Mon 21 Feb 66
Life’s just a dance when you’re sixteen! Everything seems just about to happen. I’m a hopeless romantic who loves steak & mushrooms, trees & fields & ocean & stars! I’m in love with life itself. Beales says I’m “in love with love” he’s so ignorant. It’s just his constant effort to feel superior with nothing whatever to back it up. I don’t even fret about loosening up his guard anymore. If he doesn’t send me a KOB at night, I’ll ignore it. I’ll just do what I want and express myself as usual. If he wants to spend his senior year miserable it’s his own business. I’m happy and I don’t care who knows it (even if – like Beales – they think it makes me “less than.”) There’s such a glow over the world I don’t even care that someday I’ll be old. There’s so much to read strapped to a chair I’d be having fun. Currently reading Pushkin’s fabulous Queen of Spades – I love the Russians. It’s a book of short stories and when I finish one and see there’s more I squeeze my eyes tight shut in rapture. This is the first book of my life, I feel. I am going to read all the Russians – I only hope they’re all like him. Frames a beautiful silhouette I bought in Chester yesterday. It’s a picture of a girl turning the pages of a book, which Aynsley says is a Bible and I say is a diary. I only hope I have enough time to unravel the mystery of being alive. Wed Feb 23 – 66 12:50 AM Krissy and I have moved our room around. We are barely speaking so this is a lot more comfortable. Krissy always objects to me lying naked on my covers right under the window but I adore fresh air. We have our bookcases arranged to block our beds and give us privacy. She can have the radiator, I don’t want it (she is a cold blooded reptile). It hisses all night like a dragon and burns you when you touch it. (It calms down – like a horse – if you drape it with a blanket.) Oh, for a room of my own! Going out with Ted Jones. He is something of a status symbol because he is a leader but I can’t get over that he’s shorter than I am! Balding, too. When we dance he BURIES HIS FACE IN MY NECK! It makes me want to lead. When we went sledding I had to ride on the bottom! Now really! I don’t know how much of this my pride will allow. It just doesn’t turn me on which Beales would think is a good thing (or pretends to.) Of course you should date people you couldn’t stand to touch! (See Splendor in the Grass. I rest my case.) He out of sheer inertia is going out with That Barlow Woman so I guess Kris Cairns’ mysterious depths will remain unplumbed. Beales very scornful of my obsession with Pushkin but he’s doing his senior thesis on Hawthorne who I think people read because hair shirts went out of style! Time to haul my pillow in and go to sleep. I like hanging it out the window till it gets good and cold and makes my hair crackle! Miss Wormrest is afraid it’s a secret message to the biker gangs. Sun. Mar 13, 66 I’ve been crying all night. So shocked I can’t believe it. Miss Severstein showed me the file they keep on me in the teachers’ room. It was all bad! Teachers I’ve never had anything to do with wrote bad things about me – Miss Cluny (whose table I’ve never sat at) said I had “poor eating habits”! ) I got the highest grade in her class, the creep! Miss Wienand says I “organize slumber parties for the purpose of disruption!” Miss Lissome was actually surprised I was so devastated “I thought you didn’t care what anyone thinks!” Yeah but these people grade me! Miss Severstein showed me the report she is sending home to my parents –the worst thing it says is that I “am a wild spirit that needs taming.” But why? She can’t say anything really evil because my grades are so good. But why try when that’s not what really interest s them? They want to turn me in Thekla Norvis! If I was my dad, I’d sue! Beales “piled on” by telling me I “flout the rules too obviously.” It’s civil disobedience, that’s what it is! Supposed to be these people’s specialty. Their progressive school is fake. Then he took me into his arms and comforted me. Luckily we were in the biggest wing chair in the East Room or some teacher would have had a heart attack! New motto over my desk: “Do not be anxious for tomorrow. Tomorrow will be anxious for itself.” Fleur and I are going down to the Crypt where we get milk & crackers and read our mail to watch Prisoner of Zenda on TV. May be an old movie but it was one of my favorite books when I was a kid.
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Alysse Aallyn
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