sutures hurt; I’m
Completely unavailable,
You laced my body like a jerkin
Unsheathing your ambition;
Cut my breakfast with a corkscrew
Your secret spine
Doubled up and put away.

I’m fasting now
Bracing for the worst
I can’t eat anything that doesn’t
Look right at me
And want to know the truth;
who’s for real? And
What’s the state of play?
```
            I know it’s a mess.
```
Also miserable about money and my body. Buying the
house was a great idea – I love it – however, there are constant expenses
I can’t ignore that keep me chained to this goddam stage and dressing room.
My mortgage calls for my monthly payment to increase next year – I could
worry about that if I wanted to. And then I always respond to depression and
worry with a desire to eat which of course threatens my job. (Sigh.) Tips down
(maybe I should buy a wig.) And my face is all broken out so I have to use
heavy makeup – and my skin doesn’t like that.
January 25, 2023
Inspired Pleasure
Diary of a Dancer/Daughter/Poet
```
            Thurs Aug 10 -78 – 5:30 PM
            Feeling happy and serene – it’s been the loveliest visit.  
```
Many bike rides and explorations. Lovely dinner last night at the cottage – Devon asking Dad a lot of questions – then we lay in each other’s arms at the Barnacle
and he said Time to Discuss Our Relationship. Said “some French girl” dumped
him because he’s so incompetent with condoms; he’s so relieved not to have
that with me. I said, “Maybe we should be exclusive.” He said, ‘Could you manage that? I said gratefully, ‘Certainly”, He said, “Thank you for being honest” stripped
off my clothes and made mad, passionate love to me – all orifices massaged,
nipples chewed, armpits sucked – the works. It was really something – probably the most passionate satisfying sex I’ve ever had. He told me our coming together in Plympton after I left my husband was The Most Significant Event in his LIFE.

But does he see me as a Minister’s Wife? No one can. Me included. The Problem of which we do not speak. Drive him to the ferry today,
after that a sail to Brimstone Island.
```
    Shadowe Island - The Cottage – Sat 12 Aug 78
            Mom giggling about how sweet and pure Devon is.  She
```
is certain I’ve been dumped. If she only knew. If I in am suddenly in an Exclusive Relationship with this human will o’ the wisp wouldn’t it be the worst thing for
me? Am I like a Terrible Man who will now say anything to get sex?
Five good pages on novel. Working in omniscient third
person – a violently new departure. A few vague worried sensations that I am
“telling” too much about characters but the Victorians used to get away with
this on a regular basis. How I envy them. There I’ve said it, I envy Mrs. Henry
Wood.
One thing left out of Gardner’s On Moral Fiction is how
rarely we see the book the author wanted – instead we see the draft the

publisher agreed to buy & PROMOTE. Or am I cynical? On the whole I am appreciating Gardner’s ideas – but more than ready to get back to V Woolf’s
letters & diary. That is ecstasy – the “unstructured real.” Far prefer them to
her novels.

Nice long phone talk with Devon. Feeling freed since he
described to me his definition of a future wife; she is not me. In fact, she will
be a very unlucky girl who gets – by his deliberate plan – the least of him. It is comical that I, something of a contemporary expert on all things Victorian,
should even locate such a profoundly divided, deeply Victorian male; product
of such hideous religious and sexual mangling one would think barely possible
in this enlightened century. “Wife” seems to encompass for him some whole
new scary dimension that has nothing to do with sex. What mysteries people are! Bruce wanted a fount of approval and cash. Ryder wanted a mule. Jervaze
wanted a mommy who will bed him down with a bottle of Southern Comfort and
then drive him to the hospital. I can’t even figure out What Rod wants. But Devon seems to want someone whose holiness will “cancel out”
his “bad behavior”. All I know is I don’t want to be any of those people.

But what DO I want? I’m embarrassed to admit it out loud.
I want the spiritual and physical closeness – the “soulmate connection” – to
just keep on intensifying until we switch bodies (and I get to live two lives).
Castaneda says it can be done. (Good subject for novel.)

QUILTING

The scraps
The scraps
The bad acts
Bleed like madras
Over everything
Piecing penalties
Placating the portionless
Fabric cut to fit the frame or
The other way about?
This will all have to be redone
Till it makes some kind of sense.
Make the pieces smaller – ever
Smaller – in my
Empire of
Loneliness.
```
             Devon flat out admitted he is afraid of me –says I 
```
have too much power over him. I was too aggressive with him this time
and I think my “free agency” is where the trouble lies. It “wakes him up”
too much to the existence of another person and reminds him this isn’t all
happening in his head! I am too impatient to wait for him to get ready to
have an actual relationship. In the past, the better he got to know all his
girlfriends – and the more certain he became of them, the less he
wanted them. We are dancing on a knife-edge with our pleasure now. Psychologically he rules out “sexual fire” in long-term relationships. Everyone
but me (and Dad) seems to think sexual fire must burn out.
I look forward to getting back – change in seasons, change
in clothes – working, writing, even running around town with Rod is starting to
look fun. Cold day – sun hidden by clouds.

Burnside Inn – 10PM Sunday 13 Aug 78
Told my dad I took the room here because my typewriter
needs electricity – really of course I wanted privacy with Devon and then we
ended up at the Barnacle! But a public inn (with a handy bar) requires a lot of discipline. More than I have. I am recovering from a scandalous night – too
tired to take a bath I fell asleep in my clothes after cocktails with Marc Kramer
who tried first wooing me with his completely unfettered, unapologetic interest in money by showing me his new house then just flat out tried to get me drunk.
(I did get drunk but not enough to make him seem desirable. He is very hairy.) However, “investment banker” would be a good job to give to my character
Cloud if he ever grows up. If I can ever get him out of prep school.
No more hanging around the bar for me – I plan sit here
in my room every afternoon writing between three and six. Seems to be
all my social schedule will allow. Feel myself getting fat and should cut back
on food – tall order. I just need to go home and DANCE.
Stupid diary! One love problem after another. Well I can
always go back to poor Woolf… her talk of mushrooms, chair covers, butterflies…
```
    Mon 14 Aug 12 midnight -78
            Very unsatisfied with everything I’ve ever written.  The 
```
difficulty is I need to bring all my writing up to my current level of philosophical
maturity (such as it is.) But it keeps increasing exponentially! Never be
embarrassed to start over.

Dinner scene in Paradise Road (newly retitled) feels
shaky. Too many characters for me to handle. Maybe wedding next?
Trying to invest my characters with what I’ve just learned from Devon. Would choosing “the right person” come first (my Mom’s theory) and then the love
follows afterward? More convenient for everyone, certainly.
Almost rolled a poor pimply little fisherman down at the
docks this afternoon because I am such a sucker for gorgeous naked (hairless) shoulders. And the friendly, friendly innkeeper – but don’t get me started, he
has a “wife” or “wife substitute”. Mom’s been very cruel to me lately. At dinner
last night I discovered she RODE THE FERRY with poor shell-shocked Devon (explains his “freeing’ phone call) whom she apparently grilled the whole ride.
She sniffed – “He’ll never marry you.”

Too proud to tell her I just reached that conclusion myself
and it doesn’t elevate him in my estimation (the way it obviously does in hers!)
I could say I actually know Devon better now than he knows himself (he talks
in his sleep), and I can positively state that his stated intentions never bear ANY relationship to his actions. And it’s not a good thing.

He also told he could never become a minister (because
his mother wanted it too badly!) and yet here we all are. He keeps making rules
and I keep watching him break them. Plus, I’ve been taking responsibility for
“making” him do things he doesn’t “want” to for years. It’s a spiritual game of
Chinese checkers he insists on “losing”. I guess it’s just a matter of time before he starts holding it against me.

SUICIDE STREET
This is the street of suicides.
I orchestrated masterpieces in that house
  Third-from-left –
Getting my effects too cheaply I see now
  Unmindful of material
  That lay so close to hand
  New tenants slick the lawn that moats that
  Windowed grave. They repair
The chrysalis I shattered
  Getting out.
```
    10:20 AM Wed 16 Aug 78
            I am so excited by the “newness” of my novel – starting to 
```
feel confident; like I can make these people do anything. Can’t wait to go home
and spread all the versions out – play Max Perkins to my own Tom Wolfe. Might
be able to patch something together. Still my tone needs emergency assistance,
which dictates a massive overhaul. All this omniscience is just too painfully reminiscent of somebody like Balzac – “In the forbiddingly cold winter of 1863” or worse, Dragnet? Must read Speedboat to see how far one can go. Should I
throw everything out and start over again or leave it a 500 p hegira?

Rod sends me a letter every day. He is smart, witty and
culturally aware. His handwriting is perfect. Unfortunately, this does not feel
as good as it should. I have rejected him as a potential husband (or father)
because he is so totally lacking in Projection & Charisma. Unlike Devon I plan
to marry a person I can also have soul-shattering sex with. Even Rod’s myths
are sub-standard. He needs Tale of Genji and Kraft-Ebbing but all he has is
Beowulf. Still, this is not the kind of thing you can tell a person you don’t want
to get serious with.

According to him, Miss You by the Stones is “Our Song”.
My song is Urgent, by Foreigner, and time’s a-wastin’. I can struggle with this
goddam party scene or I can go out and buy toothpaste. Ferry coming in –
very foggy.

Came into Burnside Inn tonight and immediately lost a lens. Searched and searched. Would this be the bill that would break the poor fragile financial camel’s back? Then I found it – stuck to my hair. A miracle.

Mom took me on a walk after dinner – apologized in her
weird oblique way. For a woman who claims to have “given all for love” she
really is quite calculating and cynical about it. “Why buy the cow if the milk is
free?” sums up the whole of her philosophy. She wants me to marry Marc
Kramer and live in wretched discontent, the equivalent, as far as I can see,
to opening a dairy farm and sending out pricelists. Those are the options.
Has doing too much of the emotional scutwork fatally dimmed the stars in her
“love makes the world go round” eyes? “What if I’m not a market-based
economy?” I inquire. Another missed bonding opportunity.

Dad showed gorgeous slides of Fox Island. Every
frame a poem. Made me think I should read old diaries to see what I can get.
Not that Cloud would keep diaries – not reflective that way at all. But Suni
might keep them.
```
    9:30 AM Fri 18 Aug 78
            $100 honorarium from Coltsville Community College for 
```
my presentation – I can eat for a month off of that! Dare I get my dancing
down to 3 nights a week? Would be heaven.

Discussion with sisters about Mom. Here’s their advice: “Remember she’s crazy,” “Remember she’s old,” “Don’t give her any information”
and “Lie.” There it is! If only she could hear them! And I’m the one with the
“Bad Kid” reputation! Over dinner she lectured us on how costumes for the
ballet exalt the human body. Nothing like my combination of pasties,
fishnets and glitter! Hard to listen to after the contempt she has expressed
for my job! Said nothing. What they really hate is that I am my own
choreographer.

I was too dispirited even to point out that back when
ballet was “invented”, back in the dear old Dead Degas Days, dancers were
VERY “declassee” with damn near NO control over their own bodies: how
to express themselves sexually much less how they were viewed.
Looking back over it, my most serious depressions were all caused by attempts to conform. I’m so OVER it. Am I afraid of loneliness?

No. Stigma? Childlessness? Sexlessness? No. I confront all these fears, one
by one. Hard however to keep my head high around Mom and Dad’s evident
conviction that no one can ever be found to love me. They insist on giving me
money because I’m so pathetic . OK, I’ll take it (I’ve taken tips from fans
harboring worse thoughts) but insisted on giving them a poem in return.
Read Dawn Walk out loud looking for praise –

Dawn Walk

Thunder crusts a gelid sky
Is it light or is it rain feathering
my nest with longing
Stippling soul with flushed
new growth; bursting out
the steepled trees.
This is my world and I release it
Released for flying
Stelliform
Tough as spidersilk
Unrecognizable
Even to me who birthed it
Who spent my life creating it.
Released and
Blown away.
```
            They rolled their eyes.
```
I must be secretly determined to make them look bad! Need to get car in
line for the ferry tomorrow AM at nine. Good vacation this has been. Mostly.
Last letter from Rod mentions a big society wedding
we are invited to. He does get invited to the best parties.

1:45 AM
Horrible last dinner at the Mermaid Creek House.
Am I speaking a different language from everybody else? Uncle Clive
downgraded his current girlfriend right in front of her – “she’s got no skills –
she’s not too bright.” I agree – there must be something seriously wrong with
her to want to be around him. Genevieve wants to know how I can love men
who are “weak”. This would have more significance if her second marriage
wasn’t with a submissive. I defended that weak men are “doubters” and doubters
are interesting.

The opposite is arrogance and how attractive is that?
Marc K, for example, doubts nothing. He’s also not very interesting. It would be
easy to be swept along in his wake on autopilot. Maddens me to hear Mom and G discuss Avril’s “low self-esteem.” The nerve! I think they want to pretend that life “makes sense” and is not a dangerous lottery. According to them, A has too low
an opinion of herself and I have too high an opinion of myself. Hmmmm. What’s
wrong with this picture?
January 18, 2023
Inspired Pleasure
Diary of a Dancer Sometimes Poet
```
    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 
```
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 
```
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 
```
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
```
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
```
Mon midnight 6 Feb 78
        Fri night J was in the bar getting slowly snockered. Very
```
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
```
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