Alysse Aallyn

Tag: Writing Community

  • Constellation Vulpecula: the Little Fox – a poem by Alysse Aallyn

    Constellation Vulpecula
    The Little Fox

    Cuckoo’s darling
    Sphinx-lipped hound stink
    Springs a balance tipped by weakness
    Of the Mighty. Doing
    The Master’s dirty work
    For centuries now
    You should know your way around.

    Sidereal astromancer
    Always smiling – Bone poor
    A busy employee
    Avoids the traps of the past.
    Someone else’s coffers you’re
    Lining now you hypocritical
    Suit of someone else’s armor.

  • Constellation Andromeda: poem by Alysse Aallyn

    Andromeda: The Chained Lady

    She won’t complain
    Trailing chains like widows weeds
    Foci of dissonance
    Her suffering draws us to her
    Hub of sky.

    Somebody owes somebody
    Something here, that’s plain.
    Wristbound, poor Miss
    Bredwell, accomplishment
    Depletes her

    Energy enrages her
    Passion disgusts her
    Unfree, a natural born
    Victim, a true
    Lady.

  • Job Description: a poem by Alysse Aallyn

    JOB DESCRIPTION

    Do nothing.
    Be no one
    Scrub the spaces in between
    Your life will be measured
    In others spare time.

    I say those have failed to pass
    Who failed to wash
    The scuts of infants
    Failed to harmonize the
    Broken breathing.

    Who made garbage of the children’s eyes?
    Newborns drip a cream more holy
    Than the sacraments. They are born
    Little calliopes
    Singing whalesong.

    Incendiary at one
    Stargazer at three.
    Who failed to pass?
    I pass on eternity and
    A taste for taking time

    Coaxing twisted trackways
    Into light; slow the world by hand
    If necessary; slow enough
    For the children
    To get on.

  • The Witness: a poem by Alysse Aallyn

    Seafronts. Coastal Rd, Morecambe, Lancashire. Venus and Cupid sculpture by Shane Johnstone (2005). Seated mother swinging child with Morecambe Bay and Cumbrian hills beyond.

    THE WITNESS

    You say you love me for myself but
    I killed that bitch out of jealousy
    Now as sole survivor
    I’m the only clue.
    She was the confidential client
    I left to clean up after.

    In the furnace of morning I lie
    Between darkness and wolfcall
    Charges taunting me like
    unborn children:
    Ask him to marry you, mommy!
    Ask him! Ask him!

  • Orion’s Hound: a poem by Alysse Aallyn

    This messenger ticks –
    Impatient watch –
    Anxious to be set going.

    Some new clean thing lurks
    Along the border of
    Imagining.

    My
    Severing fire of
    Intent cuts your leash.

    Be off! Don’t
    Rely on me; we’ll select
    What we want from

    Who we are. You hunt
    And I’ll imagine.
    Only.

    Such loyalty outlasts
    The stinking viscera
    Of self.

  • St Julian The Hospitaller – a poem by Alysse Aallyn

    God said, “Bring for the creeping things”
    It is you who are a creeping thing thinks Lord Julian
    Of his pasty priest, with the
    Underdone face.

    Were he a fish I’d throw him back.
    Good thing his knees are flexible as his
    Scripture. The priest speaks
    Of dominion, something

    His lordship understands. It means
    Possession without surrendering the
    Self. Power begs abuse.
    He’s the master, he alone

    Understands that here. Necessity’s
    The chain that stops the dumb animal
    Straying. Lifting eyes to the
    Steepled trees he feels the boredom of fall

    Fade into the dullness of winter.
    The animals would be fat
    Were any left – ripe for scissoring but
    He ripped too many out.

    Life’s start and stop – a blood bath brings
    Renewal. These men could stand a wallowing.
    They await his pleasure with
    Lowered eyes.

    His pleasure is not them. He needs
    Men glamorous as girls, hopes
    As high as fever but none
    Are to be found.

    Like the animals, they are gone.
    Julian’s scarred hands twitch the reins –
    Each scar is named, he counts them proudly:
    Attempted usurpation

    The burning brand, the bear that fought
    The dog that turned on him
    The boar defending young.
    Past pain surmounted

    Makes him long for wounds –
    A cut so deep he looks into
    The creature’s eyes for
    Some sweet glimpse of freedom.

    Lord Julian, the scorpion-hearted
    Scents a smell the dogs can’t follow –
    The jingling behind him should be men
    The silky shadow should be deer.

    His horse afraid – the creature moves
    Too smooth – when he dismounts
    Avenger plummets off – now
    He’s alone in moss and slime.

    This thing is stalking him!
    He sees it through the trees
    Smells hot stink – a tiger!
    What ghost is this?

    The prickled hairs stood high – he threw
    His knife – a sailor’s trick but
    Useless. He saw boars
    Twelve deep, spirals snorting

    Through their tusks. The trees
    Morphed into deer and every beast
    He’d ever killed surrounded him.
    Face forward in the muck

    At least the mud was real.
    Fox feet pattered, the tiger whisked him
    With its ruff – he dreamed a lifetime
    Lying there – every friend a slight

    And every promise broken.
    This dark that stops his ears is surely death.
    But when he stands it’s not hell he sees but
    Dripping swamp. The mare he kicked and drove

    Now leads him home. His blood is dried
    But he must cleanse the blood of others.
    To be struck he understands, now he must
    Know what spared him.

    Washerwomen lift their heads
    At his approach – they don’t recognize this man.
    Hiding faces not from fear but
    Some new glory.

  • Wild With Possibility: teen diaries of Alysse Aallyn

    Tues 7 May 68


    Frustrated & mixed up. “Only a clear pool gives beautiful reflections”. (Says the Artist from The Cat That Went to Heaven. Fave book from childhood.) Shall I blame my period? I can’t imagine ever enrolling in any other school, EVER or jumping through hoops like these again.


    Going to Tartuffe with Frank Edmunds; strictly as friends. (I paid for my own chicken. His French is very weak; I had to tell him “hors de combat” does NOT refer to prostitutes.) Rehearsing every spare moment for The American Dream – I’m Granny. Doing a “voice” – channeling my own Granny. But it’s not fun being someone else so I guess that proves I’m never an actress. Worry even in my sleep. Master Gwill gave me an A for To Bed In the Afternoon and said he will submit it to ProSem. I told him not to bother and sure enough, Toss Sheffield turned it down like a bedspread. Toss over to my table (with apologetic ice cream) to explain why. He wants “vignettes”. (Quelle “Belle Epoque!) He says the audience shouldn’t know how they’re supposed to feel. Much more artistic if they didn’t feel anything.)


    He told me to start my own magazine! But he seems to be considering adopting me. That could lead to something. He’s got the most gorgeous long straight blond hair that makes me shiver. Good body, perfect nose. He has a brain. And he is a hermit. (Fingers crossed.) He says that he loves me and he hates me but refuses to elucidate. He came to sit at my table tonight and brought me ice cream.


    Need to go to bed so I can worry. “Darkness, darkness, be my pillow
”

    Wed 8 May 68
    Starting to feel more happy & confident. It’s a shame I’m so dependent on men but don’t know if it’s fixable. Maybe it’s like a vitamin – got to have it or you get scurvy.


    My father suggests I skip graduation and go to a Yugoslavian work camp! Five hundred dollars difference he says. Miss Senior Parties? So I only get the bad part of this place? I say No and No.

    10:40 PM – Just learned the most horrible thing! Toss telling everyone I “tried to seduce him!!!” Writing an angry KOB right now. I invited him sailing and that is NOT tantamount to seduction in my universe!!! Telling him sailing invite is REVOKED!!

    Casey asks what I’m writing and I say, “The truth.” She has forbidden me to discuss her with you ANY MORE.


    “I’m going to write my own diary,” she grumbles. So I tell her to get on with it and stop her bellyaching! If people COULD, they WOULD. NoDoz to keep from sleeping when I ought to be studying.


    Toss has gorgeous male body, which he sheathes in corduroy & sharp-starched French-cuff shirts. Wears an Eng tweed vest on ALL occasions. He knows the sight of him makes me throb. This is why I must be extra cruel.

    Fri 31 May 68
    Attempting to muffle my triumph while sitting in Fr after giving Front of Class rept on Duttilleul. Free at last, thank God I’m free at last!


    Sheffield puzzles me to put it mildly. Invited him to work with me in the ice cream store but he sent Gary Long who is sweet & dumb & no threat to anyone. Then he shows up at the end to help me close. Tells me all about his father whom he deeply admires.


    Isn’t father worship a good sign in a boy? Or not? He brought Casper the Grasper’s note about my “professional level” Granny. Best performance he’s seen at the school. Wonder if C realizes this is the same girl he stabbed almost to death with a rose pin years ago? Probably not – he’s totally gaga and at least 100. Sheffield says he talks to all the boys about masturbation.

    Sun 2 June 68
    “I’ve looked at clouds from both sides now
”


    Toss’ eighteenth birthday. I was his gift – he ate my throat and whispered through my hair and studied with the Engineering Marvel that is a push-up bra (he mispronounces as “brazier.”)
    Started off in the AM at the lakehouse. White clothed tables, Japanese lanterns, trùs chichi. T took me into the center of the lake on a canoe ride while I ate my breakfast. When it started to rain he took off his pink shirt. Oh my. Oh to scale the white cliffs of Sheffield



    Played tennis, sat together at lunch, collapsed side by side in a barley field. Then climbed to the treehouse in Boy Wood where he told me how beautiful my hands are and complimented my “lioness” hair. We undressed each other. Aaahhh
 Roses for some very cold November. He shuddered over my breasts. His sweat is delicious. We licked each other clean of every childhood scrape & pain. I felt like crying from sheer happiness. This was the moment I’ve been looking for. I would have made love with him there & then but the Doberman did not drop the sirloin. Preston a terribly inferior lover compared to T



    He knelt at my feet to put on my shoes.


    Only minutes left to dress for banquet – wore my short short SHORT hot Wore my Indian bells sundress with matching bikini. T. wore 3-piece suit and looked like turn of the century banking scion. Terrible speeches, badly planned. All on the subject of individual vs. society!!! Hard thing to toast.


    The dance was VERY good. (Band tremendous.) Did a lot of sherbet eating and cookie consuming. (Shawn asked to dance once – very sporting I thought.)


    Casey & Robt both sick in infirmary!

    Sun 9 June 68
    T really saved my senior year! I owe him so much! Casey & I rushed through our room like whirlwinds, packing! I dragged Avril in for “moral support”. Pool party at the Cocks’. “I thought you didn’t like parties,” I said to T. He said, “I want to be where you are.”


    Changed into a dancing dress with huge flowing sleeves. 2 kinds of salad, French bread, fried chicken, chocolate cake saying CONGRATULATIONS CLASS OF 68. Security guard insisted T wear a tie – he put his belt around his neck. We lay in the same lounge chair. Paradise. This life is enough for me! Immortality would KILL me all over again! We danced & danced. I have enough. I am enough.

    Clove Hill Conference Center Tues 11 June 68
    Sprawled out in the Meditation section of the “Senescence Manor” Library; an obligatory “way station” on the way to Europe. They are training us how NOT to be Ugly Americans.
    I’m supposed to be “meditating” so here goes. Last night was so perfect. One of the happiest nights of my life.


    After dinner Francie Parks, Matt R., Toss & I drive in Someone’s Father’s Car to coat & tie affair at the Bellamy’s. Everyone but Toss & me seek a quiet corner to smoke dope. Why waste this glorious evening? Plumly Survivors, Unite. Is this a boat in which we haphazardly drift together or a trap we fell short-sightedly into?

    The latter, I guess because T & I flee as soon as possible to explore the grounds while a very good cover band plays “Shotgun” & “Hitchhike”.


    I wore my blue gauze skirt and Very Tight Satin Vest that Doesn’t Need a Shirt (but Miss Womrath would say IT DID.) T. skirting control SEVERAL TIMES sobbing with apology & passion while the male bullfrogs shrieked, groaned & screamed. Toss liberated a whole quart of vanilla ice cream from the Bellamy freezer, which we polished off between us; then Eggs Benedict & sticky buns were served! We danced it off.


    T’s parents arrived – I said goodbye to Casey who seemed happy enough with John M. Duke Droyer agreed to ride with us to the Sheffield party. T’s parents seem very young – Mrs Sheffield showing off her lime green shoes. Crowded into the back Toss strokes my stomach tenderly, whispers, “I love Alysse Aallyn” into my ear.


    Toss’ house is a railroad magnate’s nooky little Bavarian castle set into the Pennsylvania countryside. Paintings everywhere by Toss’ father – who’s an undercover artist posing as an investment advisor. Fauve paintings – some very good. Mrs. Sheffield showed me to my puffily pink-quilted room – sharing with the absent Francie – but I wasn’t ready to sleep, especially since they had a pool. Swim!


    Holding each other under water so exciting. We dried each other off and he gave me the tour, including the basements (which go on and on) where he has his darkroom and ending up at the Recently Acquired Matisse. That was where we took off our bathing suits and collapsed in a pile of cushions, wet hair and hot towels
just as Matt R and Francie P came in! Both acted like this is an everyday occurrence – we are graduates after all! What can they do to us now? Finally staggered off to bed.


    Toss woke me at ten for breakfast (said he couldn’t wait any more) and I met his brother David (13). Toss’ mother seemed annoyed about something like she had forgotten we were there. T & I walked Duke to the leafy little train station. I kissed him goodbye – (who knows when I’ll see him again?) and Toss mentioned that – by the way the senior boys had unanimously voted me Girl Most Likely to Get Married First.


    Compliment? I think it is if you realize it REALLY means “Girl Most Likely to be Proposed To.” T. didn’t know it but this poured balm on my still bubbling wounds inflicted by the Rumor Mill.

    Thurs. 13 June 68 – JFK International Airport
    Plane late, but meal vouchers also delayed, so forced to buy myself cheeseburger & Danish with my coffee. Now that vouchers have arrived I’m not hungry so might as well waste it on bourbon & ginger ale! In spite of the glares of the white suited headwaiter. I have an excellent view of the takeoff fields.


    So where had I got to? Steak with T & parents on their lawn? They look to me for clues to the Toss they’ve never met. But the more T’s dad likes me & tries to please the more onerous the Mom finds my presence! An exactly matched pair of counterweights! Will I look across a lawn someday at the girl who steals my son’s love from me?


    I am very much aware that I was only given food & a place to sleep because I’m Current Choice of the Eldest Son.


    Strange how people’s lives intertwine and they upset each other’s timetables.
    Alysse wants to go to Europe.
    Toss wants to go to Oregon.


    Cruel twist of fate – everyone gets the thing they don’t want any more. We are governed by the shadows of our former selves.


    Hungry after all – I eat Vichyssoise & cherrystone clams. (Excellent clams.)
    T. took me back to Pewter Hill by train because he doesn’t have his license. We went out for Chinese food with Genevieve and her husband (it was his 21st birthday) and G’s Plumly roommate Clarice. I would prefer to be alone with Toss – when we are around other people I always start to fear I’m making the whole thing up.


    Toss missed his train (thank God) and spent the night. Played “sardines” – PH a very good house for that. I am the all time winner. Dad woke me & I woke Toss & ironed his shirt (pretty inefficiently I’m afraid.) Chinese eggs, (Dad calls it “slumgullion”) orange juice & coffee.


    Toss rode on the train as far as he could go before he had to take a different connection. We kissed goodbye with people staring – I was suddenly shy.


    These Clove Hill work campers are all cigarette smoking college types. I stood out like a sore thumb with my matching red luggage. The doctors refused to give my smallpox shot because of “oozing lesions” (poison ivy) wrote all over my passport instead.


    We have to attend lectures, & choose a job. I chose “Gardening” my mother would be so proud – worked in the leek garden until my knees were black. Washed dishes after lunch, then washed my hair.


    After the last conference of the evening, Toss called. It was a living pain to hear his voice. I said, “The hell with this – when’s the next train out of here?” He said, “I’m coming.”


    We ran through backyards and over fences to his parents’ house. I said I’d like to quit the American Virginity Rat race. Went to the cabana (he says his mother is sick) and played John Wesley Hardin. Met his 15 yr old brother – taller but not as handsome.


    Toss admitted he’s a virgin too, but “we’re not protected.” Is mutual masturbation making love? I don’t know how to make it satisfying – I am not there yet. He admitted I was there to his father who drove me back.


    Awoke early to pack, grabbed a sandwich for breakfast. Our Icelandic flight cancelled (bomb threat) so we are flying Iberian.


    Used graduation money to call Toss at 3:30. He is such a darling. Truly and magnificently humble (unjustly scorned word.) Owe him a 10-page letter. But –

    Instead I wrote a poem:

    LEAVING THE COVEN

    A craven of cronies stood
    Between us & God –
    God hated short skirts, God
    Demanded clones.

    A damnation of judges
    Stood between us &
    Knowledge; claimed truth exists in
    Servicing others.

    A clowder of cretins
    Stood between us &
    Art: “Don’t be disturbing”
    “Never trust instincts.”

    You escaped from
    The oubliette; rescuing me –
    So I could grow up
    And write you this poem.

  • Wild With Possibility: teen diaries of Alysse Aallyn

    Southwark Theatre School – Thur. 21 Mar 68


    Here’s the theatre where I serve my Indentured Seniors Project. Hem hem Mr. Green is late. I’ve forgotten how to sleep. It’s just not happening. Quit coffee, tried Sominex, nothing doing. Sitting in lobby of theatre school waiting for appointment. Wish I didn’t have to keep a journal the fathead faculty can read about my Theatre Experiences. I will write The Truth here and Dress it up later.
    Sitting next to me in an armchair is the best looking thing I’ve seen in a month of Sundays – peacenik with red gold hair & mustache named Dale Whitman.


    Dylan Green strides in – receding hairline, round cheeks, hypnotic light eyes. Very attractive. Now watching them rehearse O’Casey’s Bedtime Story: Love it. I could watch rehearsals forever. Painting with people. Is that a job? Unfortunately actresses need to be seen and I wish I were invisible. How can one love fashion so much yet not want to be seen? Dr. Gilmour says I am an “enigma”. Green’s an excellent director; working on actors “mood”.


    Love writing on trains. Things always look brighter. At Plumly dreaming & reflecting are criminal offenses. Must travel by train: crying for no reason in the car makes M & D think I’m psychotic.


    Mon 25 Mar 68
    Feel like a lonely drifter. $200 and go directly to jail. Trying to live exclusively in the present. Preston hot & cold, asks me to “give him more time.” That pisses me off just thinking about it; then he gets beggy. Don’t like him or me. He’s a placeholder. This is all my fault: I want subtle, skeptical doubting people and so that’s what I get! Ambivalent confusion. Think I’ll do my nails.


    Tues. 26 Mar 68
    Train to Radnor where I’m staying with the Carnahans while M & D & A cruise Virgin Islands. Hope I never arrive I like the journey so much. Carnahans very dull. Dislike her, have crush on him. She talks and talks – everything is Freudian. Any object you could grasp, touch or pick up is a penis; vaginas are negative space and no one thinks about them! He listens mournfully. Drinking.


    Dancing class this AM at Southwark in leotard too big for me. Still it was fun. Release in a way, if they didn’t have so many mirrors and it was so painfully obvious I am the worst in the class. Guess my “lessons” with that hungry friend of Mom’s didn’t count.


    Wanted to sit in on David Margulies’ rehearsal of Oresteia but Ron Reston made me sit in office & answer phones. Ron Bruncati asked me out to Art Museum show. I said OK. He’s bald and old enough to be my father but he is a director and its all grist.


    And now for my emotional state – aha! Caught you with a bored expression. Bought a chocolate Easter egg at the station and now I’m going to eat it SLOWLY.


    Wed 27 Mar 68
    Ron Roston gave me some typing but Ellen Roston’s machine is broken so take an early lunch hour. (Use Sam’s machine when he’s done.) God what a year it’s been. God I would like to destroy this book. Just flipping through it is sheer psychological torture. But can’t destroy – probably for the same reason I’m compelled to finish all that’s on my plate.


    Can’t write on the train any more: people are too fascinating. I want to ride in all directions as far as it goes. Just looking. (Is that a job?) Every stop would be a different story.


    Bruncati picked me up ( not before I made date with interesting bearded character in acting class – Jack Foster.) Told me all about his boring Roman Catholic upbringing. He ordered alcohol for me – but they turned him down.


    Yawned through art museum show – very dull except pen drawings. Pretty sure Bruncati realizes we’re no match. He was driving me up the hill to our house – amazed there was so much land in the middle of town asked, “Do you really live here or are you just trying to get me into the woods?” Har har. (He did not attack me.)


    As soon as Avril gets back from Virgin Islands we’ll go see Tommy Steele in Half a Sixpence. (She will be so tan and I will be so jealous.) Reading Julie de Carneilhan – strange little masterpiece. Worship Colette.


    The Carnahans pester me to take a cab at night but there’s never one there – I walk from station and no one’s raped me yet. Turn cartwheels and climb trees. I’ll see if they can take me home Sun night – my laundry’s becoming a menace.


    April Fool’s Day – Mon 68
    Reading Terminal crying my eyes out with everyone staring and that’s no joke. Want to crawl into a hot bath and die. Seems like I will never be much more than a squishy rag. Just opened my purse and NOTHING was there! No wallet, no ticket, no money, nothing!! I can’t WALK to Pewter Hill!!! Left my wallet locked up in Southwark office! Borrow dime from nice man to call home, of course no one’s there. Call the Coxes instead. Good old Theo hope he loves me.

    Thurs 4 Apr 68 – Southwark Theatre School
    Dropped into Goody’s on the way here to pick up a Donovan record for Genevieve’s birthday. Easy day so far. I get to write rejection letters to amazingly accomplished actors pretending I’m Ron – including the lady from Gilligan’s Island. If this doesn’t discourage an aspiring actor, nothing will. Flirting with Dale Whitman – I love his hair. Wonder if he’s red gold & fuzzy all over. Preston walked in all young and ill at ease – I saw him through Dale’s eyes. Ouch! When he wants me I don’t want him and when I want him he doesn’t want me. Impasse. Dancing with Jack Foster last night – easy, happy guy. But he told me “Ball’s in your court” and I don’t like it there. He’s a doper, alas.

    5 Apr Fri 68 – Train to Queen Lane

    O Brave New World
    Meteorological Report: Looks like rain.
    Fashion Report: Looks like I’ve got a run in my stocking.


    Importance of Being Earnest seen with Preston. A particularly bad Lady Bracknell. Preston desperately clutched my hand to the inside of his leg (wish he’d put his hand on MY leg occasionally.) He argues that polygamy is man’s natural state. Says “Look at dogs.” Told him to look at wolves, foxes (some birds). All news to him; which is bad news for his “progressive school”. Then off to the Electric Factory. Strobe lights. Pandora’s Box (they stank) & Electric Light Orchestra. (Good.) Preston and I tried getting into the same “leaning box” but a “security guard” jumps at us. What on earth is the point of the boxes then!!!


    Preston angry at me because I wouldn’t let him come in at home. Good thing! Dad (just in from the Chesapeake) mixing daiquiris (gave me one!) and wanting to talk.


    “You’re getting to be a big girl,” he says insultingly.
    I gave him my Big Girl on Daiquiris Smile. ( Daiquiris are good.)
    “How are you fixed for birth control?”
    Fatally uncool. I staggered. Recovered.
    “I’m still a virgin.” (In spite of them rather than because of them.)
    He skipped right over that. He said Dr. Rhodes could fit me with a diaphragm. I said, “I hear those interfere with sexual pleasure.”


    He said, “No, no no. We’ve been using one for years.”
    Mom came in and to my surprise chimed in so this was a staged event.
    “You were born because of a diaphragm,” she said meaningfully.
    Dad said, “How about the loop? Looks like a question mark. You don’t want to be changing diapers at theatre school.”


    That’ll never happen! If I couldn’t get an abortion I’d throw myself down the stairs. I said, “I think you have to have already had a kid to use those things. There’s always the pill.”


    At this point Mom became predictably upset. She hates the pill because you don’t have to struggle with it. And if you don’t have to struggle with sex – then she bursts into tears. So I’ll never find out why sex needs to be a struggle. Dad admitted it was my date with 33-year-old Ron that blew the alarm.


    Thurs 12:28 PM 11 Apr 68
    Day of for Martin Luther King’s funeral. Watched it on TV. After 200 years looks like the rot is all the way through. Preston came over to invite me to see Paul Butterfield and Jesse Colin Young – too good to resist. Says he has been accepted at Haverford, Columbia & Chicago. Nice to have a future. Ended up wrestling on the floor. He got my shirt off but why do boys find bras such complex engineering problems That’s as far as we went. Watched the Academy Awards – Dustin Hoffman is a darling. (Listening to Tim Buckley. Will not be your Summer Princess or your Midnight Maiden. I will be your Sundown Angel.) Reading Madame Sarah. She was a big failure at the beginning of her career. Some comfort.


    Read To Bed in the Afternoon to mom – she laughed the whole time. About child molestation and frigidity? I said, it’s not supposed to be a comedy – she said, “But it’s so funny!” A prophet is without honor, etc. etc. Time to shake the sand off my new, elegantly spurred leather boots.


    Thurs 25 Apr 68 – Plumly
    Trying to learn a little self-reliance but it seems there’s nothing there. No wonder people take drugs. If there was a confidence pill I’d be seriously tempted. Unfortunately on alcohol I am only silly. Sweet loving letter from Devon who has decided to go into politics. I told him all the women would vote for him! He promised to invite me to Paris when he’s ambassador to France – I said it’s a deal. Lying in the sun reading Citizen Hearst.

    9PM- relaxing in the Listening Room (no talking. My new favorite spot.) Handel’s Israel in Egypt. At least the music in this Institution for the Severely Disturbed is good. Catharsis! Feeling extremely good nose to grindstone finishing all my work.


    Mom coming for Alumni Day – no Dad. She took me to the Cocked Hat to buy Lanz dress for prom. Long and white with thick lace cuffs, very pretty. Senior boys have banded together to “go stag – refusing old fashioned dating enslavement” so I was forced (pride) to import Preston. I’m sure he thinks I’m madly in love with him. I always want people to fall in love with me and when they do I am repulsed. But at least I can be polite.


    Put aside Sybille Bedford’s Favorite of the Gods. Bland. Generation of messed up women. Now why would I want to read about THAT here in my prison cell??? Writing porn exotique under my current nom de plume Kathryn Klavier-Scott.


    French Class – 11:l0 AM Tues 30 Apr 68
    Finished test in 10 mins. Great letter from Merrill saying underneath my “blaze of emotions is a core of strength.” Reassuring. I love her so much. It’s hard not to worry about how false everything feels. I understand the boys’ fears, I really do, I don’t want to commit to something awful & irrevocable either. Old young, make female we are all at total cross-purposes with each other. Language fails us. Poetry? Art? Try to think of a way. Want to run through an art gallery in a nude leotard trailing a colored scarf. It could be my own work: enormously enlarged letters – fragments of “ransom notes” but you can’t tell where or when to make the “drop” so the precious thing is bound to die. (Saw it in a dream.) But I don’t want to go to Art school!!! (Not that they’d let me in anyway.) Then what? “Center down” as the old Quakers say.


    Mom & Dad offer me trip to Europe for graduation if I work in a peacenik work project. Sent me a list of possibles. All the obviously, desperate starving places. But Sweden’s also on the list! I want to go to Ireland. (NOT on list.) Reading short stories of Sean O’Faolain.

  • Wild With Possibility: teen diaries of Alysse Aallyn

    Sat 18 Feb 68


    Wish I didn’t have breasts. I don’t like them. They make me feel like Somebody’s Mother. I would prefer to be flat chested. No sex since JULY. Bought a bottle of New York champagne from Laura for $8 and locked it in my trunk. Not sure what I’m saving it for. Kate Moody signed me up for Operation Match. I got a list of 4 names and I told Casey “I’m going to get us a date. “ So I called the first name on the list – Craig Crawford, a U of Penn student with an apartment. So that’s good! He answered his phone! “Must be a loser if he’s home on Sat night” said the loser home on Sat night. He had company but told me not to worry, “I think she’s in the bathroom.”


    He turned out to be absolutely charming, all American, ROTC. By no means a lost cause. Said he’d gone out with 2 girls through Operation Match and one of them spoke no English. I asked for a millionaire (Kate asked for me.)


    I said, “Craig, will you be my millionaire?”


    He said, “I want to be. Help me make my million.” Asked me out for Fri. I said sure if he can get a date for my friend. So – a reason for champagne.


    Tues. 20 Feb 68
    Mom came Sun night and took me & Casey out to dinner. Unfortunately she brought a Lame Duck Boarder – one of her “pretend children” some shockingly ugly girl she feels sorry for. I bewailed my barren existence. She told me I’m just “dissatisfied” not miserable. I told her about our date Fri night and she insisted Craig & Unknown Boy have dinner with the family! I told her Impossible. Not wanting to contradict her at dinner I called her up later and ruined it by crying. I SO want to be THERE and not HERE. She thinks I’m the worst spoiled child ever.


    Paris Match said Bonnie & Clyde “encourages crime” and Pauline Kael said “those sawdust heads missed the point.” I like her.


    1:15 AM Sun 25 Feb 68
    The date was AWFUL. Just horribly, incredibly, irredeemably AWFUL. Craig was FAT (why didn’t Kate ask for someone thin?) and his friend was SHORT, with very glisteny wet slicked back hair. But still better looking than Craig.

    The evening was so awful there’s no point in describing it. Shared a bottle of Almaden during a decent dinner (eggplant, mushrooms, chicken livers) but when the boys saw we were presentable all they wanted was to get us drunk. The only way this could have been worse would be if it all happened at Pewter Hill. Casey was no help – she’s been in that convent too long! She just went all glassy-eyed on me. The boys wanted to go to their apt and drink and she was all for it! I tried hard to talk them into The Electric Factory and thought I’d succeeded but they said, “Ha, we lied, we’re going to the apt.” Talked them into the Trauma – they stayed 10mins. So we ended up at their apt after all where Casey & Friend made out and danced while I parried pass after pass from Craig who finally gave us and lay with his head in my lap psychoanalyzing me. “You’re restless because you’ve never had roots.”


    I had to call a cab before they agreed to take us home. Asked us to fraternity party Sat. Casey wants to go! (I talked her out of it later, thank God.)


    We no sooner get home than Mom’s psychosis raises its ugly head, how starved and desperate I am so I will never get anyone good. That same woman who accused me of “going to meet boys” when I was trying to bike ride to Trevallion, who accused Merrill of “living in sin with Bill Saint” (they weren’t) and said Genevieve’s husband wasn’t “clean.” Just weird. So embarrassing with Casey there.


    Then Dad came in and asked me “how’s school” like an uncle who hadn’t seen me for twelve years and I burst into tears. A mess all around. This dating stuff SHOULD be easy but its so not. You’d think Mom would be all for “Operation Match” – as long as people are honest it should work. (My advice: ask for a photo.) But no. It shows you want to date and that is evil.


    Wed 28 Feb 68
    Called Devon this evening – knew I shouldn’t have but I was so depressed. I’d invited Preston to the Mar 5 dance but he said he can’t go. Has to be in a play. Invited e to the play and asked me out for the 22nd instead. I agreed to that but it’s not The Dance. Called Devon to feel something – anything – he said he was glad I called and happy to speak to me. Thought I called to wish him happy birthday! (So I said I had.) He apologized for his letters said they were “written in moments of weakness.” I said they were very romantic. I felt better then, but worse after. He HAS a girlfriend (more than one) there is no point to this. Wrote a poem, Considering the Chill Factor. Hopeless couple who can’t connect.

    CONSIDERING THE CHILL FACTOR 
    Considering the chill factor
    As I always try to do
    The day was hot
    Too hot for love or war.
    We sit in restaurants.  I pick
    The blue veined shrimp
    He picks the black-veined news.
    Outside drunkards
    Carom off the plexiglass like  entertaining fish.
    “They envy us”
    and Andrew says
    “How nice.”
    I see a couple coming in; she holds him up
    As I so often upheld you.
    I know that touch
    surgeons who
     manipulate the dying.
    She wears my dress
    the one I wore the day you
    Shamed me
    Stuck me sizzling to the sidewalk
    Shamed us both
    with those red red stains.
    Andrew  I don’t think
    I ever have forgiven you.
    Andrew says
    “How nice” 
    he lays his coffee spoon upon the cloth
    I hate the brown stain 
    it spreads like murder
    Like the bad smell of death
    Breeding fumes as we do
    Corpses in the sun.
    I rise to speak
    Shrimp spewing from my mouth like
    Parasites.
    “We have always been
    so happy, you and I.”

    Mon 4 March 68
    I’ve learned my lesson: when this huge book is used up I WILL GET A SMALL ONE. Gave up on March dance, called Preston and said I’d go to his play if he’ll go to the Electric Factory with me, Casey & Kip and champagne supper after at Pewter Hill. Mom likes Preston because his parents are her friends so she should behave herself. Rich parents used to give their sons peasant girls to practice the facts of life on and Mom is giving Preston to me. He has a nice bass voice, but something festers in his soul. I’m going to find it and poke at it. Mom wanted to invite Brice to dinner! I had to tell her the truth about him so she wouldn’t but if I thought I’d get points from her for spurning his dark desires I was wrong. Everything’s my fault because of clothes & personality.
    Past midnight – I write by flashlight. Casey talking in her sleep.


    Hard to read Spark’s Mandelbaum Gate after Genet. Spark is trapped by her form, defeated by her subject and killed by her characters. Ho hum.


    Casey & I started a film company – Gryphon Enterprises – to film my movie ideas. Marquis de Sade (of all people’s!) Eugenie de Franval is a terrific story (without the moralizing obviously) – also Donleavy’s Singular Man. Working on my scripts. Also wrote a short story – Odalisque – about a teenager robbing her own “Christina-esque” boat. Can’t use it for English because Master Gwill hates “plot” on principle. Gives the highest grades to character studies & mood pieces. For him I wrote To Bed In the Afternoon dialog of a frigid woman with her doctor.
    Sunday into the city to see Pinter’s The Lover – excellently done.


    Tues 5 Mar 68
    Benson builds a new philosophy in Defense of Homosexuality – happens to be my philosophy as well. One caveat: “the freedom of the subjective person to do as he pleases is overruled by the freedom of the responsible person to do as me must.” Who’s subjective and who’s responsible? For that matter, who’s free.


    Benson knows he’s in enemy territory so he follows every argument to infinity: no loose ends. Do women take to lesbianism the way men take to homosexuality or are men just appalling lovers? Take Craig Crawford for example. #1 he’s hideous, #2 he WANTS to be drunk. Any rational sexy girl would start to look good if you’d had too much of that. At the moment I can’t imagine ever wanting to bear children but who knows maybe someday 
 At the moment 69ing sounds impossible. (Casey & I discuss.)


    Merrill writes she “spontaneously aborted” after a month of pregnancy. Depressed her. I hastily replied that since all Aallyn girls are built to be Earth Mothers so she need have no fear.
    I can see my senior thesis needs to be a “book report: What’s Out There”. They will downgrade me for not expressing my view but they would downgrade me more if I did express it so Lesser of Two Evils



    Wed 6 Mar 68
    Wonder if I can sit in a chair for auditions. Dr Gilmour says not. Don’t know what to do with this lump of a body of mine. I should be taking dance EACH DAY. What if I recite my poem?


    Got a full weekend permission, there’s a wonder (before lowering of the financial boom.) I have overdrawn 3 times!!! Think of all the starving children in Asia and I spent $4 on a bottle of hair conditioner.


    Like to think I am free from all the ridiculous dating taboos like “girls can’t call boys” so I phoned Preston. He’s an unpolished diamond – delighted to speak to me. He’s tall, intelligent, sensitive, thin, witty, friendly, etc. Plans to go to Harvard, run for everything & rule the world. So what if he doesn’t actually attend to this school? The less he knows of me the better, considering what people around here seem to think.


    1 AM Sat 9 Mar 68
    Twelve hours and my Wretched Audition will be over with. Numb with Dread. Chances very strongly that they will hate me, I will hate them, we will hate each other. I don’t see how I can stand any more rules. But everyone tells me I have to audition at Juilliard so audition at Juilliard I weakly do. Preston and I discussed it thoroughly fifteen mins ago. Nice to have someone to confide in. I impulsively invited him to the operetta and he impulsively accepted. Will he fear being Managed, like Shawn and chafe at it sorely? Insist on “spontaneity” while my calendar goes soggy from disuse? We’ll bomb that bridge when we come to it.


    Thinking about Devon all afternoon. “So sweetly cold, so deadly fair!!!” (Byron) Really stupid. It’s like those chicks fixating on the first beak they see.


    Plumly – Sun 10 Mar 68
    “A character’s recognition, through the force of circumstance of the truth about himself is one of the classic themes of comedy” Walter Allen, NY Times Book Review.


    Me at Juilliard. Get ready to laugh. I panicked at the institutionality of it all. Don’t want a building; was hoping for an ocean or a green field. Got through the audition but they’re going to hate me. John Housman told me to “pretend I was in the shower” and I froze. What the hell did THAT mean? Well, I didn’t figure it out. Should I strip? I sang instead which I’m fairly certain is NOT what he meant.


    Depression not helped by Preston’s inept kisses, his damp limp hand throughout Guys & Dolls. Everyone envious of us as a “beautiful couple” but I couldn’t get him to apply pressure. Uh oh. This bodes ill, ill, ill for everything else. In memory Shawn tears apart my Lurex stockings to kiss my blue-veined legs.


    I looked good I have to say. I wore a gorgeous white and silver glittery dress, white stockings and white six-strap heels. The most glorious part of the entire evening was fleeing this lousy institution in his father’s car instead of returning to my sex-starved roommate (same gender as me!)


    We wander in the park at 1 AM in parka & boots over party wear. Steam rising out of the ground looked like Fall of the House of Usher. I climbed the rock wall to the art museum while Preston stared at me. Alas, he is no fun. A mad-haired spectacle was I. He says my nerves look like Francis Scott Key’s flag which is probably right. But I was NOT in the mood for psychoanalysis. Will I survive this place? Because it is winning.


    Thinking about Devon all afternoon. “So sweetly cold, so deadly fair!!!” (Byron) Really stupid. It’s like those chicks fixating on the first beak they see.


    “A character’s recognition, through the force of circumstance of the truth about himself is one of the classic themes of comedy” Walter Allen, NY Times Book Review.


    That’s me at Juilliard. Get ready to laugh. I panicked at the institutionality of it all. Don’t want a building; was hoping for an ocean or a green field. Got through the audition but they’re going to hate me. John Housman told me to “pretend I was in the shower” and I froze. What the hell did THAT mean? Well, I didn’t figure it out. Should I strip? I sang instead which I’m fairly certain is NOT what he meant.


    Depression not helped by Preston’s inept kisses, his damp limp hand throughout Guys & Dolls. Everyone envious of us as a “beautiful couple” but I couldn’t get him to apply pressure. Uh oh. This bodes ill, ill, ill for everything else. In memory Shawn tears apart my Lurex stockings to kiss my blue-veined legs.


    I looked good I have to say. I wore a gorgeous white and silver glittery dress, white stockings and white six-strap heels. The most glorious part of the entire evening was fleeing this lousy institution in his father’s car instead of returning to my sex-starved roommate (same sex as me!)


    We wander in the park at 1 AM in parka & boots over party wear. Steam rising out of the ground looked like Fall of the House of Usher. I climbed the rock wall to the art museum while Preston stared at me. Alas, he is no fun. A mad-haired spectacle was I. He says my nerves look like Francis Scott Key’s flag which is probably right. But I was NOT in the mood for psychoanalysis. Will I survive this place? Because it is winning.


    Preston said he liked the sound of my dress. At least. He brought me the candy bar that used to be my favorite. It no longer is.


    Tues 12 Mar 68
    It is SNOWING outside. Final proof the world’s gone mad. Yesterday so spring-like Casey & I played tennis. Sat I lay in the lower field coated with Bain de Soleil!
    Vibrating like a wire over second mug of gray coffee.


    Thurs. 14 Mar 68
    Last day before vacances and I seem to have a fever. Sore throat ripped by endless scream, ears popping, the works. Getting out of class the only benefit. So no date for me. (Word for the day: Nacré. Means mother of pearl. Oh so beautiful. )


    No date, but perhaps champagne. Casey and I looked at this enormous bottle (a magnum) and decided it was just what the doctor ordered. Invited Rob Severn (English exchange student) and Bob Burke (black eyebrows, long golden hair from Kenya or someplace) down to the Greenwood to drink it with us. They said they’d be delighted. Smuggled it in a Gimbels shopping bag. It was gone in about 10 mins! (Very grapey stuff.) Did make me feel better however. Unfortunately Burke threw me to the ground, tried to drag me to a shed and stuck his hand right up under my turtleneck. We are in the same weight class: I successfully fought him off.


    Severn offered to show him how to behave, I said “please” and he kissed me beautifully. Very nice. I was regretfully forced to tell him I had probably given him typhoid but it was thoughtful of him to risk it. He invited Casey into the shed; she went. Burke said he would like typhoid too. I had to say no. I guess I am not as starved as I thought I was.

    Pewter Hill – Sun. Midnight 17 Mar 68
    Just read my diary for ’67 instead of writing my Special Project paper. Nauseating. What a boring idiotic little child I was. Pathetic. There is anguish associated with diaries and no mistake. This poor body is one raw nerve. Preston came over last night, I was too weak to make the first move so No Move Was Made. Shouldn’t there be SOMETHING between fighting for your life and fainting from boredom?


    Saw his Yeomen of the Guard last night – Preston a very fetching spear-carrier. We saw Closely Watched Trains, came home, made coffee & hamburgers. I told him he didn’t miss anything with the champagne. Was a movie about a shy boy’s fear of impotence the best possible choice? (The best thing about it: Czechs don’t use extras, they use people.) Tried to discuss film (did not like it as much as Loves of a Blonde) but could hear Mom & Dad humping upstairs. Probably working on some kind of manual the doctor gave them. Thanks folks. Preston obviously embarrassed left early.

  • Wild With Possibility: teen diaries of Alysse Aallyn

    Sun 21 Jan 68


    “We are but a moment’s sunlight fading in the grass
” Jesse Colin Young


    Casey & I took a 2-hour walk past the Granolithic into the orchards and fields. Now I sit at my wobbly desk looking out of the window at a world warped by radiator fumes. Where will I be a year from now when some other poor wretch sits chained to this piece of lumber? Already I’ve escaped, imagining its spring and hot, and I’m wearing a short blue dress. It’s the tea party at Master Gwill’s after Hamlet (I played Gertrude) and Shawn and I are in love. Ah, memories.


    McKenzie compliments me on my dress when I go into dinner – did I just buy it? God now, I said. I’ve had it 2 years.


    Lucky you, she says, to have a closetful of beautiful clothes you never wear. I remember when you used to pull out eight things and ask me what to wear for Beales



    Shudder at THAT memory! Beales was constitutionally unpleasable. He used to get so angry! I now see that is a pathetic state of affairs.


    Wed 24 Jan 68
    Diaries are a horror. I could write and write and write and never get it all said. Plus I sometimes feel like a Current President forced to continue the policies of the Last President. Why can’ I be completely fresh & new? Original? Well, it wouldn’t be a diary, that’s why, it would just be a Notebook and guess what? I have plenty of those.

    Diaries

    I don’t remember anything
    I’m an amnesiac so
    I wrote it down
    Stuffed in my closet
    Among discarded ballgowns
    (smells much the same)
    utterly useless but
    too beautiful to throw away
    I only recall
    The act of writing
    An up and over downtime scrawl
    As I recall the surgeon
    Cutting at my face
    tugging splitting flesh
    he peeled the wastage out.
    I recall fierce
    Liftoff
    In the writing
    Too much dig is waste
    It’s only what remains that’s
    Valuable.

    Three tests in my next three classes. I don’t have to worry about French – no matter how poorly I do everyone will always do worse – but History – “Manifest Destiny” – I have not studied at all.

    Then there’s the outrage of philosophy where I have to pander to a lot of theories I can’t accept.

    Contrary to Plato there is no actual “truth”. Some things are just truer than other things. It is truer that I am at Plumly than In Paris, for example. Also, meaning changes – a fact that bothered Plato but does not bother me in the least. I mean, of course.


    Plato is deeply obnoxious. He says somewhere exists a “perfect” everything – a perfect cat for example – yet “beauty” is a matter of opinion. This makes my brain bubble. I suspect my perfect cat and Plato’s cat are different animals. My perfect cat would eat his perfect cat.

    Don’t even get me started about math; the only part I respect are Imaginary Numbers. Socrates said it best: to hell with the universe.


    Reading Huxley’s Point Counterpoint about which the only thing I like is its name. He falls into every literary trap there is; too many places, people, names. Everyone seems to want to write a Panorama of Modern Civilization. This is Tolstoy’s fault. Cakes & Ale made me gnash my teeth. Yesterday I finished Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up to Me (Shawn’s recommendation). Feel sorry for the guy; a brilliant boy suffering from over education. He seeks freedom, meaning and – women, who have to wear high heels while they make love. They HAVE to! Otherwise he’ll TANTRUM!


    Dinner at Master Gwill’s. The boys are punishing me for what I “did” to Dan. Except for Ed, Chip & Martin. They are always nice. Unfortunately my efforts to become a Noble Savage fail. Can think about nothing but food & sex. Worked Miss Lissome over at coffee, disagreeing with everything she said.


    Sat. 27 Jan 68 – Pewter Hill

    Movie orgy! Casey and I awake to NO bells, NO workjobs, NO faculty screams of abuse. Instead, peace, classical music, fresh grapefruit, good coffee, English muffins. (At Plumly only seniors are allowed to have coffee. You wait for four years lusting in you heart and then when you get it you realize it’s AWFUL. But you’re too proud and exhausted to tell the others.)


    Last night we saw The Graduate – true true true plus wild & romantic. (Dustin Hoffman dead ringer for Beales.) This afternoon How I Won the War with John Lennon. Then Casey wants to run around Rittenhouse Square Seeing and Being seen and I want to sit in a cafĂ© and stare. I don’t get my identity back that fast, is all. “You always ruin my fun,” she pouts.


    Mon 29 Jan 68

    Listening to Mendelssohn’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream Casey starts sobbing incoherently. She says she waits and waits but no one ever comes. I know what just what she means. Instead of protesting my fate I draw thirteen flowers on my upper thigh. Thirteen. “The thing of it is” – fine Pinteresque phrase – the thing of it is I should be DIETING but my only joy is food. Conundrum.


    Trying to do my senior thesis on Sex Offenders (Kinsey) but they are the dullest people you can possibly imagine. (Psychopathia Sexualis way more interesting.) “6% attempted intromission”. Learned one good word: “pudenda”. “Dearest Theobald, the spring pudenda are in full flower! How I wish you could be here to see them!” Or possibly, “Pudenda Pottencrest felt a premonitory shiver as she crossed the threshold of the old house
”

    Bertrand Russell says we need sex so we can concentrate on our studies but who listens to him? Insomnia. Ginger Man nauseatingly self-conscious. Tried Growing Up Absurd but Paul Goodman (author) told me it was only for boys because girls don’t have problems. News to me. He keeps wailing about advertising but in my view (judging from New York Times Mag & New Yorker) the ads are a lot more interesting (and subtler) than the articles.


    Several interesting letters from Devon in one envelope. The first, “written in a moment of weakness” looks like he was drunk. He’s romantic, I’ll give him that, in an Elvira Madigan kind of way. Dad was furious that those two committed suicide. He said if you really loved somebody you’d do anything to keep them alive and I think I prefer his philosophy. For Devon everything is Hopeless. Hopeless, hopeless, hopeless. He is in search of Plato’s perfect mountain, perfect skis, perfect run, perfect physical conditioning and its nothing but failure, failure, failure. Cheery. Do I love him only because he’s beautiful? No, he’s intelligent, too. (Amherst.) But he’s TOO beautiful
I don’t need to pursue Plato’s Perfect Skier. Think I found him. But can a boy from an all-boy family and a girl from an all-girl family be friends? I think I want to love someone who knows nothing of my past. When I say, “I was such an ugly child,” I don’t want them chiming in, “You sure were.”


    I won’t write back. (Tactics.)


    Fri 2 Feb 68

    Silenced. No library “privileges”. Can’t ask Miss Womrath for a favor, my parents for money or discuss “college plans” with Miss Liveright. This school stopped being “the school for me” long about my sophomore year but my parents refuse to hear it. If only Mom were more like Daddy – if I got expelled he would just accept it. How to rip the lid off all this fake coziness? Plumly hates artists (on principle! “Self indulgent!”) Well, they can mete out punishment (detention hall) but my mind is mine alone. Genevieve hated this place by the time she left (attacked me for believing the very things she spent freshman – sophomore year drilling into me!) but she wasn’t honest about it (and she got into Wellesley) so M & D think it was “a big success”. (At Wellesley she studied psych; calls M & D “schizophrenic”. But not to their faces.)


    Just recovering from a long crying session (as you can probably tell.) Hate all my classes and slept through study hall. “We shouldn’t have all these warped people in charge of everything” says Casey. Amen, sister. Detention hall’s in the collecting room – no one can sleep in there. Rush hour at the Gare St Lazare.


    Mon. 5 Feb 68
    Pewter Hill Sunday lunch, Avril helping me learn Aston’s lobotomy speech. Acting like skiing, building from the inside out. Horrible cold bath – water-heating system not working (as usual which Mom the Masochist refuses to believe. “You need to let it run,” she says. Believe me I have let it run.) Marcel Marceau in town – we got to go. Some new pieces. Ran into Dr Gilmour on the way out, she said she was HOPING I would get to see this!!!


    Called into Miss Womrath’s office for cutting Vespers. She says the Student of Yesteryear would Never Have Dreamed, etc. She just wants me to grovel, which she won’t get. I am appalled that this place is run by these strange inhuman beings. (Miss Beeston is senile but since she “only teaches French” they don’t care.) Boys are suspended for long hair and thirty years ago they were suspended for crew cuts!! Finished Avalon – everybody settled for less than they had dreamed of in their youth. And Quiet Flows the Don next.


    Wed 7 Feb 68
    Liked Pinter’s The Basement so much I want to make a movie of it. Such insane simplicity!


    Sun 11 Feb 68
    Casey was babysitting for Master Gwill – went over to watch Jean Claude Killy ski in the Olympics. Exciting! Le Superman! Everyone comparing him and Karl Schranz but I say there’s no comparison. Sat NYC trip! Everything that COULD go wrong yesterday, WENT. Unfortunately station wagon had no heat and my feet were freezing. 12 degrees outside!!! Refused to sit with Peter who called me an “incorrigible bitch”. (Like all shy boys once you finally get them talking you can’t get in a word edgewise.)


    Toured the Met, saw all the Greek stuff and more medieval stuff than is good for me then met with the others for lunch. Bought two candy bars to beef up boxed lunch. Then the Ballet of Don Quixote. The plot is: Quixote & Panza watch everybody dance! I kid you not! Costumes pretty good, but bordering on Tyrolean as if extras wandered in from another show. Still, I’d go to the theatre every night if I could.


    Vol I of “The Don” NOT making me want to plunge into Vol II. Prefer Genet’s Our Lady of the Flowers (unreadable intro by Sartre. Turns out I am not an existentialist.)


    Mon 12 Feb 68
    2 Plumly students killed & 2 injured in bad accident on the turnpike yesterday – truck jumped the median. People I talked to are lying dead in a morgue someplace. First class was a “memorial” – we sat silent. I try to think holy thoughts — difficult looking right at the harpies on the facing bench.


    11:20 PM Fifty pages into The Golden Bough. Don’t see how his logic operates. And it’s the source of my Bible Independent Study!!


    Tues 13 Feb 1968
    Third period study hall. Struggling with Bible. Do not believe in God or an afterlife but if I was blind would I disbelieve in the world others tell me is there? But religion I reject utterly.


    Thurs 15 Feb 68
    A typical Thurs morning meeting – exercise in amateur rebellion & spiritual emptiness. Girls Collection seated first. On Sundays we can sit co-ed, on Thursdays we are segregated. Casey and I sit together (illegally- you’re supposed to sit the way you came in.) I guess we’re supposed to be grateful we don’t have to kneel on peas on the frozen flagstones.

    My “prosperity” Chinese medallion chain (probably not real gold) is in hundreds of knots so at least I have something interesting to occupy myself. (Usually I sleep). “No fingernails” I think disgustedly as I pick at the chain.


    DeeDee shoots to her feet; she wants to talk about Vietnam; has to get it right out or she’ll be too nervous. (She’s against it.) Drone, drone. Tries to tie the Viet Cong and our Recent Dead in some kind of incomprehensible pretzel.


    Deep silence follows. I finish the chain and put it on. Susie Thos ahead of me is pretending to be bent over in deep meditation but is secretly conversing with the girl next to her. People shuffle, sigh and scratch their necks.


    Maggie Brown drawing a flower on her leg while the harridans seethe. Sarah Gould leaps to her feet. She is a “kook” and dates “kooks”. Rambling question (to God?) about how “making out is an expression of love and how can love ever be wrong?”


    Miss Womrath tries to re-start her heart, discovers she doesn’t have one. I admire Sarah for laying herself open to attack. Also for her athletic body, which we are all, admiring. Somebody else stands up to distinguish between “kissing” and “making out.” Kissing good, making out bad. Lips good, hands worse.


    Charity Dellabrook vaults to her feet. She was all happy this morning she says but she feels guilty about being happy around all these somber faces.


    Fri 16 Feb 68
    Finished Our Lady over breakfast; turning it over in my mind. I think it’s one of the most exciting books I’ve ever read for it insights into the creative brain. Honesty and originality are the only words for Genet. I neither thought these characters depraved nor pitied them. I’d call Maggie of Mill on the Floss more “perverted” than Divine. Readers deserve to be trusted (Pinter is expert at this.) So exciting makes me want to rush to the typewriter and work on “Dr Stavanger.”