Tag: #Dance

Inspired Pleasure – the dance diaries of Alysse Aallyn

    Chevy Chase, MD – 10:15 PM Thurs 8 Sept.

                          At Shoulder’s house. Not a bad drive down – (washing the dogs right before the ferry (I had to – they stank) put some time pressure on me – but I made the ferry anyway. Shoulders looks different – has a moustache. Talks about needing a roommate – does he mean me?  He doesn’t know where yet and I don’t want to live with him. His constant string of ignorant pickups would eventually get me down.

                         He doesn’t mention Ryder and I don’t look up his TV show.

Promising stuff in the classifieds – a garden apt in Landover, a townhouse in Dale City, sharing a house in Kensington. Took the dogs on the old walk – they remembered the route. Huge construction at my old house.

L’Escargot closed.

    5 PM Sept 9

                          Kensington House hopeless. You have to join some

kind of food co-op that’s like a cult religion and there’s a huge emphasis on kitchen and cooking duties. They all eat together. Seems like the worst of college and boarding school to me. I’m now sitting in a real estate office which is really a garage waiting for a guy who’s already an hour late. He’ll be here in 10 mins they say, then he’s going away for 2 weeks so I hope he will want to close the deal tonight, It’s described as an old apartment, high ceilings, fireplace. $210 a month. So I’m just praying the neighborhood’s not too bad.

    7:00 PM

                          Bleak. Too bleak. Tried to imagine myself doing my

exercises on that floor, standing in that kitchen waiting for water to boil, etc. Couldn’t manage. Feeling very stressed. Do I even want to live in this city? It’s just that I know I can easily make a living if the

book doesn’t take off. Went to the library and loaded up on Agatha Christies to help handle the strain. It works. Maybe I need to get a shag haircut and spend the winter in Spain.  Now why don’t I do that, other than the obvious reason I can’t afford it and have already missed my dogs as much as I ever want to. Another guy says he has half of a house I might want.  With a fenced in yard.

    8:15 AM Wed 14 September – Powder Mill Road

                          Drinking coffee in my own kitchen from the mug that

was my present to myself last morning on the island.  The guy is

selling this house as a rental property and was amazingly cavalier –

needed a tenant – didn’t look up my refs or demand cosigner.

Absolutely cool when I described myself as a ”writer” so “dancer”

remains beneath the radar.  (Dad would say that proves I know

dancing’s “bad”! I refuse to be unsafe just to convince my own father I’m respect-worthy.)

                         Yesterday very full day. Got up at 8 and moved

the dogs to their fenced in yard. Fetched the truck, loaded and

unloaded with Shoulders’ help – bookcases, boxes, mattress,

desk, sofa – had truck back by 3. A thousand robins on the weed-grown lawn. I wonder how long I will be looking at this peaceful green view.

    8:30 AM Thurs Sept 15 1977

                          Up early spending the last of my money on necessaries – hardware, lampshades, contact paper.

    Fri 16 September 1977

                          My books arrived at Larry’s!  I spent the morning sending them out. Then drove to the Landover Mall, bought two g-strings and pasties and off to the Plush Palace. Steve was there – (Randy the bouncer just hired) thrilled to see me.

                          Wanted to know where I’d been but I turned that easily away. Vacay! Who wouldn’t!  Told me to come to work Saturday night and they’d give me my schedule. So that’s settled. I don’t like trying to live without money. Took the landlord my paint color selection – he buys the paint and I do the work. Probably will take me the next week. Every now and then am attacked by that claustrophobic feeling of restlessness and purposelessness but I am able to keep it at philosophical bay. Working at my poem index made me feel strong and soothed.

                          Called Chloe to see if I can get on the radio – she was excited to hear from me, but unfortunately gave Erika the Pest my number. Erika called – I was nervous that she wanted me to rewrite her manuscripts, but she just invited me to breakfast. After that she has another appointment so she can’t swallow up my day. Letter from Avril saying she is coming end of Oct.

10:15 PM Sat 17 Sept 77 – The Plush Palace, Alexandria Virginia

                            Ego lift.  Nothing’s changed. I’m still the best dancer in the place. Four dancers on and I know two of them. The gossip, the Costume exchange, the curling irons, the dope in the dressing room – it’s all coming back to me. They’ve introduced some weird rules, like customers get to play the music, but it’s still a fun and relaxed place to be. Steve the floor manager says I can have all the work I want so I might be able to put money away.

     Sun 18 Sept 77

                          Opal comes to over to say “hi” but really to complain about her incipient divorce.  Not the best company. Not the best climate for me either – I found myself sobbing over Ryder (fortunately was alone by then). Why does it seem a lost paradise?  So I can still get into that sort of mood.

                          Nice phone call with Mom and dad, not too pressured. They are coming to a boatyard in Annapolis to look at a boat – will see me then. One of the best things about this house is the month-to month lease.  Feel I can leave any time but if I behave well they won’t kick me out. Gorgeous location but forty-five minute highway commute to The Plush Palace.  Still wish I could live in Virginia.

                          Wed AM 20 Sept  77                                    Sent out a ton of poems. Replied to a woman who wants pieces for an anthology. Got a beautiful love-letter from Devon!  His usual length – both sides of one page.  Talked about how much fun we had in August, dressing up and going out and “afterwards…!” Made me smile. I said to hell with money and called Avril because I wanted to share – Mason is not there during the day.   She is in a bad place. Providential I called. He has taken to staying out at night without explanation – she is frantic. Thank God she is coming here. I told Randy since I’m your best dancer, how about a raise. He gave me one! Only flaw to this house – they need to fix hot water. I had to heat water to wash my hair. Bought 2 more costumes bringing my total up to six – the bare minimum I’d say

August 7, 2025
Inspired Pleasure – the Dance Diaries of Alysse Aallyn

8PM Sat 6 Aug 77

                            Be careful what you want in case you get it. Devon and I are suddenly in the midst of a very satisfying love affair. He called 5:30 yesterday – wish it had been earlier because I was in a psychic tailspin.

Immediately tidied the place up, anointed my body, put on my black silk jumpsuit exploding with roses (last worn on date with R.) He came in wearing tight jeans and a linen safari jacket – we had a very silly time over wine.  Christ he can look beautiful when he wants to. Out to a restaurant – I ordered a “flaming volcano” and they had it! More silliness.

D. said, “Going out with you is an experience.” He couldn’t compliment me enough on my general gorgeousness (heh heh heh.)

                            We saw The Deep which was just what we both wanted – titillating glossy glop. D. kept initiating PDA’s (which he never used to –

  Wow has this guy grown up! He used to act like the Amherst PDA Police were everywhere!  He suggested we go to bed!

No loitering on couch!  Sexually he has all the time in the world –

he’s all out for my pleasure – his orgasm of no importance. He’s particularly good with my ass and I LOVE that. (He treats every sphincter like

another pair of lips – I’m in a threesome with myself!) I always felt like he was “holding back” – not any more.

                          Tendernesses and confidences growing. Nice to be loved!

He goes on and on about the beauty & sensuality of my body; my sexuality

“like a storm!” (Like dancing.)

Sun 12:30 PM Deck 7 Aug 77

                          Sitting over coffee, grits (to which Mrs. McManus has now addicted me) and Dorothy Eden. (The Sleeping Bride – very good!)

Praying like mad for writing money.

Lucky things worked out the way they did – keeps me from obsessing

over R.

                            Bike ride! It’s a form of prayer.

                 6Pm Hammering away – great scene – getting the good stuff –

– typewriter ribbon gave out! Come on! At 6 PM!! It’s like having your horse shot out from under you. I was going to spend the evening writing.

Goddamit.

                   Starting to worry about R coming back from the Finger Lakes – he

knows where I am – would he show up here? Aack!  No!  Impossible.

He can’t be alone. Wouldn’t drive that distance without a captive ear.

                            Reading Jane Aiken’s study of Jane Austen. Don’t feel a moment’s anxiety about D. Miss dancing terribly.

                            Mon 8 Aug 77

                          3 PM On deck loving the rising wind, reading The Scalpel

of Scotland Yard (Spilsbury). A perfect day. Trapped here for a few hours till the man shows up to fix trash masher – but at least I got my “naked exercises” out of the way. Today’s a scorcher – using air-conditioning for the first time. Cheated on my diet – ate a whole can of tuna.

Packed in water, fortunately. Body screaming for peaches and

almonds. Gutted the Pevensey library. They are running out of

books for me.

                            12:45 PM Tues Aug 9 – 77

                          Coming out of my coma to write agent a note.

After 3 months of not being “pushy” surely SOMETHING should

be happening. I decide I am suffering from a disease that should

be called “Dickensitis” marked by severe self consciousness and

complicated by “Plath syndrome” (brutal social induction flashbacks).

Freezes me in my path.

                          Loving Solzhenitsyn’s article on Shakespeare & Tolstoy.

But do I love Devon?  Before all of this I would have said yes, very

casually but sometimes the better you get to know someone the less

you can love them.  He was at pains to explain his theology – but it doesn’t seem to involve God – it’s all interpersonal relations – which I

have to say I think is just weird!  He wants to be “of service” to people and he’s aware – but suspicious about – the “mysticism” athletes get into.

I hate to say this but it reminds me of my mother.  Any  “be wary of people who have an inner life and try your best to get rid of yours” philosophy

is a major turnoff for me.  When we talk about “self-perfection” and “self-cultivation” we are talking about VERY different things.

                           I casually told him the more I get to know him the lessI know him – and he was very pleased!  (Relieved.) He didn’t say why –

but I know he doesn’t want to be “easy”.  I didn’t tell him he’s still held fast in Sleeping Beauty’s overgrown castle, in my opinion.  Don’t think

I can get him out of there. I always try to plan my strategy if he tried

taking the relationship up a notch. But he can’t suggest we live together while he’s a divinity student.  Think I can relax about it and just enjoy his magnificent body.

                             Take, eat. Old wounds between us are entirely healed.

If D is stuck in SB’s castle, where is R?  He is unborn, a baby

dreaming in the womb. “When I grow up I’m going to have lots

LOTS of girlfriends but they will all be PERFECTLY RESPECTABLE

and SEXUALLY DYNAMIC but only when I say so!”

                          I regret most working so hard to make him “certain” of

me, to make sure he knew exactly what I was thinking and feeling.

I put my cards not only face-up on the table, I handed them to the guy!

Not many people would be mature enough to handle that. Never

discuss what I am feeling with D – haven’t mentioned R after our

preliminary intros “what have you been up to”.  I’m not sure he even knows how I make money in Washington.

                          8:45 AM Wed 10 Aug 77

                          Like the alcoholics say, one day at a time!  Exercises,

diet, sunbathe, bike ride, swim, etc. Doing a good job at that – horrible

job at writing – because I don’t hear from agent.  Confidence completely collapsed.  Sitting on the deck feeding Ms. McManus’ Caesar salad

croutons to a squirrel.  He really likes them.  Reading Berckmann’s A Thing That Happens To You. Finished Thalberg’s bio – ho hum.

No swimming – maybe bike ride in the rain (just a misting).

                          3:30 PM 11 Aug 77 – Thurs

                          Depressing letter from Chloe – she wants my help

with her MSS.  I agree with Henry James – all I can do is My Thing

My Way. But I have to seem really approachable if I want radio

work.  Conundrum. Catatonia.  Devon called.  Do I want to get laid?

I think so! Reading about grave robbers produces a poem;

RESURRECTIONIST

Unearth me, lover

I’m a jewel now

Melted

In that crevice you once loved so

Well; it’s an ingot now,

a socket

For our mingled liquid

Essence

Suck it up with

Dust-lathered lips

Strip

The flesh as you once did

The clothes; I’m burning

Cinder-hot –

Let me astound you with

My time-perfected skill

                          Sat. 13 Aug 77

                          7 good pages writing, then bad letter from Ryder asking is our “living together” a ”condition” of “my return”?  Where the hell did he get that?  He just wants something to react against.  He can’t imagine a relationship that isn’t controlled by implied threats. He believes in

working and suffering so much then – let him work and suffer. What would annoy him most?  If I don’t respond!  Ha ha! Let the panic begin!

Need to become more private – simply to protect myself.  For all I know he’s relishing the torture he goes through.

                          Devon and I had a glorious date – splendid dinner (steak!)

then made love all over the floor. He played with my body until he got it roaring and pulsating like an express train.  The way he handled me,

gripped me, held me, crushed me even – made me ask about his other girlfriends.  He said no, he never gets as much “touch” as he wants.  I said,

“Except with me”.  He said, “Except with you.” Over dinner he said

matter-of-factly that we are so alike loving me has always felt “narcissistic” to him.  I bet!  Happy, happy, happy… Picked up The Edwardians –

I can’t get into it.  Keep seeing Devon’s body plying me, bending me…I know somewhere out there lies perfect happiness, waiting to astonish me.

August 3, 2025
Inspired Pleasure – the dance diaries of Alysse Aallyn
```
    7:50 PM Sun 15 May 77 
    Justifiably proud –  paid ALL my bills and sent off my 
```
galleys. Nothing like money! (Stupid car needs a new clutch.
It’s always something.) Able to refuse “help” from Mom and Dad
who are dithering about whether I need to be institutionalized.
```
    Told them I was working at a “restaurant” (Let them 
```
assume waitressing. They know I can’t cook. PP does serve food;
State of Virginia makes people who serve alcohol serve something to sop it up with. Good old Virginia. ) Sent M & D a DEVLYN cover.

$57 left in my acct.; $100 in my purse. (Open a savings acct tomorrow).
```
    Ordered a beautiful Vietnamese print ($80) for Genevieve’s 
```
wedding gift (last time she got married I sent candy. Well, I wasn’t invited!) Horseback riding did make me horny however – Ryder & I made love like a pair of wild animals. He may be compact, but he’s beautiful.

Cleaned the entire house. Now darkness falls .– it’s
time to walk the dogs. How I love peering into people’s windows.
When I get back, strong tea with milk and the “splendeurs et misères”of Monica Dickens. Or will I succumb to that modern master of the Grimm fairytale, Agatha Christie? No poetry, but plenty of trolls.
```
    10PM Mon 16 May 77
    Finally got a reaction from agent to Secaire.  I was 
```
physically sick when I opened it but she was full of praise. I could
teach Poe, Verlaine and Mallarme a thing or two! She’s sending it
to Harcourt but telling them it’s “too fine for a paperback”. Says it’s also readable, which is a thing more “precious than rubies”. I was really afraid of what she would say after our literary discussions and her poetry sneers.

So elated! Hit the library today and hit it hard – Nancy
Mitford’s novels, Hilaire Belloc’s Letters, life of Brontë. Delicious
dreaming.
```
    5:35 Pm Broadcast Agency – 17 May 77 
    Enjoyed Helen Bevington’s The House was Quiet 
```
cuckoos and thrushes and loblolly pines.
```
    Bored to tears with this stupid switchboard job but you can’t say 
```
it’s “hard”. I’m the last happy dodo in a world of dinosaurs – all this
equipment about to be ripped out. In 5 mins I get to disconnect
phone, walk to Church St (parking’s free in Mafia territory). Drive
to Arlington. Fish sandwich for dinner, read about Unquiet Haworth while wearing G-string & stockings. (So appropriate.)

Expanding
my house hunt to Rt 450. (Towards Annapolis; might need Dad to co-sign.) Obviously I can handle 45 min commute. (Don’t like rain, however.) Aware El Diablo is nothing but a hunk of junk. Future of American literature is fragile on some of these May nights.
```
    Broadcast Agency Thurs May 19, 77
    Only $134 in my saving acct and $7 in checking, curse that 
```
clutch. Crisis brewing with R. He is jealous and suspicious that I am out so much in the evening. He’s the one who wants to be non-exclusive so let him sweat. I have too many negative emotions about him – that he’s a coward, for example. Which would make him angrier – if I was dancing or screwing some other guy? (Which I have no desire to do and he should know me by now.) I think he sees my privacy and aloneness as infidelity. While he’s doubtless experimenting with “goofy chicks” who’ve “never been touched”; I’m only “unfaithful” with Shelley & Brontë.

But that’s STILL too much for him.) After all this time if he still doesn’t realize I’m the best, the hell with him.
```
    Worry about the dangers of psychic scars. They can SEEM to heal, 
```
but sometimes they re-shape the life beneath. All I know, is, contempt is the ultimate relationship killer. To love is to be happy with! Boy scout methods won’t work with me, the sabre-toothed tiger. Our relationship may already be fatally spoiled by resentment and revenge.
```
    Last night audience bored and hostile, but who cares? 
```
Bouncers won’t let them show it! We are goddesses to be revered and if they won’t worship at the shrine they’re out. Compared to the Shalimar, Palace is sheer joy. We are never hassled. God forbid if they try to
touch us! They are bounced on their heads in the parking lot.
If I have plain grits when I wake up at 9:30 or 10 (also coffee and
orange juice) I can last till 4. Hunger peaks at 5. Salad, then rush
to work – when I get there I’m not hungry anymore. Would like to cut the burger habit.

Need to sew my G-strings but Merribeth can see me
through the glass and she won’t leave. Reading Robt Fish as an
antidote for poor Charlotte Brontë’s pain.
```
    1:00 AM Plush Palace – 20 May 77
    Four dancers tonight. Less work, more intellect. (!) Fred, 
```
the cook, insists I try his potato pancakes and they are DAMN good.

Can’t say no. Long wailing phone call from Maeve this afternoon. Why is it we can see other’s relationships so clearly? “Dump him”, I always say. Am I telling myself something? R & I make date tomorrow night.

Now wearing black velvet, smoky eyeshadow, black stockings and glitter I look in the mirror and am astonished by my own beauty. Take that, Ryder, you poor bastard. Eight mins and I’m up – One more dance and home. Front table of impressionable navy cadets eminently shockable.
```
    11:30 AM – Sun 22 May 77
    It’s all over, baby blue.  Getting up my strength for our date
```
tonight by sunbathing in back yard – literally cooking in coconut oil.
R. complained on Fri he called me “all night long” and I wasn’t home.

Aww. Could have told him I was writing but lying just postpones the inevitable (because next time he’ll come over.) So told him I would explain on our date. A poem came suddenly : In the Butterfly Pavilion.

This evening you said you wished
I was more conventional.
I bowed my head. I did not speak.
Outside the animals leaned together,
Breathing lightly; waiting
For my answer.
Cats-tongue ferns
Swelled up like swords, pushed out a stink
Occluding fields of vision while
The rabbit-bloodied lawn curled away.
Phlox flamed
Sows littered in the cyclamen
Dwarf stars broke free as
Frazzled molten ore raced across a sky
Darkening to night.
Summoning my power
My hands stay folded in my sleeves.
Nighttime is my kingdom.
.

Exhaustion from the violent motions of the pendulum.
I made dinner, but he refused to eat. He said, “I think
I know what you’re going to tell me. “
I said, “I bet you don’t.”
“It’s another man.”
“No. I’m dancing again. I’m living here alone. I need the
money.” (I should have said “it nourishes me UNLIKE
SOME PEOPLE” but I’m a coward too.)
He said very dismissively, ”Well, if that’s all you think you can
do.”

He who read my novel! Bastard! He said, “Well, the ball’s
in my court.” So I guess, that means “Game on!” (Was it ever
off?) And he left! Put his dinner carefully away in the freezer
(I’m not made of money) and took the dogs on an hour’s walk.
Now I lie here again in Paradise – baking, basting, trying to recall
every detail of the last time we had sex. Because that’s all I’ll ever
get from him.

11:30 PM
Session this aft with Chloe at Pacifica and a young PBS guy
named John about writing a radio play for kids. I threw out some ideas.
Then out for dinner with Chloe who complained that her husband has a mental illness given to him by the Army .

And I think that I have problems. I reject “victim” AND “slut”. The
poet alone in her lofty palace. Feels like an abscess has been lanced.
Heard about a great apt in Takoma Pk that’s OK for dogs.
```
    Broadcast Agency – 4:20 PM – Mon 23 May 77
    Present tenant says do not mention dogs so I am out of 
```
love with Perfect Apt. Would rather have a house. Lots of calls today.

I seem to be getting fat – but I look so good – much too good for 128. How I hate to starve but it’s the only way. Need to be a fine-honed racing machine.

Considering entering Courtney in the Saxton fellowship.
Can I get a readable copy? Lack of sex keeping me awake at night.

Now I know why people take drugs. Devon writes to say he’ll be in
Maine on the island but not at Genevieve’s wedding for “financial
reasons”. I plan to do my best to seduce him. Reading Mitford’s
Wigs on the Green – not as funny as it is sad. Pastiche, really –
Wodehouse is better. But I feel that way about E Waugh’s humor
too – that it is basically tragic – “this is all we can expect”.

Asked me when I was moving, when going to wedding.
He couldn’t be hinting for an invite – if I show up with him my family will have me institutionalized for sure. They never could figure out what I was doing with this hysterical little man.

We’ve said our fond goodbyes. If the ball is in his court,
it died there. Need to buy a dress for wedding. Macy’s? My mother criticizes me for:
1) Making money
2) Caring about making money
3) Needing money AND
4) Buying inexpensive clothes. AND fake jewelry. A lady
never – etc.

You figure it out. Finished Farber’s essays – very bad book.
He seems to regard the female orgasm as some kind of personal insult –
“Now I’ve got this to contend with!” We’re not doing it to annoy you.

Hopelessness on the subject of sex a grave inadequacy in a philosopher I would say. Merribeth sent me to the bank today – I was thrilled to get outside – when I came back Keith called down to say he was having lunch at the Hyatt Regency and had seen me walking and wanted to say hi! Nothing to say after that. I thought of inviting him to the Palace but what would be the point? Everyone would think he’s my boyfriend and it’s a tips killer.
```
    12:50 AM Plush Palace – exhausted and bathed in sweat. 
```
Man tried to crawl onstage with me. He was in the mood to dance!

Every dancer (except me and I guess him) is using Darla’s overdose death (suicide or accident? I say why not murder?) as an excuse to not dance. I like dancing. Passes the time faster and the tips are better. Steve managing tonight – he looks just like Dylan Thomas.

I keep expecting a Welsh accent when he warns the old men with their balls hanging out. Great tales from new dancer Charmian –
she has toured the entire country. Just dancing. (She has the body of a seven year old. Plasters pasties on her completely flat chest. )

There’s a townhouse in New City I like the sound of but nobody
EVER answers that phone. Tomorrow dinner with poor Avril and that awful Mason whom I loathe and despise. Couldn’t get through Babs Deals’ The Walls Came Tumbling Down – and Crystal Mouse was so good. Fortunately I have Steven Marcus’ The Other Victorians which is excellent. Pornotopia, indeed! Should have $1000 in savings by the 24th June.

3PM Wed 25 May 77
Weighed myself – I shouldn’t have. Lost two pounds but I
can gain it back through thought alone. Reading Gore Vidal’s essays –like them better than his novels – unsettling man. Avril says Dad’s taken hotel rooms for everybody in NYC. New City townhouse a terrible shock – NOT to be thought of. R. called to invite me to the Emmys June 4. He had the nerve to say I’ll “always come back” to him. So I have to be careful not to, even when at night I howl like an animal.

I can’t trust him to “take care” of me.

7:45 PM Thurs May 26
Who knew the worst was yet to come? I was talking to
A at Broadcast Agency and a call came in and it was Ryder. “Hello
Broadcast Agency”. I said, “You’re on the wrong line.” He said, “Your private line is busy and I’ve got to talk to you. Need to come clean and beg your forgiveness.” Uh oh.

Yup. He invited another girl to the Emmys BEFORE me
(that’s his story) she said she couldn’t afford to come, he invited me,then she contacted him to say she managed to get a plane ticket.

So he’s disinviting me! I disconnected him immediately. He’ll be
lucky if I ever speak to him again. I ought to be glad it happened –
I was dithering. Needed a decision maker.

I said to Charmian this evening, “Are you happy? I’m
taking a poll.” She said, “Well, I feel all right. All that bothers me
are asshole men.”

So true! I think the pain is over if I decide it is. Struggling not
to be feel ashamed of ever loving that man. Distance is required.
Distance & discipline. Dancing makes me feel better. I kicked
really high. Audience enjoyed it.

3:10 AM
Home dreading Ryder would be here – if so I was prepared
to scream the place down. He wasn’t. Just a note – saying I was
“right to get rid” of him. Calling himself a worthless shit! He said
he’s “sinned” ever since he met me by refusing to admit how much I mean to him. The problem is it doesn’t matter. We are the wrong people for each other.

8:30 PM Fri. Plush Palace May 27 1977
The only place I can sleep is work, dozing off between
sets. Not even masturbation knocks me out. Tempting to make
Mon my last day but I should last out the week – I need the cash.
Still have so much packing to do. Keith in my office the last day of
Broadcast Agency work – I told him about the Emmys – he said it
didn’t sound like a deathblow. Men! I had considered inviting
him to the wedding – this decided me against it.

3 weeks alone in NYC house-sitting for Genevieve
while she’s on her honeymoon. Parents will take dogs. The Blessing is an awful book. Nancy Mitford not cut out to be a novelist; she’s really not interested in motivation. Only wants a forum for her retro opinions.

4:30 PM Sat 28 May 77 – Plush Palace
A girl left early so Laverne and I are splitting her sets.
Courtly Jim of the hush puppy body and the Elvis Presley hair
realizes he has to pay us more to keep someone onstage. Good tips –
holidays make people feel richer. Only 3 days left.

7:30 PM Sun 29 May 77
Packed for six straight hours, ate yogurt and chicken,
walked dogs now I’m lying on mattress more exhausted than
I’ve ever been. Shoulders has agreed to store my furniture –
we don’t need a van since his house is right across the street.
Told him he can use whatever pieces he wants. Jim will be in
to pay me Fri so I don’t need to trust the mails. Called phone,
gas, water, elec people.

Don’t think I like EM Forster
(where Angels Fear To Tread) – Henry James without the
Henry James. Edwardian didacticism makes me miss James’s
scrupulous objectivity. Why did he write this book? Because
he’s “The Literary Type”. Compare with Woolf’s Unwritten Novel.
Stagger about forcing myself to gulp Yuban. So enjoying throwing things away.

Wed. 1 June 77 – 8:30 PM Plush Palace
$770 to take off with – not bad I think. Ryder tells me
I am “fleeing.” Damn straight. Mom asked me what was going on –
I said I proposed to Ryder and he turned me down. She was
squeaking on the other end of the phone like a gerbil but I couldn’t help it. It’s almost true – I didn’t take her advice but showed him my true self! Too bad!

Reading Forster’s Longest Journey. Still feeling another story
trying to get through. Pretty sick of the glory that wasn’t Greece.
Everyone in book sanctimonious prig.

12:30PM
Forster so foul I reread this diary. Deeply shaming.
Maybe Forster is right: whatever you do, don’t write about what is actually going on – nobody may ever recover.

Opal took me out to lunch at Apple Tree – painless. Crab
quiche and 2 Brandy Alexanders. An elegant poem unspools in my head about the difference between hummingbirds and hawks.

Will I go round in circles? Or will I fly high like a bird up in the sky?

Like me the hummingbird
Transcribes inner space
Half wingtip pinwheel
Leaving outer reaches
To the ragged hawk that flies alone
The hawk is:
I am what shall be
July 30, 2025
Inspired Pleasure – the dance diaries of Alysse Aallyn

11:45 AM  Sun 1 May 77

                            Keith softened me up by calling to ask if I’d been in

his office. He smelled my perfume. (I hadn’t.) Agreed to go out with him

Sat night.  Just awful.  Awful. Keep wishing he was literally ANYONE

else. Dating someone who doesn’t interest you sexually is like trying

to diet by ordering food you dislike. (I actually tried this. Ordered tripe.)

Howlably stupid. Yet no one to howl to.

                            R. says he’d “hate” to think I “needed” him and didn’t

call. Am I the stupid one here? I think so. Sucker for punishment. Upstairs,

Downstairs cheers me up a little. Considering renting little house in the

wilds of Virginia. Or garden apt. utilities included. Dogs would like it –

close to clubs. Read Eliz Savage’s Good Confession – very minor.

Cleaning. Laundry, dishes, garbage.

                       Thinking about Sylvia Plath and the problem of panic

attacks. It’s all about learning to steer into the skid.

                    Wed May 4 – 77

                       Made illegal copies of novel at work, drove to Plush

Palace in Virginia to audition. (10 Mins down Rt 1 from Woodrow

Wilson bridge. 1 HR commute). VA pays better, mandates pasties

& stockings, Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco & Firearms (I’m not kidding)

makes sure you don’t sit with or talk to clientele. Amen! I was hired

immediately $90 day plus tips.  So pleased.  Got a car appt Fri 13^th

so El Diablo won’t die on Beltway. Working Thurs, Fr. Sat and there’s

no holdback, they pay you immediately.  Buy G-strings & pasties

Landover mall.

                       Avril says R “betrayed” me.  But do you “betray” someone

by having a weak character? He can’t help it. A says he’s behaved

so badly there’s no hope for him.   I think he can’t make up his mind –

he wants me only if I don’t want him.  Plus if he finds out I’m dancing

again he’ll want to “convert” me.  (He’ll think I’m doing it just to torture

him. I don’t plan to tell.) Gave A a copy of my novel to read – feeling

insane – got to get reaction from SOMEBODY. Broadcast asks me to

stay “on call” so Mr. Pierce has forgiven me or is desperate.

                   Plush Palace – 9 PM Fri 6 May 77

                   Very nice dressing room. Girl I’m dancing with (Darla) is just

awful. Find the comparison very cheering. A gobbled my novel up, says

it’s “deep” but “obsessive”;  made me feel on right track.  How much can

I torture my audience? I‘ve GOT to stop blubbering and start fantasizing.

Who CARES about the pathos of my existence? Make something up.

                   Sat. 7 May 77

                 House is mine! Everyone moved out.  (A’s & Mason’s new

place just what they wanted – skyscraper urban nightmare.) Listening

to opera, reading NY Times, feeling like a Big Success. Dog across

my chest in blissful rapture. ($100 in tips last night!!!) R called to say

I “always have a place with him” and He “has never taken my heart

ring off”. Is he nuts or am I?

                 Realize for the first time he says things he KNOWS aren’t

true just to hear himself say them!!  Just like the Victorians –

mouthing something is halfway there!  Because you’re making an

effort! You could not imagine anyone more opposite from me. Hopeless,

hopeless, hopeless, as the rock musicians say.

                   Reading Bottle Factory Outing – so wonderful. (But liked

The Secret Glass better.) Trying to numb weird longings to write ghost

stories by eating chicken potpie (regression). Wrote first draft of a short

story about a grandmother telling her shocked granddaughter about

“the time I almost committed suicide”. Very matter of fact.  Feel I’m

recovering from “mono-soul-iosis” – not just R but my first marriage,

Devon and everyone between.   Shoulders asks to borrow lawnmower –

asked me if I want to watch him use it.  (He knows he’s pretty.)  I do.

                   7:15 PM 8 May 1977

                   Feeling much better, like I’ve passed a turning point.  Wasn’t

sure how much I could trust myself in the past, but if I’ve come through

this, my core must be solid, instead of the jelly mass I fear. Sitting in my

far-from-clean study beneath my poster of Blake’s God & the Angels

enjoying an after dinner cup of coffee. Sanity returns. A. is coming tonight

to get her flokati rugs – that will make the downstairs look empty.   Trying

to finish Household’s Courtesy of Death, so I can take all these silly books

to the library, dump them, and get a lifetime supply of Peter de Vries. The

only proven painkiller is laughter. My damn novel’s made a fool out of me.

Time to admit it.

                   3:15 PM 9 May 77

                   Called into Broadcast to sub for Loretta.  Working on Devlyn

galleys. The main scary thing about this place is that no one works

here willingly. “Morale” is a poisonous miasma.  Kind of like the

architects’ office.

                   Mom & Dad raise hell over A’s living with Mason.  I thought

they were so worked up about “commitment”!  Sharing an apt is a

commitment, isn’t it? Not according to them. Glad poor A is taking

the storm for once and not me. Couldn’t cope with them on top of

everything else. R. and I are trying to evolve into a “friendship”. It

sounds stupid but there has to be some third place between

attraction and avoidance because each of those is obsession.

When I ran this idea past R he said I was his “best friend”.  This is

why he is so impossible to deal with.  Best friend? He wouldn’t

treat a pet the way he’s treated me (the SPCA would come and get him.)

                   Speaking of Ryder, he just called. Finished my book,

found the Black Mass a little short otherwise liked it. Didn’t say a

word  about “who’s Hank based on.” Thank God. He did ask who

the baby’s father is – I said even Nilssa doesn’t know.  According

to R.  I have “no problems”. (He doesn’t know about the dancing.  If

he was REALLY my best friend I could tell him.) He says we have

the whole rest of our lives to talk.  He’s uncannily good at saying

what I want to hear (unfortunately).  Seeing him tonight.  Take the bus

home, buy wine, wash & set my hair.  If only we could get to the stage

where we no longer fear each other.

                   4:50 PM Tues 10 May 77

                   Well we’re not out of the woods yet but perhaps have

found a path.  Last night was like losing my virginity all over again

– we were both so shy. Slept wrapped up and embracing. Many

compliments on my body (no tell-tale glitter in the bed.)  He said he

was so upset by me breaking up with him at McDonald’s he can’t

go to any McD’s anymore.  Pledges of love somewhat ruined by

an argument during breakfast about whether a novel can be “good”

if no one will buy it. Uh oh. I tried keeping it philosophical, not

giving historical examples he wouldn’t recognize (which would be

“one-upping”.) Finally stopped when he got a call from a “goofy

chick.” Should I be worried, I ask, and he says no. But I can’t avoid

the sinking feeling that I don’t dare hitch my wagon to anyone

so dependent on mass psychology – even as a friend – without losing my way

July 29, 2025
Inspired Pleasure – the dance diaries of Alysse Aallyn

         Fri. 25 Feb 77

                   I fuss, I fume. I shriek and scream.  I circle my

desk warily. Cannot get into this awful novel. Stare hard at

the clutching sisters in the Victorian photo for inspiration.

None comes. Instead slapped together a first poetry collection

– In the Vein.

                   5:20 PM Sun 27 Feb 77

                   Ryder will be here any minute. Driving straight

through from Pittsburgh because he “misses me so much.”

Flank steak marinating, turnips, parsnips & parsley, tomatoes

& sour cream – everything ready but wine.  Too lazy to drive

to the Tick Tock. Day of ecstasy sorting books in new study.

Sections are: crime writing, Victorians, Great Novels, the Occult,

Women Writers, Cinema, Politics, Science, Children, History &

Murder Mysteries. (Move those downstairs.) Hating Orlando.

Why did Bowen write Afterword if she didn’t like the book?

                   Mon 28 Feb 77 – Broadcast Agency

                   Bad sex. Sore.  Feel like I’ve been run over. Something’s

up with him.  Mauled me again in the middle of the night. Guilt?

Surprise visit from landlord – heard about “violations” from

Montgomery County. Ha ha. Obviously only two people living here –

(nothing visible of Mason’s.) Landlord calmed.  Says he wants to

sell the place. Would we allow to be shown? I said sure. Everybody happy. Sorry to lose such a beautiful house but it is too expensive for one person anyway.

                   Thurs. 3 Mar 77

                   Long talk with Avril about Mason. He is a racist.

She says how is it possible to feel superior to and inferior to someone at the same time? Human condition, I say. Spring wind makes me long to shed my clothes! Poor Ryder! It’ll be halter tops and hot pants the minute temp hits 65. Finally got a V. Woolf poem –

VIRGINIA WOOLF:

The Membraned Sieve

O bliss to be red admiral afeast

Upon a rotten apple in the grass; she dreamed that guiltily

Woke to Leonard bringing milk

Nessa dancing bear-like on the lawn, woke

To pain; cylindrical as seasons

Burning white and burning blue like friends.

The words fell fast, the blood fell faster;

Split the membraned sieve.

She raced the whitecaps out to sea

Parting the waves with her mother’s hand.

       Keith and I still talk but he has made no moves. Relief.

      Mon 7 Mar 77

      Ryder says he talks so much about me associate director

Kerry’s asked to meet me. (He told Kerry he doesn’t deserve

me.  It’s the truth!)  I said he can’t come to our party at

The Plum – we have no room.

          Sex too rough. Experimenting or letting his anger

out? Maybe I’ve stopped lubricating – my body’s ready

to quit even if I’m not. Wants me to wake up and smell

the coffee. Lunch w/Maeve at Carmac’s, me splendid in

orange leather suit, boots, bracelets. Bloody Marys.

I gave her phone bill – also letter from collection agency

about plane bill she said boyfriend paid for. He’s obviously

running a scam on her.  She says she found a Bethesda

efficiency $180/month. Had to rush to get back to work –

then saw List of Adrian Messenger with A. Made up writing

schedule for Secaire. But the minute I start I get idea for

another work – story about father/ daughter/ stepmother war–

A Demon Roused. Who’s the demon? Reading The Ring,

the Book & The Poet.

11 Mar 77

          Sent home 3:30 because B’Nai B’rith under siege

by terrorists (3 blocks away). Police will tell us when to

come back. Real estate agent leads inspector thru house.

Bad letter from my agent telling me not to try to sell “old” stuff,

write in “new” vein – but she means “like Devlyn”.  No more

historicals for me!!!! Got to get out of this stalemated “love”

relationship – when I tax R with things he’s said, he

claims he “doesn’t remember” so we never advance

and I feel diminished. Had to tell him sex is over – I can

see he doesn’t believe me.  Must ask for his key back,

that should do it. Dragged Avril protesting to Freaky Friday –

it was worth it. Barbara Harris Chaplinesque. Told Broadcast

I will work only one full day per week – must go back to dancing.

        Read Ellen Glasgow’s The Woman Within. Trying to

rewrite Secaire in third person. Unsuccessful. Dreaming

about houses with deep, cool porches but tax people

giving me only $112. Avril crying over Mason’s “hideous brutality”

but she won’t break up with him. Ugh. (Feel my relationship mirrored.)

13 Mar 77

        Made love with R for what I hope was last time

(he brought lubricant.) His body no longer a key to mine.

Think I’m started on Secaire Final Draft. God I hope so.

R will sulk for a while, then we’ll “talk”.  Prayed for the first

time, to the “life source”. Pray away panic and disorder,

pray for clarity, purity, calm. Beautiful long walk. Heat like July.

Storm burst 4:30.  Coffee, orange slices, do my nails. Re-

read Great Gatsby, pitying Fitzgerald the while. Someone

should write this novel from Daisy’s point of view.  Exciting

way to get back into Courtney – but I don’t want to put it in the ‘20’s.

     Told R I’m dating so had to invite Keith to All Night Strut –

he was pleased. Says he’s not hung up on men paying for everything.

17 Mar 77

     Thank God for dancing. a fe moments of complete bliss each evening.

Everyone fussing about Scenes from a Marriage.  It is excellent.

Reading good bio Dorothy Thompson.  Novel going swimmingly –

suddenly feel fearless. Sex scene perfect. Why elaborate?

Why elucidate? Need to be out of this house June 1 – can do,

but should I return to dancing or take summer off? Undecided.

Mon. 21 Mar 77

                   Wish I hadn’t called Ryder but I did. He was very injured

by my sex comments.  I said I was very injured by the sex. (He says he fears me.) Goddamit feel like turning in my phone if this is how

I am going to behave. Watched Upstairs Downstairs, Monty Python.

Felt better. All Night Strut amusing – Keith invited me to Voyage of the Damned. (He pronounces it Dam – NED. In a class by himself after all?)

Unfortunately not feeling the chemistry.  Trying to take what pleasure I can in high heels and see through blouses. Could we just date? Secaire solid, beautiful, disturbing. Avril says its very exciting. Found a shack in Virginia for $200/month.  But maybe I have to flee this state to eradicate R from my soul.

                   23 Mar 77

                   Voyage classically awful. Majestically, stupendously awful.

Bad date. I talked too much. Goddamit dating’s awful.  Like those endless “teas” we suffered through in Girl Scouts.  Sex is less work (not that I indulged. He has a repellently gooey corpus.)  He took me to Alfio’s for dinner!  Scene of R’s & my first date!  Couldn’t resist telling him I used to dance at Shalimar next door. Keith invited me to his house in Potomac.  I said nix. Dumped on doorstep with closed mouth kiss.

Shudders of relief. Walked in on Mason in a rage over my “betrayal” of Ryder!! I said he’s dating other people. Mason said but he loves you!

I didn’t say his love is a septic condition. (Because Mason’s love is also a septic condition. Poor Avril.) Happily to bed with Becker’s Escape from Evil.

                   2 April 77

                   Crisis at work sending my first cablegram to France – Keith showed up looking extremely handsome.  Terrible suspicions novel is bad.

Off to splendiferous bash – literary party.  Met Chuck Kornowitz,

editor from Athenaeum.  Acted interested in my work – where can we have dinner? Took him to the Serbian Crown.  He is NOT interested in my work he is interested in me. Damn. Told me the most erotic encounter he has ever had was with a stranger in an elevator!  Feels sex with complete strangers has not yet been fully explored!!! Not by me that’s for sure.

                   He drove me home, insisted on walking dogs with me, holding my hand! Weird but I don’t want to turn him off entirely. (He’s old and ugly – looks like a Gila monster.) Fighting the impulse to call R and yell at him.  Boy am I sick. Poor Keith does not know I need him for a rabies shot. Against hair of the dog?

                  Fri. 8 Apr 77

                   Agency offers me over-time while files are reorganized.  More cash. We celebrate Avril‘s new job as fake nurse at urology office.  She hasto buy a nursing uniform so patients won’t know. (Doctor not willing to pay over minimum wage.)  Still, it looks classy. Went to Black Tahiti where I had sweet & sour shrimp. Turns out I need to stay away from booze because called You Know Who came right over and we indulged in mad passionate sex all night long. R was delicate and gentle – brought me to the edge several times before finally pushing me off cliff.  Showoff.

                   Talked about me like he’d read my work. (Praising it.

Thought I’d be pleased.) Then told me he’d “busy” this weekend.

Steeerike three!  Tragically I need a guardian, conservator AND a

bodyguard.  (Keith doesn’t have the build.)

                   Chloe apologized for bad writing workshop with dinner

after at Armand’s.  My advice to writers – learn what kind of writer

you need to be and get on with it. Found myself getting defensive about Devlyn – if I don’t want to write “that way” again it must mean there was “something wrong” with it!!!  Bad advice from Ted Hughes :

“When you find yourself using someone else’s voice, stop at once.”

Nothing ventured nothing gained under that theory.  This is not making me eager to hit the “literary events” as Chloe advised. The “noise” interferes with my working mind.

                   Hostile questioning from Mom and Dad who don’t know

why I don’t move closer to Devon!!!  They say “playing the field” is

cheapening my brand. Reading Mrs. Starr Lives Alone.

July 28, 2025
Inspired Pleasure – the dance diaries of Alysse Aallyn

20 Aug 76 – 11 AM

                   I start The Mass at St Secaire for the thousandth

time with one good idea:  Manage transitions by IGNORING them.

Just start abruptly somewhere else and worry about it later!  Outside

R sits in a lawn chair playing the guitar. When he falls silent he’s writing

down notes. He says I have a good effect on him, getting him writing again.

                   In the meantime, I made a list of literary essays I want to

write and to my surprise there were more than 20. When I get back I

will make a folder for each one and start collecting notes and ideas,

beginning when I feel I have enough. How to finish a book of poems,

finish and send out a novel, write 20 literary essays while working a

45 hr week? My heart quavers. I’m afraid I won’t be able to get a job

that isn’t straight typing – then having to type when I come home.

                Balzac could have done it. Trollope could have done it – I don’t

think I can do it. But I certainly don’t want to lose R – he is a rare

being. I need a deus ex machina of some kind. Maybe my gothic

will sell.

                   So glad this is our last day at Summer Camp. Couldn’t say that to R –

he would think I hadn’t enjoyed myself. Last night he stretched

me out naked on his lap and played me like a guitar – most

delicious thing. Waves of ecstasy bulging, rolling and crashing

inside me. He says I’m so fun to please. Talks about how he

would like to adopt deaf children. This means I would have to

learn sign. Sounds good but I feel lazy and stubborn. Feel like

a fledgling – flight pattern undetermined.

                 R. wrote a song called Blue Lake Blues. Bad. I wrote a

poem called Diaries. Don’t know what I think of it.

Diaries

I don’t remember anything –

I’m an amnesiac so

I write everything down

Stuffed in my closet

Beneath discarded ball gowns

utterly useless but

too beautiful to throw away.

Recollect & treasure

Acts of writing

An up and over downtime scrawl;

Recall a surgeon

Cutting flesh

Tugging, swearing, splitting ,sweating

peeling waste from want.

Fierce liftoff –

Airborne I’m granted

Hawk’s-eye vision

Backwards , forwards

Past & future.

Too much dig is spoilage-

Freedom mined

Invaluable.

  Club Shalimar, Mon 23 Aug 76

                   Should be glad to be back but I’m so depressed.

Everything so mixed up. Promised R I’d get another job so

now I have to look for one, which won’t be pleasant. God

knows what I’ll have to say I was doing. Once when I was

married I tried to get a loan and of course they wouldn’t give me

one without “collateral” – something of which I’d never heard.

Dad said tell them I had a basement filled with gold bullion.

I guess I could just tell employers the bullion ran out.

                   Then I walk up to the club and whose car should be

there – but R’s. He had told me he wouldn’t come in as long as

I was working there. He said he just needed to talk to Rick because

Rick is helping him feel better.

                   I think what will happen is that I won’t work there any

more but R will drop in when he feels like it. I want to “ban” him

but I even more don’t want to be having these conversations.

He says I just do it for the money and because it’s easy and of

course that’s perfectly true. If I got $500 a week from writing I

probably wouldn’t dance.

                   The fact that something feels natural and pleasurable

and doesn’t leave you feeling depleted at the end of each day

isn’t a point against it to my way of thinking. He’s just an old

fashioned sexist pig.  On the other hand he is a special person

and I definitely don’t want to dance forever.

                   Sometimes I think the whole problem is that he’s

getting a divorce and he’s so unready for a relationship he’s

giving me hoops to jump through. But even if we got married

I’d have to be at financially independent – he’s just too different

from me for me to trust that he will agree with me about what’s

right for me. My theory is it doesn’t hurt to look for a job.   Maybe

I’ll find something special or interesting.

                 11:20 PM – Avril called – R staggered in dead drunk,

said “Call Alysse and tell her I’m here and set the alarm for 5:30”

and then passed out on the sofa. I told them to hide his car keys

in case he wakes up and tries to go someplace. I’m glad he’s safe,

on the other hand I’m annoyed that he’s been touring the bars.

He plainly didn’t go to his apartment, drink and then go to my

house. My guess is total strangers up and down Wisconsin

Avenue have been hearing his heartrending saga of the misery of

dating an exotic dancer.

                   11:00 AM – Tues 24 Aug 76

                   Lying in the same bed where R and I made love five

hours ago – just finished Tyler’s Clockwinder. Puzzled by the

lack of passion in her strange, sad, minor novels. Tonight R is

picking me up and taking me “someplace” – I have my eye on

a little restaurant – where we can talk it out. I hope he’s paying

because I have exactly $177 to live on till Sept 7 and $125 of

that is rent. I’m trying to look at the future calmly – I love him,

he loves me – who knows what may happen?

                   2:40 PM Was feeling so much better I was going

to work on sending out poems until I looked around at this place.

A and I desperately need Maeve to live here to help out with

expenses and she is not the tidiest person. A says she never

cleaned her other place after the party and it smells like a

dead body.  I cleaned and now I feel better but not in the mood

for literature – more in the mood to take my dishpan hands to

the mall. However I won’t because it would just result in

expenditures.

                   3:40 PM  Obviously R doesn’t really respect me.

Otherwise he wouldn’t manipulate me like this. I don’t think

he cares about me being a writer at all.  He would actually

like it better if he could introduce me to people as “my girlfriend

the insurance agent.” That makes sense in his little world. I

could break up with him but I’d have to find another place to

work anyway – he’s ruined Shalimar for me.  One can understand

and deplore and get mad, but the alternative is loneliness. All I want

is to go out and have fun, have someone to play and smooch with.

Finding and then cultivating such a person is incredibly exhausting –

and aren’t 99% of them only going to have the same (or worse)

reactions he’s having anyway?

                   10:40 AM Thurs 26 Aug –76 – Club Shalimar

                   Yesterday morning Maeve and I lingering over coffee

and chat – no one wanting to return to their life – and the phone

rang. It was editor Ruby Jenkins at Pyramid wanting to make an

offer on my book. She says it has a lot of wit and depth and is

really extraordinary and if they don’t take it someone else will.

That’s two editors on my side. Asked all about me – so I told what I was

doing, schools, what I’d had published – that Harcourt just turned down Find Courtney.

                  She’d called my parents in Maine because she couldn’t

get in touch with my agent but left a message.  I just put the

phone down and screamed for 20 solid minutes. Then went to

Shalimar and quit – gave them a week’s notice.

                   Didn’t tell them about book – Carmen guessed about

Ryder – narrowed her eyes into slits and tried to tell me a

lot of terrible stuff about him, about how he always pursued

dancers – although she admits, after me, not any more. She

said if I ever need the job again, they’d give it to me. That

was nice. Randy the bouncer had tears in his eyes because

he says I’m so amusing and no one else can make him laugh.

                   R’s “celebration” was to take me to Garfinckel’s at

the Montgomery Mall to buy me underwear. He takes it

strangely personally that I don’t wear a bra or underpants

half the time.  This could have been a fun, even erotic experience

but he was so weird I almost had a nervous breakdown – so

bizarrely controlling like he doesn’t know what presents are.

The missionary purchasing fig leaves for the natives! Felt

offensively “managed”.

                   If he had bought me lingerie and given it to me

that would have been one thing. I could take them back if I

didn’t like them.  This was if he were my parent or something –

I really can’t explain why it was so insulting. I finally allowed him buy me

a pink silk robe, which I refused to try on – of course it will fit.

Duh.

                   We should have been celebrating.  Not only can I

quit dancing but they’ve put him on the eleven pm news and

now we could have mornings together. But at the Japanese

steakhouse he really acted wooden headed. I think it’s some

sort of a gender problem – men understand that their self-respect

is tied up with autonomy but they seem to think the opposite

must be true about women. I’m trying too hard not to despise

him. Anything I could say sounds hurtful.

                   At the very same time he’s trying to “tether” me he’s

trying to free himself. He said, what if I want to take another girl

out? And I said, well you can but you have to tell me about it

before hand. He said, I know how I’d feel if you said that to me.

                  I told him he probably doesn’t have to worry – I can’t imagine

wanting another man. Now he’s “scared” I’m going to become

a famous writer! So we went back to my place and made love

for three hours and it was very satisfying. He was all over me

and it felt like the last time in some critical way.

                   To me he seems less like a man getting out of a

marriage than some kind of shipwreck victim who has never

seen or imagined our society and is becoming increasingly

excited about the sexually liberated possibilities.   How can

we avoid breaking up over this? Can’t I just get a fat check

from my book and be a young writer about town? I sincerely

hope that’s the way it will go. Reading Rose, my years in

Service about Lady Astor’s maid.

                   Sat 28 Aug 76 Shalimar

                   Ryder tried to pressure me not to go to work by

saying “we shouldn’t be seeing each other if you’re dancing”.  I remind him

we have a dinner party coming up and a vacation in Maine!

Why the hysteria? Reading Henri Peyre’s The Failures of

Criticism. Last set.

                   3PM Mon 30 Aug 76

                   Wakened by air-conditioner going on – Ryder

climbing in bed with me fully clothed so there would be “no sex”

– of course that didn’t work. He is very upset about my sense

of physical freedom – said wouldn’t “let” me be painted in the

nude by Andrew Wyeth!  I pointed out that his wife was his

ideal woman – totally restrained and untrained and ignorant

and unavailable in every way he wanted – and he hated it.

Can’t understand why he has to be such a jackass when all

his dreams are coming true.

                   3 Sept 76

                   Just back from the worst vacation of my life. Both

Avril and I took completely unacceptable men to our parents’ island –

alas, my man was the most unacceptable –   doing nothing but

fighting and sulking. He finally said such unforgiveable things I had

to drive him to the ferry and push him off into space. His last

words were “I love you.” Day late and a dollar short. The worst

things he said were that I dress like a slut, anyone looking at

me would instantly assume I was a prostitute. This was said to me

while I was wearing my gorgeous emerald scarf tied around my

breasts and my long denim skirt and Nefertiti necklace and looking

like a goddess for parents’ dinner party.

                   He said if I don’t start wearing a bra my breasts will

be “ruined” and he doesn’t want to wake up age 35 married to

only a “mind”. (The mind is in fact quite unimportant in his world.)

His wife, he assured me, always dressed most tastefully –

nobody desiring her ever.  Didn’t cross his mind that the fact

that she was dead-on-arrival in the sack and her inability to

enjoy and celebrate her own body could be in any way connected.

               He told me my poems are awful and self-indulgent and I

live entirely in my own head. I was finally forced to tell him

that what with his long hair, leisure suits, stacked heels and

man-purse most people just assume he’s gay.

                   But who cares what “most people” think – and

would we even ever know?  He really got on my bad side seemingly

justifying rape – women “ask for it” with their clothing, male

self control not an issue. I said if a crazy girl escaped from an

institution and ran down the street naked would men be “ justified”

raping her? He said yes so obviously it was over between

us from that moment. The truth, of course, is that he was

overwhelmingly jealous from the second he arrived on the island

– possibly earlier – by the fact that I am a separate human being,

who has ever existed out of his sight.

                   17 Sept 76

                   It really is over with R.  My fault for going so fast.

R leaving messages on my answering machine every day,

trying to make me jealous with “don’t call back tonight I won’t

be in”.  Finally decided I owe it to him to tell him where I’m

working – I know he thinks I returned to dancing – the

scum. Sent him a card saying we should meet for dinner

in a couple of months. Appt. with Georgetown Employment

Agency 10;30 AM tomorrow.

                   12;25 PM

                    Ryder came by to pick up his jackets. He said,

“You’re the most valuable person in the world to me.” Trying not

to goad him into pyrotechnics, so, showed nothing. He was calm,

played with the dog, kissed me on the cheek and said, “I love you”

and left.  He is worthy of a hefty Freudian tome all to himself. I want to send him a copy of The Intimate Enemy but he wouldn’t

(couldn’t) read it. He’s totally about not wanting what he has,

having what he doesn’t want, wanting something else and

hating himself into the bargain. I pity anyone involved with him –

mainly I pity me – still fixated on his worthlessness apparently.

                 Washing the dishes in floods of tears. I bragged to him that I didn’t want to change him – that isn’t true.  I don’t feel I have the right to change people while he wants to specify every detail about me.

The worst is I know how he would exult in his power over me.

Still wearing his black coral diver’s cross as a charm. When R

says dismissively “Be free” he means “Be alone”.

                   Sun. 12 Sept 76 – 12:05 PM

                   Yesterday turned down job at art gallery that would

have been wonderful but paid dirt.  They say I “might” get

commissions on sales. Have a feeling Mom and Dad would

push for it – it was very upscale – just didn’t feel right to me.

                   FINALLY letter from agent; Pyramid offering $2500

advance, 6% to 150,000 copies, 8% thereafter, a few minor revisions.

Always less than you think but not as bad as the gallery – I say

hells yes. Still have to find job; something that lets me write.

                   I called Ryder with info, left message. Have to go

to NY to sign contract so job hunt suspended for now.

                   Mon 13 Sept 76

                   Avril and Mike met me and Ryder at The Royal

Warrant for drinks to celebrate my book. I wore long sexy

purple lace-up dress – nothing he’d object to however.

(Royal Warrant because their drinks are huge.) Wore

sandals with kitten heels and I was still  taller than him.

I wonder if that’s what this is about. I invited him home after

and he accepted.  He concentrated on making me come. Said

he can’t consider dating a girl who doesn’t wear a bra. I said I

might wear one in my first pregnancy. Gave him my copy of

Intimate Enemy when he left. Reading Brownmiller’s excellent

Against our Will.

                   11:45 AM 14 Sept 76 – Tues. Boiling hot.

                   I need a full-time psychiatric nurse, vicious guard dog

and a secretary. Phone ringing off the hook. Agent called

reversing charges.  Ryder wants to celebrate his salary bump.

How can two people who despise each other as much as we do

want to have sex all the time?  Beats me. Ryder’s latest charge is

that I wrote a novel for money.  Get it?  I’m a prostitute!  Then he

marches off to his yessir, nosir job whistling. You can’t win with him.

Cheered myself up reading old diaries about my marriage.  At least it’s not as bad as that.  I used to lock myself in the bathroom to howl.

Reading Simenon’s Venice Train.  He is too mannered.

                   Ryder forced me to look at his island pictures – I am the

ugliest beautiful woman in the world.  He tries to use this against me

but of course we were fighting the whole time.  No one can be lovely under such conditions. Does “love” entail not just “sacrifice” but loss of identity?  Went out and bought a pair of six inch heels. When I am with Ryder, I love him but when I’m away, the cloud lifts.

Attempting to seduce Devon by sending him a copy of the poem Cedarwood Chest.

Cedarwood Chest

Grandpa died young that’s why

Grandma never opened

The Cedarwood chest

Till my twelve years unlocked

The scent of dreams preserved

Like mullet in red wine.

Never used the wilting nightgowns

Featherstitched sheets

Between whose coffee-colored creases

Bay leaves crumbled

(Like my reserve when you laid hands

Upon it) how it

Comes back that mossy sad

Perfume! I want to lay

You away in darkness and tissue but

I can’t

I must use you and risk

Your wearing out

                   God knows what he’ll think but I know he’ll give a better

reaction than R.  Lunch in NY 12:30 Tues – have to take the 7 AM

train to make it work!

                   7:45 AM Mon 20 Sept 76

                   R’s latest accusation is that I fell in love first!!  So weird.

Reminiscent of Bruce.  Some version of gaslighting? It’s a definite

power grab. He said he was “embarrassed” by my emotional intensity!

I have a feeling he’s trying to cobble together a story he can tell other

people. As for me, I’m trying to figure out what really happened. Used

to think R’s lack of experience wouldn’t affect us but I can see it really

has. Got my hair cut; of course I think it’s too short. Dreading what

Genevieve will say.

                   10:40 AM Wed 22 Sept. 76

                   Woke up after horrible nightmare in which Jacqueline

Susann showed me her cancer to have R drive me to the station.

We’re in a financial nightmare – A’s rent check bounced twice so

expenses going up. R says I have to start an exercise plan –

since I can’t dance.   He’s hilarious!

                   Lunch with Ruby and my agent.  Agent (Ruth) was euphoric.

Starting to feel the book was written by a stranger. I tried so hard to

make it English and Victorian – I NEVER want to do that again.

Can’t say THAT, obviously, especially after Ruby remarked I was

“so good looking we should make it a series.”  Devlyn’s best gothic

they’ve ever read! They both drank heavily while disagreeing with

virtually everything I had to say about poetry and literature. Their

recommendation: write a love story. Pity we don’t know what love is,

isn’t it?  I MIGHT be able to manage a sex story. Oh well. Genevieve

full of secret divorce-and-getting-together-with-hush-hush-sweetie

plans.  Don’t tell her husband Kent anything. He asks me what’s going on –

I play dumb but not too well.  He must know something’s up.

Awkward! Walk to library and back thinking about St. Secaire.

How make that a love story?  Everyone’s a predator or an idiot.

July 26, 2025
Inspired Pleasure – the dance diaries of Alysse Aallyn

6:30 PM 9 Aug 76 – Shalimar

                 Writing carefully so as not to mess up my fresh

polish. Got here early – Fessenden bus much better. Rick

Marl in tonight talking about R’s divorce.  Said I should hear

his wife’s side of the story. (He’s met her.) I don’t want to hear

his wife’s side of the story – what would I do if I did know it.

                Sounds like they should get a divorce – she’s not resisting so

obviously she had as many problems with him as he had with her.

The fact that he spent so much time here is bad news for any marriage.

                 I was very impressed by his job – a TV news director

is a king – he sits in a the control booth with all the camera angles

in front of him and tells everyone what to do. I said nothing, but I

enjoyed the way they looked at me – very admiringly – where did

SHE come from. Little do they know – R won’t tell them. If they

dine at the Shalimar, they’ll find out. Fortunately, they’re all good

family men – eat lunch out of a cooler then rush home to fix the

automatic garage door opener and read a bedtime story to the

little ones.

                 Reading Mortal Wounds and loving it. Fun to compare

the George Sand period to the Notorious Woman TV series last year.

Went on a picnic with R. then saw Robert Shaw in Swashbuckler.

Ghastly flick. I wasn’t too rude because R liked it. Told him he should

have seen Anne of the Thousand Days.

        Sent out 12 poems. But I’m trying to force myself to stop writing

poetry and concentrate on novel. There’s no financial point to poetry

– Alas.

11:35 am Thurs 12 Aug 76

                 I’d like to write but I must pack for the trip and it junks up my

head. Mss, 2 ribbons (in case) correctype, The Romantic Egoists,

Zelda and Scott Fitzgerald’s Scrapbooks, and the wonderful

portrait by Julia Cameron of the two little girls clutching each other

which I see as the cover of my book. Sad to see the way Fitzgerald

tried to force his wishes on the universe – force it to see things –

to be – his way.  No wonder he admired the rich – they’re the only

ones who sometimes – very infrequently –  get away with that. But

they are not enviable nevertheless – it’s always a naked emperor

situation. Zelda’ s constant references to “not having a past” interest

me exceedingly – that way madness most definitely lies. This is what

happens to people who insist on “living in the present”; they become amnesiacs.  Idea for a poem.

F. SCOTT FITZGERALD:

“To the Spoils Belong the Victor”

The butler’s name is Gin;

He never gets the girl.

The Heart’s Café is terraced –

Cantilevered exits exalt

No core. At the Pony Bar

Payment is upfront;

Robert Service and Booth Tarkington

Left prints on ice;

The service is bad but

There’s a reason for everything.

Back at the Alhambra someone who might be Ernest

Puts the moves on someone

Who looks like Zelda or possibly it was

The other way around.

They never get these stories straight.

Here’s the one they played last year:

Sole is déclassé but at least

There’s always caviar.

Look on, look down, look it up or read

The menu.

Floorshow Tonight: Van Wyck Brooks &

Edmund Wilson Debate:

Artist = Self-destructive Sport?

Or Fad? Or Fate?

                  I guess I’ll need clothes – so I must do laundry. I also should

clean house for poor A – it’s only fair.  No writing; circumstances militate.

                 R working very hard to get to the point where he can take a

vacation – he didn’t get in till 2:45 AM.

Shalimar – 3:30 PM –13 Aug 76

                 Was sitting on a box of Lite Beer sipping coffee and

reading Miss Read when Carmen warned me that the boss

might fire me for reading. Apparently writing he doesn’t mind

so much, probably because he can’t imagine anyone keeping

it up longer than 10 mins at a time. R. will be here soon, then

we hit the bank, pick up my stuff and we’re on the road for the

Finger Lakes.  Five hours alone in the car.  I find I have a lot

of inhibitions against voicing boundaries in our relationship –

mainly because I don’t want to be lied to.  I want to find out

how things really are. For example, he spent last night in

Gaithersburg with his wife. Now her I’m jealous of, because

he used to love her, used to think she was a “catch” and

was surprised and gratified that she “descended” into

marriage with him.

                 I probably won’t ask him if they had sex because

it would be making too much of it. He’s said before he wouldn’t,

and she definitely wouldn’t. But I can’t believe a woman who

knows she’s losing a man might not change in her feelings –

just to see what power she has left. I would, if he wanted the

divorce and I didn’t. Will I be able to tell just by looking at him?

R feels the right to be jealous and possessive over me, which

I don’t grudge him since I’m naturally monogamous. He feels

no discomfort making rules for me. But he should.

6:00 PM Saturday 14 Aug 76 Finger Lakes

                 Lying on the bed in our tiny TINY two room cabin –

with just a curtain separating the rooms – I was going to write

here about how much I love my job (I really miss dancing so

much when I’m away from it – the ideal thing would be three

sets a day for life) – when R came in, threw himself on me,

tore my clothes off, began kissing my breasts and exploring

my tan lines and pressing his beautiful valued body hard hard

hard into mine – and you know what happened next. If he turns

the fan on high I don’t think the other campers can hear our little

yips and screams. At least I hope not. We spent last night in his

grandmother’s house in Binghamton, New York.

                 She bedded us down in separate rooms – he gave me a

long lecture about how you have to respect the house rules of

whoever you’re staying with – and then who do you think showed

up in the middle of the night saying he couldn’t sleep. It is ecstatic

to have sex almost without moving – this must be what Tantra is like.

We were directly over her and the bed creaked so we didn’t move a

muscle – absorbed and shed each other like snakes. Wonderful.

                 Next stop was R’s cousins who own the cabins. I don’t know

what to say about them – plastic flowers and Sonny James. My state

of deep shock probably resembled mental retardation. Some people’s

houses are frighteningly ugly. Their clock has eyes,  they keep the

plastic on the lampshades. I just sat there while the ethnic and sex

jokes filtered around me. Who could blame R’s first wife for

shunning this bunch?

                 I would not choose them for buddies either. And the fact

that they are renting us a cabin doesn’t appear to mean we will

also get privacy – so I have taken to wearing my glasses. Number

one – I don’t see as well – number two – it creates a kind of screen

between me and them.

                 The Lake is beautiful – but I don’t need to go in more than

twice a day – I also don’t have the patience for the fish-a-thons that

absorb the rest of them, dawn till dusk.

                 Plus one time waterskiing was plenty. Since dinner is a

vast barbecue down at the beach every night and we only have

sandwiches for lunch and cereal for breakfast there is not that

much to do, thank God. Sadly the dinners are followed by

hours of dancing, drinking and fighting. I go to bed early to read

but R stays and plays “peacemaker”. Tonight he says he’s going

to let them kill each other and join me. Therefore I can set up my

typewriter on the kitchen table and get right to it. People keep

coming to bring me coffee and cookies – I think they really

want to see a writer “in action” – at the end of this trip I MAY

be 20 lbs heavier. The rest of my time is spent sunning and reading.

                 Unfortunately St. Secaire going VERY badly. Complete

horseshit, alas.

         I’ve started it four separate times. I think at this point I just

have to keep going and hope it’s possible to clean up the mess later.

                   Tuesday 17 Aug 76 7:30 PM

                 Outside a fair number of people, all high as kites,

revving their engines and swearing they’re leaving and never

coming back. I don’t know if anybody’s actually going to GO

or not but I wish they would. No wonder R had nothing to do

with these people for four years – he may conveniently blame

his wife but the truth is none of them can stand each other.

Pack of wolverines. I’ve been left totally alone and am well

out of it – they may have forgotten I am even here. Last night R

was so depressed he just lay on the bed exhausted by them. I

tried to explain to him about resentment and the resulting succubae

and incubi thus created. (Subject of my novel, in fact.)

                 He said something about “our next 25 years” that just

floored me. Even my husband didn’t talk like that. Remember

saying to my father – I would be fine if I could only find a man who

treated me as well as I treated him. Dad – so ready to take

anybody’s part over mine,  said, Has it ever occurred to you at

you might be hard to live with?  Such a typical Daddy remark –

the more you think about it the worse it gets.

                 Well, R treats me better than anyone else so far.

He’s almost talked me into looking for a new job when I get back –

and that’s a lot. But if he wants to introduce me around, can’t lie

about what I do, etc etc. (This group – doesn’t know about my job –

he says they’d eat me – and him – alive. I can scarcely believe

they would take the moral high ground with me but I suppose

anything’s possible.)

              Tried to read a Redbook someone brought –

shouldn’t do it.  So depressing.  Could never write like that or

be like that. If that’s the standard this whole thing is hopeless.

Then I picked up a book by Grace Livingston Hill. I’m going to

include her in my article on female pornographers.

                   R told me he had the impression that if I didn’t have my

novel to write I would probably go bananas. I said probably. I tried

to prepare him for the very different kind of vacation he’s going to

get in Maine – where people very deliberately leave each other alone.

If somebody sets off down the beach and you wanted also to walk

on the beach – you’d turn and go the opposite way. R says in his

family that would be grounds for a six-year grudge punctuated by

sobbing, screaming and threats of suicide.

12:10 am

                   Went night fishing with R because he wanted me to.

Wrote a wonderful poem about Coleridge – just came to me in

one piece. Couldn’t really share with R – he doesn’t know who

Coleridge is. So I showed him – Haunted Wedding.

HAUNTED WEDDING

The pregnant car disgorges

Only us. It’s winter.

Drunk as silver fish

We beat our gills as light

As hummingbirds.

In an amethyst ring

Of drypoint trees

The half-built house

Gapes and swells

Its timbers stink of sap.

Windrill fields occlude

Our crossing, so you carry me

High above the thorny osiers.

We sleep aloft for safety

Locked and levitating

In this space of air

One season only,

Unseen by angry outriders;

Bloodless in our wedding robes

Like the doubled membranes

Of the frozen flowers

                 This triggered a fight because he says it wasn’t written

for him.  (If he jealously searches my work for other lovers

madness is assured.)  He almost talked me into thinking it a

bad poem.

                   I feel my mother’s disapproving stare on all of this – “

don’t ruin what you have by trying to get something else” – as

if showing R this poem would  be a deliberate way of hurting him

by making him feel inferior – part of her larger accusation that I

channel so much energy into writing I’m no good with people and

that’s why my relationships suffer.  All I can say is, thank God for

my diary.

                   Writing now with my feet in R’s lap while he plays cards.

He strokes my toes from time to time, as if I were a cat. We came in

from fishing and he just took my pants down – such earthy

sexuality has never existed for him. He told me he’s never

been so happy. And as for me? One side of my multi-prismed

personality is happy, but some of the other sides are complaining.

Difficult to contemplate an existence where I am not mentally alone

six hours a day.

                   One of the reasons I like my job is that it leaves that part

of me remarkably intact – dancing is a lot like sleepwalking. If I get

another job there’s a strong chance I’ll have to interact with humans.

Hell. And we both know how humans can be. Then I might be too

exhausted emotionally and battered psychologically to have the

energy to write – it’s a serious risk.  Those architects ran roughshod

over me.

July 25, 2025
Inspired Pleasure – the dance diaries of Alysse Aallyn

    9:45 AM Wed July 28 76

                            Anniversary of Toss Sheffield relieving me of

my impacted virginity (as I relieved him of his.)  R came yesterday at 2 –

left at 3 – came back at 5.  Another watershed in our relationship – Fears.

He’s afraid to lose the hearing in his good ear. He speaks sign

language but doesn’t want to live in a world without sound. I made

him promise to go the doctor. He agreed to make an appointment no

later than Weds.

                   Reading Christina Stead’s wonderful Dark Places of

the Heart. Considered inviting Ryder to live with us – rejected

the idea. I need too much alone time. So important to establish

amour proper. I am so impoverished from setting up the house

(though I’ve made enough in tips to pay my taxi ride home tonight)

I am barely going to make the rent. Need a windfall.

                   Sweaty and smelly. I think I’ve boogie –oogie-oogied

till I just can’t boogie no more.

                   Club Shalimar– 30 July 76

                 Cookout at Ryder’s parents – I met his folks – two

roly-poly people who are nothing like him –  one sister who is

a lot younger.

                 We had glorious talks on our way there and back –

about having our own space – (we agreed he needs to live alone);

our hopes and dreams (he used to write music, wants to do that

again someday – I told him I have an agent shopping a novel around)

first impressions (I discovered he was in the bar when I auditioned!

Horrors!) He said what intrigues him most about me is that he

can’t figure me out – still can’t – everything about me is a surprise.

I guess I could say the same about him.

                 Wonderful abandoned sex – just crazy stuff – I came and

came. He told me he spent last night at his old house – he and

his wife had to have a “meeting”.   I was jealous until he told me

that his wife is sexually dead – and always has been. He didn’t

understand it when they married, assuming it was something you

get over.  I suggested she was probably molested as a child –

he didn’t want to believe it. He thinks some people are sexually

just asexual. I thought – but didn’t say – there’s a self-protective

concept. He doesn’t want to think she is turned off of him but in

my experience – such as it is – chemistry is a completely

mysterious yet crucial factor women have a tendency to discount

it when choosing a life partner.  So they end up married to the

“perfect” person, except they’re not sexually stirred.

                 2:00 AM. He tucked me in – kissed me – left – then

I was wakened with his hands all over me. When he got to his

car he realized our clock had stopped and he didn’t have time

to go home before work. So he snuck back in the sliding door.

We had sex again, and the whole night became a snake

eating its own tail. This morning got a wonderful poem:

Love, the Magician.

The Magician is a Capricorn

Bleeding cock’s milk from nipples

Pale like mine but

Maler.

Illusion, he says is memory

Of things that should have been.

Doves and rabbits he entices

From sacred groves between my legs

Placed by ruse, and freed by art.

When he dies, passion turns his eyes

To quarters.

He hears the world but faintly

Through his one good ear.

The other turns to me,

Safecracker’s daughter.

Trust the magician, voices tell me

He knows when to drop the dice.

31 July 76 Shalimar

                   R came in but I managed to get rid of him. Sandy

brought in a huge bag of string beans, squash and tomatoes

from her garden – I told Ryder to take them home and cook them.

My job is turning into a source of tremendous conflict – he is the

snake in his own paradise.  Plus, tips really fall off when he is

here. I am already looking at a very tough month financially –

trying to take so much time off.  He said he’ll be back at the end

of the night to pick me up – he’s hurt when I’m “in need” and

don’t call him. So that saves cab fare anyhow.

                   We took a walk between sets and talked about his

parents – second generation immigrants,  lifelong Army. He doesn’t

tell them anything (they obviously know his marriage broke up

and now he’s with me – but they don’t know about his deafness,

for example or about his classes at Gallaudet.)  He said to me,

can you believe I’ve only seen these people twice in the past

four years? And we live in the same state. Wait till he meets

my parents – shudder. I’ll put it off as long as I possibly can.

                   Dancing tonight with Alicia. Poor Alicia. She’s a

“dripper” (constantly leaking pee) but blames it on hypoglycemia.

She hates dancing when there are so few people in here.

It’s kind of interesting.  She sort of has a whorish appearance and

doesn’t realize she’s trapped in a vicious cycle – audience thinks

she’s a loose woman, she thinks they’re perverts.

                 I’m trying not to fall into the super-loving, super-giving

trap but Ryder is the first guy I’ve ever met who would obviously

be a wonderful father. Rare among men under thirty?  Or something.

                 Talked to Avril on the phone – she was bored to tears at home

so I suggested she come in. We shared a burger basket and she

saw me dance for the first time. She wasn’t grossed out at all by

the semi-nudity – which is good – told me I’m a great dancer and

she really envies me my pelvic wiggle.

                 Also told me I have a terrific body – which really cheered

me up because I still feel too hefty around Ryder.  (At his parents’ house

we went over his old scrapbooks – he was the star quarterback in

high school football.  They described him as 5’4”!  That’s a lot

shorter than he admits to these days. His boots have at least two

inch heels.) A left after one set because all the guys of course

came on to her. Obvious losers, alas, including the one who insists

he’s a hitman for the CIA and another who claims to be giving

away government jobs.

                 Unfortunately I’m dependent on the tips of these characters.

Ryder has been telling them all that I’m a writer (instead of a call girl,

presumably) which gives me a lot of explaining to do.

                 I wish I had money to buy things the house needs –

flashlights and fuses and drainers and shelving and all that stuff –

but I’m saving every bit for our trip to the Finger Lakes. Aug 5 will

mark one month in the house and six months since I quit the

architects. Seems like much longer than that. Where will I be

six months from now?

                   Hope my gothic novel sells – I need an immediate

hundred grand. I really can’t write with R sucking up all my free time.

I’ve been struggling with another poem about him – even that isn’t

coming. Hopefully we’ll settle down into being able to work side

by side quietly – maybe after our vacation.

6:00 PM, Chevy Chase Tyler St, 2 Aug 76

                 Across the street Shoulders, dressed in a skimpy football

undershirt, is mowing his lawn. He is a sight to behold.

                 Sitting over my repaired typewriter with a cup of hot tea

and a case of writer’s block. I could write a poem about Shoulders –

already R is interfering with my life. Beautiful day – a little chilly –

a little Maine edge to it.

                 Finished Stead’s Dark Places – which I adored – absolutely

one of a kind.  Another bothersome thing about R – he really doesn’t

read. He’s been dragging around a sleazy paperback “heist comedy”

he pretends to read from time to time. At this rate it will take him six

months. I am struggling with All Authors are Equal but I may give

up on it and read Famous Washington Ghosts which R picked up

for me to add to my considerable collection of ghost stories (I must

have 50 vols.)

                   On the phone with Maeve my old Baltimore buddy –

she is behind in her rent but looking for a new job. In the meantime

borrowing from boyfriends.   I take a perverse pleasure that anyone

is managing worse than me.

                   Shalimar – 10:20 PM

                 Called in tonight to replace another girl – great – that

means I work 5 times this week. Just that small amount makes a

big difference. A is in the chips right now and I could owe her

but don’t want to.

                 When I came in they told me R had been in 30 mins

before. That was a little unsettling – I didn’t realize he would come in

if I weren’t here. Of course it is really close to his job – but equally

of course the food is more expensive here than just about

anywhere else he could choose. I look at who was dancing

to see whether he would think she was in any way better than me –

luckily it was the pisser Alicia instead of potentially scary

competition like, say, Gloria. He didn’t know I was coming in,

because Carmen didn’t tell him. Reading the Ghosts of

Washington. Wonderful poem potential.

Shalimar Thurs 5 Aug 76

                 R dearer every day, in spite of the fact that he’s

been checking up on me. Called and called last night – wondered

where I was – I wasn’t too sure how to tell him A and I were

over at Shoulders’ drinking, so I just said we were visiting

the neighbors.  Standing in their yard, which wasn’t true. He is

jealous of Shoulders and I don’t blame him – such lush male

beauty makes women helpless. A is a complete mess over him.

He frequently wanders around the house in nothing but his

boxers –  we call them as his “huppa”.

                   R. finally got an apt and can stop “crashing” with

friends –  one bedroom at the top of a Rockville skyscraper.

Sounds crazy expensive to me. Wrote a good poem –

capitol ghosts – today from the book R gave me.

Trying to think where to send it. Tomorrow’s my day off –

R coming over at 2.

CAPITOL GHOSTS

Pale Guiteau

slants his disappointed child’s face

downwards; the better to study bloodstains left

by assassins more accomplished than himself

who required benefit of anonymous surgeons

specially qualified for skewering

the muscles of the mighty.

The guard who saw him

claimed also to hear demon cats

and could not be relied upon.

these portents once were matters of

congressional dispute; now

no matter; caught within the marbled lurch

of history, victims

of the uninspired mad;

those who pursue the corpse from whom

the ghost escaped. He haunts our history

like the villainous barber who sings as he slits

both throats and wombs, a pure tune

some say, picked clean of tragedy

                               which only the dying hear.

Shalimar 7 Aug 76

                 Sitting here in a stupor of exhaustion. We had an

Al Green fan in here tonight – kept playing same song over

and over. Presumably working through some kind of

relationship crisis. They don’t realize coming here and blowing

their money kills any relationship – and I am not going to tell

them. Anyway I hate Al Green. Missed my bus this AM so

took the Fessenden bus and walked across. A better way to go –

I like the walk – to hell with this transfer business.

                 I have to admit R doesn’t seem to understand

poetry. He’s very suspicious of all ease, elegance, lightness.

Too much Nature!  “Work” should make you grit your teeth,

groan and bulge your forehead veins.   The easier it comes,

the less valuable it MUST be.  (He would hate Picasso’s very

best stuff!)  I’ve tried getting him to understand by comparing

art to athletics – it only looks easy – it’s the training beforehand

that’s so hard. The trick is to render training invisible. But he

seems to think modern poetry is a plot to make him look stupid.

                 Really worried about money lately – everything at

Unibank is bouncing. It doesn’t take much to set off a chain

reaction. Guess I’ll have to borrow from Avril after all.

                 How true it is that before you can love you must

love yourself. My love for myself is wavering. Just finished

Sean Stiles’ Occam’s Razor. I hate to see a good idea wasted.

Mostly I am depressed by the poor quality of the stories in

the Times Detective Story competition anthology. This is

something I should aspire to? I’m on a wonderful streak

of poetry – keep piling them up – got ophelia and

haunted house this eve.

OPHELIA WAS A MAN

The best revenge is growing up.

Behold a street of suicides –

Fringed lampshades &

Mullioned windows where

The dentist’s son grew dope

From seed (they had eight bathrooms and

The dentist couldn’t be everywhere)

His wife was nowhere; we saw her leave

With the cat in a suitcase clawing to get out.

“Crazier than thou” averred my aunt.

That boy blew the fruits of orthodontal science until

The day he blew his mind –

We traced the hissing-pissing-noise

To the garage of the stockbroker’s son; he’s

The one who stayed home from Yale to rewrite Hamlet

(Made it better – put in people you could recognize)

Type-cast himself – since he saw ghosts.

Two fine boys married to each other

Rosy-cheeked and sightless

In their parents’ wedding clothes.

                 Tomorrow R is taking me on a tour of the television

station and out to lunch. This is a biggie – see where he works.

                  So I had to buy a gorgeous black linen jumpsuit (size 5!) Should

be worn with high red heels – but needless to say, can’t around

R. So instead, flat sandals. Fortunately everything is on sale.

A and I have decided to ask Maeve to move in with us – we can’t

seem to manage alone and we do have three bedrooms, but

she’ll have to hide from the landlord. I hate to do it. Letter from

D today – he’s in love with the 18 yr old virgin daughter of his minister.

Didn’t do a thing to me. God bless ‘em.

                 Rick the gambler in tonight. He’s a friend of R’s – cheered

me up by telling me I’ve done so much for R who was really “hurting”

over his divorce.

                 Ryder – I love you – but I don’t really know who you are.  Hope you are who you pretend to be.

July 24, 2025
Inspired Pleasure – The Dance Diary of Alysse Aallyn

                 Fri 16 July 76 – Club Shalimar

                   A & I hung living room paintings today, and the last piece

was moved in. Half an hour till my date with Ryder. Will his

name mean anything to me in twenty years? Brought blow dryer,

change of clothes and unguents sufficient to slap me back into shape

after 7 hrs dancing. Idly listening to gossip of Randy

(bouncer), Jinx (dancer) and Bobbi (bartender).

                 A and I had pleasant evening last night – wild storm

and the power failed. So we went out walking afterwards with

dogs & flashlights. Fun looking into people’s houses, seeing

them move about with candles. What does the future hold?

I worry both that Ryder will be there and that he won’t be there.

Margery Sharp’s The Faithful Servants has a lot of sweetness.

                   17 July 76

                  Interesting date. I want to write about it but first I have

to say today has been a TERRIBLE day – I had to follow ex-stripper

named Edie who wore a black lace corset and gloves and carried

a whip onstage – everything but the donkey, as one of the other

dancers remarked. Then I had to listen to loud speculation on

how I got the bruise on my ass when it was my turn.

                 But Ryder Arlen. We had a wonderful dinner. He

ordered in Italian. The weirdest thing about him is that he

doesn’t like mushrooms. Long dinner, then over to the Gangplank

for Irish coffee. He insisted upon carrying me across two puddles –

he’s not very big and I was sure he’d get a hernia – but he made it.

                 We got back to Chevy Chase the house looked wonderful –

A had obviously slaved for hours. We had her down for a glass of

wine, then she went back upstairs. We ended up reading my poetry

I didn’t show him the erotic stuff because I didn’t feel the time was right.

He liked valentine the best –

Valentine

I sent myself in a letter

Heart-creased

Like a glove

Too much folded

An anecdote

Too much told

Dear stranger don’t

Lose me

I forgot the rule

(Hold back a copy)

                   Then we made out for hours. He was deliciously

passionate. I said, “You don’t want to end up in bed on the

first date, do you?” He said, “You pick the time and the place

but I hope it’s inevitable.”

                   I said it was certainly feeling that way but I’d have

to get to know him better. I wouldn’t let him take down the

top of my dress either. He left at 2:45 AM. He seems to

really care for me – so my worry that I’m just a first experiment

after leaving wife seems baseless. He invited me to go crabbing

tomorrow, then on a four-day cruise sometime in August.

                   Fri 23 July 76 – Tyler St, Chevy Chase, Maryland

                   R and I have seen each other every day since Fri –

I think he’s in love. I could fall if I let myself but something holds me back.

I like our relationship now – he drops by the house after work

and we’re both in jeans. I think tonight’s the night for sex –

first time – I’m nervous but since I love his body I expect

to be all right.

                  Adore these slow working mornings. I get up

with A (depending on when her first run is – she’s now

working courier) to have time to set my hair before leaving

at 10. Beautiful walks up Tyler St. Early AM at the Shalimar

such a pleasure  – sitting at the bar with my diary balanced

on my hipbones, watching the barmaids get ready,  feeling

like a character out of Toulouse Lautrec.

                 Yesterday we met across the street neighbors –

one of them is a gorgeous guy named Larry getting a degree

in Hospital Administration.  Among ourselves we call him

“Shoulders” because he has such a gorgeous pair. To see

them dimpled with sweat on his way back from a run is to be

in heaven.  Invited Larry and roommates Garrett and Opal to

dinner tomorrow night – if they can come.

Thurs 22 July 76 – 9:25 Pm

                   God I’m in love. I love his fragile, tense blond body –

love holding it. Love looking at his Lorenzo diMedici face.

Those blond Italians!  He wouldn’t like to hear me say it –

he has a black belt in karate and thinks he’s so tough – but

he probably only outweighs me by 20 lbs. Made love all afternoon –

he is very skilful – obsessed with my pleasure. Says he doesn’t

care if he ever comes – wants to see what gives a woman joy.

We fit together exactly  – interlocking puzzle pieces even

upside down.  I can feel his feet with my feet – his knees

with my knees – it’s like having a mirror body – only with a

hard chest and penis. After the first time the relief of the orgasm

was so great I wept. I fell asleep with him inside me. Wrote

a poem about him but don’t know if I want to show him.  If I

learned anything from Bruce it’s that people misrepresent.

He could be shockable and its early days yet. Today I want

to buy a bookcase.

                   Love equals, unfortunately, anxiety attacks – could

he possibly love me as much as I love him? Yesterday walking

in the park I expressed fear about him going straight from one

serious relationship right into another – but he says he refuses to

limit the experience.  Which of course was exactly the right answer.

The worst part is his trouble with my job.

                   He says he knows he can’t ask me to quit because

he can’t support me – I pointed out he wants me to go on the Divers

World expedition, and then to Cozumel, and I want to take him to Maine,

all of which would be impossible if I had a regular job. He says he

can deal with it only by avoiding the Shalimar – OK by me as long as

I see him outside. He came in today – I got rid of him after a half hour,

before my set.

11:05 AM – Shalimar Tues 27 July 76

                 Feel like throwing out all my diaries. Driveling gush broken

up by gushing drivel. But I go right ahead and produce some more.

Randy throwing ice and cases of beer, Bobbi cleaning trays, Carmen

checking paper towels and me writing. Perfect.

                 We were lying in bed – me and Ryder – I have to lie on his

right side because he only has one good ear – and he told me a long

purposeless allegory about bullfighting. Can’t tell which of us is the

supposed to be the matador. I’m the only one with a poetic license

in this relationship.) He said I should just write, and he’s going

to see to it.  I said fine by me. I love this job but not as much

as writing, love and freedom. Then he said, I love you.

July 23, 2025
Inspired Pleasure – The Dance Diaries of Alysse Aallyn
Fri. 16 April 1976 – 2 PM – Train to Philly – a zombified
redhead in suede coat, oversized purse & glasses.
Lacking mirrors, we lose our faces. Got to get my emotional
house in order but I can’t think how. I used to have a
roadmap and none of this was on it. What am I? An idiot?
No. Just an addict of spiritually orgasmic livnig. Still, all is
grist for the art mill.

Reading The Fortunate Miss East, a charming,
charming little novel. Aunt Fred picking me up – I’m scheduled
to read my poetry at Baldwin School.
```
    Zevin Towers – Wash DC 9:30 AM Wed 21 Apr 76
    Baby sis Avril and I are totally broke. We are eating 
```
our way thru Mom & Dad’s supplies. The grapenuts went first
then the soup. Now we are on sauerkraut and spinach.
Playing Fleetwood Mac & Jimmy Spheeris while sitting on
the balcony looking over Rock Creek Park. You don’t see one
building; Washington DC masquerades as a virgin world. I
need a job by next Mon. Something tells me I can’t finish my
novel and sell it in time. I refuse to be a cubicle drudge again
so what is there? Nude modeling sounds dangerous. Topless
dancing?

Avril admits she sits on a park bench instead of going
to class as she told Mom! Uh oh. She says she just can’t “make
herself” do things. What a relief to have someone worse off
than me.

How I wish I could fall in love with Marc Kramer. He’s longing to buy jewelry for someone! I could sell that rather than the contents of this old folks’ apartment. But he’s too sane if anything andwears funny old man lace-up shoes.

Plus he’s covered in a thick mat of dark fur. And there’s his endless talk about shorts,hedges, futures. PARALYZINGLY DULL. Raining outside.

Isn’t life rotten?
```
    10:50 AM Sun 2 May 76
    Answered an ad for “go-go girl”.  You wear fringed 
```
bikinis and go-go boots and dance for the troops! No
more than 2 gigs a day (gotta drive there) and
each one only lasts an hour so $60 seems very generous.

She asked for my “experience” – I said I used to be a Maxim’s
dancer! (I didn’t say it was for the nuns’ THEATRE
SCHOOL in Minnesota!)

DeeDee is giving me my schedule tomorrow.

Tips are welcome because I don’t get paid till the 15th. Have
to clean this apt and I don’t want to at all. Dad says apt
lease up in two months so I’ll have to find somewhere else
to live (Mom refuses to live here because 16th floor.) Dad
says men are put off by us because Avril and I are too
“masculine” by which he means determined, decisive and
pleasure seeking. (A. very disappointed because she’s had
two dates with Paul and no sex yet.) Reading
Spink’s Hans Christian Andersen and his World – what
a painful ugly duckling story!
```
    Tues. 4 May 76 9:45 pm
    Totally exhausted. Had to dance 2 hrs at Andrews 
```
AFB because my partner didn’t show up (but it’s double the
money.) Jefferson Starship’s Miracles my favorite song to
dance to. Soldiers always want to play I’m A Man and
that’s no fun. Of course I have seen Spencer Davis’ dark side up
close while I was trailing around dragging an echo-plex after
rockstar husband Bruce. Would be reading The Place at
Whitton by Thos Keneally if I could keep my eyes open.
```
    11:20 AM Sat 8 May 76
    No word from Beautiful Faraway Perfect Man 
```
Devon about whether he will ever visit, but speaking of
attractive young men I had a “conversion experience” at
the Ft. Myers’ officers club yesterday. I was registering
at the front desk when this young man with dark curly
hair and the face of an angel asked me who I was and
what I was up to. I was wearing my go-go outfit plus
military-style jacket so I did stand out. He wore a sweatband
around his head and was all set for running but his plans
changed in a flash. He would rather watch me dance instead.

His name is Frank and something Italian. Took me down to
the dark Hideaway Club and watched me the whole time –
playing and replaying the Pointer Sisters’ Chick on the Side.
I gave him my number and he gave me a $20 tip. Does he
represent a break from lonely masturbation? At this stage
of my relationship with Devon I can hardly be unfaithful.
We shall see.

Marc Kramer called offering to fly me to the island
and back for Memorial Day weekend. I have $266 in the bank.
Should I take him up on it? Just doesn’t feel right.
Wouldn’t be able to get rid of him when I wanted to.
I hate feeling “beholden.” Reading Norah Lofts’ Hauntings
to help me with my ghost stories.
```
    2:15 PM – Sun 9 May 76
    Lying in bed surrounded by Sun papers. Have decided 
```
to get tix for me and Avril to Royal Danish Ballet’s Triumph of Death,

Royal Ballet’s Romeo and Juliet and All’s Well That Ends Well
at the Folger Shakespeare Library. So glorious having money.
```
    Tues. 2:30 pm 18 May 76
    Guy came forward at the Army Navy Yard, offered 
```
me his card and said I could make a whole lot more money
dancing at his club. I have to admit this rushing around in a
car is getting old – our Gremlin AKA the “el Diablo” is acting up. ThinkI will go to his club, talk to the other dancers and see what
the scoop is. It is “topless”, but so what if you aren’t supposed
to (or expected to) “fraternize’ with the audience. There is a stage.

Went to look at a townhouse off Dupont Circle –
2 bedroom, $435 a month but no place for dogs. Can’t live without my dogs forever.

Jeannie and I perform at a private party in
Annandale. I am nervous but she is completely cool and they
are content to look. Avril has a new man – Jack.
```
    Wed 26 May 1976 – The Parkway East
    Waiting my turn to go on. Thought I was going to have 
```
dance alone but thank God Darby finally showed up – fucked up,
but she can dance. (Her boyfriend brought her.) Phoned Devon –
boy that was stupid – to see if he wanted to go to the island for
Mem Day Weekend. He is playing in a tennis tournament and not
“available”. Every time I reach out to him I feel like a sap.
Never know whether his mysterious “tides” are “in” or “out”.
He did his best to sound warm and affectionate but he is obviously very stressed – he was actually panting! Now he’ll have to meditate for a week. Must let this man go.

When I wail about him, Avril
makes me laugh by saying, “He’s GAY! He just won’t admit it!”
But I have to say in the sack he didn’t seem gay to me.
Genevieve invites us to NYC for Mem Day weekend.
She has filed for divorce and fallen in love with someone else.
Ex Kent doesn’t know but she warns us he is calling everyone in
the family begging us to intervene.
```
    2 PM – 9 June 76
    Sun night I invited Frank and his roommate to dinner.  
```
Horrible. They were 45 mins late and my blintzes were ruined.
Avril & roommate took against each other immediately. They
brought Thai sticks, we refused to smoke. On an up note I
took a cab to the Club Shalimar (Gremlin in shop) and the taxi
driver was so excited about having a poet in his car he didn’t
charge me. Said he had never met a poet before. (Gave him
a poem on the spot.) Shalimar seems possible – other dancers
like it but constant turnover; no one has been there long.
Bouncer very nice, and I can take a bus there so A. can have car.
Tempted to risk it.

11:05 PM – waiting for Jeannie in the empty Bethesda
Naval Officers Club. She is giving me a ride home. She is an
interesting person – has done a lot of nude modeling – showed
me her portfolio. Very Playboy. Officers keep marching through
in their whites. They are very polite.
```
    Fri. 11 June 76 8:15 PM - 
    Things could hardly be worse.  Got my hair cut the 
```
other day – I only wanted a trim – he absolutely butchered me.
It is barely shoulder length and it looks like a cow slept in it.
I hate all hairdressers, gynecologists and dentists – you’re just
completely helpless in their hands. Plus I got another piercing
in each ear and the left one seems infected. Now my face looks
crooked. Also having my period so I am swollen up like I’m
pregnant. Avril has a college friend (male) coming for the
weekend and she is beating herself up – “Why did I say yes?”
She would call and cancel if only he had a phone.

On the plus side, tips at the Shalimar are really
good and the dancing is as energetic as you feel like –
which means standing there swaying is Just Fine. You
can rock yourself to sleep if you want to. Of course my
ego won’t allow too much relaxation.

Piece of good news – agent loves my gothic novel!
Reading The Royal Victorians. Gremlin seems stabilized
so Avril applied for a job as a driver with a messenger service.
```
    Fri. 18 June 76 ll:00 Am
    A’s friend a complete bozo.  Fortunately he has other
```
places to be so we hardly see him. Huge sigh of relief and
lesson learned. Let’s just hope he doesn’t steal the silver.
DeeDee and I come to a Sad Parting of the Ways – her
money too small, gas costs, etc.

A and I got a wonderful 3 bedroom in Chevy Chase
on a charming little side street but the landlord very snooty
about only 2 tenants. We said OK, OK. Big yard. I can
have my dogs! Moving in July 5. Struggling with Christina
Stead’s Puzzleheaded Girl. She is overrated. Maybe I can’t
read fiction any more.
```
    Fri 25 June 76 – Club Shalimar 
    Eating free scrambled eggs the cook gave me: 
```
“Somebody’s got to eat them” while waiting to go on. A lot
of interesting men come into this place. None perfect obviously
– and unfortunately I need more than perfection. I need
mysticism, competence and money-earning capabilities. Shalimar owner seems to be something of a gangster.

I got 2 standing ovations today.

The job is actually enjoyable. I am really getting
into it – dancing for pleasure – for the connection with
the audience. They stare spellbound like deer in the
headlights. Feel like I’m living in a Simenon novel as
I learn the ins and outs.

Avril loves her new job – thank God – they
want her to do dispatch (no wear and tear on fragile Gremlin)
and the drivers are all foreigners who don’t know the city.
She’s always yelling at them to “Look out the car window
and tell me what you see.”

Met the most charming little man – a TV director
at a local station – speaks sign language, is a magician
and a karate black belt, he’s just so full of joie de vivre.
His name is Ryder and his excitement about me puts
my non-relationship with Devon in a new light. Reading
Meyer’s Ibsen.
```
    1:15 AM – Sat 3 July 76
    We’re supposed to “wait” in the dressing room 
```
but they don’t seem to care if you don’t so I spend all my
time talking to Ryder. He says he’s just separating from
his wife and it’s extremely traumatic. They have been
together since high school. He’s a tad hyper – always on
the go, but very entertaining. He usually brings me gifts –
flowers, magazines, stuffed toys and cards. Also he’s a
diver and underwater photog. Today he brought pink roses.

Avril warns me not to fall in love. Just date.
Easy to say! I want security, privacy, ecstasy, exclusivity…
and love. It’s a problem!

The oilman came to the house today says he’s
shocked we have no credit references and will have to pay
COD! Fortunately, I had just got off work and I had the cash
on me but I don’t like it at all. Guess we won’t need
much oil till winter. Let’s hope.

Ryder gave me a long spiel about how he
gave another dancer a ride home (Darlene) and she
expected him to go to bed with her and he said, I don’t do
that. I could tell he was sounding me out! I said,
I don’t either! No sex, ever! Sex, bad. He laughed till
it hurt and he begged for mercy.

Poor Avril had a long hard
day – 7:30 AM to 6:30! I promised to take her out to eat at
Steak & Egg if she picks me up. She said make it Bob’s
and it’s a deal.

Sat 10 July 76 – 9 pm – Shalimar
7 hours packing at Zevin Towers before I showed up here.

10:30 AM Tues 6 July 76
Sitting on a mattress on the floor of my Tyler St

bedroom surrounded by a jumble of stuff. So exciting
starting a New Life. This time I am waiting for the gasman
– if he doesn’t come by 1 pm I have to leave.

9:25 PM – sitting in the Shalimar dressing room
eating a plum. Last night A and I saw Antonioni’s The
Passenger. Goes down with La Prisonniere, Persona,
Pierrot Le Fou and Weekend as one of my favorite all-time
films. So perfectly constructed it was like a series of Canalettos.
Ryder just asked me if I wanted to go to dinner some-
time. I said sure. He asked me about a lot of Italian food I
didn’t recognize – I said I like everything. Covered with sweat
from dancing to ”No one knows what its like to be the bad man…”
have to take it really slow, freezing in a series of poses. Then
suddenly I meet someone’s eyes and he drops his drink.

I hate packing. Getting to
be a bit of a trial having Ryder in the bar all the time. His
expressions embarrass me to dance around him. I said I
thought this place was full of stories. He said, don’t stay
here just to pick up stories. He said he would “subsidize”
me to keep me from “doing this.” Hmmmm. Right after
talking about how little money he’ll have when he splits
with his wife!

He’s been offered a job in Detroit for a lot more
money – that’s how they get ahead in his business –
jump from station to station. I told him he should take it –
turned out that was the “wrong thing” because he hoped
I’d want him here. But I told him, I’m a citizen of the world.
I can go anywhere. Fear only empty experiences. So he says,
why are you doing this? I said, to meet you.
Otherwise he is perfect. So charming, smart and
funny, with so much ambition, spirituality and humility.

4 sets left – then 2 days off. Just bought 3 costumes from
Sunny for $30. Feeling personally confident in a way I
haven’t for years. R invites me out to dinner next week.
Have to buy special shoes so I won’t be too tall and tower
over him. Today marks year and a half since my separation from Bruce.
July 22, 2025