Alysse Aallyn

Tag: #Dance

  •              Mon 18 Dec 78 – Plush Palace 6:30 PM

                                        Horrible day. Everything that can go wrong has. 

    Mailing off mss wildly expensive.  Drove Avril around because the Gremlin is in the shop again. Reading Bodyguard of Lies – history having its usual soothing effect.  (Everything much worse for everybody else.) It looks like I will have to work two jobs in Jan to pay for this house.

    Maureen the costume designer wants to rent a room in our house – that would help.  She wouldn’t be a problem – getting a masters in textiles at U. of M so not the usual flaky personality that finds itself onstage. Concluded I really have to break up with Z. It won’t be hard – just stop seeing him. 

                                        One good thing did happen – I was lying in bed at 

    1:30 AM nodding off over Bodyguard – phone rang. I almost didn’t answer it – how could it be anything good – but I thought it might be Avril with some emergency. It was Jervaze! He’s coming back. He’s been offered “crew leader” position in his old job at the Pentagon with a $5,000 bump.  He wants to celebrate by taking me out – we can go to Clyde’s where we partied for his birthday last year.  I hung up feeling good – 

    until I thought this will give me a reason to give up Buck. There’s no way Jervaze won’t find out about him. Ugh. Confrontations. Unless I can keep J out of club? Doesn’t seem possible that he is off the sauce. Must make sure he gets a place of his own – he will be living with his brother to start with. He sounded sober, I’ll say that for him.

                 Plush Palace Tues night 19 Dec 78 – 7:30 PM

                                        Wiped out my savings account to pay bills – well, 

    that’s what it’s for.  We got the Queens Chapel house!  Target date for the move is March 1. Avril  and Maureen very excited. (It really is huge. 5 beds, 3 bathrooms, divideable into 3 suites. Perfect. Huge kitchen, dining room and fenced in yard.) I contemplate writing a book of poems called The Lives of Dancers.  Trouble is, I’d have to tone it down to make it believable. Got one poem already – Impure Women.

    IMPURE WOMEN

    Between my breath and your breath

    Beneath the phallic philanthropic statues on

    The volcanic dragstrip of my city

    The wounded in the scorched earth policy

    Of love

    Muster, linger, await

    Embodiment.

    Pills to make their hearts race faster have

    Stopped their faces dead as clocks

    That witnessed crimes unspeakable

    To mothers versed in tabloid gore.

    Who will bring them

    Absolution now that I am gone?

    In the fresh wounds of a

    Seconal summer

    The stopped children meet

    And kiss.

                                        Is it the approach of Christmas that’s bringing all 

    the old boyfriends back to me like elephants to a boneyard? Ryder

    called. Marc Kramer refers to me his “dream girl” and can’t get me out of his mind and we’ve been out what – three times?  Buck gave me my present at the club – he looked adorable – bath goodies. 

    Don-the-Patent-Lawyer who’s been hanging around the club lately asked me out for New Year’s eve.  I had to refuse because Merrill and husband will be in town but I told him to try later.  He seems interesting –

    – like to get to know him better. Mature. Always trolling for someone presentable to take Home to Mom.

                 Boston to Rockland shuttle 11:45 AM Fri Dec 22

                                         Thank God I brought this diary in my purse. Bad flight feels like Week 7 of the flu and I need something to take my mind off stomach. 

    Love people-watching at the Downeast Gate – there’s a novel in that all by itself. 

    This flight goes straight up the coast.  Avril is sleeping in the co-pilot’s seat – let’s hope she doesn’t have to assume the controls.  She is trying to get a march on the insomnia she always gets around parents.  We just missed Genevieve and Brett – they put 2 planes on this flight and they must be on the other one.

                 Christmas Day

                                        Enmeshed in a family that’s not even close to changing age old patterns. Listening to Christmas music by the Oberlin Choir and roasting chestnuts. As always, food preparations take a disproportionate amount of time –

    – one might as well just surrender and become a restaurant prep chef.  

    Family “scene” caused this time by me – I objected to Dad making the two older daughters executors – I guess that makes me and A “executees”? He says you can’t have four executors.  A likely story. Well I felt I had to lodge a formal protest but of course it didn’t change a thing.

                 Plush Palace – midnight – Fri 29 Dec 78

                                         Merrill and Julian came to watch me dance. I think 

    they were interested. Don The Lawyer came and sat at their table – he behaved himself.  Good evening for tips. Don asked me out Wed – I explained I have a lot of demands on my time – just about to double my working schedule to buy this damn house  – so it doesn’t look good.  He passed that test by taking this news calmly. Having a sister makes me a Real Person at least.

                                          Catching up on dancers – Jerrilee’s  pregnant, 

    Fatima’s new boyfriend  is obviously an ethnic gangster. (Armenian I’m guessing.)  Jerrilee tried dancing at a club in DC where the girls “make lots of money” but just in tips – they have no salary. Rotten. I need extra hours but won’t audition there – prefer the protections offered by The Great Commonwealth of Virginia.

                 Plush Palace – 7:30 PM Tues 2 Jan 79

                                        Horrifying letter from Scott Meredith demanding money to read my novel.  His form letter didn’t acknowledge mine in which I said I was already the author of one book but went on and on about “unpublished writers new to the business.”  They obviously didn’t even read  my letter.  

    My father said,  “Maybe he knows what he’s doing since he’s Norman Mailer’s agent” but I wrote back and said non merci.  Auditioned at The Country Fair – they offered me $100 each three x a week.  Call for my schedule.  So that’s set. They have a good stage plus a barre and a pole.  

    Haven’t seen a barre since Shalimar.

                                        Zachary unfortunately back from New York and in a mood to party. Claims to have provided drugs to SNL.  Reads my novel and says it’s not commercial enough.  I’m sure he’s right, which doesn’t cheer me up at all.  Says it’s too brief – needs development which is also probably true.  Trying to write a poem about funerals called Treading Pasture.  Bad, bad, bad.  Reading Tillie Olsen’s Silences and that’s not cheering me up either.

                 Party Castle 11:15 AM Mon 8 Jan 79

                                        I think I like this place better than Plush Palace or 

    Country Fair. The dancers are totally uninterested in their jobs – they are all busy being college students, musicians and models – they rush in, rush out, spend their time studying and on the phone and offering me cash to finish their sets.  Fine with me. It’s very restful not having to make friends.  I called J’s brother – he’s due Thurs.  Probably the worst thing about this place is the commute – I need to take Rock Creek Parkway and sometimes traffic goes one way and sometimes it goes the other way. An unwary person could end up in a head-on collision. 

                                        The stage is way better than Plush Palace but the dressing room far worse – a miniature chamber behind the potato bins – très très très Colette.  With me tonight are Phoebe, ex-stewardess with a degree in languages and Tasha, very silent black fashion model.  She is gorgeous.  Costumes are not big here – the idea is to wear one g-string all night – pasties small as possible. 

    Contac really works – has totally drained my sinuses but also made me very thirsty – I am drinking gallons of water which I am afraid will make me visibly sweat. (Then pasties slide off and the woman from the Alcohol & Tobacco Task Force rushes forth with ticket.) 

    Got my MS back from Scott Meredith.  Zachary came to see me dance in 

    the new club. We had a tender moment on how tough and insensitive the world is – he is having a bitching time with his new band – wants to go solo but feels that will never get anywhere. The truth is it’s tough to go it alone.  

    Everybody thinks Gift is “unfinished’ – which – horrors – means I have to do more. The dog to her vomit. Absolutely NOT fun. 

                                        I want to start something totally, totally new.  I suppose tolerating all this barfing and re-barfing is what separates the sheep from the goats – but which do I want to be?  Sheep? Goat? Spare me the “fun” of wandering around blindfold trying to imagine what you are touching followed by the Inevitable Disillusionment of taking it off and seeing you’re locked in the Same Old Basement. 

                                        I think Buck has found another girlfriend. I am rather relieved to be let so painlessly off the hook – of course I miss the great parts of our relationship. It was starting to get unmanageable along with everything else. At least with Zachary I can level with him about my life. Tonight’s reading: Margaret Millar whether I like her or not – and I don’t like her. 

                                        Ordered a book on depression through the mail.  Need all the help I can get.  GiGi came in tonight – probably to gloat over my exhausted dancing. Even people who love it inevitably do too much. She’s enjoying being a trophy wife. She says.

  • Inspired Pleasure – the dance diaries of Alysse Aallyn

                 Mon 13 Nov 78

                                        Busted, wasted day. Avril called to borrow $90 so she can pick up el Diablo from Courtesy Motors – fortunately I had it so we went to bank, then car dealer.  Then I tried to get an oil change but they don’t do Fiats. Took long enough to tell me they don’t have the right wrenches. Real estate agent phoned 

    to say I qualify for special FHA loan.  I had to call my landlord because apparently I don’t have heat.  

                                        Avril is having lots of trouble with Brady who is alternately aggressive and suicidal. I think he is more trouble than he’s worth but admit he has very pretty, very long, long thighs. He and Buck went to high school then trade school together – Buck exhibits a grisly picture of them at their prom with their dates. Brady’s date is his soon to be ex-wife. Buck was also B’s best man but I was spared those photos.

                                        Zachary asked me out next Fri night but I’d rather be with Buck – but if he doesn’t ask me in time I’ll tell him I’m ”going out with the girls.” 

    That’s what he tells me he does; “goin’ out with the guys” –  so presumably this is an OK excuse. If he says what girls I’m in a bit of a pickle. But I’m a writer – 

     I‘ll invent some. It can’t be anyone he knows. Fortunately, he has no idea what a hermit I really am.

                                        Still stuck in the childhood of my novel. Can’t wait for them to grow up. Re-read Le Ble en Herbe which helped a lot. (Aaaahhhhh…

    Colette!)  Off to Crown Books with A – then White Flint Mall for Christmas shopping – had coffee at The Perfect Cup. Nice outing.  I bought wonderful rhinestone cat’s eye glasses.  Saw Bergman’s Autumn Sonata – moving. 

                 Mon 27 Nov 78 – 1:35 PM

                                        Time to write in this neglected diary while waiting to have my snow tires mounted. This threatens to blow my entire day. They also had to replace a fuse that apparently blew in the middle of a rainstorm so that my wipers stopped working. 

                                        Visit with Mom and Dad very touchy. (They are staying with Peter’s mother Rita and everyone’s slightly angry I’m not dating him and I can’t narc on his Secret Relationship.)  Mom casually accepted an

     invitation for all of us to go out to dinner on a night I was going out with Zachary, so I said I would have to invite him and got a tirade on my thoughtlessness. Then I pointed out she was the thoughtless one assuming I didn’t have any plans. She apologized, I apologized.  It blew over. 

                                        Then Avril had the nerve to ask Rita if she could 

    smoke – Mom exploded just as if it were her house. (Rita said No. She’s trying to quit.)  M & D piled on me –  I’m insane to contemplate buying a house – even if the mortgage would only cost what rent already costs. 

    Their real objection is that I might “choose wrong” – somehow encumber myself with a property that will make me even less attractive (if that were SOMEHOW possible) to A Decent Man. Not even dragging in Marc Kramer’s sacred name as Advisor helped at all. 

                                         Dad did come see a few houses with us. (We’ve seen 16 so far.) He had to admit it isn’t a bad deal as long as I can get that FHA loan. Zachary behaved very well around M and D – the “Official Boyfriend” –

    – but of course he owed me. Fortunately the evening was over before they could find out too much about him (or he offered them drugs) so his cover wasn’t blown.

                                        Conversation at dinner very boring.  Psychology 101.  

    “Why don’t people say what they want?” “Why don’t people try to get what they want?” “Why do people lose interest in what they say they want?” (Rita’s going through her third divorce.)  Since no one seems the least bit interested in the complexities of achieving Actual Gratification by attempting to mesh one’s constantly evolving desires with those of someone else I can only shake my head sagely and flee at the first opportunity. 

                                        Mom and Dad actually tackled these questions and struggled with them like a pair of marriage counselors. The truth is Rita’s ex has found somebody else and she shouldn’t be so surprised – they were both married when she hove onto his horizon.

                                        Got a very stoned phone call from Zachary last night – he was over at Rod’s and “something” was making him horny.  (I’ll bet I can guess.) Fortunately, I managed to convince him he was in no state to drive – leaving him prey to Rod, probably.  Well, we all have to take our chances in this life.

                                         Saturday night with Buck unsatisfying – he claimed his non-breathing nose is preventing him from going down on me. I let him know his account is in arrears and he will have to do something about it sooner or later. He chose later and fell immediately asleep. So, I left.  I’m not sure I will ever get to Stage 2 with this guy.  He made a point of tracking me down at Avril’s apt, calling to apologize.  A and I saw 3 more unacceptable houses – but the real estate agent says there are plenty more. Fun to be in a buyer’s market for a change.

                 Sat 7 pm Plush Palace – 2 Dec 78

                                        Just recovering from some tremendous bout of food poisoning – must have gotten it from the Sleazy Restaurant Around the Corner – but all I had there was a takeout salad.  Still, it could have been the dressing.  

    No fever.  I was throwing up all Wednesday. I called A to drop by after class but she was so worried she came right over. I finally was able to keep down some chicken soup. Then we went to Bethesda in the eve to see Zach’s Gordon Lightfoot impersonation – I had a little wine to make me feel better. (Free drinks always taste best.)  Finally finished the childhood section but I don’t feel good about it. Novels don’t want you to do anything in life but write them all the time. I am only at p. 133.  

                                        I am already exhausted and needing a vacation. 

    Cheered myself up by wrapping Christmas gifts – baroque music and Victorian gift-wrap did it for me. I especially love those chubby Victorian cherubs who couldn’t become airborne without at least two brawny stagehands hauling on a mighty hawser. Reading My Mother/Myself in between boogie-oogie-oogying.  Dinner party with A, Buck, and A’s old boyfriend who happened to be in town. We ate stuffed Cornish game hen, played Clue and went dancing at the Bastille.

                 Thurs night – Plush Palace – 11:30 PM – 7 Dec 78

                                         Manic night – a dancer literally dragged off the stage by the police because her roommate is accusing her of stealing $3300 of furniture.  

    Thank God she came back so I only had to dance one extra set.  Wed night we found a house!  It has 5 bedrooms, 3 bath perfect in every way except that that it’s packed into a neighborhood of like houses so there are absolutely no vistas. But the price is right. We made an offer but they accepted another offer –

    – ours is the “backup contract.” So, we still might get it.

                 Thurs am 1:07 14 Dec 78

                                        Finished the novel in an insane burst of speed – 10 pages a day for four days. Now I have to calm down and see what I’ve got.

     I still feel pretty good about it – but probably reading it will depress me.  

    And Devon will probably never speak to me again since he is in it. His Christmas card says I am a genius and he is in awe of me.  Hey, it could be true.  My publisher’s statement arrived. $50. $50. There goes that Feb vacation. Pretty sure I need a new agent.  What did “stooping to genre” achieve exactly? I didn’t get a living wage. I didn’t get a publisher, agent or editor receptive to my work. It’s like I’m starting over – again.  

    On an up note: looks like we might get the house! It is SO perfect. Fenced in yard and everything. 

  • Inspired Pleasure – The dance diaries of Alysse Aallyn

                 3PM Sat 4 Nov 78

                                        Trouble bouncing back from the most recent 

    rejection of Gift. Wouldn’t be so bad if I felt they actually read it. My agent compares me to Mallarmé – trouble is, no one likes Mallarmé.  

    My bank has charged me $24 for being $1.70 short on a check.  

    They did the same thing to Avril – and since she has a $6,000 savings account, 

    she figures she’s paying them to lend out her money at 18% interest. And whoever you talk to turns out to be a computer.

                                        Buck and I are having a very interesting relationship. I can hardly believe it’s happening.  There’s no bickering over unmet needs –it’s very restful.  Sex could be a potentially explosive problem area – can’t tell yet – so far so good – I think he’s a learner claiming a lot more experience than he’s got. But there are potential problems associated with having sex with a person who is obsessed with speed. 

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

    A week from tomorrow he has another race – we’ll take a picnic.  I love these outings.

                                        Plus Avril’s really getting along with Buck’s buddy Brady – definite prospects of a dating foursome. Unfortunately, Brady left his wife like two minutes ago and is not what you’d call “fully detached” as yet. 

    Fortunately: no kids.

                                        Sun 11:15 PM Buck amazed me by confessing that every time before he sees me he is “sick to his stomach” with worry that he won’t come up to my expectations. I am a “high status date” – 

    all his friends are waiting for him to stumble. But then when we’re together he says he just relaxes and we have a great time. I was really touched by this. It is nice that in the car mechanic’s world dating an exotic dancer is high status. I prefer that to being the Shameful Secret which I assume I was in Devon’s world. 

                                        Next week I’m supposedly seeing Zachary twice – haven’t told Buck – why am I doing this? Insurance? I think I don’t like Zachary. Am I competitive – is it just thrilling to see him come off the stage and touch me intimately? (Everyone’s jealous – the men as much as the women. Rod wants Zachary more than he wants me I think.)  But actually I don’t like Zachary. The trouble with canceling is then it would be just Buck and me.  Me and Buck. Going steady.

                 12:30 PM Mon 6 Nov 78

                                        Bizarrely warm day. Had a wonderful time yesterday at Shadonna’s wedding. Buck wore a marvelous blue suit with blue suede patches. It was indescribable – sort of like country singer performance-wear, and with his wispy moustaches and his motorcycle boots I’m telling you he was a sight to behold.   I wore my “slit to there” diamanté rainbow dress and we danced for hours. Nobody paid us any attention. We didn’t stand out at all, that’s what I’m telling you.

                 Plush Palace – Tues – 9:35 PM 7 Nov 78

                                        Avril said to me this afternoon, “My life is completely out of control and I don’t care.”  She has to drive Brady to his in-laws to pick up his clothes today because his wife took the car. There’s bound to be a glorious, satisfying, soap opera scene with a lot of screaming and object throwing – just like there was the time she helped him extract his clothes from his wife’s apartment. On top of this Brady is apparently extremely jealous – in spite of the fact that he’s technically married and Avril isn’t.  She is seriously thinking of inviting him to Thanksgiving because he won’t believe that she’s not secretly meeting a beau – 

    Or six!  However, he showers her with love, attention and sexual worship! 

    She says the gorgeous deep dents on the sides of his thighs are worth every minute of it.  

                                        Went out last night with Zachary – we had a sandwich and drink at Booeymonger’s and saw Animal House.  He was driving his mother’s car.  He is assembling a band called Prairie Dust and he’s in some kind of power struggle with the lead singer who is female. He needs to be the prettiest person in any band.  He says Rod – playing Daddy Big Bucks – foisted this woman on him.  Combination of protégées. 

                                      Because Rod works in radio and is paying 

    for the tape mix he has Zachary right where he wants him.  (She is a fantastic singer.)  Rod might just find his mojo after all. 

                                        Following the movie, I finally met the Zachary Folks – now that there’s no point in it.  Got along like a house on fire with his Dad because I knew all the obscure Giraudoux plays he had framed posters of on his wall.  I quoted:  “And the sewers will be fragrant with jasmine…”  

    which was my line in Madwoman of Chaillot.  I could tell I was a 

    considerable cut above the street people and space chicks Zachary usually drags home. 

                                        They must be worried as hell that he’s gay – his 

    room is full of what can only be described as pinup pictures of himself. 

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

                                        Zachary’s room is full of crosses and Gonzaga 

    pennants – I should have realized this boy has all the earmarks of being terminally mauled by priests. Parents frantic:  when will he get a “real” job. 

    College was such an unpleasant experience all shudder when it’s mentioned and no one’s willing to discuss it.   I’m betting drugs were involved.  

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

                                        So there I am again;  “The Official Girlfriend.”  Could I put an ad in the paper – some kind of specialized escort service?  “Impress your friends – terrify your parents!” 

                                    Buck doesn’t know about Zachary and since I don’t care who else Z does he must realize I’ve got a back burner – but the truth of it is that between the two of them they’re barely one boyfriend. 

    One is charming, affectionate, trustworthy and dumb as ditchwater; the other is upper class, complicated, interesting, artistic, totally untrustworthy (most likely a male whore.)  It’s a damn shame things have to get like this. I just don’t know how good at “keeping secrets” I can be. Need to go home and get some sleep. If have to get down to Funkytown one more time tonight I won’t be answerable for the consequences.

                 1:45 PM Wed Nov 9 –78

                                        I’m in need of a “carte d’identite” so I can look at it and figure out who I am. Read the first draft of The Speechless and the accompanying comments of my college writing teacher. She bollixed it up.  Her deconstructive destruction seems purposeful – I don’t believe she didn’t know  how good it was. Can I save it?  I know I should work on one thing at a time but apparently my mind doesn’t operate that way. 

                                        In the mail a letter from a publisher offering to read my poetry – for $50.00. Took me longer after that to sink to the necessary depth to get some writing done. And it still probably wasn’t any good.

                 Thurs night – Plush Palace – Nov 9 – 78

                                        Working tonight with Roulette and Jerrilee – wonderfully hilarious old hands.  We laugh until we fall over. 

                                        “How Deep Is Your Love “ is throbbing through the walls, Maureen’s got me in a costume-trading whirl and Roulette is so heavily into the Jack Daniels she is showing everyone pictures of her dog. (A Doberman.  Who looks exactly like every other Doberman I have ever seen.) 

    Suddenly I’ve acquired a whole new dancing wardrobe. But will it make me a new person?  That’s what I want to know.

                                        With a view to listening to Marc Kramer for once in my life because he’s rich and I’m not Avril and I went house-hunting.  The trigger –

    – wonderful broken down old house in College Park (complete with white pillars) – I called to ask the price.  Real estate agent sucked me effortlessly in, entering into our quest with gusto. I am almost 28 years old and although I don’t make much money – apparently I make enough.  The house was hopeless. It needs $50,000 on the roof alone. But the agent has plenty others to show us.

                                        Bizarro letter from Ryder.  He said “after that visit I thought you’d never trust me again” and  “I bow down to you.”  Which visit? 

    The one where I allowed him to give me a massage? I refuse to inquire further because that’s exactly what he wants me to do. He is just needled that I have so obviously given up on him.   Why am I attracted to these weirdos? I know the problem between us is that I want a mutual relationship and he wants a pack animal.  I want to be with the person I love and “love” makes him want to run away (because it makes him feel “out of control”).  But where is the fun in telling him this? He couldn’t use the maze clue even if I gave it to him. 

     So I write a short note telling him I’m busy with Zach and Buck.  That should fix his jealous wagon.

                                        I didn’t tell him about the hours of sexual bliss Buck and I shared last night!  Buck is warming up nicely – invited me to his parents’ house for the weekend – they will be away. Unfortunately, he snores horribly – sounds like he’s strangling.  By-product of motorcycle racing. Needs that cartilage cleared out with a vacuum hose.  Trying to read Rumer Godden’s Breath of Air. Boring and unctuous. Put it down for Dear Scott/Dear Max, which is of course delightful. 

  • Inspired Pleasure – the dance diaries of Alysse Aallyn

                 Powder Mill Rd  Thurs 19 Oct 78

                                        Still balancing thank God. Had lunch with dancer 

    Yvonne – she said she still wakes up having screaming nightmares about Warren (he was killed in a car accident. Faced smashed in by a coke bottle he was drinking at the time. He bled to death.) At least I don’t have those worries.  I sleep like a baby. Worked on costumes. 

                                        Waiting for Avril to go with me to Interiors. Reread my stuff. Think there’s a great deal to be said for the short, short novel. 

    Maybe encapsulate them into short stories? But no money there.

                                        I remain unappreciated because of refusal to hook up with some “movement”.  Drown rejected.  Started dividing the novel into geographical locations – Hooks Lane, Paradise Road.  Would make good short stories. 

                 11:30 PM

                                        Awful, awful night. Dancing badly, shoes broke. Rushed 

    out and bought another pair in my break. Pasties fell off –  carpet tape of inferior quality or possibly I sweat too much.

                 12:15 PM Oct 23

                                        Sitting by phone feeling illogical joy.  Wonderful date with Buck – restaurant with lots of wood and Tiffany lamps – just a pleasant, free-flowing conversation.  No sex at the end – hug and kiss in doorway.  “May I call you?’ I told him yes – invited him to be my date Nov 5 at Shadonna’s wedding.  He said he would.

                 Fri 27 Oct 78

                                        Concord, Mass – the grave of Nathan Bond.  

    Seems a good place to write – sitting on a gravestone in the sunlight. 

    So, what was last night like? I arrive to the theology college and another student goes up to get Devon – I overhear him say “There’s a very good looking girl here to see you and I mean very good looking.”  Hecame down looking so different with a new silky beard – exclaimed over and over again about my gorgeousness.  We went up to his room and were making out on his narrow plank of a bed when the radio played Ambrosia –

    – How much I feel. Too much for me!  Started to cry and lost a lens!  

    Now Devon thinks I’m a psycho – which I am. Luckily (for him) and sadly for me psychos are his specialty. Wish he wasn’t so unctuous about it. 

    When he attacked me with those eyes I had to get myself a drink – broke out in shivers and hives – thought I must black out.  He was talking in general ways about what he wants out of life – he seems to be expressing fear he can’t find someone better than me. I did my best to get him back to specifics – even saying a woman can’t propose to a man (Well she could,

     But if she proposed to this man she’s never hold him.) 

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

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

                                        Drove to Concord in pouring rain.  Inn is no Night 

    at the Plaza – more like Early Hardy Boys.  Read Violet Clay before falling asleep. Dinner tonight with my cousin Tory – pumping him about Hill School experiences to use in Paradise Road.   Buy some wine for tonight and celebrate my own existence.

                 G’s place – NYC – Central Park West – 30 Oct 78

                                        Why do I do this to myself – visit Genevieve?  

    I just realized the mirror in her hall is a fat mirror. I did eat a lot of 

    junk food on this trip but I don’t believe I look this bad.  On top of that,

    Genevieve’s life is a fat mirror to my life – that’s the truth.  We just saw Chabrol’s Violette – we both have a pash for him – but agreed this is not his best – plus the only Chabrol we know of with absolutely no romantic elements.  It’s probably something I will end up thinking about a lot – and rewriting in my head – so maybe it’s Ok after all. Wrote a poem for Devon 

    – Practice Cuts.

    Practice Cuts

    The dead gush cruelly after dying;

    High time to change 

    Get religion

    Have yogic visions

    See god 

    Be a nun

    Be a self worth knowing.

    Time is gunning for me

    Arthritic fingers

    Scrabbling at my dreams

    Playing old tunes 

    scratchier, less sensitive.

    I’m a body in search of a car wreck

    Crime scene consubstantial;

    The old deus ex machina

    Disaster;

    Blood is so good

    At erasing uncertainty

    Bringing back

    A taste for life.

    Reduce me, silence

    To the essential bones

    Of my non essential self

    Fortify some other ego

    Mine’s tired;

    Peel from my eyes the thickened skin of grief

    Unstop my ears from the dust of

    My own consequence

    Free my feet from judging splinters

    Life passes from my like a fever in which

    I cry out and cry out and yet

    No sound is made.

    Out

    Like the tide 

    Cauterize

    The woof-warp pattern

    So plain that even I can see it.

    Teach me not to envy

    The gulls their mirrored flight

    Unmeasured unlike my own

    Reduce me to

    Unbending bones of my

    Essential self

    Dark sister;

    She;

    The soul I was

    Before

    I became me.

                                        Can’t turn it into a presentable poem – yet – however, it did make me feel better writing it.  I guess I don’t like being Devon’s flirtation with damnation. Writing really is the best revenge.

                 Plush Palace – Thurs 2 Nov 78 8:30 PM

                                        GiGi’s last night onstage.  She is very down. Charlie is making her quit because “no wife of mine blah-blah-blah.”  Eddy says she’ll be back: can’t find these perks in any other job. I am dancing well. 

    Apparently, no one but me realizes how fat I’ve gotten.

                                        Both a good and a bad day today. Worked hard on Gift and Drown – sending out query letters – took pkgs to post office – 

    only to be told a MS has to be bound to go mss rate. I made them look it up in the manual so I won’t have to go through this again. 

                                        They treated me like this must be personal – I’m 

    trying to “catch” them in mistakes – forgetting I’m the customer entitled to service who doesn’t want to pay extra for no reason at all.  And the book spells out what services I get – in case they forget.  Apology letter from Tory: his girlfriend “out of line” to be so jealous during our paella dinner.  She did seem strange but since she’s an artist I didn’t question. I respond with a short note saying I think my questions were just too personal for her ears so I really cannot blame her.

                                        Reading Edmund Wilson’s life like watching a slow-motion car wreck – horrible man. 

  • Inspired Pleasure – the dance diaries of Alysse Aallyn

                 7:47 PM Plush Palace – Sat 9 Sept 78

                                        Dinner with Rod. He is handsome, rational, helpful, kind and forgiving.  Unfortunately, he’s also some unknown Third Sex, a complete zygote.  If he’s gay he’ll be the last to know.  

    After three glasses of wine I found the nerve to say he must have noticed we have no sex life. He talked sententiously about how we’re both cautious, both been burned before,give it time, etc – it sounded good, but I knew it wasn’t true. Something’s wrong with him. The last months of his marriage he slept sexlessly in same bed with his wife – at the very end her boyfriend even joined them! (Nobody did anything.)  Strange and unhealthy.  

                                        We went to watch his protege, Zachary play guitar in a coffee -house at Tyson’s Corners.

    Now there’s a guy with a noticeably sparking electrical overload. I was turned on to him and he was turned on to me but of course nobody did anything. 

                                                 Rod was absolutely serene, probably didn’t even notice. But would he even mind?  I can’t mention it because Zachary is basically a sewer rat.  It is not a sign of emotional health to even consider  counting coup with this guy. Pity Rod’s so perfect. Waitresses gaze at us adoringly.  Mom and Dad would love him. Wakened this AM by postman thumping on door with package – turned out to be twenty copies of Flatiron with my Resurrectionist poem spread – I’m going to send every one of them out. 

    Makes such a perfect gift and peace offering I may order 20 more. 

                                        Reading Nathanel West’s horrific Miss Lonelyhearts.

                 Plush Palace 6:10 PM Wed 13 Sept 78

                                         Mon Avril and I went to the play Mrs. Cheyney – it was excellent –  then to the Apple Tree after to dance but the volume of turkeys pitched up way too high. We made a wonderful evening anyway – picked up effortlessly right where we left off  – complete with psychic communication like imperfectly sundered Siamese twins.  Then off to Rod’s in my black satin suit – he had a bottle of champagne to celebrate Farrar, Straus & Giroux wanting to see my novel (I know better than to celebrate a thing like that.)

                 2:25 PM Thurs 14 Sept 78

                                        Wonderful letter from Devon affirming and reaffirming his love.  Very healing. Asked to keep the photo I sent him of us when I was seventeen. Described me as “majestic, mature.” Ooooo. Reading Gore Vidal’s Edgar Box stories. Difficult letter from Mom.  She doesn’t seem to realize she can’t “win”.  Her will cannot prevail.  If she keeps insisting we will only become more alienated. Good diet day – eggs, grapefruit, almonds. No booze. Lots of water.

                 Powder Mill Road 20 Sept 78 2:00 PM

                                        Avril and I met for drinks and steaks, then to White Flint Mall to see Rituals.  Hal Holbrook surprisingly good. Trying to read The World of Somerset Maugham  in bed – fell asleep at 11 – didn’t wake till nine!

                                        Finished letter to Genevieve answering hers in which she lectured me on wearing “tight pants”.  Groomed dogs, dishes, vacuuming.  Sent Flatiron around – wrote letter to Devon.  Re-read Mimsey. I think it’s a little gem but can’t be pried out of its’ setting without destruction.  Maybe I should send it around anyway, even though it’s so short.  Also found old MS of Secrets – 

    Not bad. But the real eye opener was my writing teacher’s horrible editing – suggested I change “opaque” to “grey green” – “pressed her eye against the window” instead of “applied her eye”, which is what I had. Ugh and shiver. Counted up my bills. Tight. I hate hand-to-mouthing. Will sell stock. Zachary told Rod he is attracted to me. I don’t know where that will go – it surprised me.

      He is ballsy. See them both at tonight’s party.

                 Tues 26 Sept 78

                                         Strange party. Lots of people.  Zachary was there, visibly lusting. Rod seemed perfectly comfortable about Zachary and me.  

    He is the weirdest ever. Repressed gay? Asexual? Pod person?  Put his arms around us both.  Z very effusive –  he is “onstage” all the time.  I stopped myself from saying, “Show everybody your appendectomy scar.”  Let him reveal himself. What do I care?  He produced dope but no one got high. 

    Rod told me I should allow Z to satisfy me – use upstairs bedroom.

    (Probably wired for sound.) I was not happy with that – made him follow me home instead. 

    Good sex, but he hung around till 1. It’s true he made me breakfast – a delicious omelet. But it’s always a mistake to bring them home. When Rod called, Z was still here. That was uncomfortable for me – Rod said relax about it. Stock at 16 so really can’t sell. Told Marc to watch it for a week but I will be needing the money. Must unplug phone and work.

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

        Plush Palace 27 Sept Wed 78

                                Sitting in dressing room all suited up, breasts taped up into vertical position – might as well scribble.  Good diet – yogurt, plums, apples, eggs, tuna. Wrote. Scared I’ll arrive at p. 100 and be “finished” – pushed thought away.  Avril called upset – el Diablo died and she missed an exam. I went to pick her up.

    She has date tonight with Mystery Man. I am reading about Hart Crane’s relationship with his parents. Too familiar for comfort.

        11:45 PM

                              Interesting night. My lighter schedule helps me have more fun with the other dancers – I don’t feel so invaded by them. Avril phoned about date. Fifty-fifty, she rated it. That’s not very good.

                              Letter from Devon inviting me up for Oct. I was amazed – made reservations for Concord Inn. Went to see Claudia Weill’s Girlfriends with A. We liked it – seemed extra poignant since Opal had to “drop” us rapacious females on her remarriage.

                              Then to Warehouse to hear Z sing. Surprise – he was 

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

                              Z descended from stage – I could tell he was having a 

    battle – should he be “aloof” like a “real performer” or effusive with me?  

    My unwillingness to seem needy saved us both – I was cool. Asked privately if “he could stop by” I said yes. Could have kicked myself later.  

    Shadonna the new scheduler called – asked me to do a double. I forced myself to say no.

                 Fri Oct 6 – 1:35 PM

                                        Who should come into the club but Rick Marl – Ryder’s spy – he said he had just seen Ryder and Ryder told him things between us were “still the same”!!!  I haven’t spoken to R in weeks!  Told Rick that. Rickthen showed a desire to “move in” on me –   I didn’t squash it. Told him “call me.”  Starting to think the time for “instant honesty” in relationships is passed. It’s way too dangerous.  Make them earn the right for a tour of my insides.           Avril and I saw Steve Martin last night at College Park. 

    He skewers the Ryders of this world pretty brilliantly I thought.  Specially loved the skit where he feels “responsible” for his girlfriend’s death. 

      He shot her when she became annoying.  

                                        Fight with Zachary over sex – he thinks – I “take too long to satisfy.”  I was so annoyed I left at 3 in the morning to go to A’s place. When I came back he was gone – left a note – “in your absence your odds improve” in his odd little precise architect’s handwriting. Bastard. 

    He obviously doesn’t mean my odds of being satisfied. He thinks he’s such hot stuff.  He’s performing at The Mistral this weekend.

                 10:35 PM Tues night 10 Oct 78

                                        Stock sold. There’s six months rent. Or I could go to England (I don’t give up easily.)  Instead I do a little fun winterizing – new electric blanket and bathroom rug.  I’m enmeshed in an ego problem withZachary – this is the “hedonism” Dad is always worried about. I only want to see him once a week for sex but my ego demands he fall in love with me. 

    Z has invited me Home to Meet the Parents so perhaps I’ve succeeded. 

    Very handsome unkempt hunk at the club invited me to see him race his motorcycle in Fredericksburg. This is a tempting piece of Americana I don’t think I can refuse. He’s just a gorgeous mud puppy. 

                                        Spent $17 at the post office sending copies of To Drown In Air around. Seemed like a lot to me.  It’s not just men I’m jumping between. 

    Reading both Russell Kirk’s unctuous book on Eliot and Ross MacDonald. 

    Much prefer the latter: I’ll return to him now.

        Sat 4 PM 14 Oct 78

                              How did I get myself into a situation with men calling all the time?  It is supposed to be a girl’s fondest dream – in fact it is hell. 

    I am unplugging the phone for long stretches and not telling them either or they might be tempted to come over. As Zachary did yesterday – we ended up on sofa – I admit it was his best sex yet.

                              Mon 11 PM 16 Oct 78

                                Avril and I drove to Fredericksburg for the unkempt 

    hunk’s race – gorgeous weather – spectators everywhere –

    I had a hard time finding a place to park –  then a guy in a blue and yellow racing outfit and helmet appeared and banged on the hood of my car. I thought it was someone telling me I couldn’t park there but it was Buck and I hadn’t recognized him in his racing gear. So handsome! 

                                The race was just about to start – he had a party of five or six people to cheer him on. I didn’t quite get the names – we had to rush out onto the course. Buck got a good start but his bike went wrong twice – once he did a spectacular flip and it came down right on top of him. Brady, his friend, said, “that happens all the time.”  Buck was unhurt but had to leave the race. 

    He seemed relaxed about failure – opened a cooler – gave us all roast beef sandwiches he had made himself and beer. (I hate beer.) Avril was busily finding out that Brady’s “unattached”. He’s a big shy handsome lunk too. 

                               Buck put his arms around me and gave me a big hug – told me now I have to come watch a better race. Ah, the fantasy – the mystery of Buck – who is he and what is he – taking fire in me.  Big, strong, unthreatened, unthreatening male, bursting with muscles and apparently emotionally undamaged by life. Why not horses, farm, children with such a one as this? 

    Could I get so lucky?

                              I cooked dinner for Avril – liver, onions, mushrooms, rice. 

    Plenty of bourbon. Still need to go to bed early. Colored and conditioned my hair and wrote letters.

        Powder Mill Road Wed – 18 Oct 78

                              No poetry – Too much going on – I’m longing for my 

    hermit days. I think: I ought to be able to date.  I ought to be able to have a little sex, a little love, a little affection – but what a can of worms! 

      Instantly it spins out of control!  I thought Buck might show up at the club – and indeed he did – after obviously making a special effort with his appearance. Tight leather jacket, blond hair all puffed out, face glowing. It was just like a date – only with me dancing onstage. He stayed 2 and 1/2 hrs – I gave him my standard lecture about not 

    wasting his life hanging out there – come in say hi and leave. One 

    beer. Before I finished he said, What are you doing Fri night? I said, “going out with you.” When I got home Rick called – spying for Ryder I have no doubt.  But I had to tell him I am booked solid through the 30th.  Truth to God. 

  • Inspired Pleasure – the dance diaries of Alysse Aallyn

                 Shadowe Island – Burnside Inn – 31 July 78

                                         The island its usual immortal, eternal self.    A ragged paradise. Avril and I came up through Boston – drove “The Freedom Trail” but couldn’t go to the Ritz Carlton bar because of the dogs.  She is taking care of them down at the cottage.  

                                         Mom and Dad look great – thinner and very brown.  When I checked in at the Burnside Inn Paul Morris offered me a drink and we chatted very enjoyably. Trying not to be attracted to him.  This vacation might resolve its masturbatory throbbings when Devon shows up.  He is driving down from Montreal – I am as nervous as a 14 yr old. That poor sawdust doll Rod called but phone connection (thankfully) very bad.  Merrill arrived with children in tow and we had magnificent lobster dinner down at the shore. Rod sent me a copy of On Moral Fiction.

                                         Burnside Inn – 5 Aug 78 

                                         Rod called – we talked 45 mins about Moral Fiction – 

    I feel an enormous pleasure in his intellect.  He asks me if being a poet meansyou enjoy life more intensely. I say YES. Maybe we can transition this into a friendship.

                                         11:30 PM – Devon just phoned – long conversation on power, authority and ambivalence. He is tormented by his family – can’t figure out how to escape them.  He needs to move out of their town but of course they get him jobs SO HE CAN’T MOVE OUT OF THEIR TOWN. Says he’s bringing doughnuts tomorrow over on the ferry – what are my favorites.  

    That’s easy – anything chocolate. (Mom told Avril that when he gets off the ferry and sees how I’m dressed he’ll turn around and get back on!  She doesn’t know him very well.  Kind of like Rod – they both think this “minister” thing is overly determinative.  Doesn’t in the least change who Devon really is.)

                                         Midnight Tues 8 Aug 78

                                         M & D both wrong and right. Devon DID NOT flee me at ferry but fell ecstatically into my arms. HE DID, however, painfully say he can’t express his love for me in “a fully integrated way” (because Parson!) and asked me first just to caress his nude body. He didn’t think he could have sex with someone he’s not in an exclusive relationship with.  But guess what? Then we had blissful, magnificent sex.  I didn’t tell him this is as integrated as it gets for me and a lot more integrated than it’s been lately!  (Poor Rod.) 

                                         Thurs Aug 10 -78 – 5:30 PM

                                         Feeling happy and serene – it’s been the loveliest visit.  

    Many bike rides and explorations.  Lovely dinner last night at the cottage – Devon asking Dad a lot of questions – then we lay in each other’s arms at the Barnacle and he said Time to Discuss Our Relationship.  Said “some French girl” dumped him because he’s so incompetent with condoms; he’s so relieved not to have that with me.  I said, “Maybe we should  be exclusive.”

    He said, ‘Could you manage that? I said gratefully, ‘Certainly”, He said, “Thank you for being honest” stripped off my clothes and made mad, passionate love to me – all orifices massaged, nipples chewed, armpits sucked –  the works. It was really something – probably the most passionate satisfying sex I’ve ever had.  He told me our coming together in Plympton after I left my husband was The Most Significant Event in his LIFE.

                                         But does he see me as a Minister’s Wife?  No one can.  Me included.  The Problem of which we do not speak. Drive him to the ferry today, after that a sail to Brimstone Island.

                 Shadowe Island – The Cottage – Sat 12 Aug 78

                                        Mom giggling about how sweet and pure Devon is.  She is certain I’ve been dumped. If she only knew. If I in am suddenly in an Exclusive Relationship with this human will o’ the wisp wouldn’t it be the worst thing for me?  Am I like a Terrible Man who will now say anything to get sex?

                                         Five good pages on novel.  Working in omniscient third person – a violently new departure. A few vague worried sensations that I am “telling” too much about characters but the Victorians used to get away with this on a regular basis. How I envy them. There I’ve said it, I envy Mrs. Henry Wood.

                                        One thing left out of Gardner’s On Moral Fiction is how rarely we see the book the author wanted – instead we see the draft the publisher agreed to buy & PROMOTE. Or am I cynical?  On the whole I am appreciating Gardner’s ideas – but more than ready to get back to V Woolf’s letters & diary. That is ecstasy – the “unstructured real.” Far prefer them to her novels.

                                        Nice long phone talk with Devon. Feeling freed since he described to me his definition of a future wife; she is not me.  In fact, she will be a very unlucky girl who gets – by his deliberate plan – the least of him.  

    It is comical that I, something of a contemporary expert on all things Victorian, should even locate such a profoundly divided, deeply Victorian male; product of such hideous religious and sexual mangling  one would think barely possible in this enlightened century.  

    “Wife” seems to encompass for him some whole new scary dimension that has nothing to do with sex.  Probably having to do with his mother. What mysteries people are! Bruce wanted a fount of approval and cash.  Ryder wanted a mule.  Jervaze wanted a mommy who will bed him down with a bottle of Southern Comfort and then drive him to the hospital.  I can’t even figure out What Rod wants.                                                            

                                   But Devon seems to want someone whose holiness  will “cancel out” his “bad behavior”.  All I know is I don’t want to be any of those people.

                                        But what DO I want?  I’m embarrassed to admit it out loud. 

     I want the spiritual and physical closeness – the “soulmate connection” – to just keep on intensifying until we switch bodies (and I get to live two lives). Castaneda says it can be done. (Good subject for novel.)

                                         Devon flat out admitted he is afraid of me – says I  “have too much power” over him.  I was too aggressive with him this time and I think my “free agency” is where the trouble lies.  It “wakes him up” too much to the full rights & existence of another person and reminds him this isn’t all happening in his head!   I am too impatient to wait for him to get ready to have an actual relationship.  In the past, the better he got to know all his girlfriends  –  and the more certain he became of them, the less he wanted  them.  We are dancing on a knife-edge with our pleasure now.  Psychologically he rules out “sexual fire” in long-term relationships. Everyone but me (and Dad) seems to think sexual fire must burn out.

                                       I look forward to getting back – change in seasons, change in clothes – working, writing, even running around town with Rod is starting to look fun.  Cold day – sun hidden by clouds.

                 Burnside Inn – 10PM Sunday 13 Aug 78

                                        Told my dad I took the room here because my typewriter needs electricity – really of course I wanted privacy with Devon and then we ended up at the Barnacle!  But a public inn (with a handy bar) requires a lot of discipline.   More than I have.  I am recovering from a scandalous night – too tired to take a bath I fell asleep in my clothes after cocktails with Marc Kramer who tried first wooing me with his completely unfettered, unapologetic interest in money by showing me his new house then just flat out tried to get me drunk. 

                                   (I did get drunk but not enough to make him seem desirable.  He is very hairy.)   However, “investment banker” would be a good job to give to my character Cloud if he ever grows up.  If I can ever get him out of prep school.  

                                        No more hanging around the bar for me – I plan sit here

     in my room every afternoon writing between three and six.   Seems to be all my social schedule will allow. Feel myself getting fat and should cut back on food – tall order. I just need to go home and DANCE.

                                         Stupid diary! One love problem after another. Well I can always go back to poor Woolf… her talk of mushrooms, chair covers, butterflies…

                 Mon 14 Aug 12 midnight -78

                                        Very unsatisfied with everything I’ve ever written.  The 

    difficulty is I need to bring all my writing up to my current level of philosophical maturity (such as it is.)  But that keeps increasing exponentially!  Never be embarrassed to start over. 

                                        Dinner scene in Paradise Road (newly retitled) feels shaky.  Too many characters for me to handle.  Maybe wedding next? 

     Trying to invest my characters with what I’ve just learned from Devon.  Would choosing “the right person” come first (my Mom’s theory) and then the love follows afterward?  More convenient for everyone, certainly. 

                                         Almost rolled a poor pimply little fisherman down at the docks this afternoon because I am such a sucker for gorgeous naked (hairless) shoulders. And the friendly, friendly innkeeper – but don’t get me started, he has a “wife” or “wifely substitute”.  Mom’s been very cruel to me lately.  At dinner last night I discovered she RODE THE FERRY with poor shell-shocked Devon (explains his “freeing’ phone call) whom she apparently grilled the whole ride. 

     She sniffed – “He’ll never marry you.”  

                                        Too proud to tell her I just reached that conclusion myself and it doesn’t elevate him in my estimation (the way it obviously does in hers!) 

     I could say I actually know Devon better now than he knows himself (he talks in his sleep), and I can positively state that his stated intentions never bear ANY relationship to his actions. And that’s not a good thing. 

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

                 10:20 AM Wed 16 Aug 78

                                        I am so excited by the “newness” of my novel – starting to feel confident; like I can make these people do anything. Can’t wait to go home and spread all the versions out – play Max Perkins to my own Tom Wolfe.  Might be able to patch something together.  Still my tone needs emergency assistance, which dictates a massive overhaul.  All this omniscience is just too painfully reminiscent of somebody like Balzac – “In the forbiddingly cold winter of 1863” or worse, Dragnet?  Must read Speedboat to see how far one can go. Should I throw everything out and start over again or leave it a 500 p hegira? 

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

                                        According to him, Miss You by the Stones is “Our Song”.  

    My song is Urgent, by Foreigner, and time’s a-wastin’. I can struggle with this goddam party scene or I can go out and buy toothpaste.  Ferry coming in – very foggy.

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

                                        Mom took me on a walk after dinner – apologized in her weird oblique way. For a woman who claims to have “given all for love” she really is quite calculating and cynical about it.

    “Why buy the cow if the milk is free?” sums up the whole of her philosophy. She wants me to marry Marc Kramer and live in wretched discontent, the equivalent, as far as I can see, to opening a dairy farm and sending out pricelists.  Those are the options. 

    Has doing too much of the emotional scutwork fatally dimmed the stars in her

     “love makes the world go round” eyes?  “What if I’m not a market-based economy?” I inquire. Another missed bonding opportunity.

                                        Dad showed gorgeous slides of Fox Island. Every 

    frame a poem. Made me think I should read old diaries to see what I can get. 

                 9:30 AM Fri 18 Aug 78

                                        $100 honorarium from Coltsville Community College for my presentation – I can eat for a month off of that!  Dare I get my dancing down to 3 nights a week?  Would be heaven.

                                        Discussion with sisters about Mom. Here’s their advice: “Remember she’s crazy,” “Remember she’s old,” “Don’t give her any information” and “Lie.”  There it is!  If only she could hear them! And I’m the one with the

     “Bad Kid” reputation!  Over dinner she lectured us on how costumes for the ballet exalt the human body. Nothing like my combination of pasties, fishnets and glitter! Hard to listen to after the contempt she has expressed for my job!   Said nothing.  What they really hate is that I am my own choreographer.

                                        I was too dispirited even to point out that back when ballet was “invented”, back in the dear old Dead Degas Days, dancers were VERY “declassee” with damn near NO control over their own bodies: how to express themselves sexually much less how they were viewed. 

                                         Looking back over it, my most serious depressions were all caused by attempts to conform. I’m so OVER it. Am I afraid of loneliness? 

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

    Read Dawn Walk out loud looking for praise –

    Dawn walk

    Thunder crusts a gelid sky

    Is it light or is it rain feathering

    my nest with longing

    Stippling soul with flushed

    new growth; bursting out

    the steepled trees.

    This is my world and I release it

    Released for flying

    Stelliform

    Tough as spidersilk

    Unrecognizable

    Even to me who birthed it

    Who spent my life creating it.

    Released and

    Blown away.

                                        They rolled their eyes.

     I must be secretly determined to make them look bad!  Need to get car in line for the ferry tomorrow AM at nine. Good vacation this has been.  Mostly. 

                                        Last letter from Rod mentions a big society wedding we are invited to. He does get invited to the best parties.  

                 1:45 AM

                                        Horrible last dinner at the Mermaid Creek House.  

    Am I speaking a different language from everybody else?   Uncle Clive downgraded his current girlfriend right in front of her – “she’s got no skills – 

    she’s not too bright.” I agree – there must be something seriously wrong – with 

    her to want to be around him. Genevieve wants to know how I can love men who are “weak”.  This would have more significance if her second marriage wasn’t with a submissive. I defended that weak men are “doubters” and doubters are interesting. 

                                        The opposite is arrogance and how attractive is that?  

    Marc K, for example, doubts nothing. He’s also not very interesting.  It would be easy to be swept along in his wake on autopilot.  Maddens me to hear Mom and G discuss Avril’s “low self-esteem.” The nerve! I think they want to pretend that life “makes sense” and is not a dangerous lottery. According to them, A has too low

    an opinion of herself and I have too high an opinion of myself. Hmmmm. What’s wrong with this picture?

                 Ferry Sat 26 Aug 78

                                        Made the ferry with nine cars to spare.

                 Plush Palace Thurs 31 Aug 78

                                        Three sets down. Tonight I’m asking Eddy for only three days – it’s hard to be constantly here – like living in a soap opera.

     No writing – been sending out query letters. Rod called – had the nerve to lecture me on publishing, “If you want to play in their league, you have to wear their uniform.” Deeply annoying – makes me want to bite him. 

    I refuse to wear anyone’s “uniform”.  Back to the unspeakable Constance Heaven book that is the only thing I brought. 

  • Inspired Pleasure – the dance diaries of Alysse Aallyn

                                         Plush Palace, Sat 1 July, 9 PM

                                         Rod and I engage in a little smoochy-smoochy hand -holding following Christie play.  I make an effort not to get so drunk that I pull down his pants to view his namesake. Impatient to find out exactly where my next sexual meal is coming from. Tach it up buddy. 

                                         In Dancer News, GiGi says Charlie NEVER goes 

    down on her unless he’s absolutely plastered. I want to know, “And then what good is he?”  She has to admit “not much.”  Says he laps at her like she’s a melting ice cream cone. 

                                         Did like Pamela Hansford Johnson’s Helena trilogy. 

    (Impressions of childhood, though, painfully unreal.)  Now struggling with Grahame Greene’s It’s A Battlefield. Diseased whores abound; women bear their 12th child in crowded rooms (and because he’s a Catholic that’s presumably All Right By Him) and a gay time is had by none.

                                         Midnight Sun-Mon July 2-3 78

                                         Taking Avril to Cellar Door for her birthday before she flies to Michigan to see Merrill.  Gifts Dior dusting powder & wrap around dress.  

    Festive occasion demands dress-up. Avril & I saw Grease, Rod and I saw Heaven Can Wait.  Just sweet enough but it didn’t “move” Rod as much as I hoped. What if he’s one of the “pod people” with nothing inside?  Jury still out.

                                Thurs 4:15 – 6 July 78

                                         Missing Avril so much!  Boy, did I get dependent. 

     It’s just SO Fun to have someone to do things with who thinks ALMOST EXACTLY the same as you do but with interestingly nourishing differences.

     Rod is no substitute.  Still can’t figure him out.  His apartment is 

    completely stark.  Bare.  Not ONE THING on any of the walls. The

     closest I can get to understanding him is that there seems to be no feeling in his family.  They don’t talk at meals. Father’s dead, mother still sends him clothes he hates and he still wears them. (They are perfectly presentable. But what would he wear if she did not dress him?  We’ll never know. I’m not getting in the midst of that.) 

                                         He never  suggests things to do.  I suggest everything. 

     Charlie Byrd in Annapolis (just because I love Annapolis) was OK.  On the other hand, when we went to Le Bistro he ordered Piper Heidseck champagne out of the clear blue sky! Because he said now he’s “finally dating.” 

    So that took initative. Right?

                                         Nice letter from Devon who ‘feels veneration”  for my talent.  

    Sweet. Reading Green’s The von Richthofen Sisters. 

                                         8:30 PM Fri – 7 July 78

                                         Driving in to work in a haze of ecstasy after Perfect Day, heard an infuriating review of Heaven Can Wait  by Penelope Gilliatt.  Really the woman’s a moron. She says she would understand a movie about transmigration of souls in “wartime” but why now!  Who GIVES these people a podium? How did she get this job with so little artistic sense? Bullied her way to the top, most likely.

                                         Von Richthofen sisters turns out to be boring PhD thesis. 

    So hard to get it right.  Therefore switched to Murder of My Aunt.  Amusing.

     (Richard Hull).

                                         Big tipper in tonight.  $138 so far!  I feel like the pigeons in Avril’s class experiments. “Intermittent reinforcement!”  I have to pick up Genevieve and Brett up at the airport tomorrow for Women’s March (we all wear white.) 

     Bringing them back to my place to eat first – I made a gorgeous salmon mousse. Invited Rod just to see if he’s cool.

                                         Sun July 9 78 2 AM

                                         He’s cool.  Wore white, walked the whole march and 

    was so charming to Genevieve and Brett they were dazzled. I’m now feeling relief that I only have ten days till vacation – don’t think I can become “over involved” in that short period of time. 

                                         Adelphi Grist Mill Park – 11:15 AM Mon July 10 – 78

                                         Sunbathing on my favorite rock.  When I get hot

     I’ll splash around (like the dogs are already doing).  Hardly a dry spot left on this rock – but who cares – my diaries have seen worse.  A year ago, the Last Act of the Romantic Psychodrama just beginning.  Whew. 

     I think I came out of it all right.  I’m starting to see a possible Harold-Nicolson/Vita Sackville-West thing developing with Rod.  (He actually KNOWS WHO Harold Nicolson is!!!)  Last night I almost raped him in his theatre seat but I am determined to let him make the first move.  But I do need to know how long I’m going to have to wear Glamorous Lingerie every day (just in case).  I am starting to run out of glamorous lingerie.  But we are having a lovely time – he is witty, intelligent and aware.  I “confessed” all about Devon – my longest relationship – but because he’s a “newly consecrated minister” I can see Rod’s not too worried.  If he only knew! 

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

                                         2 PM – Back at home to ringing phone – new 

    croquet ball on the pitch!  Marc Kramer coming into National – do I want

     to have dinner and discuss My Finances. Hmm. Maybe. He knows I’m too poor to invest in anything. But I say Yes.

                                         Fri. 8:05 Starlight Club Springfield, VA Fri 14 July 78

                                         I hate this club. It’s a bitch of a drive so I rarely come here but the tips are good.  Need the cash for vacation.  Unfortunately, I am working with Danielle – the Brazilian lesbian who threatened to kill me.  I’m hoping she won’t recall she threw boiling hot coffee at me.  (Her aim is bad.) 

    She’s usually pretty much out of it. Got $100 tip already from a guy who wonders why I don’t dance at The Gaslight downtown.  Because the dancers have to waitress  there!  Ugh! That place is legendary.  I tried to be polite but really.

                                         Anyway, Kramer was different from what I expected.  We ate prime rib at The King’s Contrivance – he seemed a lot older and a lot sadder. 

     He says whenever he hears 10 CC’s “I’m Not In Love” he thinks of me. 

                                         I asked him what about finances – he said I should invest in real estate.  Wants to “watch my stocks.”  I was embarrassed to tell him there isn’t anything to watch what with Dad keeping such a closed fist on the shares, and me having to sell everything I get. I start to suspect Dad is CONFIDING in him about his estate planning and PRETENDING “our” investments are actually OURS.

                                         This meant we didn’t have that much to talk about and the evening ended with a damp kiss when I turned down sex.  I say I’m In a Relationship.  He says he’s thinking of proposing to his red headed secretary –

    who reminds him of me.  I am kind of insulted but told him to Go For It. I guess 

    I had this built up in my mind – sort of like Chuck Kornowitz where you think it’s going to FINALLY be about SOMETHING ELSE.  How my Mom would jeer!  

    (Wore my 3-piece suit, anyway. With eyeshadow.)

                                         He says he has to come through on his way back

     from Oklahoma, thank God, I could say I’ll be in Maine.  Looks Like It’s Over.  

                                         2:15 AM Mon 17 July 78

                                         Another fiasco.  I should leave now while I’m behind. 

    This has certainly been Trial and Error Week. How did poor Rod – Desirable Husband Material become Inevitable Discard?  I’m sick to death of the Hand Kissings and the Knee Pinchings, Goddamit.  There is something seriously wrong with this man. We had dinner & drinks at the Peter Pan Inn, then drove up and down Price Distillery Rd until I assaulted him.  I admit it.  He is under 

    the impression that we “made love”.   Trust me, one time was plenty.   This is a man who does not “think” with his body.  He gives nothing back, an absorptive rather than reflective surface. 

                                      I worked hard not to let him know how just how incompetent he is, because really, there’s no hope.  

    Some sad girl somewhere who hates sex is going to find her “dream man”. 

     I shouldn’t have pushed it, although seriously I don’t think he will even question if it never happens again.

                                         Damn shame is all I can say.  A cruel waste, when he’s so charming in every other respect. Life is brutal. Sigh. Enjoyed Pretty Baby so much I saw it twice. (Can’t pay close enough attention while Rod is talking.)xxx

  • Inspired Pleasure – the dance diaries of Alysse Aallyn

                     

                                        Plush Palace – Midnight – Fri 12 May 78

                                        I love Friday nights.  They’re always exciting.  Gay girl in tonight approaching the dancers (without success) you’d think that would happen more often.  If she went a bit slower she might get lucky.  

    Unfortunately, she just asks us if we are gay.  How can we know without any experience?  With the right kind of situation I think we’d admit we’re all at least a little bit gay.

                                        Avril came over to the house at noon – we had white wine, macaroni salad with ham and croissants. Eddy called me in 3 sets early – $265 extra. Irresistible – means I can go to NYC.  

    Carol tells us about her sexually sadistic husband – handcuffs and everything!  She orders pancakes for dinner to “cheer up” even though maple syrup gives her hives!  Jerrilee tells how hard it was to leave her husband.  He held a gun to her baby’s head.  Kristi found a new “wonderful” guy but gave him herpes and now she fears he’s “done” with her.  What a waste since now they both have herpes!  They’re perfect for each other!

                                        This is all a lot more interesting than Ann Bridge’s 

    Emergency in the Pyrenees. (Even Mrs. Radcliffe was more fun that that). 

                                        Who should come in tonight but Peter’s brother Julian!  

    Thought he was in San Francisco.  Apparently, I’m one of the Eight Wonders of DC – can’t pass through without getting a gander.  Kissed me in a brotherly way.  We had a nice reminisce about childhood till Eddy sent me back to dressing room. He saw one set – when I came out again he was gone.

                                        11 PM Mon 15 May 78 

                                          Sun night got blind drunk on my day off through sheerfrustration and exhaustion; then  couldn’t sleep.  Intermittent nightmares that someone was trying to break into my car and throw acid in my face. Decided to kiss the novel off and let it go – just get an opinion.  Concentrate on something else. Weather depressing – no sunbathing – four day monsoon!  

    Trying grumpily to live without booze. I can see myself becoming Lida, the Alcoholic.

                                         2 AM Mon 22 May 78

                                         Exhaustion follows mania.  Yesterday couldn’t keep my 

    eyes open long enough to read the NY Times, but refusing to go to bed dragged out my notebooks to arrange beside my desk.  Horrible old valentines, photos of Ryder, dreadful wailing screeds fall out.  I have so many drafts of Flycatcher –

    it’s ridiculous. Purging isn’t easy – I totally understand hoarding. How can you be certain you’ll never need something again?  Must get to bed – tomorrow meet Avril at College Park Library to see Dear Detective and listen to Couperain.

                                         Fri. Plush Palace – 26 May 78 – 7:20 PM

                                         Dancing badly.  Reduced to eating saltines (bad girl!) 

     Feel I can see the end of all this and it’s a cold cold chill.  Apparently nothing pleasurable lasts forever – as soon as it’s a “job” it’s over.  Poor me!  What’s the next incarnation? Tending art gallery on windswept rainy isle? Living 

    drunken and obese in a trailer on the edge of the estate? 

                                         Lovely “date” with Avril.  We went to Sea Fair 

     (corner Calvert & Conn) for drinks, scallops, mussels at the outside

     café.  She says Shoulders is a total washout.  Looks like Mom succeeded all too well in convincing us romantic love is the most important thing in life – I say let’s blame her.  A having horrible insomnia troubles so before movie we bought six classical records to soothe and stun.  I really hesitate to go out with Peter – why cultivate new people when they’re so likely to turn out just as awful as the old people?  I like him now  but… he’s on his best behavior.  

    Really feeling shy and buried in myself.  Instead of new man, start a new novel.  Something crazy. 

                                         Avril tried Barbara Ellen (exercise studio) but was put off by their insulting sales techniques.  It’s like being chained to a TV listening to a half hour of ring around the collar commercials. Too bad. 

                                         I say she’s got to stop telling prospective employers she has “no experience”.  She worked for hotline, courier service, horrible fake gyno, etc. We need to construct a resume out of this – we are too damn honest.  Better to project even a witless confidence.  I don’t want to have to tell people about myself, either. 

                                         Dear Detective was superb!  Followed it up with 

    gold rush sundae and coffee at Swensen’s.  Trying to get into bestsellers 

    – reading Velda Johnson’s ghastly Etruscan Smile. Would rather read theology (and Secaire shows it. Alas.) My novel is terrible. It stinks. 

     It needs to be rewritten from the bottom UP. Plot beyond help.

                                         10:45 AM Sat 29 May 78

                                         Woke up this morning muttering about betrayal and failure.  Seems my life separates into two phases: pre and post Bruce.

     Pre-Bruce I was such an innocent – I think “goober”  is the descriptive expression.  Schools should not let these pathetic characters out – but we were so eager to roam free. There is no savagery to which people will not descend to protect their egos.  On top of all this, we have to battle M & D who, of all people, SHOULD be in our corner. They’re pissed we’re not more successfully infantilized.  Determine NOT to do this to my kids.  

    Reading Hodgson’s Carnacki The Ghost Hunter (1900) heartbreakingly dull.  And it could have been so good – a combination of Gerard Manley Hopkins and Sherlock Holmes is just what the doctor ordered. 

                                         3 PM Tues 30 May 78

                                         Struggled through 2 bad pages on Demon that will have to be rewritten, then finished Sylvia Townsend Warner’s tragic At the Stroke of Midnight. This beautiful short story almost finished me. Yesterday Italian food made me & Avril logy – we tried going dancing. 

    Horrible place, bad band. (Tramps). Predatory males (who spoke bad English) very difficult to get rid of.

                                          Saw Greek Tycoon instead – worse even than we’d been led to believe. Came home and read two bad detective stories by “good” writers.  Guilt-inducing cash from M & D – makes me feel inadequate but I need it.  Means I can buy new vacuum cleaner  AND summer dresses.  Call Peter like a dutiful child – this whole affair is tinged with doom. Thank God he is “busy” with his Secret Married Woman (who turns out to Someone Big in the Democratic Committee)!  His parents and my parents should just date each other. Dogs need walking and I need to check on vandalism at abandoned house. 

                                         2 PM Sat June 2 – 78

                                         Trouble opening latest letter from Devon – I had 

    the weirdest premonition it would a marriage proposal!  It was indeed very loving – he has hit a summit of boredom and restlessness for which I am doubtless not the cure. Praised my novel for its “mystical sense of altered consciousness.”  Wow.  I like that better than “brilliant satire”.   Avril & I went to Dillards concert at Cellar Door – they are so charming. Reminiscences of seeing Bruce play there.  First act was Scarlet Ribera and Black Rose Band –

     liked her even better.  Some attractive men, but casual sex seems to raise more problems than it solves.  A & I agree that after the “healing” comes the “strengthening” period.  Coltsville Community College asks me to teach seminar on gothic 

    novel – of course I said yes.  Poor misbegotten bastards. But at least I like watching the birds stuffing themselves at my feeder.

                                         Plush Palace Mon 5 June 78

                                         Perfect day – interesting stirrings inside – feel I am on the edge of some sort of breakthrough.  Yesterday fresh sweet corn and turkey salad at A’s, then we watched B Stanwyck’s Double Indemnity on TV.  Classic Chandler.  “Aren’t you going 75 in a 30 mph zone?”  

    After that I dressed up in my satin 3-piece suit to see Helmut Berger at the Kennedy Center. (Sigh). What a honey that man is. 

     Then sent Bruce a letter with the Unwelcome News that I am “estopped” from filing for divorce in the state of Maryland because he made me sign a “no contest” paperand then dropped his suit!  Paralysis!

                                          I know he was hoping to get out of this without paying –

    (his last girlfriend proffered enough cash to get us this far then predictably abandoned him as soon as his True Colors became apparent.)  Maybe –

    I can establish residence in Virginia and start all over again. 

                                         Had an eye appt in Bethesda so went to that library where I’ve never been and got a TON of interesting books. Treasuring Patricia Beers’ Reader, I Married Him.

                                         Plush Palace Mon 12 June 78 – 7:00 PM

                                         Horrible experience last night at the Garland Dinner Theatre – we were seated with some couple where the male was obviously severely mentally ill –she fed him 1,000 pills throughout dinner to keep him from exploding.  We could have “complained” and demanded to be seated elsewhere but it just seemed so cruel.  Avril & I used every bit of our mother’s otherwise completely pernicious training and tried to act as if nothing was happening.

                                         I’m trying to muster up the discipline to unplug my phone till six – I’m getting too involved in Avril’s job hunt.  She told me to Butt Out.  She’s right – I should just write.  What the hell am I thinking being somebody’s “mother”?  We have too much of a mother already –

     for both of us.  Martin Green’s Children of the Sun a survey rather than the illumination I’d hoped for. Now I need a real Brian Howard bio.

                             Yesterday excellent day – haven’t known such joy since April. 

    Sunbathing reading Ada Leverson & Her Circle – delicious.  (Unfortunately she was a bit of an idiot.)  Cleaned entire house yesterday so when I got back from dancing it was immaculate.  (The dogs – who had been outside in the yard – messed it up again immediately.)  Read Jane Rule’s excellent Lesbian Images at work.  She’s dumb about Colette and Bowen but I agree with her that loneliness and bad experiences are the enemy, not homosexuality.  But I don’t think I’m up for a lesbian experience – women too emotionally demanding. They do too much work (men do too little). 

    Hideously unsatisfactory choice – like having to choose between a ton of salt or none. Better to go without.

                                         Peter called to say we “ought to get together”. 

    Seemed very halfhearted to me. Bet he wants to tell his mother he’d made 

    an effort. I doubt we can surmount this fundamental lack of attraction (we both prefer blondes) but Mom thinks just the opposite. Marry people you’re NOT attracted to so you won’t be “swept away” by “hormones” and you can make “reasoned decisions”!  Is that pitiable or what? Avril says she’s LYING  because EVERYBODY lies about sex.  Suggested Mom handed Dad her wet underpants on their very first date. (At the ballet?  I don’t see it.)  Mom has also said the worse you are at sex the more likely you are to get a proposal.  

    Does this make sense to you?  Ryder’s marriage (under these exact principles) lasted 2 yrs and he wanted to be anywhere but home.

                                         Plush Palace – 22 June 78 – 3 PM

                                         Second double this week.  I hate them but I need

    $80 for typewriter, $300 to pay back Avril, $100 to quiet the utilities people –

     $200 Burnside Inn and at least $200 “Mad Money”.  You know, in case I go mad. It could happen, especially the way things are going. Need extra cash for Vacation, which I approach as if it were a Sacrament.  Secaire gets re-written NEVER under this regime. Oh well.  There’s always poetry.

    SYLVIA PLATH: The Festering Weight

    I know you deceived me

    With the bald-headed lady

    My true kin;

    My mother renounced

    Your swollen giblets in my name.

    See? I bleed tulips.

    It’s happened twice before; I seed the earth

    With children, little miracles.

    I give them their inheritance – a

    Carriage full of baby dung

    Flung

    Down the coal hole

    To remind me of you.

    Pearly maggots bee–like

    Suck my lip to

    Scent the fault that clings to me:

    Heredity.

    This enemy’s face shifts cleverly;

    First male, then jew, then

    blurred and unfamiliar, genitalia

    like narcissi.

    I reserve the right to reject

    This choiceless life.

    See? My body’s scarred by

    Your refusals.

    The blackbird sings out

    Blackly.

                                         Yesterday cleaned house, walked dogs, cooked fish stew. Avril & I read family letters, then went out to see A Different Story.  Both liked it enormously. 

                                         8:45 PM Plush Palace – 24 Jun 78 – Sat

                                         Bad mood. OD’d on junk food then lost my favorite hairbrush and other people’s plastic versions break my hair.  Growl.  I can 

    write it out.  It’s a dirty job but someone’s got to do it. Emotional roller coaster continues.  Just when I declare myself a Celibate Slave to Art a very handsome –

     (and very blond) man comes in tonight.  He works in radio, considering story about dancers; wants to interview “somebody”.  

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

                                         His name’s Rod Avery (I’m not kidding) and although he’s newly divorced he lacks the Rip Van Winkle leer. He works for a reputable national outlet. I can work with this.  Mom would just eat him up. Bought tix to an Agatha Christie play – maybe I’ll invite him instead of Avril. 

  • Inspired Pleasure – the dance diaries of Alysse Aallyn

            Sat night – 22 Apr 78 8:30 PM

                                        My whole body hurts from dancing 5 nights in a row. 

    It’s not good for tips, either.  

                                      Poor May Sarton is trying to exorcise Eliz Bowen.

    Good luck with that!  Elizabeth so contemptuous of “schoolgirl crushes”!  

    Real love in EB’s world seems strangely synonymous with corruption & 

    loss.  Old fashioned view and more male really – “ejaculate” and die.  We women get children, poems & novels out of it.  Avril stood up for dinner by Shoulders.  Uh oh.  Beginning of the end.  Apparently saying “yes” is fatally unsexy.  She & I will be eating her pot roast tomorrow – fine with me. 

                                        Fatima came down early but Lori refused to go up,

     Pointing to her watch!  Much excitement & hissing. 

                                        7:45 PM – Mon. 24 Apr 78

                                        Good scene in my novel – Miss Pruitt vs. Viv. Now I need a boathouse picnic. Every time you get to the mountaintop there’s just more mountain.  Then you’re supposed to “prune” at the end – if you have any energy left.  Trying to read A Literature of Their Own but Showalter too hard on poor old Woolf.  Women have always owned literature, it’s the publishers, editors and critics we apparently can’t have.  60,000 words on my latest tells me it’s time to celebrate.  No novel could EVER be this hard again.  

    I demand a party. 

                                        Strange letter from Devon – he is involved with some “Jewish woman” and it isn’t going well. She seems “inaccessibly foreign” –

    and he is “losing faith” in his “ability to pick a friend.”   Is this a plea for help?  

    He specifically asked where I would be this summer.  Said he loved me.  

    Took his glamour pic out of the bin where it has lain and put it up, then went out with Avril and bought a hopeful bikini.  She and Shoulders are so mired in excuses, lies and expectations no relationship seems possible.   

    Sunbathing season starts tomorrow. 

                                        1PM Thu May 4 -78

                                        Comparing lovers.  “It’s Devon in the stretch with

     Jervaze fatally winded and Bruce fallen by the wayside”.  Needs poetry.

                                        Finished Gift last week.   Letting it “perk”.  It already feels “swallowed up” by the past.  Avril read it, disappointed by the ending.  Wants murder at the very least.  But is that real life?  I think I agree with her that it should be.  People should kill themselves when you are done with them. Sadly, in reality they’re all whimper and no bang.  How to fix?

                                        When I’m not engaged on some important work my “real life” ceases.  Car to its “first service” Mon – involved ferrying each other around and jockeying with one car. Why don’t Mom & Dad appreciate this?  It’s like they want us to be ashamed of needing other people to survive. Mom staying in NYC with the new baby but then coming here Sat. to inspect our dissolute lives.  Uh oh.  I won’t have any trouble getting time off but I hate to.  Certainly can’t work when she is here.  Living two weeks off one paycheck canbe done. But I will feel obligated to battle Mom for financial freedom.  

                                        Finished Glendinning’s Bowen.  A life rich and strange but hardly enviable. I’m being pestered by old “college friend” but I am officially “not home”.  She sneaks around the house, sniffing. 

                                        Sat. 6 May 78 – 1:30 PM

                                        Cleaned & waxed kitchen and bathroom floors, sitting with newly creamed hands and cup of coffee sunbathing in recliner.  Muse time.  

    Emerge blinking like a ground hog into a new and spring-like world.  A year ago, I was a rat in a cage.  It’s critical never to let the “merchants of neurosis” trick me into limiting myself.  

                                        Tues. 9 May Plush Palace – 9:15 PM

                                        Mom spent the last two nights at my place – sleeping in my bed since guest room has no bed.  Me on sofa – doesn’t matter since I can’t sleep anyway when she’s around.  Up at 7 to make breakfast get Mom to airport for 10 o’clock plane thank God.  Avril came over with blueberry muffins and gazpacho to discuss the visit.

                                        Everything Mom said felt like an attack. (She did give me $100 but I spent – and lost – more than that on her visit.)  Avril says living on an island has been worse for Mom because she’s never confronted with a life

     that would contradict her narrow-minded theories, so it’s all: “Why can’t people get smart and live exactly the way I do?”      She tries to make her personal tastes “emotional law” – and if you don’t agree with her – or God forbid, want to explore something different you’re “the sick one”.  Rough stuff.  

                                        We took her to our favorite Ellicott City restaurant – she wanted Avril to “explain” Mason and me to “explain” my clothes.  She said my clothes trigger “weirdos” following us – it was completely in her imagination!  She cries.  No one decent man will “have” me, she wails!  I say, 

    What if I don’t want to be “had”? 

                                        I’d ask her about her life but she isn’t honest – she doesn’t know Dad has already told us that her ideology is untrue. She insists when you find Mr. Right everything’s peachy, but Dad says she was uncomfortable and unwilling about sex at first –  didn’t care for it.  They had to “work hard”.  I say we have more experience of actual pain 

    than Mom ever had – Avril says she “refuses to learn.”  Creepy.  Turns what pain she does have back on others somehow. 

                     Can’t wait to resume my privacy and my routine, 

    reading book about Forster (The Cave & The Mountain) in my own bed.

                                        I think realizing your mother’s limitations is part of maturity, and I’ve been slow because I’m unwilling to adopt Genevieve’s methods – “Don’t give her anything – just tell her what she wants to hear.”  

    I thought better of her than that but I’ve struck out so far.  Since their definition of success

    is so narrow, I don’t see how I can ever satisfy them.

                                        The best revenge? Always: write a poem:

    THE RIGHT PART OF TOWN

    We run through life

    She thinks

    Dancing lightly on high heels

    Past disemboweled sofas

    Skirting

    Drunks & drains.

    Taut veins serve as

    Toque of manners

    High & proud, worn

    For company.

    This house displays

    Her purpose;

    New red brick

    Virgin stickers swearing

    She’s the first.

    Processed air admits her

    Grudgingly:

    “You look like one of us.”

    Mentally she sweeps up sun;

    Plans daisies, cashmere

    Overnight guests

    The roar from the street soon turns

    This air to poison –

    She counts to ten

    And breaks a nail in locking up.

    She sees it won’t do after all

    Too close to stink & squalor;

    Doormen, dogs, police locks;

    Balconies with lightning rods.

    She’ll choose new paths this time

    Avoid electronics that have lost

    Their parts,

    Flexing knees

    She summons cabs; closer –

    Closer – always –

    To death;

    The constant suitor never accountable

    For gentlemanly behavior.  

  • Inspired Pleasure – the dance diaries of Alysse Aallyn

    Plush Palace – Mon night 27 Mar 78      

                                                                    So glad to be back. Really missed the old place. 

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

                                        Called my agent and demanded to know how much I am actually going to get from HBJ. The answer is $1993, so it’s a good thing I got that stock which I sold today.  April 5 I pick up my new car – a Fiat. (Avril takes the Gremlin.) Money in the bank – need to settle in for a long writing session.  Trying to concentrate on my book – Bowen’s 

    The Last September – but it just feels too distant from my own life.  Feels like I’m slowly surfacing, like a corpse that has been in the water for three days.  Last night I finished Anne Tyler’s Searching for Caleb. Her most beautiful novel in my estimation. Today A and I bought plants, put money down on car.  I’m exhausted and out of love with my own life – don’t understand why I personally seem to need to do everything the hard way and backwards.

                 4:30 PM Fri 31 Mar 78

                                        Barrage of criticism from Mom and Dad that I 

    spent stock money on car.  How do they expect us to live in two different places and have one car? Doesn’t make sense.  Avril has car today for her eye appt – will pick me up in 45 mins.  I am struggling with Bowen’s The Little Girls.  She uses writing for disguise.  Last night A and I went to dinner at an Italian restaurant – she had the clams, I had the shrimp, we split a bottle of wine. Then we went to see what A described as “one concentration camp film too many.”  I bought tickets to Bonnie Raitt concert – Mom and Dad suggested I “look up” their friends’ son Peter Pauley. 

    I may invite him, I do remember him as cool and handsome. But brunette. 

    Oh well, can’t have everything.   Got check from agent – less her percentage – 

    which I forgot to calculate. So I hope I get paid enough Sat to have money for car.  My future emerges through a glass darkly – don’t know yet whether I like it or not.

                 2:50 PM Sat  April 1, 1978  – Starlight

                                        Working a double. My latest realization is: I can never have enough money.  Curse you, Marc Kramer for suggesting I invest in real estate. In spite of this I’ve decided not to take on doubles unless I’m in a jam (as I am over this car.)  Interesting new dancer – big hips and no boobs but a wonderful attitude.  Her laugh can be heard by fishing boats on the distant Chesapeake.  Alvera.  She works in a lawyer’s office during the day. I’m trying to imagine her in her suit typing briefs.  

                                    The Little Girls is Bowen’s worst written book.  She’s not a narrative writer but a prose poet – always falls down over narrative.  Plus I feel a loss of joy in her art – maybe because she “had” to write it?  This is really a book about despair – which To The North also was – but one book was good and the other isn’t.  I think writing is a lot like cooking – some ideas can’t be rescued through editing – they just get worse and worse. 

                                        10:30 PM Tender is not the night thank God – three 

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

                 Plush Palace – 8:50 PM – Thurs night 6 April 78

                                        So ends one of the happiest days of my life. Woke

     this AM two minutes before clock radio – breakfast in bed reading – good work at typewriter.  Long walk with dogs – came back to find Green’s Mag took my whole “suicide” series. Avril showed up helped me play with my new car – first and second tough to get into and out of until the salesman professionally broke its little hymen. Seems all right now.  

                                  Book going well.  Most of the time I feel I have the ideal existence – plenty of sleep, plenty of exercise, plenty of time to write, plenty of privacy. Paradise. 

     Jervaze called.  He is really going to Alabama this time. Said he loved me, thereby proving my point that the less of a relationship we are having the more important it is to him. If we never see each other again, I bet he will remember me as the perfect girlfriend. All future women in his life will curse my name.  

                                        Good letter from Mom and Dad apologizing for 

    their explosion about car.  Part of the problem dealing with them is theytry to preserve a “united front” which means frantically 

    whispering and negotiating behind the scenes, then speaking awkwardly together like an ill-rehearsed Greek chorus. I can kind of speculate about who really thinks what – not that I want to.

                                         A and I liked Unmarried Woman – much better 

    than Goodbye Girl.  I tried Peter all day – no answer.  Reading 

    Storm Jameson’s Journey From the North – it’s like watching  a 

    slo-mo car accident the way she beats up on herself.  Why this sense that honesty requires one must utterly disown all one’s earlier versions?  

    CS Forrester did exactly the same thing in Long Before 40 – will I feel compelled to do the same some day about this life I am leading now?  

    Foolishness is youth’s necessary clothing methinks.  Think I will dump this book without finishing.  Try Angus Wilson’s The Middle Age of Mrs. Eliot.

                 9:25 PM – Plush Palace – Sat night 8 April 78

                                        Beautiful day. Off to Columbia, testing my new car. 

     A & I had lunch at Clyde’s – talked about what fun it would be if we each had a full-time man – and they liked each other.  We could double date.  

    Feels impossible. Walked around lake – bought baby clothes for Genevieve.  

    Home, walked dogs, then to work.

                                        Boring evening. Few unenthusiastic customers. 

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

                 10:10 Pm – Sunday night 9 April 78

                                        Avril met a guy she likes in one of her classes who likes her.  Fingers crossed.  As a result I spent Saturday alone, which I don’t mind. It would be OK with me if every day were the same, wake at 10, 

    write till 4, then off to work.  On Sun we played in Adelphi Mill Park – swam in the falls – wonderful picnic of brie and cherries – played with dogs.  Wrote poem about Devon.

                                        Phoned Peter – a girl answered!  He came on very brisk and businesslike – had been in Venezuela. I asked if she was “the housekeeper” – he hurried to get off phone – said he would drop by club.  Always wanted to see me perform.  I told him my schedule.  I figure if he and she are seriously involved so that I shouldn’t move forward – he’ll tell me.  Chloe’s friend Dennis called and tried to make me feel guilty enough to go out with him.  Little does he know how far past that “Since I can’t think of an excuse you’ll accept I guess I’ll just be forced to go out with you” stage I am.  He turned hostile – said I’d “led him on”.  I refused to rise to this, portraying self as a naturally friendly but also naturally private person. I guess I’ll have more of this stuff with J gone.  He was sort of protection.  Everyone wants someone who doesn’t want them. Highly entertaining if one were bored enough. I am not. 

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

    Plus, I know too many artists to be in love with this idea.  They are the worst. 

    I want someone stable. 

                                        I have to admit my chances of finding someone like that in the job I’m in seem small. But I only need one guy. I’m special –

    so would he be. Avril insists things were better in the past – “pre-liberation” but I’m not buying it.  Opal’s marriage very instructive on these points.  They are both beautiful, can think and have work they love. So why do they fight and sulk nonstop?  

    Each feels the other does not truly “value them” and fusses for increased respect. Each thinks the other is “holding them back.”  So they claim. With any encouragement I think they would jump into a threesome. Non merci.