Alysse Aallyn

Tag: #Dance

  • Inspired Pleasure – last of the Dance Diaries of Alysse Aallyn

    Party Castle – 11 PM 22 Aug 79

                                         Glad to go to Maine and thrilled to leave it. Mary & Debby dancing.  Today’s been eventful – T got my letters and was enormously moved. He says the worst mistake he ever made was burning my teenage letters. We should try to exist without this phoning but can’t help ourselves. Diet going well: I feel good. Struggling with a pile of thank – you letters from our engagement tour.

    Castle – 7 PM Fri 25 Aug 79

                                         T. and I separated 11 days already – feels like 

    eternity. Avril announces she wants her own apt so I should put house on the market. Maybe it’s easier. Flooding small publishers with Blood Memory – feel pessimistic however. 3 poems accepted – 2 by Colorado Woman, 1 by Friends Journal. Doesn’t feel as good as I’d hoped. 

                              Struggling with new novel where I try to tell the truth 

    about Devon. But why should anyone want THAT God knows. 

    Moving costs $400. I still think I should sell my Fiat. 

                              Rotten crowd tonight.  I am bored and jerking like a marionette. 

    Dancing with crazy Robin and Anne who never stops talking. She says 

    June’s in the hospital in a full body cast – will never dance again.  Car accident.  2 more sets only – praise God.

                                Trying to read about Lewis Carroll. Avril says Zach is

     threatening to show up. Don’t show up, Zach. I have a headache.

    2:30 AM Sun 27 Aug 79 –

                                There is a God and she likes me. Zach didn’t show.

     Long phone call with Toss then walk dogs to think about it. 

    He is such a powerful person it’s a little disturbing. Said he read my poem (The Duel) to his most erudite friend who was very impressed. 

    We wound up in another argument about my dancing. I can’t bear his slurs so I referenced his past drug use – WE’VE BOTH EXPERIMENTED, ALL RIGHT? He wants me to live without money then complains about selling capital. I told him it’s a “schizophrenic bind.” Didn’t mention how I have to PRY my own stock (it’s in my name!) out of Mom and Dad.

                                Reading an idiotic romance – its very idiocy is refreshing. I see why people get addicted to these. Like looking at maps when you’re lost. 

    Ok they’re only two dimensional but it’s SOMETHING! Clutch it like a talisman.

    Crystal Tues 28 Aug 79

                                Last night dancing. EVER! Celebrate with expensive liqueur chocolates but I’m too enervated to appreciate them. Finished I’m Radcliffe, Fly Me. Ultimately a failure. Fails to explore the inherent corruption of institutional structures. 

                               Horrible night. $5 in tips – they are sick of the sight of me and I refuse to buy new costumes. Word of my approaching marriage leaking out everywhere. 

                               I am scared to death of being dependent on T. I think he could 

    reassure me but doesn’t know how because if I really showed need for him would I be undesirable? Is a puzzlement. 

                                I feel like I’m unfastening my suckers from Avril and grabbing onto T! Up here without a net! Then I get mad at myself for being so infantile.

     Can’t I just write and feel powerful? We’ll see! Doubts creeping in! This time next week I’ll be in Kentucky!  Well, I’ve written some good poems lately.

                            Self-confidence atrocity attack. Feel & look rotten. Realizing the extent to which I was fertile soil for my parents’ anxieties.

             3:30 Thurs 30 Aug 79

                                Everything done, ready to leave. I’m in shock. Crawled into the bath with a vodka tonic and now I’m feeling better. Trying to figure out how to approach parents for money. Maybe they could give me my own stock as engagement present? Feel I won’t be able to disguise my contempt. 

    This “I’m All Right Jack” no matter WHAT – is mighty convenient for them.

                                I realize any sense of my own helplessness triggers all this Rage: NOT a good sign for T’s and my relationship. He can’t “make” me independent! I must not succumb, or Plath-ize. (She sacrificed herself to the gods of rage.) I’m doing this guy no favors handing him a woman on the edge of breakdown.

    4:25PM – My darling just called! Relief! He borrowed a truck from 

    somebody so although we’ll have to drive separately we won’t have movers or returns to cope with. He’s driving it out here so I can sleep as late as I like which I really need. Impossibly intense happiness. Peace & joy.  Feel we have been standing in a dinghy trying to balance. Equilibrium is everything.

                             The irrevocableness of marriage. My children mutely applaud my choice. Suffering under the hopelessness of explaining myself to any of T’s friends. Rain. Any excuse not to take a walk (T lives in bad neighborhood.) Feel like a girl in a gothic novel except for the constant sex which makes it a different kind of novel. Break with the past.

                                      Reading Robert Ludlum’s perfectly ludicrous Matarese Circle. In 100 yrs people will wonder how we stomached this stuff. A. and I going to Olney theatre to see The Bat tonight.

    Newport KY – Tues 4 Sept. 79

                                Reading old high school love-letters for anything I can use. Blood Memory  now renamed Speechless.

                                T. ebbs in and out of stranger-hood. He told his friends I used to be an exotic dancer – because he won’t “lie” but I think it was a bad idea. 

    One obscene phone call so far.

                                Don’t like the way they stare at me. Last night we made love twice. I especially like to watch him sleeping – the perfection of his profile is heart-rending. But his angers are so weirdly arbitrary. Not with me so far but I am divided on what to do – if I ignore it will it just get worse?

    Are we programming that I’ll be reasonable and he’ll be outrageous until there’s no going back? But if I don’t “let it slide” it’s non-stop arguments. 

                             Went to a famous restaurant to drink mint juleps last night and ended up in an argument about whether he has any misogynistic ideas or not. I proved he did (he thinks women “act stupid”) but that didn’t make him happy!

                                He’s given me the entire third floor of his house with glorious views over the city – I spend most of my time up here. Total furniture: a desk and a lounge chair. It somewhat makes up for the fact that he presented me with a new vacuum cleaner – obviously thinking I’m going to clean for him.

     Uh oh! Misogynistic idea #763. Mostly I am incredibly happy. At about 8 I’ll start the casserole & set the table. 

    Newport, KY: 10:15 AM Wed 5 Sept 79

                                         The electricians wiring my study have been here for 2 hrs driving me insane. T ordered impossibly ugly furniture from Horchow catalog – luckily agreed to send it back. Enjoying A Certain Slant of Light. Point of view not a problem for this writer. Next Drabble’s The Ice Age. Mental project: The Contemporary Novel.                                              

    6 Sept 79 – 2 PM

                                Toss suffering recurring nightmares that I will leave him to go back to DC Can’t reassure him as much as I’d like.  Moves upset me to a terrifying degree. Let’s hope the next is last till kids are born. I recall when I moved  to Maine to write Devlyn it took me a full month to get my neuroses under control.  

                             4 good pages on book but I still don’t know the plot. So far it’s everyone has no idea what they’re doing which is probably not enough.  Molly Lefebrve’s book on Coleridge fascinating.  

                              T & I rose at 8 to go shopping together.  Argued over each item; his ideas very rigid. Ultimately we laid in a glorious supply food & drink – I gave him check for my ½. He is slightly alarmed I won’t open a checking acct here. But he did offer me allowance which now he says he can’t afford. Too proud to complain. Must make money writing. Should take a walk right now – wake myself up. But light a little scorching – longing for fall.

    12:50 PM Fri Sept 8 – 79

                                Long letter from Devon full of love and caring – his girlfriend sounds so wrong for him – prudish fundamentalist: what is he thinking? Must we marry our nightmares?

                                Perilously close to a bad argument last night – somehow we got over it.   Trying to treat his ideas with respect. Our family has a ban on displays of anger – his doesn’t! In Sheffield World the angriest person wins because they “care” the most. Or are just willing to behave badly, I suggest.

                                 It makes me angry when he postpones our wedding AGAIN because he needs a big production and he thinks I can’t raise the money. It’s my second wedding: not asking folks to pay. House will sell eventually.

                               Sometimes he argues against the whole concept of a wedding: says, “a piece of paper doesn’t marry us” BUT IT DOES. I ask, why does a “piece of paper” make him a lawyer?  He says, “That’s different – a wedding is for other people.” 

                                “Maybe next summer” does not sound good.  Not Thanksgiving (which I think would be the easiest thing) so I suggest spring vacation – he says Sept a year from now!  Wants to have a job first. I don’t like this in-between world. I think it is better to get wedding stuff out of the way. Now he’s trying to talk me into living near his mother in the city but I hate cities. Impasse. Seems I don’t need to cut very deeply to stir up ancient pus. 

                                Can’t speed up the intimacy process as much as I want to. Keep having to detangle Mom & Dad’s puritanical creepers out of my own mind!! They give me a headache. At least T is making dinner tonight. If it weren’t for alcohol I don’t know if we’d pull through. Loving Christina Stead’s Miss Herbert. 

    6:40 PM Long letters to Devon and Merrill, then when T came home I wept for an hour. Apologize. This is heavy work. T shocked me by suggesting we “spend the summer here”- my shocked response showed how much I think I am “camping out.”

    Mon. 10 Sept 79 – Finished mad disturbing Miss Herbert then walk in dark with dogs. People’s complex rationalizations for the arcs, crests & troughs of their lives bear no actual relationship to them says Stead, I think I agree. Order & purpose come in a dream – then flash away again. Liked it even better than Dark Places of the Heart. Weird publishers’ blurb says they themselves don’t understand this novel! Poor Stead!

                                War with my own novel struggles out a snails’ pace of 3 pages a day. Lacking focus. Keep longing to write here like I’m on the verge of some great discovery. Want to read my old diaries – make notes – but that would be a massive undertaking. With NO effect on novel. 

                                In the meantime poor T and I continue our struggling course. On Fri. his friend poor Mary Ellen was raped. I told Toss this was a bad neighborhood! I think I’d be scared if I didn’t have dogs. At least no sodomy or blowjobs. Told T she should come stay here when she & husband get back from hospital – she should not have to live in that house again. 

                                Last night we lay naked face to face kissing and talking about the amazingness of our love. It is amazing. We’re riding a tiger and trying to tame it. 

                                Saw Marquise of O – came home to delicious steak dinner – took a tour of restored houses.  Poor T trying to “sell” me on staying in Kentucky, but I pine for our own Pennsylvania house. So, what is the answer? How does one give true weight to ideas & inchoate aspirations?

                                To the Conservatory to see plants – then home for fabulous lovemaking. Good weekend. 

    Tues. 11 Sept 79 –

                                Every day its catalogue.             

                                Jan & Mary Ellen to dinner – she has black eye but otherwise seems no different. Does not disparage her new (and obviously dangerous) house. 

                                Mom sends separate letters to me & T. I feel she is on “his side” not mine. Obviously “living together” is at the heart of all our problems (secretly, she probably thinks it’s my exhibitionism. Me!) 

                                Reading Self-Starvation about how children make enemies of their own bodies in reaction to growing up. Tremble with recognition. Feel so much hostility from Mom – she doesn’t know what we’re doing but surely I’m corrupting T with my awfulness. Mom said things in her letter she could only know from what I wrote to Genevieve. That outlet stopped. Feeling a rush of mature personal power – I’ve moved beyond them. 

                                Speechless is a horrible, bloody struggle. Writing about things too close to me. Wrote my first seriously bad scene – when they are adults all together. 

    3:50 PM – Too upset after letter from Genevieve to write. She has been robbed of her honest feelings – she is just pumping up and down on the merry go round. The family decision seems to be that T will get sick of me soon but they can’t decide if that is good or bad. My insistence on having a “real relationship” means I’ll never have one! Silly me. Need to do housework – or something – till I feel better. Shouldn’t try to write when feeling despondent.

    Midnight – Bath & Facial. T beautifully aroused – we made love TWICE. He repeated I am only girl he ever wanted to marry. Feel even our most terrible problems being slowly overcome. Routine & diet coming under control.  Dream of the Rood  horribly unsuccessful.

    12 Sept 79 – Magnificent day only half over. Charting novel – seems “completeable.” Starting research for Demon. No bad mail – no guilt about housecleaning – send off Walt Whitman entry. Sylvia Plath poetic incentive – I can’t put her down.

    Dawn walk

    Thunder crusts a gelid sky

    Is it light or is it rain 

    Feathering

    My nest with longing

    Stippling out a soul flushed

     With new growth; bursting from

    The steepled trees.

    This is my world and I release it

    Readied for flying

    Stelliform –

    Tough as spidersilk

    Unrecognizable

    Even to myself who birthed it

    Spent my life creating it.

    Released and

    Blown away. 

  • Inspired Pleasure – the dance diaries of Alysse Aallyn

    Castle – 2 Aug 79 – Wed

                                         Seems hopeless to TRY writing in this book – things happen so fast – a month is an eternity. Last night celebrated our 11th“divinity loss” anniversary – and a difficult anniv. It was. T came to see me dance for the first time – with Avril so it wouldn’t be so bad but had to leave he was so upset. He didn’t like me smiling!

    Like –

    I’m ENJOYING myself! The PLACE didn’t bother him (“reverent & reserved” were his words about the audience) but my pleasure in movement, beauty & freedom was a shock! Uh oh! He goes back to my parents’ argument: IT’S TURNING MEN ON. So what? I get impatient with that – that way lurks the “hajib”. 

                                         We have to educate each other. At the end the 

    atmosphere seemed cleared and we both cried with relief. Even though I know my love is in the larval stage, I’ve never loved anyone the way I love him.  We had our last dinner at his 641 E street digs – steak and wine, fruit, cream, brandy. He asked me if there were any boyfriends’ the report of whose marriage “depressed” me (he was referring to my marriage) and I had to say no. 

                                         He opened a letter from Mindy, ex-girlfriend he was thinking of re-starting a relationship with except she went to Nepal. A letter I would have thought perfectly reasonable two months ago now strikes me as ridiculous – an ounce of love is worth more than all these pages of barter. 

                                         I got a wonderful letter from Devon – he’s found 

    “another girl” (with three more in reserve I’m betting) and wishes me the best.

     But T was upset because he closed with “I love you” a word NOT thrown around in his world! (Mindy and Cindy don’t say it!)  He says it’s the only part of the letter he believes – “the guy is a total phony.” I said Devon’s only victim is himself. We then made love on the floor on top of all those letters. 

    Gloriously. Got a poem out of it.

    The Bridesmaid

    Yes, I know everything

    You’re my poor

    Relation.

    I know of your daddy’s desk where you

    Fucked with formaldehyde fingers

    I know of your lonely

    Rosary of abortions

    I repeat, I know everything.

    We made love on your letters 

    Undisturbed

    As two icons.

    She’s imperfect

    He told me.

    Unslung by mortality

    I take my place

    With the king’s crazy mistresses;

    Brewing menstrual blood coffee

    And mandrake root tea.

    Swim away, little bridesmaid,

    You’re young

    I’m in love

    We’ve got

    Too much in common ever to meet.

                                                   Need to see dentist & gyno, overhaul bike, 

    pay bills. T. meets Ralph Nader at 6. Lucky me snagging someone so ambitious and competent.

             Party Castle Mon 6 Aug 79

                                                  God, I need Maine. I love T but I need to get away from him. I am used to being alone 4-5 hours a day. Starving for that. 

    Wonder how many otherwise perfect relationships break up for this reason! 

    T. is a little TOO driven. A little TOO single-minded. Makes me argue with him –

    – I can’t help it. For example: he talked about the “ugliness of the desert landscape.” It’s not my “thing” either – because I grew up somewhere else.

    But Georgia O’Keeffe taught me to see the beauty of it. What he REALLY meant was “I don’t like it” but he raises it to a short-sighted religious principle ;“New England is better.”                                         

                                    That’s embarrassing. I constantly feel he’s trying to “re-educate” me –

     – for example he didn’t like my turquoise silk pants because he “doesn’t like colors that don’t appear in nature.” When shown an aquarium of tropical fish he doesn’t “count” them, their colors are “cultivated” and somehow “wrong.” The truth is bright colors make him nervous. So, say THAT. 

                                         Sat night we went to an office party of his people (to which I wore the aforementioned pants) and praised the house over-

    extravagantly. (He does NOT like my yellow velvet furniture. I’m giving it to Maureen.) “One good picture” per wall, beige Danish oldern furniture – 

    -unbelievably boring and sterile. A chipped china frog would have done the place a world of good. This could warn of decorating liabilities ahead.

                                         His younger brother Dominic in town – when I 

    complimented his Mazda sports car and said I’d love to have one someday. 

    Toss said “we’ll see” as if I could never buy one for myself! These 

    flare-ups are important signs.  Must work on my self-value.

    8 Aug 79

                                         Packing for Maine came across D’s letters. Not a 

    “good” one among them. “Phoniness” is NOT his problem – that’s not the right word – he’s not even “tone deaf” which was Bruce’s disorder.

     I think it’s a “temperature” thing – he WANTS all passion sexualized 

    (not that he would ever admit it) and doesn’t trust intimacy, closeness – as if he doesn’t “believe” in it – doesn’t want to believe it exists. He fears never freeing himself from the physical so he cultivates a lonely “spirituality” but he’s mired HIMSELF in sex. So that’s pathetic. 

                                      I enjoy responsibility – so he probably felt hounded by my love. Thank God I escaped is all I can say. There’s a nightmare in there. I’m betting he was gearing up to torture me for a lifetime. 

                                         I let T read my short story about his mother. That was probably a mistake. (He plans her death!) He made some idiotic “writing class” comments – I said it wasn’t THAT far along – but there’s something appealingly mythic about this undigested mass. Worry about it in ten years!

             Shadowe Island ME – Mon 7:30 AM 12 Aug 79

                                         Toss just left on the ferry so I can relax. Wish this diary ended here – I need a New Life. But Not Yet. Rainy with a gray sea. Dogs stretched out snoring on the Greek carpet.

                                         This visit has been everything I wanted, but the first night was classic in its ghastliness. Guests showed up at cocktails and stayed through dinner – unexpectedly – this mob scene making our announcement a bit tougher. 

                                         Toss whispered, “Want to go through with it?” 

    I said, “Sure.”

                                         We opened the champagne.  The guests loved it 

    – Mom & Dad really surprised. Dad started talking about his difficult 

    father-in-law and how things would be different but flat out calling me a liar when I chimed in about how Wilbur returned his prison mail unread (he told me this story HIMSELF last Christmas!) I kept my temper – oh I must have got it wrong. (I didn’t. We’d discussed it later ad nauseam.) 

                                        Avril attacked me later for “embarrassing” Dad – but he’d been TALKING ABOUT HIS DIFFICULT FATHER IN LAW. Toss was surprised at Avril’s hostility – used to her as an ally. He said, “They obviously think you’re invulnerable.”

                                         Probably. If so they’re all idiots!  I thought A was upset about her own out-of-his-depth boyfriend, Vigo.

                                         Anyway, T rescued the evening bringing tears to Mom’s eyes by talking about how he’d always loved me. M & D apologized & congratulated us. 

                                         Sunday the four of us toured the island – trying to get along with Vigo. (Avril says he has only one testicle as if that’s all that’s wrong with him.)  At dinner watched slides of my growing up – T tremendously moved – then lobster dinner. 

    Tues 13 Aug 79 – 5 PM    

                                         T called last night on his WATS line and we talked ½ an hour. Says he used to play an “airport game” of “Looking for his future wife” but thought “I AM married!” Wow!

    Sun. 19 Aug 79

                                         T’s letter came! Glorious. I do not feel worthy. 

    Tension between A & V – he teases her too much – we all try to ignore it – 

    -tough to figure out how to call him on it without opening up hostilities. Hope she dumps him. T on phone!                                   

    Ex-island boyfriend visits. A says he acts like he wants to knock me to the floor and French kiss me to death. Seems accurate. Glad T missed him.

  • Inspired Pleasure – the dance diaries of Alysse Aallyn

    Party Castle – Mon 9 July 79 – 7:50 PM

                                         26 hours without T. Spoke to him last night and 

    again this afternoon. His acceptance of me is total, but it comes from a position of strength and I have fears of being annihilated.

    Last nightI experienced hallucinatory states – drove home the wrong way – felt something was happening to the car – re-experienced my swallowing problem. Resolved my panic by starting a poem.

                                         Sat night Toss and I read the diary passages where we lost our “divinity” (his word) together. He cried and told me what he’d felt like from his “side”, wanting to be male & in control, feeling helpless & immature. Agreed if we had married then we’d be divorced now. 

    11:05PM  Trying to read Oneness & Separateness. Not well suited to me right now! Much as I want to be a mother the thought of a demanding infant between me & T now is truly horrifying. Insane fears of rejection and abandonment – why on earth should I trust this man? Called T at work! 

     Complete craziness. He reassured me we will have private alone time –

    -a real vacation in the Berkshires. He said champagne arrived. 

    Called A & we discussed Mom & Dad – how they rewarded “self-sufficiency” and responded to neediness coldly. Makes it hard to be honest now but 

    I hate this weirdly formal relationship with my own parents.

    Avril says there is no retraining them.

    Sat 14 July 79 – StormFall Farm – 11:15 PM

                                         Oh, my God who would believe it – here I am 11 

    years later!  Told T about my uncle last night as we made sexual 

    “confessions”. He was completely calm about it so it’s no longer a 

    Big Secret. He insisted I read his ex-girlfriend’s letters.  She was a 

    Piper Cub to his Concorde, believe me. He kept carbons of his letters to her!!!! Not very loving letters – but downright fatherly. In a bad way.

                                        T’s actual father and he smoked cigars last night 

    after dinner leaning against the mantel – they were so beautiful together I felt stunned. Wrote a poem: 

    MY HUSBAND SMOKES CIGARS WITH HIS FATHER 

    BY CANDLELIGHT

    Your profiles cut my heart like glass.

    Go ahead. I’m a bleeder, I’ll

    Still be here when you look back.

    Your father is a silver-headed

    Walking-stick; his elongation glows with far less heat.

    You’re his nemesis; and he’s used to it.

    The wooden floors are washed cornelian

    Perhaps by sunset

    Perhaps by jealousy of girls who

    Lost you; judged too soon the temper of your eyes

    Wrote too many letters or

    Not enough; the wrong kind

    Addressed to the pale law student with

    The cinderblock heart;

    Traveling commentator with the hundred

    Dollar bill rolled inside his shoe,

    The long-haired Pinkerton guard.

    You learned to suck the cherries

    Scarless from the tree; it’s no mean art

    Broke a few at first; we all did.

    By what right am I the winner?

    You chose me in thirty seconds leaving

     enough time to smoke another cigar.

                                         Everyone wants us to marry before May. But I feel I need some time in Kentucky first. Toss told me last night that on paper he is a millionaire. Here’s luck, because if I keep on keeping on, I’m a pauper! 

                                         Tom’s grandmother’s response was “I am not surprised.” 

     She committed herself to reading my  published “thriller”. 

                                         At dinner he announced I’m the only woman he’s ever wanted to marry. Tom’s dad said he thought his son would be a bachelor forever. 

    Privately we affirmed absolute sexual fidelity forever. Will we be able to keep it?

    Plush Palace – Wed 18 July 79 – 4:55 PM

                                                  Boring day but good tips. Magnificent party at 

    The Third Edition last night for Avril’s birthday. (I didn’t care for Avril’s latest “honey” Vigo but was secretly furious at myself – she should date as widely as possible. 

    Maybe I was affected by T who is a snob and a purist.) Drinks, fruit & cheese – then dinner at The Old Angler & Frank Langella in Dracula. (Not a good version.)

                                                  “Finances” discussion with T. He talked me out of selling my car. I worry about being dependent on him but he says it will be fine. 

    Sounds to me like he is living on a knife’s edge – working part time, going to law school, selling stock when he needs money (which he is loathe to do being naturally frugal.) Too tired to make love last night but we started up in the middle of the night – both asleep. Unknown doors keep opening – then there’s another one.

    Castle – 1 PM – Thurs 19 July 79

                                         So happy I can’t take it all in. Feel like someone 

    recovering from a long illness. Read Cheever’s Goodbye My Brother – as satisfying as a novel. Last night we made love for hours and hours but –

    I just couldn’t come – kept holding his face saying, “Is it really you”? Dancing with Barbara the Kikuyu and blonde Joyce of the day-glo costumes that light up in the dark. 

    3 PM Party Castle – 24 July 79

                                         First real friction last night – very predictably, about my job. I’m irritated over the assumption that its sordid and brutalizing. It is totally NOT the same as the dancers in DC!!! LIFE certainly CAN be sordid and brutalizing – but I like this club because it ISN’T and I’ve tried others. We discussed HIS job of muckraker/professional advocate which also has its sordid and corrupting aspects. 

    Duh. His last girlfriend gave him shit about it (and refused to read his newspaper!)

    So it’s a sore point. He should really understand. There was a horrible moment when he felt foreign and alien – but I expected it – too much intimacy always causes a backlash. Trying to read Sisters & Strangers.  The Victorian novel is not yet dead.  

  • Inspired Pleasure – the dance diaries of Alysse Aallyn

                 Party Castle 12:05 am 2 July 79

                            Wrote D an angry farewell poem.

    “HOW DID YOU MEET?”

    You saw me naked

    I saw you too close- up.

    Between the green glimpses

    You cut mountains down to size;

    I’d no idea that one could take such charge of space.

    You hovered, teaching –

    Drinking vodka,

    I drank wormwood –

    Everything’s my fault. 

    Now I’m a toad-dweller,  

    Nostrils pierced by thorns 

    Falling face-first through every hole;

    You were the king the ghost pines saluted.

    How you dove and danced!

    Speeding through your love-drunk universe, you

    Infected me with your own whiteness

    Dizziness, till all my blood drained out.

    You challenged God;

    I was just the echo following after.

    Yet here I am after all this time

    And nothing promised remains of you.

    Or, “Good luck with Sleeping Beauty’s castle!” That’s what he gets for messing with my heart. Can’t show anyone – most certainly not him – 

    – and it isn’t really finished – and I don’t think it ever will be. But thank God for diaries. Diaries can be told anything.

                                         Reading Secrets in the Family – it is so superb

     I am going to buy copies for all my sisters. Looking forward to discussing it with Toss. I’m beginning to miss him now – he’s so deep and interesting to be around – so alive on many more levels than anyone else – challenging all my levels. Falling in love – happy, crazy.

                 Thurs 11:05 – Plush Palace – 5 July 79

                                        Back at The Plush – it’s catch as catch can in my 

    present situation. I am alienating managers left and right. But I am happy crazy and who cares?  

                                        Because on the third of July Toss asked me to 

    marry him and I said yes!  Here’s how it happened. On Monday night we ate white clam linguini and Crenshaw melon while listening to Keith Jarrett’s Koln Concert  – then – came together in delicious, soul-freeing sex; two perfectly matched combatants recognizing each other not just from childhood and youth but school and dreams.  He was eager to learn how I could best be pleased – so I surrendered to the inevitable. Fireworks!

                                        He left me sleeping there in the AM – I heard thumping downstairs but I know he has roommates so didn’t think anything of it – 

    – when he came back for lunch he discovered the door broken in and my purse missing. Keys, wallet, everything. I had to call into work – had to call a locksmith to give me keys to my car. 

                                        Toss doesn’t know what else they stole because he doesn’t know what else is supposed to be in this house – called his roommates. They came, police came. So we spent a day of intense babbling and the worst kinds of petty annoyances – but none of it mattered because he was there. In fact, I welcomed it; it was an extra opportunity to be together. 

                                        At one point I said, you know, you’re everything I’ve ever wanted in a man.  He said, if I believed that, I’d ask you to marry me. I said, if you did I’d say yes. 

                                         So he said, “Do you want to get married?” 

    I said, “I think so,” and there it was!  He said I’m the only woman he has ever wanted to marry much less asked. We even chose the children’s names – there are going to be two of them – a boy and a girl of course; a combination of our old addresses! Had to call Aunt Frederica to give her the good news because 

    she’s the one who had to give the hospital permission to stitch me up ten years ago after our first unfortunate night together!  (She was drunk of course. Both times) 

                                     Toss asked me to come back to Kentucky for his

    last year of law school.  I “shouldn’t miss this part of his life.” Dogs too, natch – we are a package deal.  

                                        He has a house he’s rehabbing that has so many 

    rooms it is known as the Hilton.  When I said I would come that was more important to him than our engagement even.  He says I can file for 

    divorce in Kentucky’s understanding Commonwealth. He ordered a case of Moet Chandon, saying now we have to drive up the coast and

     tell everybody. I am a little scared to tell my parents – this suddenness might only seem another strike against me.  We told Avril and Maureen – they just stared – obviously thinking we both have lost our minds – it will take them awhile to believe in it.  I told Avril about Kentucky – 

    she says she can handle the house; she can always rent out my 

    room to a college student if she feels pinched. I want to leave some money with her – at least $1000 – had the brilliant idea to sell my car. 

    Wouldn’t want to be impoverished in Kentucky and I don’t want to be on “retainer” from T.

                         Last night I read Toss The Duel and his eyes 

    filled with tears!  He said the only flaw he sees in this arrangement is that one of us must surely predecease the other!  Could it really happen?  Could we grow old together? Could it be that I will never make love to another person?  Wrote a short note to Bruce, 

    telling him I will definitely be needing a divorce, sooner, rather 

    than later.  Now I am trying to write a letter to D; but honestly, 

    what is there to say?   Summing up our relationship seems only

     to dismiss it.  He has already fallen far, far back into the past.  Toss is my future.

    The Duel

    Europe without you

    Was a funeral feast.

    I recall the procession of your letters

    Far better than 

    The stream of luckless suitors

    Trying to distract me.

    Virgins aren’t distractible.

    Your seductive missives stalked me.

    A fatal ploy was that nude photo

    Adam lonely in his garden.

    I came right home.

    I well recall the ceremonies

    Of that night!

    Your shyness

    My perfume

    Our ignorance

    Wild and hard 

    A riderless horse.

    I did cry out as the candles burned.

    I swear there were some moments when

    We actually saw each other.

    But if this magic sword cuts both ways

    Why was I the only bleeder?

    They peeled me off

    And dropped me down a mile

    Of antiseptic hallway –

    A princess in a bucket.

    It could have ended there

    But at your school I haunted you

    A chilly-breasted demon.

    My daytime incarnation seemed mature:

    I fooled everyone;

    We chatted as you prepared the skin.

    I bit down hard and 

    Tasted  only

    Suture wire.

    You wrote and broke off 

    Our association.

    Years groaned by

    Like convicts chained

    We served our terms with no time off

    For bad behavior.

    Lust had luster,

    Excrement was ecstasy.

    The castaways the whirlwind 

    Flung upon the sand

    Were calm, polite

    We knew our way around. But

    That look you gave me!

    Our unborn children shivered

    In their sausage skins 

    Fully aware

    Their time had come.

    The tale was done

    The frog-mask

    Shivered off

    We saw:

    The you of you

    The me of me –

    Masks 

    Unmirrored

    Scars 

    Unscored

    Virgins not but

    Innocents Restored. 

  • Inspired Pleasure – dance diaries of Alysse Aallyn

        Starlight – Sat night – 23 June 79

                                        What a week! I have discussed it with Avril in depth but I still don’t understand it – I’ll just write it out and see what happens. Got a letter from Toss Sheffield of all people – my blood-mate from high school – a wonderful letter. He read my poem in the Alumni Directory and noted I was “divorced”. (Of course, technically I’m still just separated because of Bruce’s malfeasance.) 

                    Toss is working with Ralph Nader on the  Three Mile Island problem herein DC all summer and wants to see me. The rest of the time he is a prizewinning journalist studying law in Kentucky.  Woo hoo! 

                                        Timing could not be better – my restlessness desperately seeks somebody new – someone I don’t have to explain my childhood,schooling and family to. The Boy Next Door!  At the very least I could use him as a cat o’nine tails on Devon (which D royally deserves).  Last Wed night Devon showed up in the middle of the night on his way out to California. 

     More push me – pull you. Very unsatisfying night as we finger each other gingerly like priceless objects pre-smashed, badly glued and inexpertly set.   

    He invited me out to Calif. in Sept. Long wait, big ticket, which is the story of Any Girlfriend of Devon’s Life.  Might be able to manage if I get that MasterCard. 

    On the other hand he said our parents were “hoping we’d get together” which is major turnoff.

                                        GiGi came into the club again. She obviously misses us. Said she saw Buck the other day and he spoke of me fondly. There’s a load off my mind. Leave ‘em sighing, that’s my motto. 

                                        Toss Sheffield put the phone number of the house where he’s staying in his letter – I’ll call him tonight around ten. Wait till he finds out what I do for a living. Or I might not tell him. It all depends on him. 

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

                                        Struggling to read Joan Didion’s Slouching Toward Bethlehem but she is pretty depressing.  Read Millheiser’s The Mirror. 

    Absolutely stank. What was Putnam thinking of to choose that novel over mine?  Shows there’s a factor here I don’t understand.  Wish I was a multizillionaire with my own publishing co.

                 Castle 26 June – Tues – 10:30 PM

                                        How to describe my ecstatic dinner with Toss? He opened himself up to me like a book. “Take. Read”.  He loves the universe –

    – but in a healthy way – vibrates to it and wants to be overwhelmed, then empowered by it.  Just like me! He explores the DC area with the zest of one “learning” a foreign country – touchingly amazed that one eats the whole of a fried crab – “Even the eyebrows!”  

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

                                         This is all scary but I feel I must ride with it. He is so 

    intelligent – such a relief to talk to someone who knows the difference between a prodigal and a prodigy and can tell a scherzo from a schizo. 

                                        He showed up for dinner at Queens Chapel Road, driving an immaculate yellow Rabbit.  I was frightened to so much as look out the window – I said to Avril – “Tell me what he’s like.” She said, He’s exactly the same. 

                                        And he was. Gorgeous poet’s face (Rupert Brooke)-

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

                                        We had swordfish prepared on my new gas grill. 

    We responded to each other in exactly the same way we did right before 

    he left for college – his eyes feasting all over me – so humbling and overwhelming to realize someone loved me so deeply at such a painful period of my life. We marked each other in every meaning of the verb.  I feel chastened and grateful to have such an effect on another person. We have so many similarities – both listened to Miss Goggins as children!  

    We can each quote whole skits, tossing back bourbon in brandy snifters. 

    As soon as I was drunk enough I declaimed my poem about how we spent Class Day in the treehouse. 

                                        He didn’t remember the frickin’ treehouse!  The memories of people who don’t keep diaries are appallingly patchy. I showed him the trunk under my bed – decorated with flowers and my childish handwriting – and gave him the diary that described those nights!

                                        He was open mouthed;  he stared at me as if I were a witch.

     Who knew diaries can come in so handily to resurrect the dead?  He told me I am a fabulous writer and should never give up.  That the purpose of existence is to find what you were born to do and do it.  No one else in my life talks like this!

                                        There was no lingering hostility over our unfortunate parting – our fundamentally dishonest Dear John – Dear Jane letters. No game playing – none of that.  I can’t even recall who touched who first – 

    – my guess is we lunged at each other – it must have been mutual. 

                                        Well, if I’m a witch, he’s a knight in shining armor. 

    Only he can rescue me from this hellish situation I’ve fallen in with Devon – with all of them.  That devon could make love to me the way he does and not want to 

    see me till Sept has been playing tricks with my mind.  Devon uses me to flagellate himself and I can be so much more than that.  

                                        It’s definitely fun to talk to someone who has 

    exactly the same background as me – someone who reads and gets all my references. I was beginning to feel like an exotic (about to become extinct) rarity. He wants to date me solidly the whole time he’s here –(he leaves in Sept – that mystic date).  Fri we’re going out – also probably Sun and the fourth of July. He says he’s never gotten over me, 

    never loved anyone else the way he loved me. He wants me to come to his family’s place in the Berkshires in August – where I last went at 18 years old – why not say yes?  I turn down work joyously while the managers gnash their teeth. It’s only money.

                 10:00 PM – Party Castle – Wed 27 Jun 79

                                        The inevitable panic reaction has set in – am I out of my friggin MIND?  But it’s my battle and I’m dealing with it. I hear myself saying WAY too much around him as if tempting him to find something to be disgusted by and to reject me – why can’t I just shut up and enjoy this? 

    Because I can’t believe he really loves the real me – we haven’t seen each other in 10 years. I plunge gratified into the dizzying sensory experiences – he is very sexual and willing to talk about it – everything he says turns me so ON.  Heavenly  night of ecstatic sex.  Trying to go SLOW, not empty out my bag of tricks all at once. I resent my own anxieties and my fear of being vulnerable. Here at work I wrote a poem about our past – The Duel.  It’s still a mess. Will I ever be able to show him?

                                         I even like his snobbishness – he’s more elitist 

    I guess you’d say. He assumes we’re  “up there” – and it’s others job to qualify, to climb up to “our level”! That’s so refreshing after Usher Glayne’s oppressive weirdness!  He just takes it for granted we’re in a class by ourselves; special people trying to do special things. And our tastes are so similar. He doesn’t plan to stay in Kentucky – wants to live in New England with its fall, its woodstoves and frozen lakes. I can barely comprehend such confidence much less contain it.   Imagine being free forever from the fear that the party’s happening elsewhere.   We ARE the party.

                                        I said I felt safe with him – he said he wasn’t sure 

    that was justified – looked at me like a beast longing to rend, but restraining itself. Wild frissons! He must be horrified by how fast things are going – 

    I have never met a man who wouldn’t be. But he’s driving this train. Told me he’s been so celibate lately –  very upfront discussing his discouraging relationship with a virginal anorexic perfectionist frightened by everything who compensates by torturing herself and all the people around her.  In a flash I realized, that’s exactly what Devon is also. 

                                        Toss says he feels “stormed” by me –dizzied – by whoand what I am, the summit of my “magnificence”. Wow!  Such flattery very scary. How can he possibly mean it?  Yet he seems so honest, so open. 

    What will he do when he finds out I am human after all – a creature of mud and sludge like everyone else?       

                                        Reading Margaret Drabble’s The Needle’s Eye  – 

    not so good as The Waterfall – beginning to be turned off by her towers of verbiage. My own life is so much more interesting. Good phone con-versations with Toss – I am beginning to trust him. When I told him what I do for a living he was totally unfazed. “I knew you couldn’t get that body walking!”  Tomorrow we explore Annapolis. 

  • Inspired Pleasure – the dance diaries of Alysse Aallyn

                       Castle – Wed 1:15 AM 16 May – 79

                                        Unspeakably rotten dinner at the Cosmo Club with Usher Glayne.  Forget him and his majestic New England genes. He is simply “collecting” me as his latest oddity.  He has “so many warm, women artist” friends but no dancer yet (he’s way overdosed on poets) and he drifts from one “presence” to another, sucking wattage like some radioactive swamp monster. He and his wife have an “understanding” which probably means she has no idea where the hell he ever is and nobody’s had sex in eons.  Can’t I do better than this?

                                         In spite of the fact that I’m a declassee person who doesn’t know where her next sexual or emotional meal is coming from I think I must insist on a note from wifey before taking this matter further. According to his poetry he associates sexuality with evil – not that I’m physically attracted to him –

    – it’s just so piquant to be with a man who gets a fresh barber’s shave right before seeing you. (It’s been awhile). 

                                    I don’t think he listened to a thing I said, just 

    gazed at me rapturously. I tried getting him interested in helping me write a screenplay for Faulkner’s Mosquitoes – to me a completely ignored, obviously filmable work. He dismisses, “It’s been done.”  

                                        Well it may have been “treated” BY SOMEBODY but the point is, it hasn’t been treated by us and it hasn’t been filmed  and it would be WONDERFUL. Couldn’t ignite him. He really doesn’t want to talk about writing with me – I guess he has other people for that. I was so happy when our “date” ended I could have wept for joy. On the other hand I am sorry to see these millions slip away.  My children could have used them, not to mention all my fantasies of early retirement busted. Looks like I have no one to depend on but myself.  Enjoying Monica Dickens’ enchanting The Moon was Low. But had to buy a Quaalude from Maureen to get to sleep.  

                                        Finished  V. Sackville-West’s The Devil at Westease. 

     I can’t figure out why she wrote it. She speaks entirely in lost codes.

                                         I really dragged myself in to work today. That’s how you know you’re working too much. Letter from Devon – he’s off to California to “find himself.” What he really wants is any way to figure out how to be a minister in a state of sexual abandon and he instinctively knows if the answer is anywhere, it is in California.  

    On the other hand, will this really turn out to be what he wants?  Not if I know him. The only good news about him is that his genes are impeccable.  Plus, I’m very depressed about my writing. 

                                        Spreading myself too thin – thinking about one project while working on another. My Secaire book is starting to get ridiculous, but I want to follow up this “satanic rites” thing to see where it goes. Why did I come up with it? What does it mean? Who knows? Cheap and derivative everyone would probably say at this point. Yet it holds some interest for me. 

    Love and sex as hostage-taking. The question is, who’s the hostage and who’s the keeper? 

                                        Could it be hours of research, prose and bitching produce only a single poem? Lucky if so.

                                        Even if it’s a mess.

                                        Also miserable about money and my body. Buying the house was a great idea – I love it – however, there are constant expenses I can’t ignore that keep me chained to this goddam stage and dressing room. 

    My mortgage calls for my monthly payment to increase next year – I could worry about that if I wanted to.  And then I always respond to depression and worry with a desire to eat which of course threatens my job. (Sigh.) Tips down –

    (maybe I should buy a wig.) And my face is all broken out so I have to use heavy makeup – and my skin doesn’t like that.

                                         Party Castle 8:20 PM Fri  May 18 – 1979

                                        Fasting all day so feel much better. Two more sets. I am the only dancer willing to dance to Baker Street so they keep playing it for me and it is a tiring song. However all that stretching is good for my muscles probably. Reading  A Time to Keep Silence.  Secaire has got me on a religious kick.

                                                          Genevieve’s Apt. off the Park – NYC – Sun 20 May 79

                                       It’s me laughing and joking and eating a whole box of Entemann’s cookies – and it’s not me. Family. The constant ache of having so little of myself accepted. It’s like being with people like Usher, really – they want such a little piece of you. The worst part is, you get so used to the pain you can’t imagine life without it. Thank God I am usually content to be alone.

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

    Reading it would be like visiting an art gallery.

                 Queen’s Chapel Rd – Tues 22 May 79

                                       That trip helped. I feel better, more focused. My 

    new agent submitted Memory to Putnam who loved it but said they had 

    just published a book with incest theme!  Goddamn it all to hell. But theirreaction cheered me up – they didn’t say anything about choppy, episodic, incomprehensible motives, etc.  So maybe I’m a real novelist and not just a bad poet hungry for money. Making plans for The Lives of the Dancers–

    – a poem for each one. Fun. More fun than novelizing with such a hideous plot –

    – can’t seem to get my people out of the airport.

                                        Write a haiku BECAUSE THEY’RE EASY. Relief.

    Harness UP – ON WEARING A BRA

    Two kinds of clothes –

    Comfortable and un:

    Two viewpoints:

    Supportive and –

                                        Fasting again today. So horribly fat right before my period

     it would not surprise me to go into labor onstage. Apparently no one else has noticed I have lost my waist.  Have agreed to see Devon in Boston next month. 

    I am going off birth control so we will see what happens. I feel sure I can get him into bed. But never telling him he is a father? Can I pull it off? I might try. 

    Getting past block in my novel by having different characters tell different parts of the story.

                                        I give up on Pamela Hansford Johnson. Holiday Friend is The Perfectionists all over again– but not as good. 

                 Party Castle 12:35 AM – Fri 25 May 79

                                        Funny how it all comes together sometimes. Dancing tonight has been ecstasy – is it the fasting? I am cutting my schedule at the Plush Palace – the audience here is so much better. They are really quiet and intense. Probably because it’s so close to the FBI. They get the same relaxation from watching us that you get from a tank of tropical fish. Except of course with that sexual frisson reminding you you’re alive. Read Laura Hobson’s The Tenth Month – pretty shocked by a doctor who would prescribe Nembutal to a pregnant woman. But that’s the way they were back in the Dark Ages. 

                                        Now I’m on Highsmith’s Edith’s Diary – which is 

    fabulous – the review in New York Times was downright immoral. Books should not be reviewed by the stylistically tone deaf. Reviewer should be open to many styles –  I don’t think that’s too much to ask.

    Went on stage tonight glittering with body jewelry – big stones. Big tips. FBI very supportive of the warrior look.

  • Inspired Pleasure – the dance diaries of Alysse Aallyn

                                        11:40 AM Mon 26 Mar 79

                                        Ezra Pound’s last years (Nigel Stock) make very 

    depressing reading. I wish “survivors” seemed more enviable, considering the alternative is Death at the Height of Glory. The good news about a long life is, you can accumulate quite a body of work – the bad news is your instrument 

    becomes increasingly deranged. 

                                        Dreadful schedule this week – 5 shifts including one double.  Present of $2500 “house gift” from Dad means I don’t need to accept

     but I would have to quit and I’m not ready. These are the best places to dance with the best managers – I don’t want to get thrown into some of the compromising situations I’ve heard tell of. Plus they just let me up and leave for vacation whenever I want. Can’t play that hole card too often.

                                                 Spent all day wandering the mazes of literature – look at Lillian Hellman – surely she’s getting very bizarre. She’s a “history fixer” and no one wants artists doing that. 

                                                 3:20 PM Tues 27 Mar 79

                                                 A bad day doesn’t make a bad week thank God.  

    Got drunk with Maureen last night, (too much sherry in our tea) but with careful diet and lots of sleep I bounce back. Anne Lindbergh’s Flower & Nettle a great improvement on previous volumes. Tantalized by Rosamond Lehmann, who ought to be my next project. Pledge:  I AM HAVING ALL MY HAIR CUT OFF MAY 1!!! 

                                                 Starlight 8:30 PM Thurs 29 Mar 79

                                                 Joselle plies me with Chablis – I succumb to get her to spill her secrets – but her secret seems to be she’s thinking of turning lesbian and her gaze on me seems somewhat fixed.  Or am I imagining things? 

    Two glasses of wine on an empty stomach and I’m a goner. God knows I long for the flesh – those “brown motherly furrows” as Plath calls them are in need of plowing. Would I have to exclaim over her body the way men exclaim over me? 

     It just doesn’t sound fun. If only she were less female. More boyish. Order a cheeseburger to snap myself back to reality. This is a dangerous world to be hungry in.

                                                 Reading Randall Jarrell’s Third Book of Criticism. 

    I enjoy him enormously.

                                                 11PM – Shank of the evening.  I am dancing superbly but tips very bad. The approach of tax time or are they simply seeing too much of me? The latter, no doubt.  Went to the health club today but I won’t renew when my experimental month is up.  I was seduced by their sauna and masseur but need something closer to home.

                                                 Starlight 2:30 PM Sat 31 Mar 79

                                                 Hot day – sun behind clouds – the sky is violet and the air intense – looks like rain, but I’m overflowing with joy and luck and good fortune.  Just ate an enormous chef’s salad and two cups of coffee. 

    All I needed for returned confidence was one big tipper and a non-suicidal letter from Devon. (He’s been depressed.)  

    Obviously, it will never work out between us.  We would be in competition each trying to get the other to play caretaker. I need too damn much care.  It would be madness. Discuss this over vod & tons with Avril. Invited back to Mulberry Island, but also got a card to the Bullets opening (which I prefer.) Reading The World, the Flesh and Father  Smith. Dancing very well – what a pity I’m “sculpting in snow”. Feeling “in tune” opens a clear lens to the soul.

                                        9PM Tues 3 Apr 79

                                        Buying spree with A.  Bought a pile of silk shirts and a satin whipcord coat & skirt (black). Immortal piece I should still be wearing thirty years from now. We had a lovely lunch at Third Edition – reminiscing about our lovers’ bodies – what we treasure most – I vote for the flock of milky-white scars above Devon’s buttocks. Aaah. Intimations of glorious, irreproducible mortality.  I am also irate at not hearing from Usher and even more irate at myself for being irate.  He is obviously a no go so what’s wrong with me? I think I may be like those explorers expiring for lack of vitamin C. 

    Need to force myself to eat raw blubber just to save my life.  It’s a wonder anyone survives.

                                        Reading 3rd vol David Garnett’s autobiog – what an unlikeable human being.

                                        Car pooped out on us will cost $250 to fix.

                                        Starlight 9:15 PM Wed 4 Apr 79

                                        I hate wasted days.  Drove all the way to White Flint Mall to pick up my rhinestone glasses – a pin broke on them – and all the way back. Grrr.

                                        Not liking Robt Frost’s letters and Christina Stead’s House of Nations is even harder to get into. But things looking up on diet front.  Fewer binges. 5 days of rain, and a power mogul in the audience who keeps instructing me on how to please him.  I curtsy down to the floor very gracefully and pretend I don’t speak English.

                                        Starlight 8:25 PM Sun 8 Apr 79

                                        Burst of freedom rescues me from inertia. My best moments are intense enjoyment of the present: must write and examine everything. Revel in my own growth – including comprehension that Usher Glayne can’t be my crutch.  Lost 4 lbs eating apples and feel good – refuse to take a guy’s tip because he licked his lips at me.  Yuck.  

                                  Jervaze came into the bar last night, dragging his 

    shame-filled self across the floor.  I couldn’t resist suggesting he come home with me – he was so excited – love poured 

    out of him like a dizzying force.  I browsed greedily on his beautiful body. It was like plugging into an electric current.  He moaned, “You’re so good to me” but when my orgasm came it was just a little pop –  uncorking a bottle of stale champagne.  So goodbye to all that.  Masturbation is really a lot less trouble. 

                                        Out to China Syndrome movie tomorrow with Avril. 

    John Middleton Murray is a blubbering blabster. Usher sent me a poem entitled “I dream of starting off with you” which was obviously not written for me. Took her name out and slammed my name in. What could go wrong? What a pity we leave choice up to men when they so clearly have no idea what they are doing.

            3:30 PM – Dumbarton Oaks – Sat 14 Apr 79

                                        Enjoying a day of full sun. Beautiful carved stone bench –

     – azaleas in full bloom – peace. Woke up determined to finish taxes – offices 

    closed! When can people go if they work all week? Beats me. But it would take more than a late filing to bother me – feel blissful.   Approaching Plath from the question of her reputation. Determined to write and to learn to see movies alone. 

                                        Last night awful sets with Zach – I don’t like his new band. 

    He couldn’t seem to play guitar and sang off-key. Promises of a future have taken his present away. My heart went out to him – ordered a bottle of champagne to cheer him up. Late dinner – I ordered catfish in a spirit of adventure (not good) he ordered what he always has – chicken & fries.

    He told me about the times he’s been mugged and his belief in magic – I didn’t believe any of it. He was full of insecurities about Usher – I decided to act like we have a relationship to make it easier to get rid of Z later on. He “retaliated” by describing his affair with his friend’s 48 yr old divorced mother back on the coast. Sure, sure. Asked to come home with me. I said no. 

            Plush Palace – Mon 23Apr 11PM

                                        God Malcolm Muggeridge is unpleasant (Jesus

     Rediscovered) and not even Christian.  Makes Waugh look like the author of Sermon on the Mount. Trying to figure out how I would address God: 

    What would I say? 

                                        Beautiful note from Devon saying, “I love you dearly”. 

    Sweet.  The silenter I am the more he adores me. Sent a copy of my Plath essay to Usher – we’ll see what he says. Agent passed along a very flattering rejection on Memory – I am “too much” of a poet!  Since I have just concluded(with Usher’s help) that I am no poet at all this cheered me up enormously.

                                        Airborne today – dancing really well. It’s the fasting. Feel a shimmering force field all around me.

                                        Starlight – 12:45 AM – Thurs 25 Apr 79

                                        Dragging myself around this AM –  my own fault for indulging in Irish coffee and caramel ice cream last night.  2nd anniversary party at the PACIFICA radio station and I thought, That might be fun!  It was a disaster.  I took Avril and we were immediately cornered by the club bore. (I had to give him a fake phone no just to get rid of him.)  

    Plus they charged us for our drinks! Rod was there – tight and prim – probably fearful I would attack him about his nonexistent dance story – I put him at his ease. Left after an hour and Avril and I “drowned our disappointment” in the usual way  (it felt good at the time.) Ross & Tom should be required reading for egomaniacs.

                                        Plush Palace 9 PM Mon 30 Apr 79

                                        Had my hair cut today and dyed platinum blonde – like the color not the cut.  I wanted it all off – she asked to “try something” and if I didn’t like it she would “fix it for free”.  Of course, I don’t like it but I didn’t have the time to stay and have it re-done. I think it’s almost too much trouble to go back – get somebody else to fix it.  Everyone likes color however; I needed a boost.  But it’s not what I pictured – looks like a medieval “bowl” cut to me.  

                                    Fistfight! Guy dragged out of the club in handcuffs. Joselle says too bad; he was such a good tipper.

                                        Feel too old tonight – I obviously need a vacation but the only one I can take is in my own mind.  I love the house but it always needs something. 

                                        I was perched on the edge of celibacy but Jervaze showed up last night. Fabulous sex!  Turned out to be worth it! 2 Hrs (I counted!) Oh, bliss. Reading very bad romantic suspense –  A Relative Stranger. It’s a serious problem that I hate everything popular.

                                        2:30 PM Wed May 2 79

                                        Perfect day at home. Worked on poems listening to Mozart. 

    Got my “medieval bowl” changed to “little boy” haircut – it’s wonderful!  Do nothing to my hair anymore!  Don’t have to wash it, brush it or even look at it!  Of course, I have to deal with all the sobbing men at the clubs. Turns out long hair is a powerful masculine fetish.  I consider pretending I’m a different person – but I have the same old costumes.  New stage name?  Wonder if “Colette” is taken.  Guess I didn’t plan this very well.  

                                        Yesterday overeating so today it’s a fast – only coffee.  Phone keeps ringing I refuse to answer. It’s probably Paz begging me to come in and sub for some dancer who had an onstage breakdown.  Reading Wagenknecht’s “psychograph” of Nathaniel Hawthorne. Interesting.

                                        Sun 6 May 79 -1:50 PM

                                        Avril and I drove to St Michaels yesterday – such a pleasure –

     – I remember sailing into that port.  It’s so beautiful I fantasize about buying a house and “retiring” there.  I tell A, you get the country house, I’ll have the town house we can go back and forth.  She says she does not want to live with her sister FOREVER!  Why not when I’m so perfect?

                                        Delicious lunch of soft-shelled crabs and homemade coconut cream pie. Didn’t get to work till 6:40 and I was the only dancer till 9 PM! Apparently previous dancer unconscious in dressing room and ambulance was called.  Sorry I missed it. Eddy gave me extra $$ but told me I can’t wear my black jade rosary on stage (too many complaints). Too bad – it looks so good with white collar and cuffs.  He says the place has been sold again and we will be getting new management.  Hope it’s not Tony.

                                        Plush Palace – 10:10 PM – Mon May 7 – 79

                                        Would like to break my 2 day fasting record but I got up at 5:30 AM this morning and was just too hungry.  Cucumber sandwiches with lots of pepper on whole wheat bread…mmmmm. Here’s my latest plan –

    – rewrite Secaire and Blood Memory – get pregnant Sept 1 1980, have baby May 81!  Father as yet unknown. Certainly not Jervaze whose family is terrifying. Crazy, huh?  Reading The Restless Journey of James Agee.

                                        Tues 8 May 79 – 4:45 PM

                                        Great day’s work on Secaire.  Not “done” but better.  

    Completely new scene showing why Hank and Nilssa are attracted to each other. 10 P!!! Celebrated by going out to buy new notebooks.  Sniff the paper hungrily.  New lighting at the Palace very bad – guess who came in to audition? Brandy! I told manager she was lying about her age so he wouldn’t hire her.  

    Nobody wants to work with her. She’s a grenade with the pin removed.  

                                     Interesting book by Louis Cassells about the differences between religious faiths.  So far I like Unitarianism best but want to expose my kids to as many different ones as possible and let them choose.  Joselle keeps asking me if she’s going to be in my book. (I’m afraid she thinks I cut my hair for her.)  I start instead a poem beginning “the chaste warrior sleeps only with his prey…” Bad! Sad.

                                        3PM Thurs 10 May 79 – Plush Palace

                                        New manager Jasper comes in. Seems nice. I curtsy very low.  Yesterday fasted till evening – wrote 7 pages – walked dogs then Avril & I saw Truffaut’s Love on the Run and went out to dinner. White pizza with plenty of garlic. Usher is reading at a NJ college – invites me to go with him.  Hmm. Needing a pair of hot pink pants to visit this college in.

                 9:30 PM Fri night 11 May 1979

                                        No hot pink pants. Did find a nice pair of aqua polished cotton jeans and matching high-heeled shoes. Usher phoned and we commiserated about publishing. Avril and I went to see the movie, A Little Romance. Very good. Long walk with dogs, further exploring our new neighborhood. People keep their lawns very tidy around here. Since I refuse to do ovens, windows or lawns, house-pride like this could present a problem. 

    Must hire out.  I’m bored with my job, but it pays the bills so well I don’t think I can make changes till July. But who knows what lies just over the horizon? Reinventing oneself could be the greatest pleasure there is.

                                      Plush Palace – Sat night 12 May 1979 

                                      Another exhausting goodbye with Jervaze.  I wore see-through chiffon bell-bottoms and flowered Qiana shirt – gratified to see they had their effect. He said he will always feel the same about me, always be jealous of the person I marry. I must say I now wish he would just go away. Which he’s supposed to do – off to Alabama.  Again. I am not, shall we say, invited to this on-again, off again wedding. Awww. Feeling emotionally drained – only 30 short hours till I see Usher and I want to be witty and “on.” As opposed to slack-jawed and twitching.

                        Queen’s Chapel – 4:30 PM  Sun  May  13 -79

                                        Dragged Avril to Unitarian church. There was a woman minister. I found the service satisfying enough and the church (River Road) very beautiful. They seem to have a lot going on – discussion groups, plays, theology class. I could be interested if I had the time.  Unfortunately everyone seems old. Could I overcome my misanthropy to go alone?  Remains to be seen.  The church has a bookstore – I bought an interesting book on female contemplatives. I’m contemplating a future as a single parent.  

    Feel a faint hormonal stirring.  (Avril says it’s the house.) Who’s the lucky guy? 

                                      Jervaze would have been perfect if it wasn’t for that alcoholic gene. 

    And I don’t think I could hide a baby from Devon for the rest of his life. Usher probably has some impressive genes along with the vast millions to which he constantly alludes. On the other hand, the kid he does have sounds defective. 

    Need to get clear about his marital status.

                                                          Queen’s Chapel – 9:30 PM  May 15 -79        

                                                          Bad visit to NJ with Usher.  Thank God it wasn’t an overnight.  First he showed up in a Mercedes he described as “the color of Lena Horne’s skin”.  UGH!  Next – brace yourself – he wanted to hide me from his audience!!  Dumped me at an antique bookstore (that part wasn’t a total waste –

     – bought the diaries of Cynthia Asquith) then took me out to an apologetic dinner.  

    I was so annoyed I commanded everything to be set on fire – fondue, oysters, 

    and 2 desserts.  (He chose a very good wine. It was the least he could do.) 

    He didn’t want to talk about his reading – said if I had attended there would have been “too many questions”.  And as artists, aren’t we SCARED TO DEATH of questions?  Aren’t we?

  • Inspired Pleasure – the dance diaries of Alysse Aallyn

                             11PM Starlight Wed 7 Mar 79

                                       Very down night. Only $70 so far. Need $600 to

     keep my bills current. Bryony wailing because the state took her children away.

      Sometimes seems like the pain of the helpless is smothering the world. Tony’s 

    the bouncer tonight and he’s all for letting the men stick their bills down the girls’ G-strings!  No thank you.  Wait till Gentleman Randy hears about this. 

                                                Reading a bad German mystery – the mystery being why he wrote it, how it got published and why I’m reading it.  Fantasizing celebrating spring by getting all my hair cut off. Hmmm. Jean Seberg? Could be sexy. 

                                                Wish I’d brought Kafka’s Letters. Making 

    huge floor pillows for my housewarming party. Longing to sink into classical music & bubble bath, followed by Oleg Cassini sheets & cup of diet cocoa. Having my own house really is a dream come true.

                                                Mon 20 Feb 79 – 12:20 AM

                                       Such a depressing party I got drunk just to be “out” of it.  Avril & Ben making out in a corner all evening. Usher brought me books and a bird of paradise flower, Stockley gave me a beautifully framed tiny drawing of crustaceans –

    but then cancelled that by attempting to corner me all evening. He covers up the soul he doesn’t believe in with a repellant fleshy brutality – life is kill and conquer – 

    – eat or be eaten.  Honestly, now I’m scared of him. Afraid to even argue with him for fear of launching something irreversible. Luckily, he next fastened his lasers on Yvonne. Poor Yvonne. Save yourself, I should say but was relieved to be off target. 

    Plan to ask Paz to schedule me for just two nights. On a self-dare, 

    I sent my poem about Rossetti’s model to Usher.  

    LIZZIE SIDDALL: The Woeful Victory

    Be still or I can’t paint you.

    It is evening and

    I almost knew you.  Who are you

    Fair one?  Your mouth is stuffed 

    With poppy hair 

    Fate coils between your breasts

    A snake –

    Your tongue’s torn out.

    You must be the echo of my thoughts.

    (“I am the motionless cradle.”)

    Your flesh takes fire from my setting sun.

    Can you free me, O Lady of the Sundial?

    My eyes grow dim.

    (“Perfect love’s not found this side of heaven.”)

    I shall paint you vermilion

    Butcher nightingales and use their tongues for brushes

    Melting foil & verdigris

    To the tune of Canterbury bells.

    Stay awhile, Fair one.

    I almost thought you spoke.

    (“I am the face rising from the pool

    to drag the drinker deep.”)

    I will bury you in manuscripts, I will

    Visit when there’s time. Someday

    We might marry, but

    I am not whole, dear lady.

    I am not myself.

    Who are You?

     (“I am thyself. What hast thou done to me?”)

                                                Tues 28 Mar 78

                                                Extraordinary spiritual experience.  A haunting.  Someone standing behind me in the empty house. I turned and no one was there but power only increased.  At first I was afraid – then felt a melting richness of love –

    – coming at me, into me from outside of me.  I realized it was Jesus.  Relief.  Followed by –

    Confidence.

                                                Of course, afterwards I question it all over the place.  

    How could I be so certain?  Maybe just an ordinary haunting by a peculiarly loving ghost?  Maybe a thing in my head?  But I do have that memory of certainty and bliss to cling to.  Very powerful.  It’s out there – somewhere.

                                                Starlight Thu 14 Mar 79 – 10:00 PM

                                                Started out as a very bad night – trying to dance myself exhausted – then some guy tipped me a $50 and I ate an orange and now –

    I feel better. (Feeling so unbearably fat I bought diet pills.  Then “dinner” of cashews and wine.) Finished Prayerbook for a Skeptic – I liked it. Fortunately, I brought along a ton of reading. Had to dump Joyce Carol Oates’ Do With Me What you Will when I became disgusted with zombie heroine. NOT as good as The Hungry Ghosts (but reminiscent of McCarthy’s Groves of Academe.)   I’m in the mood for something different.  Not, however, C.S. Lewis’ The Four Loves which is deeply annoying. Women are “unqualified” to be “true friends”. Isn’t that the “know your place” argument?

                                                Maybe what I need is Thos Merton’s, Seeds of 

    Contemplation.               How to switch the physical into the spiritual – that’s what I can’t figure out.  Sexual longings intense – my body on fire. 

                                           No wonder monks beat themselves. Peace and

     concentration in the dressing room – we are all doing doubles. Yvonne is fine.  She is more than a match for Stockley – saw through him without a problem. She just acts interested in all men regardless. On principle. 

    She says if you want to choose, you’ll have to compare offers. So sensible. 

    Tomorrow a day of cleaning & working in my study.

                                                Sun. 18 Mar 1:50 PM.

                                                Terrible nightmare about Usher Glayne. His face 

    melted showing the skull underneath – two hideous holes of darkness.  The world is fierce, cruel, we are all hobbled. Wake to astonishingly gorgeous day. 

                                             Worked on expanding short story Erin – cleaning away deadwood –

    –  it’s only going to be 30,000 words but the hell with it. Can’t “produce” to “compete”.  Want to find the intrinsic shape buried within. The secret meaning.  Letting it speak for itself makes me happy.

                                                Adoring Pilgrim at Tinker Creek. (Wish I had written it.) 

     Then it’s off to the library á la bicyclette for more theology books to understand my haunting. 

    Apparently lots of people have had it. 

                                           Obviously, I should worry more about Success and the fact that I’m dirt poor but I am interested in a different kind of immortality. 

    I have arranged my life so carefully to do exactly what I want.  

    Seems a shame to ruin it now. 

                                                12:30 PM Mon 19 Mar 78

                                                It’s a problem that I don’t like Usher’s poetry. At least he talks about sperm and chastity so presumably is not yet dead from the waist down. He’s successful and I am not, so criticism from me sounds like sour grapes. I call to thank him for the books he send me; a woman who is probably his wife answers. Should I be embarrassed?  We are NOT having A Thing. So, why?

    Out in the yard with dogs trying to read Teilhard de Chardin.  Hot sun.

                                                Café Rabelais, Wed 21 Mar 79 3:25 PM

                                                Pleasant 3 hr lunch with Usher discussing literature

     – he had to run away leaving me with my coffee. Tried to get me to pretendto be willing to date his friend who is wheelchair bound.  I have a feeling this was the whole point of the lunch. I want to talk about literature, he wants to give me away to his friends. I said No. But couldn’t I just make nice? I said no. 

    I’m not that kind of nice. 

                                           I took revenge by asking if he lives with his wife. 

    He said “sort of”.  Their child is “a problem”.  No one can write within a mile of this child.  (Poor wife. Luckily her life doesn’t matter!)  Usher seemed taken aback by my questions so maybe I won’t hear from him again. 

    Good lunch, though. Very cuisine minceur – lots of different dishes and you don’t feel full afterwards. (Rabelais would have been very disappointed.) I top off my coffee with a glass of blond chartreuse. 

                                     At the Phillips, I saw a Goya that made me want to burst into tears. 

    Note to self: reorganize Courtney entirely around paintings. But which artist would be perfect to express my anti-heroine?

                                        4:20 PM Thurs 22 Mar 79

                                        Today a model for what all days should be.  

    I’ve passed unscathed through the financial hysteria of closing on a house, even have money in the bank.  Sparkling weather; spring is definitely here.

    A day of sunbathing – the first are always the worst – skin a white blubbery mass. 

                                     Reading Kroll’s book on Plath symbols – gives one furiously to think.  She wants to find everything in the poems themselves – and of course – that’s exactly where it all is. Plath controlled by potency symbols.

                                        I am sick of Devon’s letters – he must “shield his eyes against my radiance”.  Come on. I can’t believe he doesn’t want exactly the life he’s got. Always hard for me to believe that one can reject the sprinkles, the cherries, the walnuts on the sundae.  My family always lectured me for being attention-seeking and voracious – so it makes me shy to advance myself into anyone’s purview. Plath seemed prepared to be loved for her accomplishments rather than her being – a scary compromise.

                                        Although I do recognize that I am trying to 

    experience my own “wholeness” through the eyes of another with all 

    the danger that implies. Currently trying to kick my sugar cravings.

                                        11:30 AM Fri 23 Mar 79

                                        More sunbathing – my own skin smells 

    intoxicating to me. Like pool water, like beach sand, childhood. 

    Dixie – “God’s lioness” stretches out beside me, wind ruffling her fur. 

    I write a poem about dogs.

    Sticks

    Peter’s dog

    Went on fetching sticks

    Long after it was dead.

    We’d find them on the stoop

    Arranged In patterns

    Pete would sigh and say

    That’s poor old Monk all right

    Still missing the people games

    Heaven won’t allow

                                        Add it to my ghost story book.

                                        Unexpected tear sheets in the mail from Usher 

    – his reviews of Plath. He says he didn’t think it “professional” to disclose

     that he knew her – that seems unprofessional to me.  Makes his comments seem underhanded: pale. He says diplomatically about my poetry that I’m a “rare being.” Hmmm. 

  • Inspired Pleasure – the dance diaries of Alysse Aallyn

                     Party Castle – 3 Feb 79 11:30 AM

                                         We did it – moved into the Queens Chapel Road house though nothing is organized yet.  My study is the nicest room in the house – a whole wall of huge windows – sunlight always blazing in.   I covered the walls with my pictures and they fit perfectly – leaving one wall empty for a big corkboard.

                                        Guess who showed up to help us move?  Ryder! 

    He brought his “girlfriend”,  plus a huge bucket of Kentucky Fried Chicken and a large bottle of Irish Mist. Girlfriend a shocker – little nursy mousebird of a woman!   After all the hell he gave me, this is who he ends up with.  

    His sexual revolution is over – single shot fired.

                                         Went to see Corio play at Childe Harolde –  he acted surprised to see me – introduced me to his date, Bev.  I didn’t feel Bev is much of a threat – Avril says, “She’s a hot water bottle.”  I said, “I’m not giving up”. Zachary didn’t help move – so when he showed up for sex I sent him away.

     I was really annoyed – his excuse was he “wasn’t up to it.” Who is? Fortunately,

     I have strong muscles. Carried a gold velvet sofa practically on my head.

                 Mon 5 Feb 79

                                         Moments of pure joy while painting my bedroom shelves.  

    So adoring Sylvia Plath. Closer Look at Ariel & Letters.  Her letters burst with plans, lists & preparations – like this diary. That’s how it goes.  Feeling capable, independent – maybe strong enough to even rewrite Gift. There is pleasure to be had even at the start of a journey with no apparent end in sight. Back on my Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner diet. Feel house will be ready Sunday. Party?

                 8 Feb 79 Plush Palace

                                        Surprise today – Usher Glayne came in to see me 

    dance. Curtsied low and slow. I felt intimidated by him but he said he liked poem I sent. Struggling with Boston Adventure – Me no likey.  

    I’m on p. 300 of Gift and if there’s a novel in this mess I can’t find it.

                 8PM Mon night 12 Feb 79

                                         Snowed all night – didn’t feel guilty about calling the Plush Palace and saying I couldn’t make it.  Used the time well – finished my study.  It is perfect. Bedroom almost done – must unscramble my jewelry to put it away. Great having laundry in-house – I am washing all my costumes. 

    I give up on Boston Adventure. To think a critic compared her to the Brontës. 

    Well they did have under-functioning ovaries and the English language in common. Marc called – he will be in town and wants to have lunch at the Capitol. Which I would love to do.  Told him I took his advice and bought a house.  Roll my eyes while he complains about his horrible life investing other people’s money.

                                       Maureen is never here so we hardly see her. And 

    she’s very neat, so far sharing a bathroom is no problem. Recovering 

    from my bout of restlessness over Gift, I managed two pages. But it was too hot to work up here last night (I can’t seem to control the temp.) Tomorrow buy fan. 

    Usher called.  He wants to be “friends”.

                                                Queens Chapel Rd – Wed 14 Feb 79

                                                At last a comment from an agent who likes Blood Memory (latest incarnation of Gift).   We now have one agent who likes it, one who didn’t, one close relative who likes it and two who didn’t, one lover who likes it (and two who didn’t.)  I wish she would start a “sell job” with me but she’s just “dying to talk with me about it.”  In other words, she wants to know, how crazy ARE you? Sadly, it depends on the day of the week. 

                                       Avril just phoned – invited me downstairs for an omelet.

     I said no. Fasting today. (I like being somewhere the kitchen is not.) Later we’ll go out and try to find a pair of emerald pants for me to see my new agent in. 

    This is one of the ways Avril and I make do with living together – we respect each other’s privacy. 

                                       Yesterday at work who should be second dancer but Yvonne!  We had so much fun catching up. She’s still dancing at Mother Joe’s, but needs all the work she can get.  I feel a perverse satisfaction in the fact that even amazingly talented, flaming beauties can’t seem to struggle out of life’s junk pile. Her ex, whom she quit dancing for, went out with an “all nude” dancer the night after they broke up!  A friend of Ryder’s came into the bar – 

    I pretended not to recognize him.  I’m sure he’ll be running back with the story. 

     Dreamed I had open lesions in my face and you could see right through them. 

     Reading Greene’s The Human Factor. 

                                       2 PM 15 Feb 79 – Thurs

                                       Sleeting out. Feeling restless the way I do before I write a new book.  Hauled out Bride & Wolves for a rewrite – tremendously impressed with my own talent!  Development always was my problem (as in life). 

    Greene’s Human has an odd, unfinished feel.  Reviews did not prepare me for it in the least. I think they reviewed Greene rather than his book.  More impressed by Margot Ruddock’s letter to Yeats in Ah, Sweet Dancer (which could be retitled Dirty Old Man.) She compares the “fickleness” of men to the fickleness of God! Can’t blame her if God insists on being male.  Read Howatch’s Call In the Night as a purgative. Going to see Country Wife tonight at U. Of Md. 

    Usher sent me strange Valentine collage of Playboy photos, couples kissing, etc. 

    Avril says “I give up on him.  It’ll be a miracle if he can ever say what he wants.”

                                                Starlight Sat 18 Feb 79 – 11:10 AM

                                                 Waiting for my bangs to curl at the start of a 

    double. Had a nightmare where Devon performed marriage ceremony between me and some other guy!  Right up to the end I kept thinking he was going to “rescue” me.  Naturally he did not.

    “Psychic” about him as usual, I  got a letter saying he’s busy with this year’s Ladies Ski Team meaning he’s got 12 girls passionately in love with him and he plans to take his time to savor the field. 

    Vengeful poem results:

    Cloverleaf

    Some roads lead nowhere;

    They’re my favorites.

    I held my breath while

    You drew my face in

    Blinding strokes 

    Creamed my mouth with curling lines

    Destroyed one picture; then another.

    You

    Left at dawn while I

     Ran in circles, calling

    Raging, spending

     Nights & time

    Without you,

    No blue thigh guards

    My sleeping heart while you – alertly

    Gauge the coming storm.

    Trapped in cloverleaves , I’m

    Sentenced to perform

    School figures endlessly

    Disputed by a myriad angry judges.

    Every face I paint 

    Resembles you; balked by

     Our enervating past

    Of unlived lives I

    Open up the chilly ruffles 

    Of my breasts

    To beauty; yours 

    And mine and your

    Strange spine’s;

     A body so much lighter

    Than the mountain that you loved –

     The course you learned

    Much better than you learned me.

    Overconfident as always

    I tell myself that

     you’ll come back &

    Float across the powdered snow

    In bird-winged silence –

    all-enveloping

    Unrepentant

    Lost and frozen like my heart.

                                                2 PM – Jervaze came into the club!  Ducked away momentarily from his fiancée.  Glad he didn’t bring her in as I am having my period and feeling particularly fat and grumpy. My poor body’s been unloved for a month now and is falling to pieces.  Still it was an enormous pleasure to see him. Someone for whom I apparently remain The Holy Grail.

                                       Tues. 6:45 PM  20 Feb 79

                                       Struggling against a vast undifferentiated depression.  

    Going to treat it with diet and meditation.  Reading Tapie’s Richelieu and Louis XIII.

     History a great cure for all who feel unlucky.  Even being an aristo was no picnic. Avril accepted for both of us to go to Aunt Frederica’s party on the shore where she’s rented a house.  Hitchman’s bio of Dorothy Sayers very bad book. Sayers wasn’t “in love” with Lord Peter, she was him!  

    Will-to-power and dream logic.  Trying to “bind” her two halves together when she made him marry Harriet. Had to re-read Sayers’ wonderful 

    Unnatural Death (my favorite) to get the taste out of my mouth. Ah.  Such pleasure.  Painting till I’m exhausted then long walks with dogs through pretty Queens’ Chapel Manor.  Haven’t voyeured a neighborhood this satisfying since Chevy Chase. 

                                                Starlight Wed 21 Feb 79 – 11:45 AM

                                       Going through a phase where work feels like 

    being beaten. Think it’s because no one is caring for my body. Will warmer 

    weather turn the tide? I love my house but Marc Kramer is wrong – home ownership NOT the cure-all promised.  The only difference I can see is I can no longer mess around financially. Nose permanently to grindstone.

                                                Reading John Dickson Carr’s Blind Barber.  It is so awful.  Why does anyone like him? Pass my time sewing red rhinestone buttons to my pink satin blouse. Yesterday clutch cable snapped – pedal became a dummy.  Fortunately I was right NEXT to a gas station. Had to take a taxi home. Damn Fiat.  Financial nightmare – more doubles to get my car out of hock?  Turns out it’s not expensive.  A. gives me ride to work, Eddy gives me ride to car.

    Leaning heavily on inner life. Efforts to live “outwardly” all seemingly result in hideous failure. Shopping list: pasties, carpet tape, stockings, cotton balls, liquid plumber, string bikini.

                                                Sat. 24 Feb 79

                                       Devon turned 30 today. Great house party at bungalow Aunt F rented on Mulberry Island.  Interesting artist named Stockley there with an exciting mind but unworkable body. Fun to talk to though. He wears a hard hat and welds sculpture. Avril asked out by handsome redhead named John.  

    Fingers crossed.  Jervaze called to say he broke off his engagement.  Uh oh. 

    Macmillan says my novel “not their cup of tea”.  Very sneery.

                                                Starlight Fri 2 Mar 79 – 2 PM

                                       Bought a pair of yellow overalls to write in.  Hadn’t realized how thin I’ve gotten – I look fantastic.  House closing magically lifts depression when it cost $900 less than I expected.  I was fully ready to write these nice people a rubber check – Thank God that’s not necessary.

                                       Instead of wasting away in debtor’s prison, I get to compare myself to Sylvia Plath.  What if in a panic, I married a party boy who fails to cherish The Real Me? Wait, I did that. But I didn’t stay to wrestle with him and now I’m free.  

    Could be much, much worse. Hang in there and go it alone. See it as a strength. 

    Trying to apply for grants. There’s an art form all by itself. Avril’s redhead working out nicely.  I don’t like his comments about his mother though.  Is satisfactory sex possible with men who hate their mothers? Could be massive Red Flag.  

                                                12:35 PM Tues Mar 6 – 79

                                       Sit down to chat with diary over lunch – can’t eat 

    because scolding letter from agent gave me a stomachache. Didn’t I know it was 

    unethical to allow several agents to consider me at the same time? I do see it’s a very beneficial for the agents to drag this process out so they end up doing all the choosing and not you. But since she’s the one I want I can’t say so. 

    Play dumb, promise to Be Good in Future and throw my affairs entirely into her hands and let her speak for me. Silence frees the artist from “servile 

    bondage to the world”, says Sontag. 

                                       Letter from Devon saying he really respects me for buying a house (the opposite of what Mom thought would happen.  He says it makes me more interesting. Or he’s just less scared I will show up on his doorstep.)  Also, he says “it’s been a bad ski season” and asking particularly about the men in my life, closing, ”I love you Alysse. Our relationship is the most important thing to me.” 

                                       Whew! What are the odds that every girl on that ski team would turn out to be a lesbian?  Or were they chilled by his aura of untouchable purity? Most girls would consider it a challenge but some lack the stamina necessary to defrost him. Still, they’re all out of their minds not to give him a whirl I must admit. Interesting how very much we each fear the other’s loss.

  • Inspired Pleasure – the Dance Diaries of Alysse Aallyn

                 Tues 16 Jan 79

                                        Feeling upside down with a chance to get right side up. A call from the real estate agent – we can move into the Queens’ Chapel Road house Feb 1 if we want to because that’s when they’ll be out. We’d only have to pay them one-month rent. A and I looked at each other and immediately said “yes”!   Woohoo!  Rushed off to Wendy’s for celebration dinner – note we chose a cheap place. It will be that way from now on.  Called Mom and Dad in Trinidad to tell them.  Dad sounded very dejected and gloomy like we are completely crazy and certain to be old maids on his tab forever now.

                                        Sunday Zachary and I went to Ellicott City. We were coming out of Cocoa Lane (he paid) when we met an old friend of Zachary’s –

     – Corio – singer for the Bills Blues Band. Gorgeous. I stuttered and quivered like an infant.  I may have to do something about this powerful attraction.  

    He gave me his card.  Avril listens to call-in shows all the time and she says women are sick of being penalized for making the first move. Men say they “want it” but usually that’s an absolute lie.  So how can I make this guy think he’s making the first move? Puzzler.  Z needed to score some dope so we parted company.   Corio is playing Childe Harold’s next month so maybe I will see him there.

                 Plush Palace 11:15 PM

                                         Two doubles in two days.  My father’s right, I’m off my head.

     Can’t keep doing this to myself. Drive from one club to the other in full makeup –

    – wearing only a gold lamé cover-up in rush hour traffic. God knows what the drivers think I do for a living but I can imagine.

    Ronnie says Jervaze was in asking for me!  Alvera dancing tonight – she says I’m her favorite person to dance with.  Sigh.  Feels like home.

                                        Famous poet – Usher Glayne – came in tonight – I 

    recognized him from party at the Folger Shakespeare Library (we both read). 

    Shyly introduced myself.  He gave me his card told me to send him something. 

    Who would expect to see a beautiful man like this in a sleazy trap like the Plush Palace?  Sent him my Byron poem.

    HAVING SEX WITH LORD BYRON

    or

    “Or, if you can’t have love, you can always have relatives”

    Lord Byron took his lady on the sofa

    Before the wedding dinner;

    He considered sex a “hostile act” and

    Liked to get it over with.

    Afterwards both parties sued for rape.

    “Poor me”, quoth his lordship,

    “Nobody’s been so ravished since the Trojan War.”

    Some truth there was; the stampede

    Of countesses was considerable.

    This poet who fell upon chambermaids

    Like a “thunderbolt”

    Confounded all by falling in love with

    Foolish Gussie, his half-sister.

    Ain’t that the way;

    Overwhelmed by choice, people cherish

    That forced card.

                                        Reading Crazy Sundays about Fitzgerald in Hollywood.

     Ten days till we move into new house.   Need sleep badly. Maybe buy a Quaalude from Maureen.

                 Castle – Fri Jan 26- 79 –5:30 PM

                                        Halfway through my double – pacing myself – still 

    feel fine. Reading Published in Paris. Obnoxious guy in tonight calls himself Spewey Suckman – says he knows Zachary. No I do not wish to spend my evening chatting – but he does tip well.  Discovered that my phone’s been accidentally unplugged for days so I fantasize about all these men – 

    Jervaze, Usher Glayne, Zachary, Don trying to reach me.  Maureen very excited about moving in with us – A and I each get 2 bedrooms (a bedroom and a study) and she gets one (but it’s a big one).  She and I will have to share abathroom upstairs (there’s two on the first floor) but we’ll survive.  Just had the most fascinating conversation about sex with Roulette. 

                                        If I hadn’t drunk two glasses of wine I’d understand it better, but if I hadn’t drunk two glasses of wine I wouldn’t be having it in the first place. She wants to discuss the clitorises of bisexual females –

    – she’s convinced they’re bigger. I really couldn’t say. 

                                        Jervaze is getting married – that’s the latest – his brother set it up – so he brought in the bottle of wine and we’re all taking swigs. That’s my excuse for drinking on the job.  “Long-time girlfriend from Alabama.”

    I suppose this is my fault for being so discouraging about him living with me. We are just at different stages, I guess.  I wished him well.  Cross him off my list (sigh.) Feel this leaves my sexual eggs bouncing around in a single basket – very unsafe place for them, in my experience.  Avril and I toured our house.  I hadn’t fully appreciated the yucky white paneling but the carpets are good and the place is spotlessly clean. Kitchen huge, yard very nice (gas grill and “workshop”.)  Exciting!  My bedroom and study painted lime and emerald green with matching shag carpet.  I can work with that.

                 Mon 29 Jan 79 Castle 7:30 PM

                                        J. came by. Kind of broke my heart he was so loving and tender with me.  He said he wanted to come Wed and help us move.  Nice of him.  

    Zachary’s also coming. That could be fun. J. says his fiancée feels I’m “no threat to their relationship.”  She must be from another planet. But possibly I can control myself.  It’s always dangerous to tell me I can’t have something.

                                        Old home week for boyfriends.  Marc Kramer called and said his “Official Girlfriend” found my valentine and “got upset”.  In my recollection it wasn’t very incriminating. Avril and I trying to scrape together $120 to pay for oil in fuel tank – its always the bills you don’t expect that sink you. Tonight I’m working with Gaysha, Indonesian law student, and Phoebe. Don came in wearing a Bill Blass suit. Boring crowd. I’m wearing my feathers for fun – got one $40 tip.  I think changing costumes helps keep the crowd awake. The really drunk ones think I am a different dancer they haven’t tipped yet.  

    Tasha came in on her night off.  Her boyfriend drives a dump truck.  She wanted to show off her new flowing weave, rabbit coat and picture of her Eldorado.  He also has flying hair and a fur coat. They are a pair.