Alysse Aallyn

Tag: #Reading

  • Inspired Pleasure – the dance diaries of Alysse Aallyn

                 10:30 PM – Plush Palace – Mon  night 10 April 78

                                         Two more sets. I’ll live. Finished study of Mary McCarthy by Doris Grumbach. Much prefer that to actually having to read  McCarthy who reminds me of Aldous Huxley – Is it possible to be too contemporary?  Trends of modern writing a little too sketchy for me.  No book  should feel like flipping through a magazine.  Sensory overload sans enlightenment.  

    As for Angus Wilson – we are parting forever. I read all but two stories in Such Darling Dodos  – back on the shelf he goes.

                                        Wonderful day – up before 7, read New York Times, sent out poems – magnificent walk with dogs – explored abandoned house. Haunted by novel – so went back and got six pages – one good new idea. 

    Called publisher – ordered ten more books.   Little self-promotion. While writing got call from the Plush Palace – would I come in two sets early for Glory, who is sick?  Love to.  Just feeling bankrupted by the drycleaners. I was justified too because first set got a big tip. ($300)!  

    Peter called – said he would have loved to go to the Raitt concert with me but had to go to Vermont. He certainly talks differently when his girlfriend/housekeeper/telephone answerer person is not around. 

                                        He hinted that his love life is impossibly complex and he doesn’t want his parents to know. I’m guessing that she is married. He promised to get in touch when he gets back. I’m in the ladies room because the air-conditioning in dressing room not working – it is suffocating in there. Yesterday evening thoroughly enjoyable – steaks wine and hot fudge sundaes at A’s then watched Richard Brooks Happy Ending which really 

    was a bomb. Trying to read Anthony Powell’s Venusberg but feeling nothing yet. Tried Sarton’s Miss Pickthorn – a hash of all her other stuff – very slight. Avril not home for past four hours – out on date with Jordan. 

    Can’t wait to hear the play by play.

                                        11:45 PM – Thurs 13 Apr 78

                                        Safe & warm in my gilt-canopied bed, happy in spite 

    of my cold.  A & I got “El Diablo” inspected today – $70 – But at least she can take it to the MVA tomorrow and have it put in her name.  That great feeling of “starting out fresh”.  In spite of dribbles & wheezes, blissful dog walk followed by deep-dish pizza & wine at Armand’s. No painful memories. 

    Cherry blossoms are out.  

            Saw Coming Home with Jon Voigt & Jane Fonda.  Good, if somewhat earnest.  Bruce Dern acted like he was in a different movie.  Rough role deserves a hero’s commendation. I stare at the casually interdependent  couples – it’s been a year since I could lay a hand on another’s thigh with that proprietary air.  Poor Avril dissolved in tears towards the end – too reminiscent of the “endless pain” of vets like Bruce and Mason.

                                         I’d be more sympathetic if they didn’t take it out on others. What they learned apparently is how to “stage a war”.  The people we love inflict the worst damage.  Avril’s at the stage where she’s still haunted by Mason but feels it’s “boring” to talk about him so she bottles it up.  I tell her get a diary.  Hope to finish Powell’s 

    Agents & Patients tonight – but it is a little dull. 

                                        Plush Palace –Fri 14 Apr 78 – 3:50 PM

                                        Only 3 more sets, with 4 dancers.  Still, made 

    enough tips for groceries.  Buy wild birdseed for the birds cavorting 

    outside my desk’s bay window. Daringly went on without stockings – such a savings if we didn’t have to buy them but Eddie told me No Cigar.  

    Too bad – they’re hot in summer.  Alvera says Yvonne’s back at Mother Joe’s.  I thought she wouldn’t be able to eat enough shit to stay in her music clerk job.  We goddesses so spoiled by our pedestal.  Called A in the afternoon to see how she was doing – Shoulders was there flexing his muscles at her and she is over the moon.  Trying to be glad for her but in spite of his obvious beauty I’m afraid he is a bit of a shit. (See testimony of past burnees plus eviction notices.)

                                        I feel I must disappear deeper into solitude and see what’s down there.  Gift  (new version of Courtney) coming along interestingly but slowly.  I’m afraid it has no plot other than my own life, when what it needs is a couple of murders. (Same thing my life has always required.) Poems so much easier instead.

    Tried to read Phyllis Bottome but she’s a fatal cross between a 

    didact and a pleaser; sort of like a barky little dog.  Most unpleasant. 

     And that casual anti-Semitism pretty shocking.

                                        Plush Palace – Sat 5:50 PM 15 Apr 78

                                        Halfway through novel –  can’t figure out if I’m 

    satisfied or not.  All my discoveries so agonizingly slow. Can’t afford 

    fuckups – then I’ll have to go through it all AGAIN. Slept late, breakfast at Avril’s.  We did laundry together, then played gin.  

                                        I was the first one here thank God (means I’m the

     first to leave).  Got my schedule – 4 nights in a row, 2 days off.  Good. 

    Congratulate myself on my intellectual freedom as I wrap black lace around my throat, recalling all the put-downs I suffered back in the day when I was an “architect’s helpmeet”. 

                                      Reread Alvarez’ description of Plath’s suicide – I don’t agree her death was some “by-product.” Her mother raised her to be murdered by other people; 

    Nazis or husbands.   There had to be a “bloodletting” – Mrs. Plath’s ulcer – Sylvia’s “suicides”. If you don’t “accept” martyrdom someone will have to die in your place. Kid yourself it’s” freedom” just because you choose time & place. 

                                         It bothers me terribly that Mom & Daughter shared a bedroom during Sylvia’s formative years.  Death would seem inevitable just to get some privacy & distance.   Poor Sylvia offered those magnificent poems to Alvarez and he 

    backed away terrified because Art is terrifying. $30 for lost contact that came out when a necklace scraped my eyeball while I was hanging upside down. 

    Teach me to wear contacts onstage. Who needs to see the audience anyway?

                                        7:15 PM Sun 16 Apr 78

                                        Spent the day in bed eating oranges, raisin bread, peanut butter.  Avril’s spending the night at Shoulders’ new place – then tomorrow we’re going to the new Cassavetes film and I’m excited.  Jervaze in for last set to invite me to his going away party.  I slept nine hours. 

                                        Horrifying Who Made the Lamb – author really lost control of this one but I bet she would say she was just “reporting”. Books Do Furnish a Room much better than Powell’s previous – has a sense of direction. “Trapnel himself always insisted that a novel is what its writer is”. I would agree.  Style follows taste, I think. Realize Dad and I don’t mean the same thing by the word “intellectual”.  He means a person who knows specific things, (education) I mean a person who thinks a certain way (style). 

    Twain never meets. I am not respectful of artificially acquired patinas –

    “points of view”. Wrote the infirmary scene – just what I wanted to say.

                                        Maybe I need to give up sex and even male companionship –

     – just can’t afford them.

                                        Plush Palace – 6:45 PM Fri 21 Apr 78

                                        Wonderful walk along Powder Mill Road thinking 

    about the mystique of money.  I eternally fight a rearguard action. Mom & Dad call at noon – Genevieve had little girl – Belinda.  Avril delivers my new lens– bounce notice in mail – I tear my hair in a frenzy.  I get to dance 2 sets for GiGi – $200 – she tells me about her night of sin with Louie. And she wants another one.  Life’s a soap opera.  Management says there’s going to be a drug raid with dressing room search warrant. Panic among the girls – but not me. Check out the customers with a more intense interest.  Are narcs here?  Everyone planning to leave town except me.  I offer to work tomorrow night.   

                                        Reading an interesting study of Iris Murdoch novels – the Disciplined Heart. Too much coffee – I’m switching to tomato juice. 

  • Inspired Pleasure – the dance diaries of Alysse Aallyn

                 12:55 PM

                                        Very tired. Shouldn’t keep working with this intensity but my new discovery of shaky financial position means I have to. When I “have to” do anything it makes me feel soiled.  Wild idea of getting pregnant by Jervaze.  He’s pretty enough. But what would that fix? Only my biological clock and my finances – permanently.  Fixed in a downward direction if you get my drift.  Finished Sarton’s Mermaids, startingTyler’s Caleb.

                 6:30PM – Plush Palace – Tues 7 Mar 78     

                                        A triumphant day. Like some manic-depressive,

     I am in my high cycle.  Probably from reading Elizabeth Bowen – 

    The Cat Jumps.   Amazed at how much I like it – much better than Death of the Heart.  She leaves me feeling a writer can do anything. I see my book now as thirteen short, sharp, clear scenes.  Why can’t  I do it any way I want? Tonight  I have To The North to look forward to.

                 Plush Palace – 11:PM Fri Mar 10 – 78

                                        Wednesday I broke up with Jervaze to make him finally go home. Thursday he called me.  I got the impression that in the South it’s when you break up that things really  start to get interesting.  Apparently if I wanted wild declarations I should have done this long ago. Fortunately, I can handle this 

    on the phone.  It’s that glorious body dipped in platinum dust that I can’t say no to.

                                        Finished Bowen’ s World of Love and To the North.  

     I can’t believe she was ever popular – I like her too much.  She suits me exactly. What a stylist.  OK, forget plot, character, those little appurtenances.  

    She makes them seem so unimportant. Imagine recasting Courtney  in this light. I guess her style is too forties, but would that be necessarily a bad thing?

      Avril called. She and I are crutches to one another, but I like her better than any man I have ever met.  Watched Monty Python, steak dinner, then she helped me paint my new four-poster bed. (Gilt, of course. Gives me a new title – The Gilty Bed.) Watched La Femme Infidele sur le television while consuming an appropriate wine.

                 Plush Palace – 11:PM Sat Mar 11 – 78

                                        I was in too good a mood today. Bought a new costume from Maureen just when I AM JUST ABOUT TO LEAVE FOR THREE WEEKS, but it is yellow velvet and fake sapphires with armbands and everything – a beauty.  Good work on novel, ate hamburgers (and eclairs) with Avril, wrote a good letter to Devon

    – in answer to his weird one to me.  Struggling with Eva Trout and The Ponder Heart. Nix on both.  Fortunately, also have a June Thomson murder mystery for a chaser.

                                        Avril and I assembled my bed – canopy and everything, it looks smashing with its hangings of brown lace. Then she called Mason in Calif to see why he isn’t sending her stuff – he said he’s seeking another estimate – they had a rational discussion but she was obviously very shaken when she hung up.  I teased her that he is wearing her clothes and probably looks good in them.

                 Plush Palace – Wed/Thu Mar 15 – 78

                                        No London in my future. I’ve accepted it. I need 

    affordable breaks from this life – two weeks in Maine, one week in Boston, etc. A and I going to Maine tomorrow.  Avril spent the weekend comforting Opal who is upset about the failure of her marriage – it’s the old story – when it’s the woman’s turn to be babied man withdraws, making frightened, threatening noises.

                                        Finished Sarton’s Kinds of Love.  I can see why 

    some people like it.  It kind of has a “National Geographic” feel to it – here’s a guide to the “foreigners”.  But it is not a good novel – it’s Faith Baldwin through and through. Reading Sarton is like attending writing class – she never loses the miasma of the eager student and she has a lot of interesting ideas. But, remarkably for a poet, she is deficient on the mystery end. Perhaps she doesn’t understand that a novel is another kind of poem. Lots of Ructions here tonight: Gina and Jerrilee fighting and I have to play peacemaker (because there’s nowhere to go from the dressing room other than the alley or the ladies room and no guarantee rabid fans will stay away.) I haven’t packed – will be up till 4.

                 2PM – Shadowe Island Sat Mar 18 – 78

                                        Every time I come back to this beautiful island I wonder why I ever leave.  Dogs are in paradise. Mom and Dad relaxed, involved, charming.   Avril  all defensive about the “failure” of her life with Mason so I am off the hook – temporarily. 

                                        I’m reading The House In Paris – restores my high estimation of Bowen. The trouble with this island is that the rest of existence vanishes totally when I am here.  I am eating too much but the food is so fabulous it would seem immoral to resist – roast lamb, new potatoes, spinach quiche, sour cream gravy, stuffed mushrooms, strawberry trifle.  We stayed up late reading Ruth Rendell’s mystery stories aloud, then I fell asleep and I had the most delicious erotic dream about J – much better than the real thing.

     Felt what it would be like to be a deep-throated cello vibrating endlessly.

                 Mon Mar 20 7:00 PM -78

                                        Why is it around my parents my self-confidence takes a nosedive?  Every fingernail becomes deciduous.  I had better call  Plush Palace and get put on next week’s schedule.  Finished House and began Heat of the Day.  My mother asks questions that reveal her to be jealous of all the reading I do.  Her delicate hint – she would feel “lazy” doing so much reading because there must be something that she would be neglecting.  I tell her I, on the other hand, if I were not reading, would feel guilty. (As well as deprived.)  Thus we must differ. The great thing about Eliz B –

    – she writes like no one else.  To criticize her would be like saying the plumed flycatcher has a little too much plume.

                                        Managed to prevent Mom from inviting “young people” to a “weenie roast on the shore” for me and A.  We are here to HIDE.  She was very nice about it.  Do imagine I could live here. Listening right now to Haydn’s Clock Symphony.  Now that would be a great title for a short story about an unattached woman in her late twenties…

                                        Avril and I have wonderful conversations in our twin beds like a pair of teenagers home on holiday from school, listening to the distant waves crash on the dark shore.  I realize we could still be feeling like thiseven when we are a pair of decrepit old maids – which is probably why families like to stay together. You are timeless for each other.  She asked me which of my boyfriends had known me best.  I think Toss Sheffield – 

    certainly better than my own husband.  But this is not a flattering conclusion since he seems to have run wildly in the opposite direction