Tag: #Mysteries

                 

                                    Plush Palace – Midnight – Fri 12 May 78

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

                                    11 PM Mon 15 May 78 

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

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

                                     2 AM Mon 22 May 78

                                     Exhaustion follows mania.  Yesterday couldn’t keep my 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

                                     Dear Detective was superb!  Followed it up with 

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

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

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

                                     10:45 AM Sat 29 May 78

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

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

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

                                     3 PM Tues 30 May 78

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

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

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

                                     2 PM Sat June 2 – 78

                                     Trouble opening latest letter from Devon – I had 

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

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

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

                                     Plush Palace Mon 5 June 78

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

                                     Plush Palace Mon 12 June 78 – 7:00 PM

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

                                     Plush Palace – 22 June 78 – 3 PM

                                     Second double this week.  I hate them but I need

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

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

SYLVIA PLATH: The Festering Weight

I know you deceived me

With the bald-headed lady

My true kin;

My mother renounced

Your swollen giblets in my name.

See? I bleed tulips.

It’s happened twice before; I seed the earth

With children, little miracles.

I give them their inheritance – a

Carriage full of baby dung

Flung

Down the coal hole

To remind me of you.

Pearly maggots bee–like

Suck my lip to

Scent the fault that clings to me:

Heredity.

This enemy’s face shifts cleverly;

First male, then jew, then

blurred and unfamiliar, genitalia

like narcissi.

I reserve the right to reject

This choiceless life.

See? My body’s scarred by

Your refusals.

The blackbird sings out

Blackly.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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