Blog

Inspired Pleasure
Diary of a Dancer/Poet/Official Girlfriend
```
    Ferry Sat 26 Aug 78
            Made the ferry with nine cars to spare.

    Plush Palace Thurs 31 Aug 78
            Three sets down. Tonight I’m asking Eddy for only
```
three days – it’s hard to be constantly here – like living in a soap opera.
No writing – been sending out query letters. Rod called – had the nerve
to lecture me on publishing, “If you want to play in their league, you have
to wear their uniform.” Deeply annoying – makes me want to bite him.
I refuse to wear anyone’s “uniform”. Back to the unspeakable Constance
Heaven book that is the only thing I brought.
```
    Thurs 8:30 PM 7 Sept 78
            Day spent in the mundane, pricing wicker at Pier 1 with
```
Avril. Lots I wanted but can’t afford. Bought mugs and plant.

7:47 PM Plush Palace – Sat 9 Sept 78
Dinner with Rod. He is handsome, rational, helpful,
kind and forgiving. Unfortunately, he’s also some unknown Third Sex, a
complete zygote. If he’s gay he’ll be the last to know. After three glasses
of wine I found the nerve to say he must have noticed we have no sex life. He
talked sententiously about how we’re both cautious, both been burned before,
give it time, etc – it sounded good, but I knew it wasn’t true. Something’s
wrong with him. The last months of his marriage he slept sexlessly in same
bed with his wife – at the very end her boyfriend even joined them! (Nobody did anything.) Strange and unhealthy.

We went to watch his friend, Zachary play guitar in a coffee-
house at Tyson’s Corners. Now there’s a guy with a noticeably sparking
electrical overload. I was turned on to him and he was turned on to me but of
course nobody did anything.

Rod was absolutely serene, probably didn’t even
notice. But would he even mind? I can’t mention it because Zachary is basically
a sewer rat. It is not a sign of emotional health to even consider counting coup
with this guy. Pity Rod’s so perfect. Waitresses gaze at us adoringly. Mom
and Dad would love him. Wakened this AM by postman thumping on door
with package – turned out to be twenty copies of Flatiron with my
Resurrectionist poem spread – I’m going to send every one of them out.
Makes such a perfect gift and peace offering I may order 20 more.
Reading Nathanel West’s horrific Miss Lonelyhearts.
```
    Plush Palace 6:10 PM Wed 13 Sept 78
            Mon Avril and I went to the play Mrs. Cheyney – it was 
```
excellent – then to the Apple Tree after to dance but the volume of turkeys pitched
up way too high. We made a wonderful evening anyway – picked up effortlessly
right where we left off – complete with psychic communication like imperfectly
sundered Siamese twins. Then off to Rod’s in my black satin suit – he had a
bottle of champagne to celebrate Farrar, Straus & Giroux wanting to see my
novel (I know better than to celebrate a thing like that.)
```
    2:25 PM Thurs 14 Sept 78
            Wonderful letter from Devon affirming and reaffirming 
```
his love. Very healing. Asked to keep the photo I sent him of us when I was seventeen. Described me as “majestic, mature.” Ooooo. Reading Gore Vidal’s
Edgar Box stories.

Difficult letter from Mom. She doesn’t seem to realize she can’t “win”. Her will cannot prevail. If she keeps insisting we will only become more alienated. Good diet day – eggs, grapefruit, almonds. No booze. Lots of water.
```
    Powder Mill Road 20 Sept 78 2:00 PM
            Avril and I met for drinks and steaks, then to White Flint Mall
```
to see Rituals. Hal Holbrook surprisingly good. Trying to read The World of Somerset Maugham in bed – fell asleep at 11 – didn’t wake till nine!
Finished letter to Genevieve answering hers in which she
lectured me on wearing “tight pants”.

Groomed dogs, dishes, vacuuming. Sent Flatiron around – wrote letter to D. Re-read Mimsey. I think it’s a little gem but
can’t be pried out of its’ setting without destruction. Maybe I should send
it around anyway, even though it’s so short. Also found old MS of Secrets –
not bad. But the real eye opener was my writing teacher’s horrible editing –
suggested I change “opaque” to “grey green” – “pressed her eye against
the window” instead of “applied her eye”, which is what I had. Ugh and shiver. Counted up bills. Tight. I hate hand-to-mouthing. So will sell stock. Zachary
told Rod he is attracted to me. I don’t know where that will go – it surprised me.
He is ballsy. See them both at tonight’s party.
```
    Tues 26 Sept 78
            Strange party. Lots of people.  Zachary was there, 
```
visibly lusting. Rod seemed perfectly comfortable about Zachary and me.
He is the weirdest ever. Repressed gay? Asexual? Pod person? Put his arms
around us both. Z very effusive – he is “onstage” all the time. I stopped
myself from saying, “Show everybody your appendectomy scar.” Let him
reveal himself. What do I care? He produced dope but no one got high.
Rod told me I should allow Z to satisfy me – use upstairs bedroom. (Probably
wired for sound.) I was not happy with that – made him follow me home instead.
Good sex, but he hung around till 1. It’s true he made me breakfast – a delicious omelet. But it’s always a mistake to bring them home. When Rod called, Z was still here. That was uncomfortable for me – Rod said relax about it. Stock at 16 so
really can’t sell. Told Marc to watch it for a week but I will be needing the
money. Must unplug phone and work.

Quarter to 7 – Worked on childhood stuff till tension got too
much. Plugged phone back in, dinner, read NY Review of Books. Exercised
dogs. Went to library – got bio Hart Crane – a nice big one – bought huge
desk calendar for planning.

Plush Palace 27 Sept Wed 78
Sitting in dressing room all suited up, breasts taped up into
vertical position – might as well scribble. Good diet – yogurt, plums, apples,
eggs, tuna. Wrote. Scared I’ll arrive at p. 100 and be “finished” – pushed
thought away. Avril called upset – el Diablo died and she missed an exam.
I went to pick her up. She has date tonight with Mystery Man. I am reading
about Hart Crane’s relationship with his parents. Too familiar for comfort.
11:45 PM
Interesting night. My lighter schedule helps me have more
fun with the other dancers – I don’t feel so invaded by them. Avril phoned
about date. Fifty-fifty, she rated it. That’s not very good.
Letter from Devon inviting me up for Oct. I was amazed –
made reservations for Concord Inn. Went to see Claudia Weill’s Girlfriends
with A. We liked it – seemed extra poignant since Opal had to “drop” us
rapacious females on her remarriage.

Then to Warehouse to hear Z sing. Surprise – he was
tense to see me! His throat closed up. Finally sheer professionalism
carried him through – everyone seemed impressed. He never looked
straight at me but I could tell he was watching me out of the corner of his
eye – he flinched at my slightest movement. Flattering? Or scary? I don’t
know. I’m trying to feel flattered – why assume responsibility for everything? Shoulders and Peter P showed up with girlfriends – hello –
big surprise – all exchange new phone numbers. Everyone friendly. Avril
charmed by Shoulders all over again – said she didn’t think that girlfriend
looked serious.

Z descended from stage – I could tell he was having a
battle – should he be “aloof” like a “real performer” or effusive with me?
My unwillingness to seem needy saved us both – I was cool. He asked privately
if he could “stop by” I said yes. Could have kicked myself later.
Shadonna called – asked me to do a double. I forced myself to say no.
```
    Fri Oct 6 – 1:35 PM
            Who should come into the club but Rick Marl – he 
```
said he had just seen Ryder and Ryder told him things between us were
“still the same”!!! I haven’t spoken to R in weeks! Told Rick that. Rick
then showed a desire to “move in” on me – I didn’t squash it. Told him
“call me.” Starting to think the time for “instant honesty” in relationships
is passed. It’s way too dangerous. Make them earn the right for a tour
of my insides. A and I saw Steve Martin last night at College Park.
He skewers the Ryders of this world pretty brilliantly I thought. Specially
loved the skit where he feels “responsible” for his girlfriend’s death.
He shot her when she became annoying.

Fight with Zachary over sex – he thinks – I “take too
long to satisfy.” I was so annoyed I left at 3 in the morning to go to A’s
place. When I came back he was gone – left a note – “in your absence
your odds improve” in his odd little precise architect’s handwriting. Bastard.
He obviously doesn’t mean my odds of being satisfied. He thinks he’s such
hot stuff. He’s performing at The Mistral this weekend.
```
    10:35 PM Tues night 10 Oct 78
            Stock sold. There’s six months rent. Or I could go to 
```
England (I don’t give up easily.) Instead I do a little fun winterizing – new
electric blanket and bathroom rug. I’m enmeshed in an ego problem with
Zachary – this is the “hedonism” Dad is always worried about. I only want
to see him once a week for sex but my ego demands he fall in love with me.
He has invited me Home to Meet the Parents so perhaps I’ve succeeded.
Very handsome unkempt hunk at the club invited me to see him race his
motorcycle in Fredericksburg. This is a tempting piece of Americana I don’t
think I can refuse. He’s just a gorgeous mud puppy.

Spent $17 at the post office sending copies of To Drown
In Air around. Seemed like a lot to me. It’s not just men I’m jumping between.
Reading both Russell Kirk’s unctuous book on Eliot and Ross MacDonald.
Much prefer the latter: I’ll return to him now.
```
Sat 4 PM 14 Oct 78
        How did I get myself into a situation with men calling all
```
the time? It is supposed to be a girl’s fondest dream – in fact it is hell.
I am unplugging the phone for long stretches and not telling them either
or they might be tempted to come over. As Zachary did yesterday –
we ended up sixty-nining on sofa – I admit it was his best sex yet.
```
        Mon 11 PM 16 Oct 78
        Avril and I drove to Fredericksburg for the unkempt 
```
hunk’s race – gorgeous weather – spectators everywhere and I had a hard
time finding a place to park – then a guy in a blue and yellow racing outfit
and helmet appeared and banged on the hood of my car. I thought it was
someone telling me I couldn’t park there but it was Buck and I hadn’t
recognized him. So handsome!

The race was just about to start – he had a party of five or
six people to cheer him on. I didn’t quite get the names – we had to rush out
onto the course. Buck got a good start but his bike went wrong twice – once
he did a spectacular flip and it came down right on top of him. Brady, his friend,
said, “that happens all the time.” Buck was unhurt but had to leave the race.
He seemed relaxed about failure – opened a cooler – gave us all roast beef
sandwiches he had made himself and beer. (I hate beer.) was busily
finding out that Brady’s “unattached”. He’s a big shy handsome lunk too.
Buck put his arms around me and gave me a big hug – told me now I have
to come watch a better race. Ah, the fantasy – the mystery of Buck – who
is he and what is he – taking fire in me. Big, strong, unthreatened,
unthreatening male, bursting with muscles and apparently emotionally
undamaged by life. Why not horses, farm, children with such a one as this?
Could I get so lucky?

I cooked dinner for Avril – liver, onions, mushrooms, rice.
Plenty of bourbon. Still need to go to bed early. Colored and conditioned
my hair and wrote letters.
```
Powder Mill Road Wed – 18 Oct 78
        No poetry - Too much going on – I’m longing for my 
```
hermit days. I think: I ought to be able to date. I ought to be able to have
a little sex, a little love, a little affection – but what a can of worms!
Instantly it spins out of control! I thought Buck might show up at the
club – and indeed he did – after obviously making a special effort with
his appearance. Tight leather jacket, blond hair all puffed out, face
glowing. It was just like a date – only with me dancing onstage. He
stayed 2 and 1/2 hrs – I gave him my standard lecture about not
wasting his life hanging out there – come in say hi and leave. One
beer. Before I finished he said, What are you doing Fri night? I said,
“going out with you.” When I got home Rick called – spying for Ryder
I have no doubt. But I had to tell him I am booked solid through the 30th.
Truth to God.
```
    Powder Mill Rd Thurs 19 Oct 78
            Still balancing thank God. Had lunch with dancer 
```
Yvonne – she said she still wakes up having screaming nightmares
about Warren (he was killed in a car accident. Faced smashed in by a
coke bottle he was drinking at the time. He bled to death.) At least
I don’t have those worries. I sleep like a baby. Worked on costumes.
Waiting for Avril to go with me to Interiors. Reread
my stuff. Think there’s a great deal to be said for the short, short novel.
Maybe encapsulate them into short stories? But no money there.
I remain unappreciated because of refusal to hook
up with some “movement”. Drown rejected. Started dividing the novel into geographical locations – Hooks Lane, Paradise Road. Would make
good short stories.
11:30 PM
Awful, awful night. Dancing badly, shoes broke. Rushed
out and bought another pair in my break. Pasties fell off – carpet tape
of inferior quality or possibly I sweat too much.
```
    12:15 PM Oct 23
            Sitting by phone feeling illogical joy.  Wonderful date 
```
with Buck – restaurant with lots of wood and Tiffany lamps – just a
pleasant, free-flowing conversation. No sex at the end – hug and kiss
in doorway. “May I call you?’ I told him yes – invited him to be my date
Nov 5 at Shadonna’s wedding. He said he would.
```
    Fri 27 Oct 78
            Concord, Mass – the grave of Nathan Bond.&nbsp; 
```
Seems a good place to write – sitting on a gravestone in the sunlight.
So, what was last night like? I arrive to the theology college and another
student goes up to get Devon – I overhear him say “There’s a very
good looking girl here to see you and I mean very good looking.” He
came down looking so different with a new silky beard – exclaimed over
and over again about my gorgeousness. We went up to his room and
were making out on his narrow plank of a bed when the radio played Ambrosia
– How much I Feel. Too much for me! Started to cry and lost a lens!

Now Devon thinks I’m a psycho – which I am. Luckily (for him) and sadly
for me psychos are his specialty. Wish he wasn’t so unctuous about it.
When he attacked me with those eyes I had to get myself a drink – broke
out in shivers and hives – thought I was must black out. He was talking
in general ways about what he wants out of life – he seems to be expressing
fear he can’t find someone better than me. I did my best to get him back
to specifics – even saying a woman can’t propose to a man (Well she could,
but if she proposed to this man she’s never hold him.)

Obviously, he loves me. That question answered. But
there are more. But as much as I deserve? Seems like not. He’s incapable
of making the kind of statement I need him to make. He wants to get a clinical psychology degree and he hinted that I wouldn’t be such a disaster as wife
to a psychologist. (Flattering?)

I told him he has a fear of “emotional success” and
he agreed. He astonished me by making passionate love to me – I didn’t
have to do a thing (other than wear my short pink gauze peasant blouse
and the denim gauchos that show my bellybutton) – he couldn’t get my
clothes off fast enough. Very satisfying – wasn’t an inch of my body
he didn’t kiss – including my heels. I told him my heels had never been
kissed before – so he kissed them again – also sought out all the other
unkissed places. I do feel satisfied for at least a century. We went out
to a Greek restaurant for dinner, then to see The Deer Hunter. Powerful
movie. Crazy, just like life. Christopher Walken lovely.

Drove to Concord in pouring rain. Inn is no Night
at the Plaza – more like Early Hardy Boys. Read Violet Clay before
falling asleep. Dinner tonight with my cousin Tory – pumping him
about Hill School experiences to use in Paradise Road. Buy some
wine for tonight and celebrate my own existence.
```
    G’s place – NYC – Central Park West – 30 Oct 78
            Why do I do this to myself – visit Genevieve?&nbsp; 
```
I just realized the mirror in her hall is a fat mirror. I did eat a lot of
junk food on this trip but I don’t believe I look this bad. On top of that,
Genevieve’s life is a fat mirror to my life – that’s the truth. We just saw
Chabrol’s Violette – we both have a pash for him – but agreed this is not
his best – plus the only Chabrol we know of with absolutely no romantic
elements. It’s probably something I will end up thinking about a lot – and
rewriting in my head – so maybe it’s Ok after all. Wrote a poem for Devon
– Practice Cuts.

Practice Cuts

The dead gush cruelly after dying;
High time to change &
Get religion
Have yogic visions
See god or be a nun
That would be a self worth knowing.
Time is gunning for me
I can feel arthritic fingers
Scrabbling at my dreams
Playing the old tunes but
scratchier, less sensitive.
I’m a body in search of a car wreck
A crime scene consubstantial;
The old deus ex machina
Disaster;
Blood is so good
At erasing uncertainty
Bringing back
A taste for life.
Reduce me, silence
To the essential bones
Of my non essential self
Fortify some other ego
Mine is tired;
Peel from my eyes the thickened skin of grief
Unstop my ears from the dust of
My own consequence
Free my feet from the sharpened judging splinters
For life passes from my like a fever in which
I cry out and cry out and yet
No sound is made
Time to head on out
Like the tide &
Cauterize
the woof-warp of a pattern
So plain that even I can see it.
Teach me not to envy
The gulls their mirrored flight
unmeasured like my own
Reduce me to
unbending bones of my
Essential self
the dark sister;
she
The soul I was
before
I became me.
```
            Can’t turn it into a presentable poem – however, 
```
it did make me feel better writing it. I guess I don’t like being Devon’s
flirtation with damnation. Writing really is the best revenge.
```
    Plush Palace – Thurs 2 Nov 78 8:30 PM
            GiGi’s last night onstage.  She is very down. Charlie
```
is making her quit because “no wife of mine blah-blah-blah.” Eddy says
she’ll be back: can’t find these perks in any other job. I am dancing well.
Apparently, no one but me realizes how fat I’ve gotten.

Both a good and a bad day today. Worked hard on
Gift and Drown – sending out query letters – took pkgs to post office only
to be told a MS has to be bound to go mss rate. I made them look it up
in the manual so I won’t have to go through this again.

They treated me like this must be personal – I’m
trying to “catch” them in mistakes – forgetting I’m the customer entitled
to service who doesn’t want to pay extra for no reason at all. And the
book spells out what services I get – in case they forget. Apology
letter from Tory: his girlfriend “out of line” to be so jealous during our
paella dinner. She did seem strange but since she’s an artist I didn’t
question. I respond with a short note saying I think my questions were
just too personal for her ears so I really cannot blame her.
Reading Edmund Wilson’s life like watching a slow-
motion car wreck – horrible man.
```
    3PM Sat 4 Nov 78
            Trouble bouncing back from the most recent 
```
rejection of Gift. Wouldn’t be so bad if I felt they actually read it. My
agent compares me to Mallarmé – trouble is, no one likes Mallarmé.
My bank has charged me $24 for being $1.70 short on a check.
They did the same thing to Avril – since she has a $6,000 savings account,
she figures she’s paying them to lend out her money at 18% interest. And
whoever you talk to turns out to be a computer.
Buck and I are having a very interesting relationship.
I can hardly believe it’s happening. There’s no bickering over unmet needs –
it’s very restful. Sex could be a potentially explosive problem area –
can’t tell yet – so far so good – I think he’s a learner claiming a lot more
experience than he’s got. There are definitely problems associated with
having sex with a person who is obsessed with speed.

My period started today and it seems cruel to task a
beginner with this issue. At least Buck goes down nobly like Jacques
Cousteau. But he’s not much of a talker. The most amusing aspect is
how we’ve settled down socially – we have a lot of fun around other
people. I am contemplating writing a story called The Official Girlfriend
which will treat this from a sociological perspective. Tomorrow we are
meeting his parents at a restaurant – I hope its dark in there because
they are bound to think I am too old for him. Naturally we are keeping
my job a deep dark secret – I have to be a “hostess” which really blows.
A week from tomorrow he has another race – we’ll take a picnic. I love
these outings.

Plus Avril’s really getting along with Buck’s buddy Brady
– definite prospects of a dating foursome. Unfortunately, Brady left his wife
like two minutes ago and is not what you’d call “fully detached” as yet.
Fortunately: no kids.

Sun 11:15 PM Buck amazed me by confessing that
every time before he sees me he is “sick to his stomach” with worry
that he won’t come up to my expectations. I am a “high status date” and
all his friends are waiting for him to stumble. But then when we’re together
he says he just relaxes and we have a great time. I was really touched by
this. It is nice that in the car mechanic’s world dating an exotic dancer is
high status. I prefer that to being the Shameful Secret which I assume I
was in Rod’s world.

Next week I’m supposedly seeing Zachary twice –
haven’t told Buck – why am I doing this? Insurance? I think I don’t like
Zachary. Am I competitive – is it just thrilling to see him come off the stage
and touch me intimately? (Everyone’s jealous – the men as much as the
women. Rod wants Zachary more than he wants me I think.) But actually
I don’t like Zachary. The trouble with canceling is then it would be just
Buck and me. Me and Buck. Going steady.
```
    12:30 PM Mon 6 Nov 78
            Bizarrely warm day. Had a wonderful time yesterday 
```
at Shadonna’s wedding. Buck wore a marvelous blue suit with blue
suede patches. It was indescribable – sort of like country singer
performance-wear, and with his wispy moustaches and his motorcycle
boots I’m telling you he was a sight to behold. I wore my “slit to there”
diamanté rainbow dress and we danced for hours. Nobody paid us any
attention. We didn’t stand out at all, that’s what I’m telling you.
```
    Plush Palace – Tues – 9:35 PM 7 Nov 78
            Avril said to me this afternoon, “My life is completely 
```
out of control and I don’t care.” She has to drive Brady to his in-laws to
pick up his clothes today because his wife took the car. There’s bound to
be a glorious, satisfying, soap opera scene with a lot of screaming and
object throwing – just like there was the time she helped him extract his
clothes from his wife’s apartment. On top of this Brady is apparently
extremely jealous – in spite of the fact that he’s technically married and
she isn’t. She is seriously thinking of inviting him to Thanksgiving
because he won’t believe that she’s not secretly meeting a beau –
or six! However, he showers her with love, attention and sexual worship
so she says it’s worth every minute of it.

Went out last night with Zachary – we had a sandwich
and drink at Booeymonger’s and saw Animal House. He was driving his
mother’s car. He is assembling a band called Prairie Dust and he’s in
some kind of power struggle with the lead singer who is female. He needs
to be the prettiest person in any band. He says Rod – playing Daddy Big
Bucks – foisted her on him. Because Rod works in radio and is paying
for the tape mix he has Zachary right where he wants him. (She is a
fantastic singer.) Rod might just find his mojo after all.
Following the movie, I finally met the parents – now
that there’s no point in it. Got along like a house on fire with his Dad
because I knew all the obscure Giraudoux plays he had framed posters
of on his wall. I quoted: “And the sewers will be fragrant with jasmine…”
which was my line in Madwoman of Chaillot. I could tell I was a
considerable cut above the street people and space chicks Zachary
usually drags home.

They must be worried as hell that he’s gay – his
room is full of what can only be described as pinup pictures of himself.
Little do they know it’s worse than that – he’s into anything that would
be into him. Bestiality would be frankly appraised on its merits. “Is it a good
looking chicken?”) House full of unbelievably beautiful, unbelievably
uncomfortable furniture – striped satin Empire sofas – stained glass
windows – wrought iron candelabras – that sort of thing. His mother very wary – fiercely Catholic – thin with a long blonde pony-tail and a long horsey face –
but actually quite intelligent and attractive.

Zachary’s room is full of crosses and Gonzaga
pennants – I should have realized this boy has all the earmarks of being
terminally mauled by priests. Parents frantic: when will he get a “real” job.
College was such an unpleasant experience all shudder when it’s mentioned
and no one’s willing to discuss it. I’m betting drugs were involved.

Of course Zachary wanted to have sex in his narrow
twin bed – right beneath the picture of “The Holy Father” (he doesn’t even
have a lock on the door!) and I have to admit I found the Chabrolesque
aspects of the situation arousing. He seemed to lose track of the fact that
it was me – but his orgasms were more explosive than ever.
So there I am again; “The Official Girlfriend.”

Could I put an ad in the paper – some kind of specialized escort service? “Impress
your friends – terrify your parents!” Buck doesn’t know about Zachary and
since I don’t care who else Z does he must realize I’ve got a back burner
– but the truth of it is that between the two of them they’re barely one boyfriend.
One is charming, affectionate, trustworthy and dumb as ditchwater; the
other is upper class, complicated, interesting, artistic, totally untrustworthy
(and most likely a male whore.) It’s a damn shame it has to get like this. I
just don’t know how good at “keeping secrets” I can be. Need to go home
and get some sleep. If have to get down to Funkytown one more time tonight I
won’t be answerable for the consequences.
January 20, 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 Poet
```
            8:45 PM Plush Palace – 24 Jun 78 – Sat
            Bad mood. OD’d on junk food then lost my favorite 
```
hairbrush and other people’s plastic versions break my hair. Growl. I can
write it out. It’s a dirty job but someone’s got to do it. Emotional roller coaster
continues. Just when I declare myself a Celibate Slave to Art a very handsome
(and very blond) man comes in tonight. He works in radio, considering story
about dancers; wants to interview “somebody”.

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

His name’s Rod Avery (I’m not kidding) and although
he’s newly divorced he lacks the Rip Van Winkle leer. He works for a reputable
national outlet. I can work with this. Mom would just eat him up. Bought tix to
an Agatha Christie play – maybe I’ll invite him instead of Avril.
```
            Plush Palace, Sat 1 July, 9 PM
            Rod and I engage in a little smoochy-smoochy hand 
```
holding following Christie play. I make an effort not to get so drunk that I
pull down his pants to view his namesake. Impatient to find out exactly
where my next sexual meal is coming from. Tach it up buddy.
In Dancer News, GiGi says Charlie NEVER goes
down on her unless he’s absolutely plastered. I want to know, “And then
what good is he?” She has to admit “not much.” Says he laps at her like
she’s a melting ice cream cone.
```
            Did like Pamela Hansford Johnson’s Helena trilogy. 
```
(Impressions of childhood, though, painfully unreal.) Now struggling with
Grahame Greene’s It’s A Battlefield. Diseased whores abound; women
bear their 12th child in crowded rooms (and because he’s a Catholic that’s
presumably All Right By Him) and a gay time is had by none.
```
            Midnight Sun-Mon July 2-3 78
            Taking Avril to Cellar Door for her birthday before she 
```
flies to Mich to see Merrill. Gifts Dior dusting powder & wrap around dress.
Festive occasion demands dress-up. A & I saw Grease, Rod and I saw
Heaven Can Wait. Just sweet enough but it didn’t “move” Rod as
much as I hoped. What if he’s one of the “pod people” with nothing
inside? Jury still out.
```
        Thurs 4:15 – 6 July 78
            Missing Avril so much!  Boy, did I get dependent. 
```
It’s just SO Fun to have someone to do things with who thinks ALMOST
EXACTLY the same as you do but with interestingly nourishing differences.
Rod is no substitute. Still can’t figure him out. His apartment is
completely stark. Bare. Not ONE THING on any of the walls. The
closest I can get to understanding him is that there seems to be no
feeling in his family. They don’t talk at meals. Father’s dead, mother
still sends him clothes he hates and he still wears them. (They are perfectly presentable. But what would he wear if she did not dress him? We’ll never
know. I’m not getting in the midst of that.)

He never suggests things to do. I suggest everything.
Charlie Byrd in Annapolis (just because I love Annapolis) was OK. On the
other hand, when we went to Le Bistro he ordered Piper Heidseck
champagne out of the clear blue sky! Because he said now he’s “finally dating.”
So that took initative. Right?

Nice letter from Devon who ‘feels veneration” for my talent.
Sweet. Reading Green’s The von Richthofen Sisters.
```
            8:30 PM Fri – 7 July 78
            Driving in to work in a haze of ecstasy after Perfect Day, 
```
heard an infuriating review of Heaven Can Wait by Penelope Gilliatt. Really the woman’s a moron. She says she would understand a movie about transmigration
of souls in “wartime” but why now! Who GIVES these people a podium? How did
she get this job with so little artistic sense? Bullied her way to the top, most likely.
Von Richthofen Sisters turns out to be boring PhD thesis.
So hard to get it right. Therefore switched to Murder of My Aunt. Amusing.
(Richard Hull).

Big tipper in tonight. $138 so far! I feel like the pigeons
in A’s experiments. “Intermittent reinforcement!” I have to pick up Genevieve
and Brett up at the airport tomorrow for Women’s March (we all wear white.)
Bringing them back to my place to eat first – I made a gorgeous salmon mousse. Invited Rod just to see if he’s cool.
```
            Sun July 9 78 2 AM
            He’s cool.  Wore white, walked the whole march and 
```
was so charming to Genevieve and Brett they were dazzled. I’m now
feeling relief that I only have ten days till vacation – don’t think I can
become “over involved” in that short period of time.
```
            Adelphi Grist Mill Park – 11:15 AM Mon July 10 – 78
            Sunbathing on my favorite rock.  When I get hot
```
I’ll splash around (like the dogs are already doing). Hardly a dry spot
left on this rock – but who cares – my diaries have seen worse. A year
ago, the Last Act of the Romantic Psychodrama just beginning. Whew.
I think I came out of it all right. I’m starting to see a possible Harold-Nicolson/
Vita Sackville-West thing developing with Rod. (He actually KNOWS WHO
Harold Nicolson is!!!) Last night I almost raped him in his theatre seat but I am determined to let him make the first move. But I do need to know how long
I’m going to have to wear Glamorous Lingerie every day (just in case). I am
starting to run out of glamorous lingerie. But we are having a lovely time – he
is witty, intelligent and aware. I “confessed” all about Devon – my longest
relationship – but because he’s a “newly consecrated minister” I can see
Rod’s not too worried. If he only knew!

A good development is I’m learning not to drink so
much. If there isn’t sex right around the corner one must stay aware. Coffee
“without dessert” so to speak. It’s good for me. I told him the whole plot of
Secaire – weak points become immediately obvious. He tells me about
his wife.

2 PM – Back at home to ringing phone – new
croquet ball on the pitch! Marc Kramer coming into National – do I want
to have dinner and discuss My Finances. Hmm. Maybe. He knows I’m too
poor to invest in anything. But I say Yes.
```
            Fri. 8:05 Starlight Club Springfield, Fri 14 July 78
            I hate this club. It’s a bitch of a drive so I rarely come 
```
here but the tips are good. Need the cash for vacation. Unfortunately, I am
working with Danielle – the Brazilian lesbian who threatened to kill me. I’m
hoping she won’t recall she threw boiling hot coffee at me. (Her aim is bad.)
She’s usually pretty much out of it. Got $100 tip already from a guy who wonders
why I don’t dance at The Gaslight downtown. Because the dancers have to
waitress there! Ugh! That place is legendary. I tried to be polite but really.
Anyway, Kramer was different from what I expected. We
ate prime rib at The King’s Contrivance – he seemed a lot older and a lot sadder.
He says whenever he hears 10 CC’s “I’m Not In Love” he thinks of me.
I asked him what about finances – he said I should invest
in real estate. Wants to “watch my stocks.” I was embarrassed to tell him
there isn’t anything to watch what with Dad keeping such a closed fist on the
shares, and me having to sell everything I get. I start to suspect Dad is
CONFIDING in him about his estate planning and PRETENDING “our”
investments are actually OURS.
This meant we didn’t have that much to talk about and
the evening ended with a damp kiss when I turned down sex. I say I’m In a Relationship. He says he’s thinking of proposing to his red headed secretary
who reminds him of me. I am kind of insulted but told him to Go For It. I guess
I had this built up in my mind – sort of like Chuck Kornowitz where you think
it’s going to FINALLY be about SOMETHING ELSE. How my Mom would jeer!
(Wore my 3-piece suit, anyway. With eyeshadow.)
He says he has to come through on his way back
from Oklahoma, thank God, I could say I’ll be in Maine. Looks Like It’s Over.

SUNBATHER

Poor periwinkle hides
within the final
spiny spiral of his shell, no
stronghold that from
hungry file-worms’ whippet tongues nor
sun-mad amateur biologists nor
ten year olds; while I
more evolved, lie
among the oval-jointed shells, the
sheepswool sponges, camouflage
my breasts as comb-jellies, hair
as seaweed, fooling none yet
impressing those
I can’t deceive.
```
            2:15 AM Mon 17 July 78
            Another fiasco.  I should leave now while I’m behind. 
```
This has certainly been Trial and Error Week. How did poor Rod – Desirable
Husband become Inevitable Discard? I’m sick to death of the Hand Kissings
and the Knee Pinchings, Goddamit. There is something seriously wrong
with this man. We had dinner & drinks at the Peter Pan Inn, then drove up
and down Price Distillery Rd until I assaulted him. I admit it. He is under
the impression that we “made love”. Trust me, one time was plenty. This
is a man who does not “think” with his body. He gives nothing back, an
absorptive rather than reflective surface. I was just able to prevent myself
from rushing to the bathroom to masturbate. I worked hard not to let him
know how just how incompetent he is, because really, there’s no hope.
Some sad girl somewhere who hates sex is going to find her “dream man”.
I shouldn’t have pushed it, although seriously I don’t think he will even question
if it never happens again.
Damn shame is all I can say. A cruel waste, when he’s
so charming in every other respect. Life is brutal. Sigh. Enjoyed Pretty Baby
so much I saw it twice. (Can’t pay close enough attention while Rod is talking.)
```
            Wed 19 July 78 - 3:20 PM
            Unbelievably hot. Woke up sluggish, ate last night’s 
```
macaroni, felt worse. Ate grapefruit, felt better. Eddy called me for a double,
I refused. Read Mary Kelly’s Cold Corse. Interesting. Gave me new ending
for Secaire. Off to the creek to play in the naturally freezing Jacuzzi. Must buy
Perrier, fruit and yogurt. Reading Jessica Mitford’s A Fine Old Conflict. Charming.
```
    Shadowe Island – Burnside Inn – 31 July 78
            The island its usual immortal, eternal self.    A ragged
```
paradise. Avril and I came up through Boston – drove “The Freedom Trail”
but couldn’t go to the Ritz Carlton bar because of the dogs. She is taking care
of them down at the cottage.
```
            Mom and Dad look great – thinner and very brown.  When I checked in at the Burnside Inn Paul Morris offered me a drink and we chatted
```
very enjoyably. Trying not to be attracted to him. This vacation might resolve
its masturbatory throbbings when Devon shows up. He is driving down from
Montreal – I am as nervous as a 14 yr old. That poor sawdust doll Rod called
but phone connection (thankfully) very bad. Merrill arrived with children in tow
and we had magnificent lobster dinner down at the shore. Rod sent me a copy of
On Moral Fiction.
```
            Burnside Inn – 5 Aug 78 
            Rod called – we talked 45 mins about Moral Fiction – 
```
I feel an enormous pleasure in his intellect. He asks me if being a poet means
you enjoy life more intensely. I say YES. Maybe we can transition this into a
friendship.
```
            11:30 PM – Devon just phoned – long conversation 
```
on power, authority and ambivalence. He is tormented by his family – can’t
figure out how to escape them. He needs to move out of their town but of
course they get him jobs SO HE CAN’T MOVE OUT OF THEIR TOWN. Says
he’s bringing doughnuts tomorrow over on the ferry – what are my favorites.
That’s easy – anything chocolate. (Mom told A that when he gets off the ferry
and sees how I’m dressed he’ll turn around and get back on! She doesn’t
know him very well. Kind of like Rod – they both think this “minister” thing is
overly determinative. Doesn’t in the least change who he really is.)
```
            Midnight Tues 8 Aug 78
            M & D both wrong and right. Devon DID NOT flee me 
```
at ferry but fell ecstatically into my arms. HE DID, however, painfully said he
can’t express his love for me in “a fully integrated way” (because parson!) and
asked me first just to caress his nude body. He didn’t think he could have sex
with someone he’s not in an exclusive relationship with. But guess what? Then
we had blissful, magnificent sex. I didn’t tell him this is as integrated as it gets
for me and a lot more integrated than it’s been lately! (Poor Rod.)
January 17, 2023
Inspired Pleasure
Diary of a Dancer Slash Poet Slash Novelist
```
            10:45 AM Sat 29 May 78
            Woke up this morning muttering about betrayal and
```
failure. Seems my life separates into two phases: pre and post ex-husband Bruce.
Pre-Bruce I was such an innocent – I think “goober” is the descriptive
expression. Schools should not let these pathetic characters out – but
we were so eager to roam free. There is no savagery to which people
will not descend to protect their egos. On top of all this, we have to battle
M & D who, of all people, SHOULD be in our corner. They’re pissed we’re
not more successfully infantilized. Determine NOT to do this to my kids.
Reading Hodgson’s Carnacki The Ghost Hunter (1900) heartbreakingly
dull. And it could have been so good – a combination of Gerard Manley
Hopkins and Sherlock Holmes is just what the doctor ordered.
```
            3 PM Tues 30 May 78
            Struggled through 2 bad pages on Demon that will 
```
have to be rewritten, then finished Sylvia Townsend Warner’s tragic
At the Stroke of Midnight. This beautiful short story almost finished
me. Yesterday Italian food made me & Avril logy – we tried going dancing.
Horrible place, bad band. (Tramps). Predatory males (who spoke bad English)
very difficult to get rid of.
Saw Greek Tycoon instead – worse even than we’d
been led to believe. Came home and read two bad detective stories by “good”
writers. Guilt-inducing cash from M & D – makes me feel inadequate but I
need it. Means I can buy new vac clnr AND summer dresses. Call Peter
like a dutiful child – this whole affair is tinged with doom. Thank God he is
“busy” with his Secret Married Woman (who turns out to Someone Big
in the Democratic Committee)! His parents and my parents should
just date each other. Dogs need walking and I need to check on
vandalism at abandoned house.
```
            2 PM Sat June 2 – 78
            Trouble opening latest letter from Devon – I had 
```
the weirdest premonition it would a marriage proposal! It was indeed
very loving – he has hit a summit of boredom and restlessness for which
I am doubtless not the cure. Praised my novel for its “mystical sense of altered consciousness.” Wow. I like that better than “brilliant satire”. A & I went to
Dillards concert at Cellar Door – they are so charming. Reminiscences of
seeing Bruce play there. First act was Scarlet Ribera and Black Rose Band –
liked her even better. Some attractive men, but casual sex seems to raise more problems than it solves. A & I agree that after the “healing” comes the “strengthening” period. Coltsville Community College asks me to teach seminar on gothic
novel – of course I said yes. Poor misbegotten bastards. But at least I
like watching the birds stuffing themselves at my feeder.
```
            Plush Palace Mon 5 June 78
            Perfect day – interesting stirrings inside – feel I am on 
```
the edge of some sort of breakthrough. Yesterday fresh sweet corn and
turkey salad at A’s, then we watched B Stanwyck’s Double Indemnity
on TV. Classic Chandler. “Aren’t you going 75 in a 30 mph zone?”
After that I dressed up in my satin 3-piece suit to see Helmut Berger at
the Kennedy Center. (Sigh). What a honey that man is. Then sent Bruce
a letter with the Unwelcome News that I am “estopped” from filing for divorce
in the state of Maryland because he made me sign a “no contest” paper
and then dropped his suit! Paralysis!

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

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

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

SYLVIA PLATH: The Festering Weight

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

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

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

HORROR STORY

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

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

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

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

Plush Palace – Mon night 27 Mar 78

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

LOVEWINGS

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

SEX CADETS

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

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

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

GOTHIC NOVEL

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

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

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

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

THE CENSOR’S CENSOR

Our childhoods were different. My
Parents didn’t believe in medicine
Yours worshipped Wall Street. You
Took ex-lax to reduce for wrestling, LSD
To see God, smoked Queen Anne’s Lace for lack
Of something better –
Rejected poetry that I wrote. I
Rewrote Melville, shiked to
The observatory – you
Tucked the bedsheets in so tight
I had to sleep with someone else.
You combed your hair to imitate Dick Diver
And were soon out of school. Looks like
I’ll be stuck in here forever.
For me it’s Leap Year every year
That seems to mean I do things backwards
Proposing to the boys and coming upside down.
I forget why I tried so hard to please you.
Save me a seat in the tobacco-brown Mercedes
Do you think you could forgive me now?
```
    Wed Mar 22 78 – 4:15 PM
            Waiting for cocktails, I discover a flaw in the divine Miss 
```
E B. She doesn’t like to admit that she is of the same clay as her characters.
Those creatures based on the Mosleys she repudiated utterly as if creatures
from another planet. I’ve got news for her. Creatures from another planet are
not that interesting.
Last night was one of the most traumatic family
eveningsI have ever experienced – I think my eyes are still puffy. I heard we
would be having Island People to dinner – he used to be a university president/professor so presumably would be good company – they met
because somebody was the bridesmaid of somebody else’s bridesmaid so
there is a connection. It started with me wearing a green silk shirt, my denim
gauchos and hardly any makeup (yes I wore eyeshadow) and being told by
Mom that my “get-up” was “more suitable for a bar.” (All of a sudden she’s
an expert on bars.) Harvey and Edna turned out to have “heard of my job” –
I gather in some commiseration session on Incredibly Unsatisfactory Children – however they refuse to accept that there is any difference between being an
exotic dancer and being a stripper (hello! I don’t strip) and somehow Harvey
segued from castigating “exotic dancers who try to feel superior to strippers” to criticisms of “ total sexual freedom” which apparently means that “everybody
should jump on everybody.”
I tried to dignify this mess by explaining that it is actually
the reverse – in the “old days” under the “ancien regime sexuelle” a dancer
could expect to be “jumped on” by “anybody” because of her job (like poor old
Degas’ ladies) but that actual freedom for women would mean a world in
which one could be a barely clothed dancer (I would think anyone would
admit nudity is at least an equally valid way of expressing the art of muscle,
line and form as heavily costumed artificial approximations) without it
becoming some sexual signal that one has “lost caste” and therefore privacy
and choice. I recommended Susan Brownmiller’s book to this painfully ignorant
male (God knows what he taught – he had never heard of Brownmiller –
seems to have her confused with Ti-Grace Atkinson assuming she must
write books no self-respecting intellectual would read (maybe he was the
type of university president who just brings in wads of cash).
He challenged my premise that the ultimate societal
freedom would be for unattached females to not to be under the threat of
rape every minute. Harvey insisted – with a perfect straight face that women
rape men every bit as much as the reverse – “psychologically of course”
which he says is just as terrible – and in fact probably even more so since
we all know the “physical thing is no big deal” and often does people a “favor”.
I must say this does not reflect very well on his wife Edna but she was smiling
smugly so I think she may have just been too obtuse to follow any of the
arguments.
I really could not cope with this free-for-all avalanche
of idiocy especially when my parents played their trump card – if bars where
women sit in front of a drink and watch barely clothed men cavorting don’t exist, therefore this is an antifeminist exercise and my claim to be a feminist is a
sham. I think it was at that point that I burst into tears. Which of course was
totally demeaning. I sorely missed Avril’s assistance – she refused to jump in
but made peacemaking noises like “you both have a point” (untrue – their
“points” are a disgrace). Ugly Harvey apologized – what a monster! but there
could be no satisfaction in it for me at that point. Avril went walking with me
until they left.
Alas, waiting till they were gone did not end the discussion.
Mom and Dad pounced on us to drive home their point that the male animal
is a violent dangerous creature barely contained by the civilizing
influence of the female. (Guess they can’t get behind Harvey’s “female
rapist” idea.) Of course they are going to rape any female who lets down
her guard for a second and it will all be her fault. (Didn’t R make this case?
I’m ashamed to share a world with these people.) Any kind of a sexual
display (I guess the beach would certainly qualify) is a declaration of
“Jump in boys! It’s free today!” At least they recognized Harvey’s
behavior as extreme (“Two drinks and he’s lost” was Dad’s comment.)
Basically as long as I work at “that bar” I’m the
“lost cause” and if any decent male finds out about it our relationship
will be over in a trice. This kind of thing makes me wonder why I bother
to visit them. Fortunately, I’m escaping soon, but the whole ferry
reservation problem means one loses the right to fight irretrievably
with one’s hosts on this island. Dad’s big mistake was giving me an
example of a good marriage as Lillian Hellman and Dashiell Hammett!
Did I blow my top! He probably thought I’d listen to him if he produced a
literary example. He wasn’t aware that not only were they not married
but Mr. Hammett was married to someone else and cheated on poor
Hellman whenever he could manage to stay stiff long enough. (I really
didn’t want to “get in” to the alcoholism problem. Lillian tried to make
him seem like a “mentor” but honestly she was just his keeper and bail
bondsman.)
January 11, 2023
Inspired Pleasure
Diary of a Poet Who Happens. to be a Dancer
```
Tues, midnight, 9 Feb 78
        What a day. Lost a contact just before bed, which put 
```
me in a hideous temper. 1 ½ hrs sleep, drove A to Laundromat, did
laundry, bought cosmetics, picked her up, did lunch and visited broker.
Just like the other rich girls except for the Laundromat part. Then to
MVA, got MD license renewed, new address, not too horrible photo. Avril
flunked her test must retake Wed.
Back to house managed 2 more hrs of sleep. Woke
up feeling cheerful and streaked hair with L’Oreal. Still have a rotten
cough. The trouble with being sick is you can’t imagine yourself well.
Intimations of mortality. Ate lasagna with A, then off to work. J dropped
in second set, said his car was fixed, seemed cheerful, said his sister-in-law
(whom I suspect of being The Pirate Queen) is reading my book “to
figure out what kind of person I am” (uh oh). He left during my 3rd set
without saying goodbye. Should I drop in on him? Tempting.
He also asked to read Demon. Hmmmm. A of course
thinks I should clamor for “boundaries” “rights”, “clarity” and “definitions.”
I am embarrassed even to tell HER that this is all completely hopeless.
I’d have to set him on my knee and move his mouth. I’d end up defining
every term and he would immediately forget anyway. Anyway, in my
experience, the less “clarity”, the better the sex. Once things have
been completely defined you no longer want to touch each other.
Missing Devon of all people. He must be sick of
Gwynne by now. Where will he find another like me? But it’s always
a bad sign when I plunge into “default” mode. So, I dropped in on Ryder
to take him by surprise. He was there and it was worth it. Gave me a
gorgeous massage. I gave him my cold. We are at the wrong points in
our life trajectories to connect in any meaningful way. Picked up Holt’s
Lord of the Far Island which one of the other girls is reading. Unbelievably
crappy. Why do people prefer this stuff to mine? Oh well. Feeling better –
night almost over.

Sun. 12 Feb 78 – 10:20 PM
Psychic tremors driving home. But when I walked in the
door everything was fine. It’s so comforting to be surrounded with one’s
own stuff – it seems to assumes a personality – like a separate self. A
reassuring stand-in – someone who “goes on” for you when you’re tired.
Very busy weekend – A moving into her own place – sorting, packing,
cleaning, buying. Moving. Hard physical labor since we are doing it all.
“Mother Truckers.” Rushed on to work with my arms aching – J. showed up.
His body seemed solider, less fragile. I gave him a comforter for his birthday
– he seemed to like it – we went to his place to watch Harper – side by side
like an old couple on the couch. I’ve decided he reminds me most of some
wild animal. He always wakes up like a deer finding itself in a cage. He seems
to be just now comprehending that I’m there. He insisted on pleasuring me
so I just accept it. Said his body “hurt”. I wish I could convince him that
caffeine, junk food and alcohol are his enemies, but he is too stubborn to
believe it.  I fear a return of that kidney thing that felled him before. I’m
afraid our relationship belongs to the bar and his apartment, however.
Can’t get him to go anywhere with me; he is “tired” and he works enough
that it’s a believable excuse. He’s so beautiful you’d think he’d be more of an exhibitionist but it’s just the opposite. Three days off. I need it. But on the
whole I am pleased with my life.
```
    1:45 PM MON 13 Feb 78
            Lovely dog walk. My desk collapsed under piles of 
```
books, so I bought new furniture – unpainted. Cleaned, redecorated
spare room (A’s old room.) Looks good. Decided just thinking about J
is channeling my energies away from writing. We have a “sexual friendship”,
so there. That’s Hugh Hefner’s “highest good” so presumably some people
would be happy with it. But J has no influence on my life-plan. R called.
We had a decent conversation.
```
            5:45 PM Snow pouring down – four more inches 
```
expected so I decided not to go out. Last night was the first night I’ve
actually been unable to rouse J – so I just left – went home dirty and
sleepless to a couple of short-changed dogs. Now it turns out he’s in
the hospital undergoing tests because of “passing blood”. Medieval
sounding. Does he have those big black knobs under his armpits?
Ashes, ashes, we all fall down. The sister in law phoned with this info,
also gave the brother’s number where J will go after tests.
```
    9PM Plush Palace – Wed 15 Feb 78
            J quite drunk when he came in this evening – said 
```
he’s turning in his notice and returning to the South. (I wondered if they
fired him but didn’t say it.) I was so upset I walked into the men’s room
by mistake! (No one in there.) He did say “or I could live with you.”
This does not sound good to me. My monogamous soul does not aspire
to a lifetime playing nursie.
```
    10PM – Plush Palace – Thurs 16 Feb 78
            3 sets done – I’m exhausted and my legs hurt but I’ll survive. Spent the afternoon with Chloe and Dennis Parks at WPFW, taping 
```
a vibrant show on paperback publishing. Really enjoyed myself. A came
over for dinner and helped me paint my new study furniture. Got a
frightening letter from the IRS – I phoned – turned out that they think I
owe them an extra $56! They can have it.   Electric bill $76.   Disappointed
by Noel Coward’s Future Indefinite, seeking escape instead in
Mona Farnsworth’s Dark Wood. I deserve escapism after all I’ve
been through.

               11:40PM – Plush Palace – Fri 17 Feb 78
Just finished Rosenberg’s bio of Dorothy Richardson.
She seems just like me – then when I get to the end of her life – poverty
& anguish! Oh dear!

4:00 PM Mon 21 Feb 78
Lying in bed – hair set – an hour to go before work.
Spent all day tidying study – including file drawers – if I was to die this
minute I would give everyone the impression of being a hardworking
artist and an astute businesswoman. Maybe I shouldn’t wreck it by ever
going in there again. Gregory’s book about Dorothy Richardson – lots left out.
Putting myself to sleep with Homage to Daniel Shays – I must have a
lready read this because all the essays seem so familiar.   Very unpleasant
Vidal attack on Anais Nin.
```
    Plush Palace – 7:45 PM
            Lots of comforts in this job. Inhale the pleasure 
```
of a messy dressing room, so full of life & hope. I was sitting down
taking out my curlers when GiGi asked me to do her last set – her knee
hurts – so I put on a gold G- string and did one set without makeup. That
paid my electric bill right there. Settle down with Anne Tyler. Comfortable.
```
    10:30PM – Plush Palace – Thurs 23 Feb 78
            Avril came to work with me – I’m having a great night. 
```
She met a guy here she likes who asked for her number – he seems nice,
but he must have the problems intrinsic to all who haunt this place – alcoholic
or druggy – or just unmotivated in some fatal, fatal way.
Paz’s been telling me her new honey’s too “big”
for her – makes her bleed. That can’t be right. This triggered an
avalanche of gynecological horror stories that ended up with all who
are interested examining Fatima’s hanging “meatus” left over from a
“botched childbirth”. She has trouble tucking it into her G-string!
I declined inspection. Missing an opportunity other writers would have
jumped at? Will I need to describe this someday?
```
    Sun. 26 Feb 78 – 9:45 PM
            J actually showed for dinner last night – while I was
```
stuffing the baked potatoes – we had a wonderful evening, played Clue,
very good sex. Said his sister read my “gothic” but called it Too Victorian.
Disguised praise? I decide to think so. He asked me to visit him in Alabama.
I’m sure there’s a novel in that but do I want to be the one to write it?
Then of course he had to leave early. I called A – had kind of a psychic
flash – a feeling of trepidation about the human condition – she said she
had been sobbing all night. Are we going no place? I asked her. Is it all an illusion? She said she feels she once had a home and family but somehow lost them and can’t adjust. She has a life others would envy – young college student with her own apartment in DC – but she wants back something she never had. “Neva vu” ex-husband Bruce and I used to call it. The unrecognized familiar. I am reading – very appropriately – The Troubled Helpmate. Misogyny in literature.

To Drown In Air

Were the world as simple as

At first it seems

I’d be sky-haunted

Lay my emblems end to end

Ever seeking upward.

Have a fine ambition;

Possibility becomes the future

Without the prodigal waste of past.

Turn your gawper turkey-wards;

Survey the clouds for nourishment

Breathe in all that

Oxygenated snow; be

Young

Be beautiful

Be dead.
January 10, 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