Alysse Aallyn

Tag: #Publishing

  • Inspired Pleasure – dance diaries of Alysse Aallyn

        Starlight – Sat night – 23 June 79

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

                 Castle 26 June – Tues – 10:30 PM

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

                                        We had swordfish prepared on my new gas grill. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

                                        It’s definitely fun to talk to someone who has 

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

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

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

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

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

                                         I even like his snobbishness – he’s more elitist 

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

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

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

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

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

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

                                        Reading Margaret Drabble’s The Needle’s Eye  – 

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

  • Inspired Pleasure – the dance diaries of Alysse Aallyn

                       Castle – Wed 1:15 AM 16 May – 79

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

                                        Even if it’s a mess.

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

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

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

                                         Party Castle 8:20 PM Fri  May 18 – 1979

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

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

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

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

    Reading it would be like visiting an art gallery.

                 Queen’s Chapel Rd – Tues 22 May 79

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

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

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

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

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

                                        Write a haiku BECAUSE THEY’RE EASY. Relief.

    Harness UP – ON WEARING A BRA

    Two kinds of clothes –

    Comfortable and un:

    Two viewpoints:

    Supportive and –

                                        Fasting again today. So horribly fat right before my period

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

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

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

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

                 Party Castle 12:35 AM – Fri 25 May 79

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

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

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

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

  • Inspired Pleasure – the dance diaries of Alysse Aallyn

                             11PM Starlight Wed 7 Mar 79

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

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

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

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

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

                                                Wish I’d brought Kafka’s Letters. Making 

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

                                                Mon 20 Feb 79 – 12:20 AM

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

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

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

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

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

    LIZZIE SIDDALL: The Woeful Victory

    Be still or I can’t paint you.

    It is evening and

    I almost knew you.  Who are you

    Fair one?  Your mouth is stuffed 

    With poppy hair 

    Fate coils between your breasts

    A snake –

    Your tongue’s torn out.

    You must be the echo of my thoughts.

    (“I am the motionless cradle.”)

    Your flesh takes fire from my setting sun.

    Can you free me, O Lady of the Sundial?

    My eyes grow dim.

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

    I shall paint you vermilion

    Butcher nightingales and use their tongues for brushes

    Melting foil & verdigris

    To the tune of Canterbury bells.

    Stay awhile, Fair one.

    I almost thought you spoke.

    (“I am the face rising from the pool

    to drag the drinker deep.”)

    I will bury you in manuscripts, I will

    Visit when there’s time. Someday

    We might marry, but

    I am not whole, dear lady.

    I am not myself.

    Who are You?

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

                                                Tues 28 Mar 78

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

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

    Confidence.

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

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

                                                Starlight Thu 14 Mar 79 – 10:00 PM

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

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

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

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

                                           No wonder monks beat themselves. Peace and

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

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

    Tomorrow a day of cleaning & working in my study.

                                                Sun. 18 Mar 1:50 PM.

                                                Terrible nightmare about Usher Glayne. His face 

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

                                             Worked on expanding short story Erin – cleaning away deadwood –

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

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

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

    Apparently lots of people have had it. 

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

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

    Seems a shame to ruin it now. 

                                                12:30 PM Mon 19 Mar 78

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

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

                                                Café Rabelais, Wed 21 Mar 79 3:25 PM

                                                Pleasant 3 hr lunch with Usher discussing literature

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

    I’m not that kind of nice. 

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

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

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

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

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

                                        4:20 PM Thurs 22 Mar 79

                                        Today a model for what all days should be.  

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

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

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

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

                                        Although I do recognize that I am trying to 

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

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

                                        11:30 AM Fri 23 Mar 79

                                        More sunbathing – my own skin smells 

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

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

    I write a poem about dogs.

    Sticks

    Peter’s dog

    Went on fetching sticks

    Long after it was dead.

    We’d find them on the stoop

    Arranged In patterns

    Pete would sigh and say

    That’s poor old Monk all right

    Still missing the people games

    Heaven won’t allow

                                        Add it to my ghost story book.

                                        Unexpected tear sheets in the mail from Usher 

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

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

  • Inspired Pleasure – the dance diaries of Alysse Aallyn

                 Powder Mill Rd  Thurs 19 Oct 78

                                        Still balancing thank God. Had lunch with dancer 

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

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

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

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

                 11:30 PM

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

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

                 12:15 PM Oct 23

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

                 Fri 27 Oct 78

                                        Concord, Mass – the grave of Nathan Bond.  

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

                                        Drove to Concord in pouring rain.  Inn is no Night 

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

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

                                        Why do I do this to myself – visit Genevieve?  

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

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

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

    – Practice Cuts.

    Practice Cuts

    The dead gush cruelly after dying;

    High time to change 

    Get religion

    Have yogic visions

    See god 

    Be a nun

    Be a self worth knowing.

    Time is gunning for me

    Arthritic fingers

    Scrabbling at my dreams

    Playing old tunes 

    scratchier, less sensitive.

    I’m a body in search of a car wreck

    Crime scene consubstantial;

    The old deus ex machina

    Disaster;

    Blood is so good

    At erasing uncertainty

    Bringing back

    A taste for life.

    Reduce me, silence

    To the essential bones

    Of my non essential self

    Fortify some other ego

    Mine’s tired;

    Peel from my eyes the thickened skin of grief

    Unstop my ears from the dust of

    My own consequence

    Free my feet from judging splinters

    Life passes from my like a fever in which

    I cry out and cry out and yet

    No sound is made.

    Out

    Like the tide 

    Cauterize

    The woof-warp pattern

    So plain that even I can see it.

    Teach me not to envy

    The gulls their mirrored flight

    Unmeasured unlike my own

    Reduce me to

    Unbending bones of my

    Essential self

    Dark sister;

    She;

    The soul I was

    Before

    I became me.

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

                 Plush Palace – Thurs 2 Nov 78 8:30 PM

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  • Inspired Pleasure – the dance diaries of Alysse Aallyn

    1 July 77

                       Today I should start my new novel – always the worst 

    part.  Lauren called to APOLOGIZE for our dinner.  I said nothing

     to apologize for I had a wonderful time.  She said she had an

     “off” night and they are upping my print run from 100,000 to 

    110,000.. So I guess I’m “on” again in case I write another Eng 

    gothic historical paperback they like (don’t hold your breath).  

    Threw aside Berckman’s Crown Estate suddenly can’t stand 

    other people’s writing. 

                       Very disllusioning dinner with Chuck Kornowitz. My 

    piece de resistance crab manicotti in Newburg sauce turned out 

    exquisitely but he only cared about the booze. When I mentioned The Great American novel he said it’s been written and offered to send it to me.   He edited it!  He only laughed at one thing I said – 

    he called Athenaeum a “very, very small publishing house” and I 

    said, “More of a hut, really”. He obviously thought I was going to 

    have sex with him so that he would read my book. I turned him 

    down but offered to make up a bed for him on sofa (he really seemed incapacitated by drink but he blamed it on jetlag.) He insisted on leaving, looking very cranky. He did wonder aloud who the hell I think I am?  What’s a little sex between “friends” (or supplicants & donors?) 

                       Letter from Devon (I needed it) cheered me up extraordinarily.  

    Just in the nick of time. I’m a loner, he’s a loner too – do two loners

     make a party? Having a hard time feeling beautiful when I am not 

    dancing and 50 situps a day and one filthy bike ride are no substitute.

     But this seminarian writes a mean letter. Loved  my novel. Looks 

    forward to servicing – er surveying Boston in my company.  Four

     hours on novel produces 8 bad pages. It’s a start. 

                       Ms. MacManus foisting her probate lawyer nephew 

    Henry on me. He came over to invite me to the beach 

    (and help me walk the dogs.)  He’s a pale,

     pale Ryder (he’d have to be Peter Frampton to arouse me at 

    this stage) and I feared he’d get sunstroke but I said yes. Saw 

    Jabberwocky – very Monty Python. 

                       Wrote a long wailing, complaining letter to Avril.  Try to 

    read Women & Madness but it’s too poorly written and repels 

    every attempt.  Norah Lofts White Hell of Pity – very depressing. 

    But you’re pretty much asking for it if you pick up a book with that title. 

                       11:00 AM Sun 3 July 77

                       Had to walk Genevieve’s dogs all the way to Columbus 

    & Ninth to find NY Times.  Henry cancelled – I didn’t know why till 

    Ms MacManus told me he found out I wasn’t Jewish!  Now she tells 

    me! (She’s not Jewish either.)  Reading First Person Singular – 

    actually some helpful dating advice.  Is it too crass to count on 

    having sex with Devon July 20? (That’s as long a wait as I think

     I can stand.) 

                       12:45 PM Mon 4 July 77

                       Almost strangled the dogs today. Sam rolled in horseshit 

    in the park. Had to wash them both.  Then they bothered me so much

     during my exercises I had to lock them up.  They howled.  Penance all around. Ms. McManus invited me to see New York, New York

    . We enjoyed Unsung Cole last night – and she is going to Martha’s Vineyard so won’t be around to make me her new chew toy. 

                       11:25 PM  Wish I could read the future. New York, 

    New York none too reassuring about male/female relationships. 

    Reading Leonard Woolf’s depressing Downhill All the Way.  

    His mind so different from Virginia’s you could call it “antithetical”. 

    Tomorrow’s excitement – double feature of Shame and The

     Passion of Anna.

                       12:25 AM 9 July 77 

                       Ryder’s divorce final. His relationship with me?  Still in 

    “separation” phase.  Trying to hate him but it’s not working. Pity 

    the petty man who revels in bondage. Feeling sorry for all his 

    future lovers is the best I can do. He would respect me more if I 

    was less sexually excitable, and that’s the ugly truth. Totally 

    resigned that Harcourt will reject Secaire. Went to Patti Smith 

    concert with Brett’s brother.  Kind of fun the way she barks out

     her poetry; but little too butch for me. He is an incipient pedophile 

    remarking on every thirteen-year old he saw (or possibly he was

     just trying to annoy me.) 

                       11:45 PM Sun 10 July 77

                       Loved  Rhoda Lerman’s The Girl That He Marries

     – never were reviews so misleading! 

                       July 14, 1977

                       Power out in the whole city! Living by candles. No 

    elevator doesn’t affect us readers. Doorman up and down the 

    stairs with flashlights looking for old people.  Dogs poop on 

    balcony. I seize any excuse not to write.

                       9 PM Fri 22 July 1977 – Mrs. McManus’ condo 

    Pevensey Old Farms

                     New deal: all I have to do for luxe pad is write an 

    article for Mrs. McManus’ real estate mag. I think rich people 

    are masters of bait and switch – I was supposed to be doing HER a favor – but of course I say yes.  Contemplate novel about homicidal house-sitter called Other 

    People’s Houses  but I see from Books In Print it’s been taken.

                       Lying here making new breakthroughs in the art of 

    writing sideways; disinfecting my ear from swimming. Wanted 

    to write about Monica Dickens’ Man Overboard or N Ephron’s 

    Crazy Salad or at the very least make a New Plan for My Novel 

    but find I can’t. Was very “good” today – swam, bicycled, some 

    writing. Allowed to eat anything here luckily her food is not too 

    outrageous – hamburger and zucchini salad.  Marinated artichoke 

    hearts.  

                     Refuse to shred my nerves further by hating myself.  

    My body’s not perfect but I do feel on the home stretch to self-control.  

     Give me six weeks and I’ll be flying.  Emotionally, I’m a mess.  

    Devon brought up marriage and I am smotheringly certain that I 

    can’t live up to either of our expectations as a parson’s wife. 

    Might be fun to try – but that’s not the point.  I fear the idiot side of me that just keeps coming out. Can’t seem self-assured, playfully 

    grave instead sexually voracious and maniacally ridiculous. 

                     Anyway Intuition told me he would call tonight between 

    8-10. 

                     He called at 8:30. I cracked too many jokes – conversation 

    painfully bizarre.  He seemed calm and unfreaked. He got a new

     job that gives him more “room” (he’s a waiter- he’s sick of teaching 

    people) asked when he could “show up” and suggested tomorrow.

                     Moving a lot faster than I expected from my memories of 

    Shy Boy. Do I want to have my fantasies played fast and loose with in this way? (Am I over Ryder?) Do I want to get over him?  Or are mismatches of Time & Desire my Fate?

                       I am certainly NOT turning down D’s offer to see what 

    there can be for us. Companion? Lover? Second self? Brother?

    Alas he is too blindingly handsome for me to be rational.

                     If he comes tomorrow there won’t be time for more than 

    necking (has to get to new job by 4.)

                       Forget “July 20”, entered on my calendar as S Day. 

    I WILL NOT MAKE LOVE TO A SCHEDULE. We have to have 

    a night alone to make things happen.  I can be patient – can he? 

    Well, I can be honest.  Best anyone can do.

                       10:45 PM  Back from a walk, reliving my years as teenage 

    prowler. And peeper.  These walks are very informational as I spy 

    couples hanging plants & merrimekkos, having fights and pouring wine. 

    Macramé is de rigueur. Try to imagine Devon & me in similar situations. 

    Maybe he won’t be a parson forever.

              Celebrate my freedom from R. Nice to know I can go to parties without fearing R’s paranoia & restrictions mixed up in his exhibitionism & flamboyance. Freeing me maybe to be those things. Fantasize 

    pleasurably about long drives with D – my hand on his thigh – separate but equal thoughts unfolding with the journey.  My emotions a difficult horse to ride.

        11:50 PM

                                Interrupted by phone call from R. 

    Offered to send me money. What is wrong with him? 

    He said, “You were right the way you always are.  When are you 

    coming back to me?”  Loves me, misses me, wants me back. He’s 

    been sick – Emmys a complete bust – his TV show cancelled – 2 

    directors actually fired (25 people in total.) Today’s the first day he’s 

    been back to work, amazed not to get a pink slip. He’s taking a two

     week unpaid leave to go to the Finger Lakes and find his soul. If 

    they fire him so what. He refuses to take out of town job.

                                He really worked me over – gave me a bird’s eye 

    view of what life with him would be like.  For example, said, “his 

    place is my place.”  If he means “move in” he knows I’ll say no 

    because his skyscraper doesn’t take dogs.  He asked, “When 

    do you come down to get your furniture?” I don’t like him having 

    all this information.  Thank God for D.  Six weeks to decide 

    whether I even want to return to Washington. I write a poem for Devon. 

    Angel Clothes

    You are like a ripe peach

    Swollen in the summer of your life

    And as the peach surrounds its stone

    Your skeleton enwombs your soul

    But thinly.

    I often see it shining

    Through the hollows in your cheeks.

    I need your body

    Need to know its shadows

    Sound its pleasures

    But as the stone

    Though small at first

    Must grow; feed off the dying peach

    So your spirit must transhume your flesh

    Disgorge it in

    A thousand peaches a thousand summers a

    Thousand eternities more beautiful than

    You or i

  • Inspired Pleasure – the Dance Diaries of Alysse Aallyn

    Shadowe Island 23 June 77 11 PM

          Walked around corner of my parents Cape Cod house to 

    The deck – there’s Devon sitting with his Mom and my Mom and Dad. 

    Waiting for me.  He is still dreamily beautiful; cut glass profile, 

    muscles shining through clothes;  a star. The understanding 

    between us electric as always – hope I did not gape too 

    obviously. 

             I felt a “reaching-out” from this shy man bubbling up 

    from the deep wells of his most secret personality. 

    Seemingly uncertain of his power and frightened by his own beauty, 

    Utterly obliterating poor hopeless, impossible Ryder, which is just what 

    The doctor recommended.  

              I must have babbled something as they gave 

    me a huge Tanqueray gin and tonic. Mom has that 

    wrinkle between her eyes whenever she looks at me 

    like there is no book I can publish, job I can take, no man

     I can marry to iron out that wrinkle. 

             We hear them talking about us as if we weren’t there:

     “1972 was such an important year for them, that Winter 

    Carnival;” “Why don’t they get together if they love each 

    other?” “Kids these days think marriage just a piece of 

    paper.”  Just a piece of paper?  You won’t get a rise out

    of me over that.  I pass my life in a blizzard of papers, 

    which may (or not) survive me. May (or not) bear any 

    ultimate meaning.

             His Mom offers me studio apt in their ski chalet – 

    $125 month utilities included.  Staking an early claim to 

    any progeny I may produce.  I say, No thank you,  I need 

    a city. Still, it gives one furiously to think.

             When Devon left he lifted up my chin to kiss 

    me – tight familiar “everyone’s watching” mouth and 

    prickly blond moustache. He says he’s going to England 

    for a week. Invited me to Boston after. I imagine us 

    unpeeling at the station, two nude souls confronting one 

    another. Rank terror. The body reacts first, hands trembling 

    violently.  All I could do to keep from just savaging him in 

    front of everybody. I could hardly hold my drink. 

             I am an easy catch, too.  He quoted from my poem

     “the one you wrote on the bus” when I visited him at Amherst –

     I had completely forgotten about that one. Quote to me from 

    my own work and I become your slave. 

            Poor Ryder! He never thought of that! I know he will “feel” 

    This moment, the moment I lose interest in him; he will lift his head – wherever he is and whatever he’s doing – and come after me.  Just when I don’t want him any more.

    (The quote: “memories like stones I’m free to choose and

     in life’s rivers, eventually lose”)

       Still true. 

     Barnacle Cabin – Sat June 25 – 77

                 I can tell it’s early by the light but can’t find out what time 

    it is without waking someone.  Health complete.  Walked the dogs all over Heath Island, ran into Paul Morris who just bought the Burnside Inn. He invited me back for coffee and brandy, to show me the changes he has made. He sneered when he asked me if I thought “exotic dancing” was “art”.  I said Sure, why not.? It can be. He read Boston Globe “exposé” on “strippers who are just little girls.  They were all molested by their fathers.” I told him they get better tips by calling people “Daddy”. 

             Paul has a mysterious live-in girlfriend who refers to herself as The Sinister Chambermaid. Helping him renovate the place, traveling with him from Boston where he is a university professor.  Since they are not married I wonder about their “financial deal”.  Let me guess, she invests her labor, you own title and cash?  But now I have a good excuse to stay at the Inn and I am considering it.  They have electricity for my typewriter and the Barnacle doesn’t.

                       New York City, 96th off the Park Sat June 25 77 ll PM

                       Suffered through my sister’s wedding – a day of hideous 

    rain forcing us out from the rooftop garden to huddle in the restaurant.  

    I wore a gray silk backless tuxedo pantsuit – halter-top and bare midriff 

    – Mom did NOT approve. (Looked ravishing if I do say so myself.) 

                  Someone asked Dad – about me – “How many of you are redheads? 

    And Dad answered, “Hardly any of us.” Bride tells me she chose Brett because he would make a good father.  Says she’s coming back pregnant from this honeymoon if it kills them both (they take temp, every morn, etc.) Mom all dewy eyed.  I feel like replaying a few “deleted” scenes from Genevieve’s past of which Mom is blissfully unaware but loyally refrain, thus retaining my title as Official Bad Daughter. Hey, it’s a pivotal job.

                       NYC 10:45 PM Sun26 June 77

                       Last night Avril came into my hotel room to stop my wailing and we talked till 2:30 AM. We both agree “fireplug sex” – you stand there while I spray you – is out of the question.  She says women 

    who expect nurturing from men are always disappointed because men lack the nurturing gene.  Hmm. This is not true of Ryder OR 

    Devon (it was true of Bruce.) If we’re going to talk about “nurturing” 

    we have to face the fact that plenty of mothers seem to lack the 

    gene too – they don’t care what you want or who you are they are just trying to smack you into “shape”.  That’s the kind Ryder is. 

    Devon?  Remains to be seen but the way he talked about my novel – 

    seeing me inside it – gives me hope. 

                       Went to see 3 Women tonight with Best Man (Brett’s 

    brother) on the Doobie Bros principle of “why you in such a hurry to be lonely one more night?” But he is still in college.  Immature frat 

    boy.  Any relationship speculative at best. There’s Genevieve’s bike to ride when the physical becomes overwhelming on my 3 wk housesit (while they are on their honeymoon & Devon is in Eng) will pass fast. 

    Hearing I was “house-sitting” in NYC parents’ friend at wedding offers me another outside Boston – perfect for seeing Devon whose theological 

    college is nearby. That’s a definite yes.

                       I REALLY miss dancing. Yet creativity heals all. Conquers 

    my fear of ultimate impotence.  The act of creation – even if others don’t agree – has a purifying effect. After all, we can’t live in other people’s heads

     (it’s dangerous to try). 

                       Tues. 28 Jun 77

                       Walk Genevieve’s miniature dogs, tend fish & plants, take bike

     ride, wash hair, see Swedish flick Man on a Roof (long Lincoln Mercury 

    ad). Bought huge-brimmed red sun hat with single rose in Greenwich Village. 

    Walked HUNDREDS of blocks to NY Pub Lib but they won’t let me take anything out. 

                   Planning next novel, A Demon Roused.  Need to give Jewell some past 

    crime. Infanticide?  But under sympathetic circumstances.  Or maybe murder

     of Stephen Ward-like pimp. Bad news at publisher: Harcourt acquires Pyramid and my editor dumped (lunch with her Thurs).  Could be good news for me (lunch with new editor tomorrow). Trying not to feel 

    dragged in to dumped editor’s hysteria.  

                       Out to dinner at Fiorello’s last night with Brett’s brother, 

    then Altman’s Images (which he knew I wanted to see.)  He is trying to figure “a way in”.  There is no way in.  Images  exquisite. Much better than 3 Women. Transitions so elegant they hardly existed. 

    Wish I could do that. Didn’t want to ruin it by talking about it.  Very 

    reminiscent of La Prisonniere. My previous all-time favorite.  Sent R. my Pevensey Old Farms address so he won’t harass M & D. That’s what I tell myself, anyway.                      

                       Listening to Vivaldi and reading Haskell’s From Reverence to Rape –anything I can find around here. Genevieve likes novels andI HATE other novelists writing (usually). New editor Lauren changed our Monk’s Inn lunch to dinner.

                       Chuck Kornowitz offered to read Secaire – I invited him to dinner here.

                       Wed 29 June 77

                       Disappointing meeting with “editor”.  I guess dinner went 

    as well as it could on the surface – but Lauren doesn’t like me and 

    eager to wash her hands of me.  Damned if I know why. Trying not to take it personally.  She is furious at being in “paperback division” (subtext: “throwaways” ) and says my new  novel being read by someone else – guy promoted over her who used to edit Westerns.  

    Think she enjoyed my panic at this news. 

                       Tried entertaining her with usually reliable Tales of Childhood but she was not amused.  Probably considered it all bragging.  She was what I expected, mousy bun, tortoise shell earrings, presumably raging hormones. Dinner with me was something she had to “go through”. 

     Work, not fun.  Said she is forced to read two novels a day but prefers memoirs!  That’s what she reads for pleasure. I ate snails with lots of garlic and I think she was a bit disgusted.

    I conjectured you could take out an eyeball with those special snail tongs.  Since she was not turned on by this idea I could see she is not the editor for me. 

    Snails were delicious, however. Anyone who loves mushrooms 

    would adore snails.

                       Lunch with on-the-way-out-editor Ruby a scary experience.  She made me meet her at a laundromat where her clothes were in drier!  Went to a Mexican restaurant around the corner, I ordered Sangria. She wore old jeans, ill-fitting shirt, had a price list in hand.  

    Trying to get me to hire her as freelance editor!  She showed me 

    her poetry collection (awful: title “Twitterings”.)  Says she has a 

    novel ¼ done. Praised me awkwardly by saying I am “a real writer”. 

    When I tell her I just want to find out what I need to write by patiently building house of cards in my head she tells me people like me are trampled underfoot by the thousand and I need her to make my novels acceptable.

    Her qualifications are that she has been fired by all the big publishers (they are “consolidating”!) But she also expresses disgust with them.  She is probably right on facts but she needs to work on her presentation. 

                       I was horrified.  Wanted to be friendly because she bought my book, but when I say why pay someone to rewrite your book in a way you might hate she say there are no guarantees in life.  You have to go with whatever “works”. That she is not working seems too rude to point out.  I agree the world’s a dark wood but I need to find my way out alone. She drank 3 bullshots, I order coffee frantically afraid I’ll have to drag her and her laundry home. We split the tab both probably thinking the other should have treated  (last time out was on Harcourt’s dime). I tried to act like I might be thinking about it but I don’t have a good face for hiding when I am absolutely appalled. 

                       Purged my mind at Visconti’s Conversation Piece.  

    Especially reveled in the beauty of our modern Dorian Gray 

    Helmut Berger and  the “footsteps of death” in apt. overhead. 

    Very Edith Wharton. Dinner at Old Ms. McManus’ Sutton Place apt. (whose Boston house I will sit next.) She shows off her latest antique acquisitions.

  • The Dalingridge Horror – a play by Alysse Aallyn

    VIRGINIA
    I should never have married you. Women see the worst of men, how cruel they are at home, how they believe in ranks and ceremonies, how they demand praise and management. We bring out what’s bad in each other. We should live separately.

    LEONARD
    Virginia, I admit I have been a brute. I told you that before you married me. I have faults, vices and beastlinesses. I am lustful, a whorer, a gazer after women, a vicious man who has loved the refinements of vice. I have seen the filth of the brothel, know that it is filth and still I’ve lain with the ugliest whore. I have been selfish, jealous, and cruel. You are the most beautiful, most magical among women. Yet I must have you, and not some inferior female who would enrage me with her inferiority and submission. I am terminally and unconditionally in love with you. God, the happiness I’ve had being with you and talking to you – mind to mind and soul to soul. I don’t care so much for the physical part. You are the best thing I have ever had in my life. I will never be content, now, with second best.

    VIRGINIA
    And here am I, a failure, childless, no writer and insane. You confessed your sins before we married, but I knew I was insane with a mad sister and a madder uncle and yet I married you.

    LEONARD
    Tell me the truth. Why did you marry me, the penniless, trembling Jew?

    VIRGINIA
    Perhaps only because you were my beloved brother Thoby’s best friend. He said, I’ve met a man so violent, so savage, he trembles with contempt for the whole human race. And that was you.

    LEONARD
    Thoby was so beautiful it was difficult to speak with him of iniquity or despair.

    VIRGINIA
    Thoby had the kind of beauty that defends itself from caress.

    LEONARD
    And you’re the same. With such gestures one falls in love for a lifetime.

    VIRGINIA
    Thoby and I were so close until he went away to that school, where the boys fought and buggered. When he came back he was so different, harsh and cruel. He beat me. I just stood there and let him pound me with his fists, feeling the most awful sadness; why hurt another person? He showed off by abusing me. I refused to surrender the space we used to have, but he said, Girls must give up. That’s what it means to be a girl. It was essential for the fellowship of men that I be kept out. Because you were his greatest friend I hoped the best of him lived on, in you. But you are nothing like him.

    LEONARD
    The Goth was always a law unto himself. He didn’t acquire friends, he annexed worshippers. You and Vanessa looked so like him our Circle called you “Visigoths.” Misses Virginia and Vanessa Stephens, so beautiful that dogs turned to look at them in the street.

    VIRGINIA
    Trust me, it’s not that pleasant having dogs turn to look at one in the street. So, you married me, thinking I was like Thoby and you were disappointed.

    LEONARD
    Virginia, you must stop thinking everything is your fault. We were primed to fall in love because of our friendships, but we actually fell in love because we saw each other’s true selves.

    VIRGINIA
    I saw how shocked you were when you realized you had married a madwoman.

    LEONARD
    Life may be an obstacle race but that doesn’t mean one would want the obstacles removed.

    VIRGINIA
    I should have told you!

    LEONARD
    Did I tell you my tremor is hereditary? My father had it, too. Should I have confessed that? We didn’t want to talk about our families. We wanted to revel in each other’s hopes and dreams.

    VIRGINIA
    When we talked, I forgot everything except the joy of our conversation. Originality and freedom, purity and restraint, we discussed it all. Here’s someone who cares, I thought, about the hidden pockets of emotion, someone who wants to work like a steam engine at uncovering the truth. I needed to know that when I weep, I am not the only weeper. You almost persuaded me we could change the world with just our two brains.

    LEONARD
    Nothing’s more important than the two of us united.

    VIRGINIA
    Yet somehow here I am, locked up in a madhouse.

    LEONARD
    Virginia, this isn’t a madhouse and you are not insane. But we need the doctor’s permission for you to leave. We must figure out, the pair of us, how you can assume control. I don’t believe in guilt or apologies. I know what it is to be driven beyond endurance but I know I can avoid the whirlpools if you help me, Virginia. Let me help you learn how to assume control.

    VIRGINIA
    What’s the use of men talking to women, we’re too different. We must hate and fear each other. Women can’t even step outside their doors with any safety. If you could strip off my skin you would see my nerves gone white with fear of you.

    LEONARD
    You’re talking to the member of a despised race rooted out as pests wherever we settle. My nerves should be white with fear of your kind. It’s a fetid, sordid world. Yet we two are somehow different. In Ceylon, I took out my gun to put an end to the utter foulness, the stupid blind vindictive foulness of everything. You see, we have that in common.

    VIRGINIA
    You did? You really tried to shoot yourself?

    LEONARD
    I thought that the only reason one doesn’t commit suicide is that one is either a selfish coward or already dead and rotten. The one thing that saved me was a vision of you, the beautiful Miss Stephen who wrote like an angel and quoted Plato. I longed to meet you. But I was so afraid of making a fool of myself my very soul and stomach trembled.

    VIRGINIA
    You stayed alive because of me?

    LEONARD
    I did. So you must return the favor. Lytton Strachey and I wrote long letters back and forth. He argued against suicide and insisted that I propose.

    VIRGINIA
    Lytton asked me to marry him once. Thank God, I didn’t. The very idea of his criticisms would have kept me from writing anything.

    LEONARD
    He understood all that. He said the only person who was right for you was me.

    VIRGINIA
    But he didn’t know about my spoiled, ruined body.

    LEONARD
    You have a perfect body!

    VIRGINIA
    Currently being stuffed like a Strasbourg goose, thanks to you. Strapped down, force fed, shot with drugs.

    LEONARD
    All because you refuse to eat. Let me order dinner right now and feed it to you. How about that?

    VIRGINIA
    I’m not hungry. Oh, let me die, Leonard! Let me go! Find a girl who can love you properly! I failed in the bedroom – you made that perfectly clear.

    LEONARD
    Perhaps copulation is inherently degrading. Really, horseback riding is more pleasurable.

    VIRGINIA
    But there’s children to look forward to, surely.

    LEONARD
    I don’t want children and if you really read The Wise Virgins, you’ll know why.

    VIRGINIA
    But we won’t raise them in a strict Jewish home!

    LEONARD
    There’s your prejudice again! It wasn’t the Judaism, it was the endless striving for dominance of tiny minds. How I hated it!

    VIRGINIA
    Father shrieked and screamed that we were sending him to the poorhouse with our expensive household bills. I brought him a catalog of King’s College classes for Ladies but he said he couldn’t spare me because it was my turn to pet him, soothe him, cut his meat! I wanted to write, but I couldn’t keep it private. Once I had a diary with a lock but Thoby stole it, so I pasted my secret pages into a book.

    LEONARD
    After my father died we really were headed for the poorhouse. My brother had to work to support the family.

    VIRGINIA
    Don’t you think every family is a lonely caravan, absolutely private, silent and unknown? I see us wedged in together, surrounded by vast space we couldn’t cross. It seemed impossible to break through the dark cloud and shed light on those shrouded, curtained rooms. Censors, visionary figures everywhere admonished us. Father told me no intelligent being had any right to believe in God, but when I was six years old, I dreamed that I was God.

    LEONARD
    And your mother?

    VIRGINIA
    Mother said there couldn’t be a God because no just God would have killed the splendid Herbert Duckworth, her first husband. She loved him so. She never told my father she loved him.

    LEONARD

    Never?

    VIRGINIA

    Never. I wrote stories in which clever, courageous children rescue their families and bring hope to the sick. Do you believe in God, Leonard?

    LEONARD
    No one believes in God. Virginia, we must refuse to be determined by our pasts. Our parents had too many children to cope but we won’t make the same mistake. Don’t you want to be free, Virginia? With so many mouths to feed, freedom’s never possible.

    VIRGINIA
    I know you’re only saying that because Dr. Hyslop insists the mad should never propagate.

    LEONARD
    I swear I’m not. Nessa has children – and with all her lovers looks to spew many more – wouldn’t that be enough for you?

    VIRGINIA
    (turning away)

    Surely loneliness destroys us. Futile and infertile – aren’t those more than adequate reasons for self-murder?

    LEONARD
    We’ll never be futile, not us. You’ve written a wonderful novel, Virginia. I know you’ll write many more.

    VIRGINIA
    Received by my family in complete silence.

    LEONARD
    They’re barely literate. My whole point is that family shouldn’t matter. I’ve freed myself – I never see my mother if I can help it. Remember how upset she was to be excluded from our wedding? Surely an ambitious person’s gaze should widen, take in more?

    VIRGINIA
    Take in who? Society, like the Countess of Carnarvon? Publishers like Gerald?

    LEONARD
    How about other modern thinkers, trying to do what we are doing? Finding new ways to be, see, think, do, connect. Roger Fry with his “significant form”. Maynard Keynes with aggregate demand, E. M. Forster’s clever novels. The literary impressionism you attempted in Voyage Out.

    VIRGINIA
    Forster isn’t clever. He thinks women should be banned from the London Library Board and never allowed on the grass at Cambridge. How on earth can dry, dusty books ever make up for real, live children?

    LEONARD
    Was your childhood really anything you’d care to revisit, Virginia?

    VIRGINIA
    Yes, yes, yes. If I could only tell you, or anybody. Oh, the magic summers at St. Ives! Lost, gone forever. Paradise before, catastrophe after. Now whatever it is I want I cannot tell. I was born with extraordinary capacities for feeling, but you say bury my emotions or they will never let me out.

    LEONARD
    Not bury them, Virginia. Manage them. We need to convince the world that you are fine and well. Let’s get to the bottom of the ideas that torment you. How many years was that paradise of childhood, really? Two or three? We have our whole, long, fruitful lives ahead of us.

    VIRGINIA
    It was paradise before the deaths began.

    LEONARD
    There’s no escaping death, Virginia.

    VIRGINIA
    You intimate that children would drive me mad?

    LEONARD
    They would certainly stop you working. Can you see a house filled with nannies, nurses, servants, their followers and lovers? Cockney quarrels and endless Bedlam difficulties? You once described your nursery as a cage where you were forced to perform compulsory tricks.

    VIRGINIA
    And what do you call this damnable house? Cousin Madge says you’re mean and think of nothing but money.

    LEONARD
    Madge is an idiot. Let’s resolve to cut all idiots on principles of health.

    VIRGINIA
    If that were only possible! Here I am in George’s house, sentenced to eternally hawking Gerald’s books!

    LEONARD
    But George isn’t here. And there are other publishers in the world besides Gerald.

    VIRGINIA
    Worse ones, doubtless. Did you read Gissing, or even Meredith?

    LEONARD
    Then we’ll publish our books ourselves.

    VIRGINIA
    (turning to face him)

    Could such a thing be possible?

    LEONARD
    Of course, it is. You know your Women’s Cooperative promotes apprenticeships. I think the Working Man’s College teaches printing.

    VIRGINIA
    Oh, imagine if that were so! How I’d love to print! I used to bind books, I liked that. The tools were so beautiful. Papers from Italy, leathers from Africa. The smell alone was heavenly.

    LEONARD
    Don’t these doctors recommend handiwork?

    VIRGINIA
    Tat-work! Or crochet!

    LEONARD
    Let’s defeat them, then. Can’t we, together, push the world our way? Or at the very least carve out a tiny corner where we can live and thrive?

    VIRGINIA
    If only I could trust you.

  • Writing a novel for class – a memoir by Alysse Aallyn

    THE PINCH OF DEATH – Writing a novel for class

    After my fiancé graduated law school in Kentucky, we came East – where our families lived – to get married. I applied to Brooklyn College for the MFA program and was hired as a writing fellow. What followed was an experience so discouraging I can well understand why graduate students are at a high risk of suicide.

    First, there’s the contrast between the high prestige of the position and the pitiable pay. You could literally make more money (and spend the same amount of time) combing the subway for lost change.

    Next, there’s the “job” they want you to do, which is to prepare seriously undereducated freshman to write an essay justifying their admission into the hallowed world of academe.

    I had fun developing my own syllabus, which was basically teaching critical thinking in the most fun way I could possibly imagine. A teacher “reviewer” who came to watch the class wrote me a rave review – I don’t think anyone in my life has ever praised me as much as he did. I still cherish that evaluation. But don’t get excited – the second guy (months later) disparaged me so much that if you add the two reviews together I think you’d have to give me a sad C-. But at that point, They Knew About Me – that I had no college degree -and so they were trying to get rid of me. Really, you can’t blame them – how could I prepare students to get something I didn’t have myself? And what – you may ask – was wrong with MY thinking and reasoning powers that I had not expected this?

    The truth is, I had flouted “rules” all my life – they always seemed ridiculous – and because I was a “rara avis” I usually got away with it. But clearly, this could not continue. Much chastened by my brush with the universe (which represented itself as “sanity”) I did go ahead and get a BA degree in psychology from LaSalle. I even got half a masters under my belt from Springfield College until I saw that it was useless.

    But back to Brooklyn. There were classes I took, of course, in WRITING – which was my absorbing interest and passion. I kept the fact that I had actually published a novel a secret because the class expressed such a tragic belief that being published was their deepest desire and most desperate and holy quest. I knew that it was the writing of the book itself – finding the subject AND the expression that was your spiritual release into the world – that was the most important absorbing and exciting. My first book was written to specifications – what was “popular” – under the ingenuous theory that I would develop important publishing relationships (my editor lost her job, my company bought out and revamped.) You could hardly brag about an experience like that.

    For my class on the Novel I decided to write a novel. I thought it would be fun. If you wrote a chapter every week you would have a novel at the end.

    One of my classmates was an ex-nun – a most interesting person – whose experiences strongly affected me. I effortlessly adapted her into my heroine, because my book was a mystery. Surely these are the easiest to write – they must evolve according to a plan. You have to introduce the problem, then the suspects, give clues, and make the reader care about the outcome. I had an idea it would be less emotional than my first book, which got bogged down into a bizarre love story about a fatherless girl pathetically seeking mentorship. THIS book would be all business.

    I got such massive pushback from the class I’m kind of surprised I went through with it – but I was enjoying the writing and the characters were alive to me. “Criticism” in class was students laboriously reading each others’ work, describing its emotional effect on them and describing different ways things could be said. The forward motion of a novel – the sweep, the assumption of power – was thereby utterly dissipated. Everyone just rewrote the first chapters of different books endlessly. So it shouldn’t have been called “Novel Writing”, it should have been called “Paragraph Writing” – a class I wouldn’t take.

    This teacher and I butted heads on all kinds of issues. First off, he said great writing couldn’t have a “happy ending.” I saw his point but I thought it shallow. Surely completion of a quest – solving a mystery – is an enormous relief. But mysteries aren’t serious writing, he insisted. (Uh oh. Since I was engaged on one.) Well, what about the Odyssey? Jane Austen? {Probably Tom Jones, if I could recall the ending.)

    MODERN literature!! He insisted. We can’t have happy endings anymore!

    That was when I realized the whole thing was bogus. If I was bogus, they were even more bogus. I was eight months’ pregnant at the time and this man’s feeble philosophy defied the spinning of the planets, the arrival of spring, the creation of Life itself. What a silly fellow.

    I finished Pinch of Death, and still reread it with pleasure, A very charming book.