Tag: Psychological Thrillers

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
The Demon Lover – a play for two voices by Alysse Aallyn

6. ENTREGARME – SURRENDER

EVAN
I am utterly becalmed.
What I dread most is silence,
The latest form of impotence.
I need stringing up and tautening.
This is the
Revenge of love. Its revenge on me.

EVA
I am suffused with love because I am free.
My work becomes our child,
Our extension. Immortal. Still,
Something vanishes when you’re not there.

EVAN
Elayna broke her hip.
How irreplaceable she is to me.
Our brand of married happiness is entirely unsung.
I shrink to leave her even for a day.

EVA
I’m sorry it wasn’t fatal.
Am I so dispensable to you?
You love no one. If you turn against me
I’ll die in a week because
I have no one looking after me.

EVAN
Turn against you! Agonizing!
In spite of the hangover of humiliation
I broke down all reserves so we could be together.
A very happy day and I was sorry to leave you.

EVA
Wed & sad.
Past distress muffled by age & habit.
Today we meet formally as if at a garden party.
A promise unfulfilled.
Miracles happen but
The gift of love is guilt & pain.

EVAN
You looked so ill
I was nagged by fear I bored you.
I long for the happiness of old age,
Guilt free, pain free, fear free.

EVA
I invited Elayna to lunch.

EVAN
I am not best pleased.
Your ghost will haunt me till I die.
The day you come to like each other
It will be poison to our love.

Elayna rarely admits depression.
I have had not just love but loyalty.
You force ruthlessness.
It is a good thing your throat is sore
Or you would never stop talking.

EVA
Are you sending me your signet ring?
I want something solid to remember you by.
A last communion.
Dodging death, I fight off this
Paralyzing loneliness.

(EVA fades away. EVAN is alone.)

EVAN
Is the flaw in love a flaw in me?
I never should have married.
My heart jumps with pain like a hooked fish.
I am rudderless. Upon your death
My ring comes back,
All your contrivances revealed.

Now that you are gone, I find you everywhere.
It’s hard to take in the fact that
We will never see each other again;
Never, never, never.
You are gone from me forever.

I walk the streets and weep.
Is this delayed shock? Boredom or despair?
I will never cease to feel this pain till
I cease feeling anything.
For the last three nights, I dreamed of you.

Did I anger you, neglect you?
It’s too late to pray –
I await your final book with horror.
I need to know I was your life.
Please come back one last time
For just an hour.
If you ever thought you loved more than I
You are now
Revenged.

July 21, 2025
The Demon Lover – a play for two voices by Alysse Aallyn

VOLCADA – CAPSIZED

EVA
Allen’s buried.
Without husband, I re-experience my youth.
Oh, the bafflement of the young!
I broke off my first
Engagement because I loved too much
And cast about for a spouse I could
Control. I believe you did that, too.

EVAN
I experienced our parting as unbearable.
I had to run away –
Your rush of talk was like someone bursting into tears.
I felt like an executioner robbing you of sleep.
Without you
My nose began to bleed and
It’s been bleeding ever since.
We must love each other less to become more tranquil.

EVA
I am a witch and you should fear me.
I glow with contempt and boredom and fury.
I don’t understand why
I can’t experience life by your side.
We share the same senses,
The same vein of joy.
Our life together is timeless, continuous.

EVAN
Your letter fraught with dynamite.
I can never be alone, it is me and the gin bottle.
I am home nowhere now – except with you.

EVA
Please don’t get yourself into a state –
But Edgar has proposed, forcing me to face the fact
That I literally cannot live without you.

EVAN
I dread you will succumb to Edgar.
You called him “sweet” and “cozy” and “brilliantly entertaining”
And I am none of those things. Did you bewitch him?
I ask in my persecuted voice.
It would be your ultimate justice, sending me to hell.
We lose each other by inches.
Aren’t we doing that already?

EVA
I can’t show Edgar the brutal candor
Behind my loving kindness.
He mistakes the hostess for a person.
I arrange my flowers in symbols of you
And everyone’s too stupid to notice.
To bed alone again tonight.
I wish Elayna would die.
Then we should be equals.

EVAN
I must refuse your guilt.
I feel a shift in the angle of vision
Further from you than ever.
A foreboding so final it seemed the end.
Your pleading for our life dissolves my will.

EVA
I am gnawed by an aching hopeless wish.
Loneliness leads to breakdown,
Becomes dementia. I batter
Around the rooms of this castle,
Brightly-plumaged,
Knocking into furniture,
A tragic bird who’s trapped indoors.
Even dizzy with drink I maintain the frigidity
Of an Edwardian hostess
Intolerant of scenes at meals.
Without you life’s a half-lit room.

EVAN
I’ve become a character in your melodrama
An absurd scalawag of romantic vice.
Let’s reject this
Hopeless dilemma.

EVA
What could be more beautiful than our ten days in New York,
Among perverted architecture.
No loss of illusion there, rather an increase.
I’m in the midst of a dreary financial crisis,
Having breakdown on my feet.
I hope I don’t sound too shocked and sad.
You are life to me as nothing is.
My fingers still tremble,
Touching you after 17 years.

EVAN
This is the Eva I first met, first knew, first loved.
We waited it out and didn’t lose each other.
I was sane or mad to doubt you & myself.
We are like two people sweating blood
I dread losing you
But Elayna’s power still holds me.
One of you may do me harm.

EVA
Thanks for the cash,
I hope it doesn’t embarrass you too much.
You are a reviver and a balm.
We shall be in Paris together before we die.

EVAN
If you want me to be unselfish, let me be unselfish.
You are my greatest friend. I’m
Trying to keep off the drink while you’re here,
Otherwise I know I’ll wreck everything.
Three manhattans makes me crazy.
Your feverish cheer does not seem solid.
Is this the wreckage of our love?
Once frightened of your clinical eye
Now I’m more frightened of my own.
I’ve matriculated in
Your fearful university.

EVA
We sheer away in horror
Scenting fumes of evil
As we lose control.
Defeat and exhaustion, alarm and despondency.
Demoralized and sad.
Slam down the lid on pain and resentment:
I have taken against your family.
Let’s dance. To sit
In silence denigrates our love.

EVAN
My heart aches for you.
We talked for the first time in weeks
About hurt and resentment.
I could manage my life if it weren’t for you
And you could manage yours if it weren’t for me.
You infect me with your despair and I flee to my wife
To release the pressure.
Her quickening influence works my imagination.

EVA
I hate that you travel the world without me.
You pervade that place as God pervades our hearts.
I obsess that you’re in places where I’m not.
I could not live without seeing you. Yet
Our visit may turn sour.

EVAN
Everything except your beautiful self rusts
Or dies or goes away.
My love only seems dead;
it’s alive underneath. If you die
I shall never forgive you.

We need ideas that are less about ourselves.

EVA
My rage is based on my assumption
Of togetherness and my
Secret fear you’re being got at when
We could be so snug together.

EVAN
I hurt Elayna tonight
But there’s no help for it.
She cares for me and I only care for a life apart.
A clean break, an amputation
Makes me frantic and guilty.
She says we have a happy marriage only because
She willed it. This smell of death and decay
Makes me long for sex.
Could you help me find a girl – any girl you choose –
Or will you call me a sex mad degenerate?
Panic makes my hands shake.
I thought of Elayna and I wept.

EVA
I received your sad, wild letter.
I accept that you can’t free yourself.
Do you accept it?
I feel so very near you.
I accept that you make sex
Desperately with strangers –
Do you accept it?
Can anyone love such a cold-blooded person?

EVAN
How silly I am, I thought
I reconciled to our ending,
Expecting a collapse of tension & illusion.
But it’s a prospect I just can’t face.

July 20, 2025
The Demon Lover – a play for two voices by Alysse Aallyn

4. CALESITA –THE MERRY GO ROUND

EVA
Did I leave my diary behind?
Don’t read it, not that you would.
It’s anaphrodisiac. I am filled with envious admiration
For the way you spend your time.
It’s an incentive to work, being alone.
Diplomats are never lonely.

EVAN
My bed gets so icy in the small hours of the morning –
I am losing interest in sex.
Perhaps I am already part of the spirit world.
I am in limbo and will never escape this place.

The teenager remains alive in me, I have a
Panic fear of conformity
So I cast myself as the elderly rake.
I fear I’m the bore –
Marriage gets me down.

EVA
When you go on and on about yourself
You’re a man I don’t recognize.
I prefer your adolescent self.
The man of the house should be a free agent.
A respected prowler
Never lonely, housebound,
Eating baked beans and drinking stewed tea.

EVAN
In other countries women
Are less bossy and more decorative.
You are jealous of my life –
I am jealous of yours.

EVA
Ah the pain of your reproach!
Not seeing you would kill me.
I live for the memory of our every moment.
I wouldn’t give a damn if I died tomorrow.

EVAN
This is the letter I would write you if I dared,
if I weren’t frightened by the cancer
Of your wife-hatred.
I am overworked, wrung out.
Possessed by you.

You make me live at the pitch of anguish.
Our love has roots in good and evil,
It lives in the darkest places of our natures
Shall we end by destroying each other?
You have the deadlier weapons.

EVA
I do have a bad effect on people.
Guilt, conspiracy, love,
I cannot breathe without them.

EVAN
Boredom, dissipation, remorse,
And apprehension– I can’t escape this obsessive cycle.
Beneath the controlled surface of my mind
Opportunities to be frenzied are endless.
I’m afraid of saying something ruthless which many stick.

EVA
This place is full of you.
I can no longer look at hyacinths
Gratitude for our happiness chokes me.
The restlessness of pleasure going to waste.
Missing you is like an illness.

EVAN
If there’s a worm in this bud
Who is the corruptor?
Your insights are so powerful they alter mine.

EVA
I believe we should exchange rings.
Is this a faux pas? Would your wife object?
I need something in case you die of your itch or
I fall out of an airplane.

I wonder why Elayna’s throat won’t heal?
I believe she is ice-bound.
Sealing you away from life.

EVAN
You witch, you have
Frozen poor Elayna’s throat.
I begged you not to. You make all
Suffering physical.

EVA
Elayna’s frozen her own throat –
I wish you’d see it.
Depression is hallucinatory.
Guilt and sorrow undermine my confidence,
I refuse to give them credence.

EVAN
I’m grateful when we talk calmly,
Our fearful scenes seem so long ago.
I’m sure the panic of youth has played its part.
I used to hope you would love me less over time
But now I think we love each other equally.

EVA You are so near me I feel we are one person.
I feel you now beside me.
I will make you real.

EVAN
I feel your longing
As I fear your signaling.
I owe you happiness
But I can’t express it.
We must believe life is as beautiful as music
Says it is.

EVA
The illusions we cultivate are
A form of courage.
Forget my deficiencies
Find amusement in the worldly game.

July 19, 2025
The Demon Lover – a play for two voices by Alysse Aallyn

3. LATIGAZO – WHIPPING

EVAN
Do you really love me?
Why should you?
I don’t any longer
Believe In friendship.

EVA
It is a horror, an outrage
That we should not be together. I struggle against
The wound of not knowing where you are each minute.
Everything you do is more important to me than my own life.
The whole of me is with you.
I see and feel you so distinctly,
Your beloved cold hand in mine
Your touch on the nape of my neck.

Joy and agony
– my insides torn by pincers.
A double goodbye would have been awful
– two bites on the bullet of pain.

This love is like something we have given birth to.
We must never blunt our imagination or tenderness.
Don’t get a cold in your soul.

EVAN
Are these abortive suicide attempts?
I disappoint everyone.
Cut the cable. Set me free.

I deliberately left one of your letters for Elayna to find.

With me love is linked with
A need to betray. I invite possessiveness.
She made me promise our love would never be physical.
I lied fluidly.

EVA
Even the thought of
Such a loss of pleasure tears at my heart
Like some medieval torture.

You harrow me unbearably.
My defenses are down.
I’m filled me with a sense of ghastly injury.
How I wish I were more beautiful –
It’s my mouth that ages me.
It reveals my greedy secrets.

I want you seeing all of me –
Even if it hurts. My work
Is my legacy –
You are your own child.
You preserve your youth with the harm
That you cause.

I feel I am dead and already
Interred – in you.
You are my eternity.

EVAN
Repressed boredom causes blocks
You can’t have everything.
I am kept aloft by the conflict of
Unbearables.
It makes me happy.

EVA
If our dancing life is over –
Should I enter a convent?
There’s no point in being alive
if we’re not together.
I show my deepest self to you alone.

EVAN
Please – no more shaming conversations
Over Irish whisky. Let’s cut our losses
And get some fun from life.
Your miraculous capacities awaken
My belief in myself.

EVA 

The gash in our love might close
But I’ll never forget it’s there.
Life with you is a remote happiness to which I cling

EVAN
And all this time you write such
Fantastic books. If you were as unhappy as you say,
You couldn’t write so well.
I’m proud to be
The whetstone on which you sharpen –
I should be thanked for all your works.

Writing to you
Makes me itch with a beastly itch –
Exhilarated, punch drunk
Feeling your enthrallment
Despite the day’s malaise.

I can’t put my heart back in the hollow
Where it used to be.
You force me to see
Myself.

At the peak of my ambition,
Beauty and power curdle within me.
People are so easily fooled, so
Satisfied with little
identify my performance with my Soul.

You’ve spoiled me for everything.
Stop warning me you’ll take a lover –
I don’t own your life and never aspired to.
There is heartbreak here, but is the ghost in the house
Or in me? We argue about who has the worst friends,
But our friends are all the same. Please
Send another psychic telegram, “You’re the One.”

EVA
Your last screed was a masterpiece.
I believe writing it
Creates that eczema from which
You say you suffer.
My friends at Tosca said it’s bad manners
To make a depressing fuss
And get other people down.

EVAN
Is the strength I draw from you a fairy tale?
I am appalled by the joint misery we feel.
Why should we not rebel?

EVA
You shed your light around me.
If only we could stand each other.
You’ll keep the blood
Running in my veins
Threatening to spill.

EVAN
Someone said I look ten years younger
From drinking your life, I’m sure.
I need my own room because I sleep badly and
I like to roam at night.

Tosca is too emotional to be good taste
But I’m happy you enjoyed it.
I feel far from you right now but
Underneath
I’m outrageously glad.

EVA
Your diplomacy fascinates me.
Your mettle is the stuff of history.
When young I resisted education
Like a fool – But
It makes everything comprehensible.
What kills me is having to deal with people.

I tie myself up writing
Imaginary conversations with you –
It’s possible you’re a creature of
My invention. Our pattern seems set –
Or is it?
If treachery can’t break it,
There is no death.

July 18, 2025
The Demon Lover – a play for two voices by Alysse Aallyn
2 – Cadena – Enchainment
EVAN
A happy guilty day full of betrayals
Kept me in an extraordinary state
Of fascination. I’ve lied to everyone for
So long, I feel certain that truth
Is beyond me.

EVA
I’d rather see you dead at my feet
Than dead ON your feet.
That would be a mercy killing –
The last unbearable agony –
Wondering if you existed at all.

I have small talent for this.
I have disgraced my idealism,
Pretending boredom can be fruitful.
Waiting, waiting for you everywhere. I
Wake one day to find I’ve lost my looks, my hair,
fascination, brain – everything.

EVAN
You’re only waking up
In an empty hotel.
The light is always different
The morning after.
This is what middle-aged people do.
I love the brutality of your world.
You never fade. You are my word made flesh.

EVA
You are my religion.
Until In fell in love with you I was 25 inside.
I lived in a world of dreams and theories.
Your experiences seem realer to me than mine.

EVAN
Social instinct is my religion.
You have the bravery and intelligence
Men are supposed to have
But never do.
To have touched the same places
Is a bond between us.
I never think of my deficiencies –
Or how could I forgive myself?

EVA
Middle-aged people go to weddings
Out of perverse fascination for the bride.
I was that bride –
My day was all champagne.
Anaesthetized
It doesn’t hurt so much.
Such a sense of enormity came over me
I almost fainted. I gave Allen the dirtiest look: “You caused this.”

Without a wedding dress
I was a restless, dowdy snob.
People were falling in love left and right –
Even in decaying marriages.
I wanted that –
He read my subtext.
And I was caught.

EVAN
These dreary parties have a decaying effect.
My loneliness for you is like a whiplash.
Your absence is a bitter injury
But nothing can injure our love –
We’re too strong for them.
I’m silenced till I hear from you.

If I let myself go I would feel desperate.
I can’t bear you’re going to France without me –
But –
isn’t love our country?

EVA
I won’t say “I’ll die if you don’t come”
Because I know you would come if you possibly could.
What a skeleton in the cupboard a wife is.

EVAN
Don’t be jealous of Elayna. You are the only goal
Toward which my life is tending.
You are the meaning of my life.
I could never live for work alone.

EVA
You enlarge my soul.
In your mind is my existence.
You’re more real to me than me.
I’m in a peculiar psychic state.
It’s an atmosphere of illusion.
I envy Elayna all the time.
It drips like an irritant over my nerves.

EVAN
What of Allen? You
Have your worse half too.
I don’t waste my time
Being jealous of him.

EVA
Oh, Allen spends time lost in woods,
Falling in love with trees. He’s
No threat to anyone.

EVAN
To understand one’s destiny
One needs a framework for this mass of experience.
How can I live separated from you?
If I stopped caring for you
I couldn’t care for anything.

I need my wife, her whip-cracking organization.
I loathe living in the squalor I get to on my own.
Having breakfast OUT of bed is the last horror.
Miasmic feelings of impossibility and terror. Help me.

EVA
We help each other
By existing. Except for God I have no help but you.
Our love is growing more formidable as our unshakeable belief
Grows stronger. Like grace, it renews itself.
All yesterday I glowed. My inability to accept your wife
Is my deformity – help me with it.
The light of our love is the only light for me.
July 17, 2025
The Demon Lover – a play for two voices by Alysse Aallyn

THE DEMON LOVER

I. ABRAZO – THE EMBRACE

EVAN

I like women willful, late
For appointments,
fond of showy clothes and society, vague, drifting, dreamy,
yet of course all of that is tiresome.

Love mingles with irritation.
But I don’t like competence, intellectual honesty, intelligent sensuality.
Women who turn on me saying,
“You don’t love me.”

What good is it to have been so happy
when it ends so painfully?
I am a “crook”, a “torturer of women”,
“Murderer.” She makes me feel a monster.

Below the surface of the will
I feel deep animal distress, as if I had wives
Hidden away somewhere; perhaps
That is why I had to marry
My present wife.

EVA
If you start “trying to be good”
that will really come between us.
It’s too unattractive. What are you up to?

I dream of a small house in Burgundy but
You must help me pay the rent.
Having a home is a form of egotism.
My beautiful one, you could make me so happy.

Selfishly I want you here
So I don’t have to hallucinate your nearness.
What’s that wife of yours –
What do you call her –
Elayna –
Thinking in her frozen chamber?

I’m feeling sorrow at our growing separation.
Can’t we pull out of the world’s battle and live in retreat?
Grant me one last happiness
Before the sufferings of
Pain and old age.

EVAN
I can’t keep up with life’s ambiguous futility.
Is happiness just “freedom from pain”?
Life is unendurable without you.
People here are flirtatious but not sexy.
it’s so boring here
I’m hardening my heart to give up my home.

EVA
I find your misery gratifying.
This power of enjoyment comes from being an artist,
It is the secret of my strength.
When I was younger I used to
Accommodate everyone –
Now I’m recalcitrant.

It hurts because the sword runs through both of us.
You’re never out of my thoughts, but
Sadness dulls one.
Honestly, I always risk failing you,
Failing you in outstandingness.

You are extraordinary, I am extraordinary,
we have been extraordinary together.
Specimens under glass.

The agonizing force of missing you
Is sweeping over me.
We have eternity connecting us,
Backward & forward but I just
Can’t get anyone to believe it.

EVAN
Would my death simplify things?
My wife struggles with carrying the conversation
While I stare glumly at the rain.
We go to an expensive little restaurant
And pretend we are on a date to really talk.
My double life begins the moment
I say “Are you in love with me”?
And really mean “Am I in love with you?”

EVA
That woman’s killing you.
Imagine if you were dead and your wife
Wrote a book explaining you
To everyone! That’s true suffering –
Fodder for the mealy-mouthed.

EVAN
My wife won’t be writing any books
About me or about anything. You’re the one
To write the book. And
I feel safe in your witch-like hands.

EVA
Except I’ve told you over and over
You’ll outlive me. Because
You’re a killer.
Or your wife is.

You look younger than I’ve ever seen you.
Have you gone queer? I fear
I’ll die of my addiction –
We always do.
We prefer it.
Will you write about me?

July 16, 2025
Sleeping Orchid – Creative Boot Camp for Sensitives & Empaths with Alysse Aallyn

Miracles – Love

If This Archetype Chooses You – You are surrounded by magical possibilities. Are you dreaming of eternal bliss? Floating in connectedness? In Love the boundaries of the other disappear, all is forgiveness. Merge fearlessly, knowing you will be able to get yourself back any time, soothed, improved, and healed.

We Are Creatives for Love – Love is the spirit that animates the empty spaces between humans. Once charged, these spaces become a powerful force for growth and change – uncharged they are so much dead air. This is the space that creatives protect. Love is the longing to be truly alive and to share life with the Blissed, Blessed Others.

Our Yearning Defines and Connects Us – As children we thought we knew about miracles but it seems we have forgotten. As creatives we fight for our ancestral memories of trust and closeness. How we long to be reminded of the ecstasy of selflessness, to re-experience the borderlessness between creatures that makes a dead universe come alive.

Love Is Our Armor – It’s a spiral, our labyrinth, remember? We can’t go back, we can only go forward. We practice techniques and invent others as we design and redesign purposeful maps in a threatening and uncertain world. We have the collective confidence of all the brilliance of the creatives who came before us. Someone loved us once, eternalizing the golden moment, now we can re-create and perpetuate that magic by creating our own miracles.

Creative Danger – Danger lies in narrowing, exclusionary definitions of what ‘can’t” happen, what “won’t” work. Creatives explode restrictions all the time. Love must ever open outwards. As soon as we turn Love into a zero-sum game with a shut-off valve focused on our own narrow gratification, Love dies.

Creative Opportunity – Love Is always a Miracle – It can restore the dead to life. It can open minds, it can awaken hearts. The possibilities of a creative are endless because we have chosen, with our flexibility and our sympathetic understanding, to be endless. Close your eyes and assume yoga’s starfish pose. We are open to what the universe longs to teach and once we commit to pass it on, we form an unbreakable chain, free at last from the bonds and the limits of selfishness. Clasp the hand (or paw) that generously, trustingly takes hold of yours. Let’s venture forth together.

Models & Mentors – ‘to love and be loved is to feel the sun from both sides”
– David Viscott

“Miracles don’t happen to you, they happen through you.” – Mary Davis

“Love has nothing to do with what you are expecting to get, only what you are expecting to give, which is everything” – Katherine Hepburn

“Love gives you a piece of your soul you never knew was missing” – Torquato Tasso

“You’ve got to see the miracle to be the miracle.” – Jandy Nelson

“Love is the gift of oneself” – Jean Anouilh

“I love you for who I am when I’m with you”
– Elizabeth Barrett Browning

#Haiku: Love Transfer

The secret of breaking
Any bad habit
Is to love
Something more

July 13, 2025
Sleeping Orchid – Creative Boot Camp for Sensitives & Empaths with Alysse Aallyn
Peace – Serenity
If This Archetype Chooses You – You need to learn to enjoy yourself. Enjoy your time off. Do you find your reveries organized around beaches, vacations, relaxation, memories of happy times when you had nothing to do but bliss out; feeling only the moment?

Peace is Possible. Serenity is an Idea. Most of us are familiar with the “serenity prayer” written by theologian Reinhold Niebuhr:

“God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference, living one day at a time; enjoying one moment at a time; taking this world as it is and not as I would have it; trusting that You will make all things right.“

The Serenity Prayer works as an inoculation against pointless worry, which is seen as “borrowing trouble.”

Creative Challenge – Like meditation, serenity is a mental state that takes practice. Make a list of your most pressing concerns. Can you do anything about any of them today? If so, appoint a time when you will take a step towards resolving this concern. If you can’t do anything about it, put it forcefully out of your mind. Imagine your worries as a bunch of balloons. Now let them go, one by one. Put each useless worry on a piece of paper and burn them slowly, one by one.

Creative Mantra – Give yourself a “serenity mantra” a word or phrase you find comforting and centering, and repeat it out loud to yourself. St. Julian of Norwich recommended: ”All will be well”, Coué offered, “Every day, in every way I am getting better and better”, some yoga enthusiasts chant a simple “Om.” You can use a phrase from your own past said to you by a Beloved Person – “now you’ll be fine” “You’re safe” “You’re perfect” “Everything’s all right” or the tried and true: “I love you.” My favorite is from the Book of Revelation: “Every tear is wiped away.”

Creative Danger – Don’t be tempted to become a mentor while you’re still learning. Creatives want to be helpful but this is a snare. Mentoring is an end-of-life honor, but you are still placing the oxygen mask on your own face so that you can stay on your plan. Show friends the basics but don’t walk them through it. You’re busy.

FOMO – We are all worried about “missing” something. Often that “centering person”, that reassuring person from our past is not just the one who gave us the relaxation code, but is also the same one who told us what to worry about: ie. ”Make sure all the locks are locked” “Have you done your homework?” There certainly are things to be concerned about (“Are you registered to vote?”) but there are plenty of worries we CAN’T address. Return to the serenity prayer and start weeding out – on paper – your Justifiable Concerns. One of the best things about Anxiety – and I mean this – is that it offers an opportunity to ask for help. Yes, I say “opportunity”! Because life is all about RELATIONSHIPS.

Worries can be Chances to Forge Meaningful, Worthwhile Relationships. Get ready to experiment. As with any other relationship in your life, your requirements, tolerance, communication goals are unique. Many people yearn to speak to a “professional” – therapist or life coach – and plenty of professionals out there are auditioning for a little – or a lot – of your hard-earned cash. An excellent place to start is with Proven Gurus like Tolle Eckhart or Pema Chodron who can be accessed for free from any library. See what you think. Evaluate their assistance. Inquire further.

Creatives Know What They Must Do – Others are envious that we have laid out a plan for our lives, that it is flexible, that it is life-enhancing and that it gives us permission to Enjoy. Be humble about this jealousy, but don’t get dragged into making others “feel better” about being stymied. They may be seeking fellowship in their tarpit.

You’re Entitled – Others also could find peace if they began to take control of the drama that rages within them. Point them in a hopeful direction but don’t agree to sit idly with them in their misery. Don’t get sucked in.

Meditation Looks Like Dreaming – The secret is, there is enormous pleasure in being a creative. You finally feel your strength, and when you know the value of your time, you feel your own value. This is what others yearn for. They can learn it, too. But in the mean time you are enjoying your hard-fought serenity.

We Need So Little to Be Happy – This is the great realization. One bowl, one mat, one dawn. The comfort of another’s presence or the pleasure of your own thoughts. The joy of another morning, another night’s rest. The confidence of a clear head. Welcome to the Universe.

Models & Mentors – “Do not let the behavior of others destroy your inner peace.” – The Dalai Lama

“God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can and the wisdom to know the difference.” – Reinhold Niebuhr

“Serenity of spirit and turbulence of action make up the sum of life”
– Vita Sackville-West

“Enjoy the peace of nature and declutter your inner world” – Amit Ray

#Haiku: Peace – Serenity

Melting heart;
Compassion
Purges
Life’s shudders
Restores
Unruffled Depth
July 12, 2025