10:30AM Sun 20 Feb 77
R and I went on ski weekend to Massanutten.
Didn’t work. Never felt so far from him, and he realized it. Opal & Garrett over for dinner last night – their relationship is boring when I’m alone and don’t have R doing all the work for me. Drank too much out of sheer boredom and because I was depressed over R, then I get depressed over being depressed and drink more. Clearly he’s worthless and I must be too if I can get depressed over him. No good work on novel. Filing, cleaning, paying bills takes up all my time and my room still looks like a filthy hole. Hermiting seems only option (cheaper, too). Must learn to roll with the punches. Fantasizing about Devon because 24th is his birthday. Bad sign.
1:00PM 21 Feb 77
Dizzy from dieting. Not dancing very bad for my body.
Current weight 122. (Opal says I have the perfect body. Glad someone appreciates it.) Ryder suggested jogging – bad mistake. Instantly attacked by colds & flu. Instead of eating go to library on my lunch hr to take out books. Went to see The Sentinel somewhere in the burbs with Avril and Mason, who drove like a crazy person (“I’m not afraid of death!”) Never again. Ghastly flick. Mason moving in – his money is good. Another secret to be kept from landlord. A guy at work (Keith Dalrymple) is courting me. He looks all right, though he has receding hairline. Kind of old. Asked to read my novel. I gave him my poems instead. He needs to hit the ground running.
Tues. 22 Feb 77
Mason trying to talk A into moving to Calif with him. Uh oh.
Maeve also wants to move out because I’m critical of her “dating” her married boss (they have sex in the supply closet). She believes his tiredest lines. “Drop him – he’s outrageous and destructive,” I say. I’m one to talk. Will use her room for my study. Try to live without roommates. Sent Devon a long grey silk scarf for his birthday.
3:40 PM Wed 23 Feb 77
Keith Dalrymple amazingly told me he loves my
poems. Wow. Having good literary taste definitely works with me! Having a drink with him tonight. Had to struggle to keep myself from hurling cash at a gorgeous $50 suit in going-out-of-business dress shop on Dupont Circle. Slogging through Mrs Dalloway – it’s her best book. But all this blind struggle not my thing. Require some consciousness. I guess we were reptiles in those days just turning amphibious.
Thurs. 24 Feb 77
Can’t seem to write poetry anymore. Cocktail bar buffet
with Keith (A calls him a “dim bulb”. We are very critical of each other’s honeys.) He’s a Woolf novel – smooth glossy surface, violence and trauma beneath. He is intelligent – quoted Frost – 38 yrs old – divorced (was married 15 years!!!) I sat swilling Scotch and giving him the hairy eyeball – do I have the strength for this? He blanched when I ordered escargots chablisienne. Wouldn’t even kiss him. I demand exceptionality and refuse to settle for less. Whatever else you can say about Ryder, he’s definitely one of a kind. I am in a unique position compared to other women writers. Given the chance to rise above sexual strictures. Bought an exquisite pair of very high-heeled boots. I tower over Ryder – in more ways than one. Heheheh. Fri. 25 Feb 77 I fuss, I fume. I shriek and scream. I circle my desk warily. Cannot get into this awful novel. Stare hard at the clutching sisters in the Victorian photo for inspiration. None comes. Instead slapped together a first poetry collection – In the Vein. 5:20 PM Sun 27 Feb 77 Ryder will be here any minute. Driving straight through from Pittsburgh because he “misses me so much.” Flank steak marinating, turnips, parsnips & parsley, tomatoes & sour cream – everything ready but wine. Too lazy to drive to the Tick Tock. Day of ecstasy sorting books in new study. Sections are: crime writing, Victorians, Great Novels, the Occult, Women Writers, Cinema, Politics, Science, Children, History & Murder Mysteries. (Move those downstairs.) Hating Orlando. Why did Bowen write Afterword if she didn’t like the book?
Mon 28 Feb 77 – Broadcast Agency
Bad sex. Sore. Feel like I’ve been run over. Something’s
up with him. Mauled me again in the middle of the night. Guilt? Surprise visit from landlord – heard about “violations” from Montgomery County. Ha ha. Obviously only two people living here – (nothing visible of Mason’s.) Landlord calmed. Says he wants to sell the place. Would we allow to be shown? I said sure. Everybody happy. Sorry to lose such a beautiful house but it is too expensive for one person anyway.
Thurs. 3 Mar 77
Long talk with Avril about Mason. He is a racist.
She says how is it possible to feel superior to and inferior to someone at the same time? Human condition, I say. Spring wind makes me long to shed my clothes! Poor Ryder! It’ll be halter tops and hot pants the minute temp hits 65. Finally got a V. Woolf poem –
VIRGINIA WOOLF: The Membraned Sieve
O bliss to be red admiral afeast Upon a rotten apple in the grass; she dreamed that guiltily Woke to Leonard bringing milk Nessa dancing bear-like on the lawn, woke To pain; cylindrical as seasons Burning white and burning blue like friends. The words fell fast, the blood fell faster; Split the membraned sieve. She raced the whitecaps out to sea Parting the waves with her mother’s hand.
Keith and I still talk but he has made no moves. Relief.
Shalimar – 3:30 PM –13 Aug 76 Was sitting on a box of Lite Beer sipping coffee
reading Miss Read when Carmen warned me that the boss
might fire me for reading. Apparently writing he doesn’t mind
so much, probably because he can’t imagine anyone keeping
it up longer than 10 mins at a time. R. will be here soon, then
we hit the bank, pick up my stuff and we’re on the road for the
Finger Lakes. Five hours alone in the car. I find I have a lot
of inhibitions against voicing boundaries in our relationship –
mainly because I don’t want to be lied to. I want to find out
how things really are. For example, he spent last night in
Gaithersburg with his wife. Now her I’m jealous of, because
he used to love her, used to think she was a “catch” and
was surprised and gratified that she “descended” into
marriage with him.
I probably won’t ask him if they had sex because
it would be making too much of it. He’s said before he wouldn’t,
and she definitely wouldn’t. But I can’t believe a woman who
knows she’s losing a man might not change in her feelings –
just to see what power she has left. I would, if he wanted the
divorce and I didn’t. Will I be able to tell just by looking at him?
R feels the right to be jealous and possessive over me, which
I don’t grudge him since I’m naturally monogamous. He feels
no discomfort making rules for me. But he should.
6:00 PM Saturday 14 Aug 76 Finger Lakes Lying on the bed in our tiny TINY two room cabin –
with just a curtain separating the rooms – I was going to write
here about how much I love my job (I really miss dancing so
much when I’m away from it – the ideal thing would be three
sets a day for life) – when R came in, threw himself on me,
tore my clothes off, began kissing my breasts and exploring
my tan lines and pressing his beautiful valued body hard hard
hard into mine – and you know what happened next. If he turns
the fan on high I don’t think the other campers can hear our little
yips and screams. At least I hope not. We spent last night in his
grandmother’s house in Binghamton, New York.
She bedded us down in separate rooms – he gave me a
long lecture about how you have to respect the house rules of
whoever you’re staying with – and then who do you think showed
up in the middle of the night saying he couldn’t sleep. It is ecstatic
to have sex almost without moving – this must be what Tantra is like.
We were directly over her and the bed creaked so we didn’t move a
muscle – absorbed and shed each other like snakes. Wonderful.
Next stop was R’s cousins who own the cabins. I don’t know
what to say about them – plastic flowers and Sonny James. My state
of deep shock probably resembled mental retardation. Some people’s
houses are frighteningly ugly. Their clock has eyes, they keep the
plastic on the lampshades. I just sat there while the ethnic and sex
jokes filtered around me. Who could blame R’s first wife for
shunning this bunch?
I would not choose them for buddies either. And the fact
that they are renting us a cabin doesn’t appear to mean we will
also get privacy – so I have taken to wearing my glasses. Number
one – I don’t see as well – number two – it creates a kind of screen
between me and them.
The Lake is beautiful – but I don’t need to go in more than
twice a day – I also don’t have the patience for the fish-a-thons that
absorb the rest of them, dawn till dusk.
Plus one time waterskiing was plenty. Since dinner is a
vast barbecue down at the beach every night and we only have
sandwiches for lunch and cereal for breakfast there is not that
much to do, thank God. Sadly the dinners are followed by
hours of dancing, drinking and fighting. I go to bed early to read
but R stays and plays “peacemaker”. Tonight he says he’s going
to let them kill each other and join me. Therefore I can set up my
typewriter on the kitchen table and get right to it. People keep
coming to bring me coffee and cookies – I think they really
want to see a writer “in action” – at the end of this trip I MAY
be 20 lbs heavier. The rest of my time is spent sunning and reading.
Unfortunately St. Secaire going VERY badly. Complete
horseshit, alas.
I’ve started it four separate times. I think at this point I just
have to keep going and hope it’s possible to clean up the mess later.
Tuesday 17 Aug 76 7:30 PM Outside a fair number of people, all high as kites,
revving their engines and swearing they’re leaving and never
coming back. I don’t know if anybody’s actually going to GO
or not but I wish they would. No wonder R had nothing to do
with these people for four years – he may conveniently blame
his wife but the truth is none of them can stand each other.
Pack of wolverines. I’ve been left totally alone and am well
out of it – they may have forgotten I am even here. Last night R
was so depressed he just lay on the bed exhausted by them. I
tried to explain to him about resentment and the resulting succubae
and incubi thus created. (Subject of my novel, in fact.)
He said something about “our next 25 years” that just
floored me. Even my husband didn’t talk like that. Remember
saying to my father – I would be fine if I could only find a man who
treated me as well as I treated him. Dad – so ready to take
anybody’s part over mine, said, Has it ever occurred to you that
you might be hard to live with? Such a typical Daddy remark –
the more you think about it the worse it gets.
Well, R treats me better than anyone else so far.
He’s almost talked me into looking for a new job when I get back –
and that’s a lot. But if he wants to introduce me around, can’t lie
about what I do, etc etc. (This group – doesn’t know about my job –
he says they’d eat me – and him – alive. I can scarcely believe
they would take the moral high ground with me but I suppose
anything’s possible.) Tried to read a Redbook someone brought
– shouldn’t do it. So depressing. Could never write like that or
be like that. If that’s the standard this whole thing is hopeless.
Then I picked up a book by Grace Livingston Hill. I’m going to
include her in my article on female pornographers.
R told me he had the impression that if I didn’t have my
novel to write I would probably go bananas. I said probably. I tried
to prepare him for the very different kind of vacation he’s going to
get in Maine – where people very deliberately leave each other alone.
If somebody sets off down the beach and you wanted also to walk
on the beach – you’d turn and go the opposite way. R says in his
family that would be grounds for a six-year grudge punctuated by
sobbing, screaming and threats of suicide.
12:10 am Went night fishing with R because he wanted me to.
Wrote a wonderful poem about Coleridge – just came to me in
one piece. Couldn’t really share with R – he doesn’t know who
Coleridge is. So I showed him – Haunted Wedding.
HAUNTED WEDDING The pregnant car disgorges Only us. It’s winter. Drunk as silver fish We beat our gills as light As hummingbirds. In an amethyst ring Of drypoint trees The half-built house Gapes and swells Its timbers stink of sap. Windrill fields occlude Our crossing, so you carry me High above the thorny osiers. We sleep aloft for safety Locked and levitating In this space of air One season only, Unseen by angry outriders; Bloodless in our wedding robes Like the doubled membranes Of the frozen flowers
This triggered a fight because he says it wasn’t written
for him. If he jealously searches my work for other lovers
madness is assured.) He almost talked me into thinking it a
bad poem.
I feel my mother’s disapproving stare on all of this – “
don’t ruin what you have by trying to get something else” – as
if showing R this poem would be a deliberate way of hurting him
by making him feel inferior – part of her larger accusation that I
channel so much energy into writing I’m no good with people and
that’s why my relationships suffer. All I can say is, thank God for
my diary.
Writing now with my feet in R’s lap while he plays cards.
He strokes my toes from time to time, as if I were a cat. We came in
from fishing and he just took my pants down – such earthy
sexuality has never existed for him. He told me he’s never
been so happy. And as for me? One side of my multi-prismed
personality is happy, but some of the other sides are complaining.
Difficult to contemplate an existence where I am not mentally alone
six hours a day.
One of the reasons I like my job is that it leaves that part
of me remarkably intact – dancing is a lot like sleepwalking. If I get
another job there’s a strong chance I’ll have to interact with humans.
Hell. And we both know how humans can be. Then I might be too
exhausted emotionally and battered psychologically to have the
energy to write – it’s a serious risk. Those architects ran roughshod
Fri 23 July 76 - Tyler St, Chevy Chase, Maryland
R and I have seen each other every day since Fri –
I think he’s in love. I could fall if I let myself but something holds me back. I like our relationship now – he drops by the house after work and we’re both in jeans. I think tonight’s the night for sex – first time – I’m nervous but since I love his body I expect to be all right. Adore these slow working mornings. I get up with A (depending on when her first run is – she’s now working courier) to have time to set my hair before leaving at 10. Beautiful walks up Tyler St. Early AM at the Shalimar such a pleasure – sitting at the bar with my diary balanced on my hipbones, watching the barmaids get ready, feeling like a character out of Toulouse Lautrec. Yesterday we met our across the street neighbors – one of them is a gorgeous guy named Larry getting a degree in Hospital Administration. Among ourselves we call him “Shoulders” because he has such a gorgeous pair. To see them dimpled with sweat on his way back from a run is to be in heaven. Invited Larry and roommates Garrett and Opal to dinner tomorrow night – if they can come.
Thurs 22 July 76 – 9:25 PM God I’m in love. I love his fragile, tense blond body – love holding it. Love looking at his Lorenzo diMedici face. Those blond Italians! He wouldn’t like to hear me say it – he has a black belt in karate and thinks he’s so tough – but he probably only outweighs me by 20 lbs. Made love all afternoon – he is very skilful – obsessed with my pleasure. Says he doesn’t care if he ever comes – wants to see what gives a woman pleasure. We fit together exactly – interlocking puzzle pieces even upside down. I can feel his feet with my feet – his knees with my knees – it’s like having a mirror body – only with a hard chest and penis. After the first time the relief of the orgasm was so great I wept. I fell asleep with him inside me. Wrote a poem about him but don’t know if I want to show him. If I learned anything from Bruce it’s that people misrepresent. He could be shockable and its early days yet. Today I want to buy a bookcase. Love equals, unfortunately, anxiety attacks – could he possibly love me as much as I love him? Yesterday walking in the park I expressed fear about him going straight from one serious relationship right into another – but he says he refuses to limit the experience. Which of course was exactly the right answer. The worst part is his trouble with my job. He says he knows he can’t ask me to quit because he can’t support me – I pointed out he wants me to go on the Divers World expedition, and then to Cozumel, and I want to take him to Maine, all of which would be impossible if I had a regular job. He says he can deal with it only by avoiding the Shalimar – OK by me as long as I see him outside. He came in today – I got rid of him after a half hour, before my set.
11:05 AM – Shalimar Tues 27 July 76 Feel like throwing out all my diaries. Driveling gush broken up by gushing drivel. But I go right ahead and produce some more. Randy throwing ice and cases of beer, Bobbi cleaning trays, Carmen checking paper towels and me writing. Perfect. We were lying in bed – me and Ryder – I have to lie on his right side because he only has one good ear – and he told me a long purposeless allegory about bullfighting. Can’t tell which of us is the supposed to be the matador. I’m the only one with a poetic license in this relationship.) He said I should just write, and he’s going to see to it. I said fine by me. I love this job but not as much as writing, love and freedom. Then he said, I love you.
9:45 AM Wed July 28 76
Anniversary of Toss Sheffield relieving me of
my impacted virginity (as I relieved him of his.) R came yesterday at 2 – left at 3 – came back at 5. Another watershed in our relationship – Fears. He’s afraid to lose the hearing in his good ear. He speaks sign language but doesn’t want to live in a world without sound. I made him promise to go the doctor. He agreed to make an appointment no later than Weds. Reading Christina Stead’s wonderful Dark Places of the Heart. Considered inviting Ryder to live with us – rejected the idea. I need too much alone time. So important to establish amour proper. I am so impoverished from setting up the house (though I’ve made enough in tips to pay my taxi ride home tonight) I am barely going to make the rent. Need a windfall. Sweaty and smelly. I think I’ve boogie –oogie-oogied till I just can’t boogie no more.
Club Shalimar– 30 July 76 Cookout at Ryder’s parents – I met his folks – two roly-poly people who are nothing like him – one sister who is a lot younger. We had glorious talks on our way there and back – about having our own space – (we agreed he needs to live alone); our hopes and dreams (he used to write music, wants to do that again someday – I told him I have an agent shopping a novel around) first impressions (I discovered he was in the bar when I auditioned! Horrors!) He said what intrigues him most about me is that he can’t figure me out – still can’t – everything about me is a surprise. I guess I could say the same about him. Wonderful abandoned sex – just crazy stuff – I came and came. He told me he spent last night at his old house – he and his wife had to have a “meeting”. I was jealous until he told me that his wife is sexually dead – and always has been. He didn’t understand it when they married, assuming it was something you get over. I suggested she was probably molested as a child – he didn’t want to believe it. He thinks some people are sexually just asexual. I thought – but didn’t say – there’s a self-protective concept. He doesn’t want to think she is turned off of him but in my experience – such as it is – chemistry is a completely mysterious yet crucial factor women have a tendency to discount it when choosing a life partner. So they end up married to the “perfect” person, except they’re not sexually stirred. 2:00 AM. He tucked me in – kissed me – left – then I was wakened with his hands all over me. When he got to his car he realized our clock had stopped and he didn’t have time to go home before work. So he snuck back in the sliding door. We had sex again, and the whole night became a snake eating its own tail. This morning got a wonderful poem: Love, the Magician.
The Magician is a Capricorn Bleeding cock’s milk from nipples Pale like mine but Maler. Illusion, he says is memory Of things that should have been. Doves and rabbits he entices From sacred groves between my legs Placed by ruse, and freed by art. When he dies, passion turns his eyes To quarters. He hears the world but faintly Through his one good ear. The other turns to me, Safecracker’s daughter. Trust the magician, voices tell me He knows when to drop the dice.
CHORUS & DANCERS: WOMAN HUSBAND LOVER/LOVE OBJECT Diners, College Students, Furniture, Bank Tellers & Customers (5 or 6)
SceneChange I: A glittering dinner party of masked participants (CHORUS). WOMAN takes off her mask and gazes about in a bored way. At exactly the same moment by a kitchen screen a waiter holding a tray (LOVER) takes off his mask. They gaze at one another. He advances forward setting down his tray in front of her and slowly, deliberately removes his glove to draw his hand along her arm, removing her glove. Other diners too animated in their conversations to notice.
He removes his other glove, then her glove. With each of his sway-backwards motions she rises from her chair until he turns to flee behind the screen and, pulling up her skirts, she pursues.
SceneChange II: The CHORUS build their chairs into “trees” pursued and pursuer dart between; the dining table becomes “steps” upwards. CHORUS build themselves into a hall of “doors”; only the LOVER’s door is ajar.
SceneChange III: CHORUS build themselves into a “bed” and a “window”. LOVER removes his shirt, opens up his arms. He and WOMAN dance as she is helped out of her clothes. They simulate slow and passionate sex in front of the “window”, sitting upright on the “bed”. As they lie in each other’s arms the “window” shines its light on them. WOMAN rises, gathers up her clothes, dressing very inexpertly, runs into the hall in a panic.
SceneChange IV: CHORUS rebuilds “doors”. WOMAN wanders up and down the hall as if lost while college students (inverted masks) peek at her from behind their “doors”. Then light hits the “steps” and she runs down, performing a sensuous, joyous dance. DARKNESS.
SceneChange V: WOMAN’s bedroom. CHORUS approximates an “armoire” spilling feminine objects, a “cheval glass” (Mirror) and a “bed” piled with pillows. HUSBAND and wife simulate sex in wheelbarrow position, he wearing suspenders and a tie, holds her legs upwards. Her face is buried in pillows, her arms grasping upwards to…nothing. It does not look fun.
“Mirror” tries to position itself camera-wise to capture the action. Alarm Clock sounds; HUSBAND stops what he is doing, puts on pants and jacket, grabs a briefcase and does a robot dance out the door. WOMAN flounders in pillows, finally gets herself upright but he is gone. She tries on a variety of outfits and seems displeased by all of them (the Armoire and Mirror happily offer alternating possibilities.)
WOMAN dances a self-soothing dance with her different clothes while the Armoire and Mirror sway helpfully and supportively, until she is finally in a good mood again and feels beautiful. Makeup, hair,
shoes… and it is back through the TREES, up the STEPS to the HALL of DOORS.
SCENECHANGE VI: She knocks on each and every door. (There is one door with no one behind it). Each door she knocks at, an opposite door opens, a snatch of music is heard and someone leans out, only to retreat when she looks in his direction. Finally she is able to synchronize movements to grab hold of a masked student and pull him out.
He plays dumb, shakes his head, shrugs his shoulders, just doesn’t know WHO or WHAT she could POSSIBLY be talking about. All doors open, all students look out and engage in a head-shaking, shoulder-slumping stupidity contest of No Such Person. WOMAN tries to peek beneath one of the masks, student slaps her hand away. She gives up. With crossed arms they watch her leave down steps. DARKNESS
SCENECHANGE VII: A BANK with old-fashioned tellers’ cages. WOMAN stands first impatiently in line, finally gets to a window, opens her purse and evidently tries out a series of identity cards and bankbooks in an effort to get money. Teller shakes her head, gets another teller over, then manager; they repel all books, all cards, shake their heads, cross their arms NO.
The WOMAN starts dancing out the story of her love, unmistakably acting a passionate tale of romantic awakening. CHORUS of bank customers are drawn into this story – swaying and touching themselves in supportive echoes; the two tellers clutching, dancing, then finally sobbing together.
They open up both bank drawers and shower her with money which she stuffs in her huge Designer Handbag. Customers congratulate her, throw confetti, produce balloons, champagne, blow party horns and dance together in celebration of her triumph as they send her on her way, back up the “steps” to the Hall of Doors.
SCENECHANGE VIII: WOMAN knocks and knocks on the LOVER’s door. He’s sitting behind it all right, with his back against it, arms crossed (no mask) but not answering. He looks annoyed. She sinks to her knees, keeps speaking, wheedling, repeating as many of the gestures of her Romantic Bank Dance as she can manage on her knees, to no avail.
They are very close together, both pressed against the door. Mirror-play. All the other doors keep opening and closing with peeking tenants until finally they just loiter out to frankly stare. She begins to push money under the door. He looks at the money – interested, then disgusted – pushes it back.
There is a frantic pushing back and forth of money while the other students gather around – holding out their hands and offering with pelvic thrusts and unbuttoned shirts to take over and fill in. WOMAN flees down the hall, bumping back and forth between them, down the “steps”. DARKNESS.
SCENECHANGE IX: A street scene. Everyone is masked, (including WOMAN) as they stroll, walk pets, wait for buses. The WOMAN lifts her mask just a little bit to peek at each passerby. None are to her taste. A Pretty Young Man, unmasked (THE LOVE OBJECT) sits on a park bench reading a book. She chooses HIM. She takes off her mask and casts it onto his book.
This gets his attention; he looks at it as if it fell from outer space. She takes off her scarf, drapes it over his head. Now he gets that there’s a human being involved; he looks up at her, startled. She unbuttons her blouse and does an unmistakably sensual, sexual dance that gets him very hot under the collar. He rises from his bench to follow her. She leads him on slow chase through the TREES, discarding clothes & shoes which he gathers up.
SCENE CHANGE X: The TREES become GRAVESTONES – they are in a cemetery. LOVE OBJECT a little scared now, all by himself. Owl hoots, day darkens. He shivers as he looks around but he is still game. WOMAN has vanished.
He drops to his knees before a “gravestone” to pick up an item – a lacy thong – holds it up wonderingly. On the scrim behind him the huge shadow of a naked woman appears, seeming to fill the sky. He looks up, terrified. The scrim is thrown over him, snuffing him like a candle. DARKNESS
In the spring of 1975 I quit my job as an administrative assistant to a group of Baltimore architects and gave myself an extended vacation in Maine. I was divorced and very frustrated with the dating scene in Baltimore which seemed oriented around married older career men and young, hopeful, not very smart women. My best friend who had hired me for the position was having an extended relationship with our married boss, which I saw as revolting. She got very excited about the “black pearls” he gave her and the vacations they took where he could show off her gorgeous youthful body and his hideous elderly one at sun-drenched locations.
I myself had an unhappy relationship with the unmarried art director (we actually lived together for awhile) which was obviously going nowhere and I was drinking too much. He got fired (not sure why) and his subsequent meltdown gave me a good excuse to get out of there.
My parents had just bought a house on Round the Mountain Road, Vinalhaven Island, that they hoped would allow them to live on the island year-round, our property on the shore being more of a “camp”. This house had water access, a boathouse, and a fantastic greenhouse off the dining room filled with spectacular camellias. Just after my parents bought it my father was surprised to be offered a job by Pennsylvania’s governor Milton Shapp to manage the finances of his presidential campaign. My parents rushed down to Washington where the action was and rented an amazing two bedroom, two bathroom apartment on the sixteenth floor of Veazey Towers overlooking Rock Creek Park.
Dad offered to pay me to winter in the Round the Mountain Road house and keep the camellias alive (which I successfully did, in spite of having no gardening aptitude whatsoever.) I set up my office in the greenhouse and wrote my first novel, Devlyn, surrounded by all the Victorian novels I had ever admired. I wanted to cash in on the trend and write a “gothic” novel, but the fun for me was, could I write a real Victorian novel? It was a treat to try. I had a great idea in the fact that one of my favorite authors Thomas Love Peacock, friend of Shelley and author of Nightmare Abbey, had actually adopted an impoverished village girl and treated her like a daughter. The question was, why? And what happened next?
I spent the winter writing it out and getting an agent. I had an abortive relationship with an unmarried local realtor who turned out to have extremely primitive relationship ideas (ugh) and I was offered a serious relationship by the handsomest man on the island, a real sweetie of a fisherman. But to stay, permanently on Vinalhaven Island! To be a fisherman’s wife! Couldn’t imagine it. Turned him down gracefully (we hadn’t even dated) and he went on to marry the prettiest and worst-behaved girl on the island who led him a nightmare dance of several years until their subsequent divorce and he’s now happily married to a career-woman divorcee (with children) who can’t believe her good fortune. This hothouse trap is what islands are like and I knew to stay away. One of my previous colleague architects (whom I really knew only in passing) drove all the way up from Baltimore and suffered an hour ferry ride to the island to visit me with romance on his mind. But he was married! So by spring I was more than ready to trade houses with Mom and Dad and move down to their apartment in Washington, D.C. and see if I could scare up an interesting job. (They had to leave when Milt Shapp’s finances went under investigation by the FBI.) My sister Avril left Wilmington College in Ohio for the summer and joined me.
I certainly knew what I didn’t want. I didn’t want to be office handmaid to a group of professional men offering low salaries and zero vacation. I considered working for an environmental group, selling art on commission in a gallery, and I tried out an employment agency whose offered jobs were never what they said they were. When I found a classified ad for go-go dancers I was intrigued. After all, I did have a background in dance, having studied at Martha Graham in NYC and the Philadelphia Academy of Dance and I loved dancing at clubs. Avril and I went to the agency to “audition” and met Deedee, its proprietor. The job was wearing bikinis and go-go boots and dancing for the troops at military installations around Washington. There were a lot of venues! Two “gigs” were possible a day – afternoon and evening – and they would be only an hour to two hours, shared with another dancer. Bet of all, you only worked when you wanted to! Avril couldn’t stomach the idea, (she took a job dispatching messengers) but I was willing to try it.
It certainly was an interesting experience! I drove everywhere, to bases, Navy Yards, officers’ clubs, hospitals and air stations. The men were extremely polite and sometimes tipped. I learned to navigate the Washington DC area, and even briefly dated a naval lieutenant I met at an officer’s club in Virginia. My free-wheeling Quaker/artistic/peacenik background clashed horribly with his career plans, however.
Most interesting were the other dancers. All of them were career dancers who combined occasional gigs for Deedee’s agency with dancing in local clubs. I soon discovered the clubs in Virginia were considered the best because the Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms vigilantes enforced audience distance from the dancers, who stayed in the dressing room when not on stage. Stockings, pasties and g-string were the required outfit, and the money was better than anything Deedee could pay. Three dancers worked per hour, so a set was twenty minutes. Less driving, more money, and a physical workout. It sounded good to me! My sister and I rented a three bedroom house in Chevy Chase, I auditioned for the Ad Lib in Alexandria, Virginia and was hired by Gentleman Jim, the manager. That’s how I got started dancing.
In the spring of 1975 I quit my job as an administrative assistant to a group of Baltimore architects and gave myself an extended vacation in Maine. I was divorced and very frustrated with the dating scene in Baltimore which seemed oriented around married older career men and young, hopeful, not very smart women. My best friend who had hired me for the position was having an extended relationship with our married boss, which I saw as revolting. She got very excited about the “black pearls” he gave her and the vacations they took where he could show off her gorgeous youthful body and his hideous elderly one at sun-drenched locations.
I myself had an unhappy relationship with the unmarried art director (we actually lived together for awhile) which was obviously going nowhere and I was drinking too much. He got fired (not sure why) and his subsequent meltdown gave me a good excuse to get out of there.
My parents had just bought a house on Round the Mountain Road, Vinalhaven Island, that they hoped would allow them to live on the island year-round, our property on the shore being more of a “camp”. This house had water access, a boathouse, and a fantastic greenhouse off the dining room filled with spectacular camellias. Just after my parents bought it my father was surprised to be offered a job by Pennsylvania’s governor Milton Shapp to manage the finances of his presidential campaign. My parents rushed down to Washington where the action was and rented an amazing two bedroom, two bathroom apartment on the sixteenth floor of Veazey Towers overlooking Rock Creek Park.
Dad offered to pay me to winter in the Round the Mountain Road house and keep the camellias alive (which I successfully did, in spite of having no gardening aptitude whatsoever.) I set up my office in the greenhouse and wrote my first novel, Devlyn, surrounded by all the Victorian novels I had ever admired. I wanted to cash in on the trend and write a “gothic” novel, but the fun for me was, could I write a real Victorian novel? It was a treat to try. I had a great idea in the fact that one of my favorite authors Thomas Love Peacock, friend of Shelley and author of Nightmare Abbey, had actually adopted an impoverished village girl and treated her like a daughter. The question was, why? And what happened next?
I spent the winter writing it out and getting an agent. I had an abortive relationship with an unmarried local realtor who turned out to have extremely primitive relationship ideas (ugh) and I was offered a serious relationship by the handsomest man on the island, a real sweetie of a fisherman. But to stay, permanently on Vinalhaven Island! To be a fisherman’s wife! Couldn’t imagine it. Turned him down gracefully (we hadn’t even dated) and he went on to marry the prettiest and worst-behaved girl on the island who led him a nightmare dance of several years until their subsequent divorce and he’s now happily married to a career-woman divorcee (with children) who can’t believe her good fortune. This hothouse trap is what islands are like and I knew to stay away. One of my previous colleague architects (whom I really knew only in passing) drove all the way up from Baltimore and suffered an hour ferry ride to the island to visit me with romance on his mind. But he was married! So by spring I was more than ready to trade houses with Mom and Dad and move down to their apartment in Washington, D.C. and see if I could scare up an interesting job. (They had to leave when Milt Shapp’s finances went under investigation by the FBI.) My sister Avril left Wilmington College in Ohio for the summer and joined me.
I certainly knew what I didn’t want. I didn’t want to be office handmaid to a group of professional men offering low salaries and zero vacation. I considered working for an environmental group, selling art on commission in a gallery, and I tried out an employment agency whose offered jobs were never what they said they were. When I found a classified ad for go-go dancers I was intrigued. After all, I did have a background in dance, having studied at Martha Graham in NYC and the Philadelphia Academy of Dance and I loved dancing at clubs. Avril and I went to the agency to “audition” and met Deedee, its proprietor. The job was wearing bikinis and go-go boots and dancing for the troops at military installations around Washington. There were a lot of venues! Two “gigs” were possible a day – afternoon and evening – and they would be only an hour to two hours, shared with another dancer. Bet of all, you only worked when you wanted to! Avril couldn’t stomach the idea, (she took a job dispatching messengers) but I was willing to try it.
It certainly was an interesting experience! I drove everywhere, to bases, Navy Yards, officers’ clubs, hospitals and air stations. The men were extremely polite and sometimes tipped. I learned to navigate the Washington DC area, and even briefly dated a naval lieutenant I met at an officer’s club in Virginia. My free-wheeling Quaker/artistic/peacenik background clashed horribly with his career plans, however.
Most interesting were the other dancers. All of them were career dancers who combined occasional gigs for Deedee’s agency with dancing in local clubs. I soon discovered the clubs in Virginia were considered the best because the Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms vigilantes enforced audience distance from the dancers, who stayed in the dressing room when not on stage. Stockings, pasties and g-string were the required outfit, and the money was better than anything Deedee could pay. Three dancers worked per hour, so a set was twenty minutes. Less driving, more money, and a physical workout. It sounded good to me! My sister and I rented a three bedroom house in Chevy Chase, I auditioned for the Ad Lib in Alexandria, Virginia and was hired by Gentleman Jim, the manager. That’s how I got started dancing.
I always wanted to be a writer but writing felt almost too intimate ever to be my career. Other people didn’t seem to like it when I told the truth and always tried pushing me in a different direction. I kept a diary from the time I was nine years old and journaling became necessary to iron out my thoughts, develop them and see who I was becoming. From an early age my stories and poems didn’t meet much family support. If it wasn’t humorous, my parents weren’t interested. My father acted offended. “You wouldn’t want me to say it’s good when it isn’t, right?” My mother laughed her way through my short story about child sexual abuse: (To Bed in the Afternoon) “Isn’t it a joke?” School was more helpful because English teachers typically recognized and encouraged my gift. Fellow students, not so much. The areas I wanted to explore – personality contradictions, alienation, disappointment – were deemed pointlessly anarchistic. I read a lot and particularly liked mysteries involving masterful re-interpretations of confusing and frightening events. I remember excitedly opening Paul Goodman’s Growing Up Absurd recommended by a teacher but dropping it as soon as Goodman declared girls were not subject to any of the pressures he described. Idiot!
I was particularly frustrated at Plumly, my Quaker boarding school, which was reputed to be educationally advanced. Their slow crawl through the likes of Steinbeck, London and Melville threw me into full rebellion. I did not encounter a single memorable writer in the English syllabus there and lobbied unsuccessfully for the inclusion of at least some women writers (my paper on Francoise Sagan was frigidly received.) When I complained to my parents, they joked that maybe I’d be happier at Catholic military school. It seemed I was going to have to construct my own education. The nineteenth century proved a good place to start – blazing with impressive women writers – ultimately bearing fruit in my first novel, Devlyn.
My experience at Plumly was so bad I couldn’t imagine going straight to college but took a “gap year” flirting with acting and dance. Fame would be nice, but what I secretly hoped for was fulfilling and supportive romantic love. I was able to talk my parents into paying for an apt on West 56th Street in New York City where I enrolled at Circle in the Square Theatre School and the Martha Graham School of Dance. Even though I got the lead in the acting class play I thought I was horrible and I was never happy expressing other people’s ideas that I couldn’t agree with right when I was trying to figure out my own ideas. The most profound memory I have of that period was feeling people trying to control me and me not wanting to be controlled. But could freedom be found? My own background strongly suggested marriage was a place where I could flourish – once I found someone who loved me and believed in me couldn’t I let my husband worry about the money? That seemed to be something men naturally wanted to do, while my knowledge of Mom’s Chestnut Hill friends was of women living in artistic paradises created by their own hands. Sure looked good to me!
My first boyfriend after Plumly’s Toss was an actor named Armon Hyle. He was talented theatrically and deeply sensitive and artistic. I followed him to Lawrence University but persuaded him to transfer to Antioch in Maryland where I could study writing – and there I ran into my first husband, the multi-talented Bruce Burke.
Bruce was a musician and a writer and dripped with charm. In fact, my writing teacher far preferred his writing to mine although I was fairly certain she was really ensnared by his beauty, as most people were. I considered Bruce’s poetry “masculinist” (i.e. idiotic) and I stalwartly refused to be critiqued by him, or even by my writing teacher who kept trying to make me “write like The New Yorker.” (Later she hired me to ghostwrite a novel for her. It was called The Colors of Love if I remember right and we did ell it but I thought it was pretty ghastly dreck.) I was struggling to write a novel about adolescence that tried to expose the general craziness of non-conforming parents who want you to conform, but I kept tripping over the Problem of Sexuality and was getting nowhere. I also wrote awful (feminist) poetry attempting to skewer my fluctuating psychological and emotional states. My job at the time was as the only paid employee of a community theatre whose director was a predatory sexual harasser. My relationship with Bruce kept him in check. Bruce had a band, Bad Heart, which played all over Maryland and DC on the same bill with better known musicians like Emmylou Harris and Judy Collins. It was fun travelling to David’s concerts, getting to know musicians, roadies, groupies and especially his charming manager, Bubbles (who used to tell me, “Alysse, you need to get your gothic ass in gear.”)
Bruce was older; he’d been married and divorced, been to Vietnam, been to jail. When he asked me to marry him I was elated. Marriage was in particularly bad repute at the time, but I thought my parents might accept him, which they grudgingly did. Our fun wedding at the Quaker Meeting on Jan 1, 1972 was everything I wanted, except that the harmonium player couldn’t make it through the snowstorm, and afterwards we drove to Vermont to stay with one of his roadies at a ski chalet. Right away, Bruce and I clashed. What I thought would be a ski weekend was actually a drug weekend and I refused to participate. Bruce was irked. According to him, you HAVE to do what everybody wants to do. But I had spent my entire life resisting that!
So after the wedding I discovered that my husband was a man who simply said anything other people wanted to hear. I was completely unprepared for somebody like that; I had been taken in, like everyone else. He talked my father into investing in his band, he talked a friend into investing in his album, he never did any of the things he said he was going to do with the money, always leaving me to apologize (and grovel), picking up the pieces.
He wanted to be where the action was, but I wanted to live in the country where I could write my novel. Almost immediately after our marriage his mother died, and using their tiny inheritance, he and his brother bought a farm in Devil’s Elbow, New York where real estate was incredibly cheap. The peace and quiet was just what I had been looking for. I immediately plunged into a novel about a lesbian relationship (Flycatcher.) It was really about the relationship of a mother to an unacceptable daughter, and the mother’s search for a perfect daughter but it was painfully inchoate. In the meantime, Bruce was touring, taking drugs and being unfaithful because “that’s what everyone expects.”
Our marriage, his relationship with his brother and with his investors were all on the rocks, so we sold the farm and moved back to Maryland to complete our college degrees. I needed a job and I needed to get rid of Bruce – I told him he could have the rest of the house money if he would just split, which he happily did. He had some bridges in England he needed to burn.
It wasn’t till my parents offered a housesit in Maine that I was able to actually complete and sell a novel, but although it sold 100,000 copies (paperback) it didn’t provide the kind of money you could actually live on. Worse, the publishing connections I had made assumed I would write to specification, while I had a whole psyche left to explore! Once again, marriage (much happier this time) and children (who turned out to contain the secret of the meaning of life!) intervened.
I wasn’t able to work on my second novel until 2002. I had been studying true crime for the past decade, increasingly intrigued and absorbed: here were ready made, real plots that explicated the very questions of identity, self-presentation, power, truth will and justice that had always obsessed me. With Find Courtney, I was off and running – and to my intense artistic satisfaction, Woman Into Wolf, Depraved Heart and I’ll Sleep When You’re Dead quickly followed with fabulous reviews. Unimpressive sales led me back to the theatre, where one forges a more immediate connection with the audience. With every play, The Honey & The Pang (Emily Dickinson), Queen of Swords (murderous stepmother), Cuck’d (Othello), Caving (quantum physics), Rough Sleep (the multiverse), The Dalingridge Horror (Virginia Woolf) I find out more and more about myself and the world I’m living in. Writing full-time to please yourself is the greatest joy there is.
(Lectern flanked by flowers. A screen with a glamour pic of a young man in his late 20’s- wistful, engaging – someone you’d have liked to know. A young woman, mid twenties, dressed for a funeral in a very tight fitting suit, steps up on the stage and picks up the mike with a becomingly abashed air of charm & professional sweetness)
MARCI Hi, I’m Marci, and I’d like to say a few words about Glenn Godiver. I never saw myself as a person who gives eulogies, but Glenn and I had that kind of relationship. We called it The Mutual Autopsy Society. You do me and I do you.
(She acknowledges audience laughter)
Right? He was so funny! Sometime it took me like a minute to get the joke!
(Trying to be serious.)
If you knew Glenn, you were one of the very, very privileged few. He was a private guy, and although he had more friends than anyone I’ve ever met, he didn’t let just anybody in. But he was SO worth knowing! I mean, what a guy! Am I right? Every guy wanted to be Glenn Godiver and every girl wanted to get with Glenn. At least that’s what he would say!
(Laughs)
Naw, you couldn’t stay mad at that guy. At least I couldn’t. What a sweetie pie! He was as sweet as pie.
(Tries to chuck the photo under its chin. Presses a button on a remote and the pictures change to Marci & Glenn together or with groups of young people. Traveling, partying.)
There he is, right where he always wanted to be, the center of attention. He wouldn’t leave while the party was still going on! When I was going through my pictures I can’t tell you how many I found where there I was on the sofa asleep, waiting for Glenn to feel ready to go home. There’s one! Because while we were dating those six happy, happy months, I was always looking for some alone time. Not just face time, face-and-body time.
(Inappropriate picture, obviously sex. MARCI freezes on that picture)
Uh oh! How did THAT get here?
(Fake embarrassment. She zooms in on just the faces, which get a little blurry.)
That’s better! I mean, this is the family hour. Lots of little ankle biters wanting to pay tribute to Uncle Glenn, as well they should. As well they should. So where was I?
(Takes her jacket off and hangs it on the mike stand. Underneath a skimpy lace camisole)
Is it just me or is it getting hot in here?
(Comes to sit on the edge of the stage, making herself comfortable. Fake radio DJ voice)
I’m Yvette DaBomb – welcome to Pillowtalk. It’s dark outside, rain is falling and it looks like we’re locked in here together for the duration, so why don’t I show you all a good time?
(Tinny laughter)
Yeah, without Glenn the party will never be the same. I remember when we broke up – I broke up with him, contrary to the story I KNOW he was telling some people – it was all about issues. Trust issues. He used to say to me –
(bad Nicholson impression)
You can’t handle the truth! And I told him you’re the one who can’t handle the truth!
(Starting to get steamed)
Telling everyone you were looking for a nice girl so you could settle down, I mean, that wasn’t true, was it? He just wanted to see inside every pair of undies on the West Coast. And I mean, that’s OK! I say, God bless him! But don’t go around telling me who I can hug. Who I can text! Who I can talk to!
(Reining herself in.)
Oh, he had issues. But I liked him just the way he was. I accepted him. I think that’s what love is; you’ve got to accept people so they can accept themselves. But Glenn was a difficult person to satisfy. He was always looking – you know – for that next little “tweak”. There was always just something that needed fixing, something that could be better. “Added value”, he called it. Am I right? That’s why he was such a successful entrepreneur; he was always looking for ways to add value. Like he wouldn’t tell me my breasts were too small; he’d always say, “Look at these.” And he’d show me those pictures on his phone. I know the police said afterwards there were no pictures of breasts on his phone and of course we don’t want to remember him that way. But I know what I saw. Glenn was a “seeker”. Always searching for…something better.
When I got the implants he was so happy at first! 32B to a D is a big jump!!
(Cradles her breasts – shown off to good effect in the flimsy camisole.)
He was like a kid with a new toy, that’s for sure! He said he only wanted me to be admired, he wanted “the real Marci” to come on out. He would tell me some of you – don’t take this the wrong way – were saying behind my back that I wasn’t right for him. I have to say you guys were making it hard for me to be your friend what with all the back chat I was hearing.
(Works to calm herself)
Naturally I wanted to check his emails and his Facebook page after he was saying things like that! And we trusted each other with the passwords – in spite of what he probably told you – plus he always used his dog’s name – Welliver – as his password and you just don’t forget a thing like that. Imagine my shock when I found out those implants he had begged me to get and then to show off to his friends – were another point against me! “Not exactly wife material” people were saying! That kind of thing!! Yeah, I was upset at first and it led directly to our breakup.
I mean, he was setting me up! Am I right? He was setting me up to fail! Then I saw him doing that with other people he said he was “mentoring” (air quotes.) This is the hardest thing to admit about Glenn – that he acted like an asshole sometimes. Like his left hand wouldn’t see what his right hand was doing! I put it down to his competitive spirit. Just like Welliver – that dog never could resist using his teeth! Grrrr! Had to get his teeth around something!! I mean, he’s a dog! So when he plays, you expect him to play rough.
There I was stuck with this big bill! Not to mention getting a full Brazilian every two weeks – I mean was that for him or me? Oh, you don’t mind the pain, he tells me. You like it. I mean, why would you do this otherwise? Why would anyone?
I told him flat out, I’d do anything to please you. I admitted it. What’s it gonna take? You’ve got me, so tell me what to do. Glenn could be generous, but usually he was more generous after he’d been satisfied. You know what I’m saying. I mean the guy would give you the shirt off his back – he did give me the shirt off his back – of course I was naked at the time! (Laugh). He took my clothes! But he did have a way of dodging responsibility. First guy into the restaurant but when it came time to pay the check, I mean, where was he? Am I off course here? I felt he leaned just a little too hard on his friends, didn’t you? But we forgave him! He said to me, you can work it off. Clean my house and …other ways. Called me his little porn star! (More sex photos) Then he sold me that crappy car that never worked! But I still had to pay for it! I have to say that made me kind of uncomfortable. Goddess or porn star, Glenn, which is it? Oh, he was itching to make a porno! Said, we’re all going to make a million dollars! Doin’ what comes naturally!
I warned him, Glenn, if you do, the jury will come back against you! Everyone will know you’re not the saint you pretended to be. But he says to me, Marci, there are no male sluts. There’s female sluts and goodtime guys, that’s what and there’s no coming back from it. (Flips through the pictures in frustration, looking for a good one.) Not like breaking up made any difference because we couldn’t stay away from each other! We were combustible, all right. He always said he never came so hard with anyone else. Even jacking off! It was always me he wanted to think about.
So we forgave him! Didn’t we always? I know he was pulling these same stunts with other girls – you Jeannie and you Rebecca – he showed me your emails & texts. Bet you didn’t know about that! But who could say no to this guy? Look at that! (Zoom close-up of the photo) I mean, who could resist those eyes? Awwww! That’s what he seems to be saying. Awww! Make me! Ya gonna make me?
(Switches pictures)
I know we were all getting sick of THAT picture.This one was taken the day he died.
(Naked torso making the “strongman” gesture)
He was so proud of his body – as well he should have been. He was in the gym two hours a day turning ugly flab to rock hard muscle. Sweat is fat crying, that’s what he used to say! Oh, he used to slap my ass to get me going! Beat my ass until it hurt. Clocked me too, once, till I saw stars. I’m not saying I didn’t deserve it sometimes. We knew how to push each other’s buttons. He was easy to tease because he had this fake persona and he wouldn’t admit that he had. I mean, I had lost everything– put all my skin in the game – he made sure of that. I said, “I’m all in.” I was completely dependent – but he was still pretending he was free as air!
I forget whose idea it was to take these pictures.
(Several shower photos).
They’re good, right? I mean this could be an Old Spice ad! “Habit Rouge” is what I mean to say. That’s the stuff he liked. Called it his “hunting coat.” But he did need new photos for his page because he was so much better toned. He was bench pressing like 260 – he could lift me with one hand. I have a photo of that somewhere here.
(Shuffles through the photos – some of them are crime scene.)
How did THAT get there?
(Fake surprise.)
Oh, that’s right. I’m helping the police. It’s something only I can do, because I was closest to him. I was the last to see him alive.
(Puts on professorial glasses, takes out a laser pointer)
Look at this. Don’t you think there had to be at least two murderers? That’s the first thing I said to them. I mean, who could take advantage of this guy, he was so strong! I’m surprised they didn’t wait till he was asleep – you know, and vulnerable. But the police think the attack started right here in the bathroom. You can see there’s a shell casing from a 25 caliber there on the tiles. So she shot him, I guess. Or that guy did – you know, the people that broke in. Glenn was in trouble with lots of people he owed money to. He had all these sketchy roommates and then there were the thousands of girls he’s disappointed! Looking for a wife!
(snorts in disbelief)
What a line! “The perfect girl to share a family and kids. Happily ever after. You know, he said that after death families are raised up together and come together in heaven. I don’t know who he’s with now, though, since he spread himself so thin. He did have a rough upbringing you probably all remember – he talked about it enough. Inspirational, that’s what it was. But he couldn’t get away from that family fast enough.
Who knows? I’d really like to know how heaven works. Maybe you get to select your own company. Bring anyone you want! That must be where he is, don’t you think? Because he suffered when he died. Heaven’s the right place for those who die young. He didn’t get the chance to do the really terrible things – you know those things the living regret, those things we can’t take back or ever undo.
But the first shot didn’t kill him – you can see here where he went and stood over the sink, probably trying to figure out what had happened. You’ve got to ask yourself, what did he see, there, looking in the mirror? A guy whose pretty face was shot away? The police are being real boneheads about this, saying the shot came last! I mean, I wasn’t there, but ask yourself, what kind of sense does THAT make? Who breaks into a house to attack a guy in a shower with a knife? It’s just the stupidest thing that I can think of. But have it your way, Officer Malarkey.
(Rolls her eyes.)
You’re the professional! State-sponsored. servant! Twenty years of crime scene reconstruction! I’m just a girl who loved the victim, who lived there and cleaned the place and picked up after the owner! Naturally my DNA is everywhere. I cleaned up the dog poop too, if Glenn was too lazy to walk Welliver. Dogs need walking twice a day! Right! But I couldn’t be there every minute! I mean, I had a life, too! I have bills to pay! I had to work! I was trying to have a life too! I even joined Linkups because I said, if you can date, I can date. You know what he said? He said, “I’m not comfortable with that.”
(Mimics Glenn)
He made damn sure I texted those guys I wasn’t coming! “My ex isn’t comfortable with that!” Then I asked him, so when are you going to GET comfortable with that? Don’t I deserve a little hottie of my own? Somebody taking care of me? How many girls does one guy get?
“When I get married” he said. “You can be bridesmaid at my wedding! I’ve got my eye on the perfect girl – she’s saying no right now” – he meant you, Kira – “but I’m the guy that turns No into Yes.” And he was, wasn’t he! He so often was. That was his rep, all right. He always knew how to change your mind and make you want it, that thing you said you would never do. He kept digging till he got what he was after.
He asked me, “what am I doing wrong with Kira? How should I play this? She says she only wants me for a friend!”
I did wonder if he’d met his match. What do they call that – the Murphy effect? If you leave every territory after you’re finished with it, looking for new fields to conquer, I mean, eventually you’re going to fall off a cliff! Am I right? Pissarro and Cortez and all those guys! Stepped off the world! Right into a pile of skulls.
He probably would have made you marry him Kira, whether you wanted to or not! You’d wake up the morning after, asking, “What just happened?” I say you dodged a bullet! But nobody dodges every bullet and not in a tiny enclosed space like that shower. Got him right in the jaw till he was spitting out teeth. They say those low caliber bullets ricochet around in a person’s head. I mean, this one bounced right off his skull! Under the skin. He has hardheaded, was Glenn! Proud of that hardheadedness, too!
(Raps on her own skull.)
Don’t be such a pussy, he used to tell me! You gotta be all business if you plan to get things done! The police say those low caliber bullets are the choice of mobsters. You know, mob hits. “Execution style!” I told them, “Look for bill collectors. He was having trouble hanging onto his house and blaming me cause my credit was in the toilet and he had to hire the moving van for my stuff.” But Officer Numnutz says, doesn’t your grandfather have a .25 that’s gone missing? I mean, WHAT kind of relevance can that possibly have? My grandfather can’t find his own teeth! Everyone has guns, especially around here. And people gravitate to the little, light ones. “Concealed carry.” But I’ve never even SHOT a gun. So don’t look at me!
So Numnutz says – I’m sorry, Officer Mendez, I see you over there but if you can’t tell the truth in a eulogy then where can you tell it? He says to me, Look where the guy ran down the hall. Follow the blood trail. So Glenn’s getting away and they came after him with knives. These are the defensive wounds – here and here – where Glenn grabbed onto the knife for a moment and held it. They’re slippery, those things, with the blood flying everywhere.
Here’s where they gave him the “coup de grace”. Slit his throat. I mean, probably, judging from the blood pool.
(Acknowledges audience gasps)
I mean, GROSS right? That’s what I said! Heinous stuff! So here –
(blurry photo of sock clad foot and bloody shoulder)
Here’s where she dragged him back to the shower. Now why would she do that, Officer Mendez asks me. Maybe she was trying to revive him, Officer Bananas, if that’s really your name. Trying to wash off all that blood. Forgive me if I can’t remember every little detail about everything. I’ve got stuff on my mind. I mean, my best friend just died! Died at the peak of his life! So how do I know what murderers would do?
Maybe he hit her. Maybe it was self-defense.
(Picture of Glenn working a punching bag)
You know, hit out at her and she was just defending herself. Like I tried to tell you, he was really strong. He owned guns too. Unregistered ones. Proud of that. I know I saw one somewhere. And he had to use a knife to cut the rope when he tied me to the bed. Oh, didn’t I tell you about that? I thought I did – it was all about that porno he wanted to make. He first wanted to shoot it in the woods. That was his big idea. Or maybe on the hood of a car in rush hour traffic! Impossible to reason with the guy. Shake some sense into him! What about the looky-lous! They’ll know about you, about us! What about Kira! What will she say? She’ll drop you like a hot potato. The cops say “everybody has an alibi”. Well duh! I was miles away! But do you think the people who – I mean the people who did this if it wasn’t professional – would even remember? I mean, you’d want to forget a thing like this as fast as you could, wouldn’t you? If you loved the guy? And everyone loved him. He was the sweetest, most thoughtful, most generous guy who ever lived.
(Fumbles with papers on the lectern, starts to cry)
Can we get an appletini up here? That’s what he always ordered for me. Appletinis. He said, “I like the smell.”
I miss him. We had so many plans. We were going to walk the Freedom Trail. Together. Before we die. We swore a blood oath. Everyone says that it’s fantastic, that you come back from that trip a different person.
OK. I see you asking me to wrap things up. To cut it short (throat slitting gesture) I’m getting the hook! Don’t worry about it. I’m used to it. That’s what Glenn used to say he loved most about me, that I knew how to laugh at myself. Before I go I wanted to lead us in a song. (Quavering voice) If you get to heaven before I do
Coming for to carry me home – come on everybody, you know this one! Tell all my friends I’m a-coming after you! Coming for to carry me home! Swing low – sweet chariot –
Alysse Aallyn 