24 Dec 77 - midnight – Plush Palace
The Big Day. Go home, sleep, wake up, do laundry, take dogs for shots, buy snow tires. In a haze of infatuation – J was in for 5 hours tonight watching me dance with a sense of unmistakable pride. He asked for my phone number so he could call me on Christmas Day – I gave him all of them. New York City Dec 25 77 – Fri night. Life is so interesting, Wouldn’t miss it for the world. Lovely intimate family talks – just what family should be doing for a perspective on past and future. Two days Avril and I drive to Michigan to see Merrill – 11 hours – tonight’s dinner in the Village then an early night. Heard of a studio apt on the island – winterized – going for $200/month. Of course I will have enough royalties for that…or won’t I? Harcourt royalty dept uncooperative, Lauren very cagey. But won’t the island kill my already comatose sex life? This is the longest time I’ve been away from dancing and I miss it. It’s a great substitute for sex but not a complete one alas. Physical activity vital to my peace of mind. 96th St off the Park- New York City – 26 Dec 77 This apt triggering horrible flashbacks to how sick I was at the beginning of last summer. Scary that a man could do this to me. Don’t ever want to get that sick again. Makes me sorry this diary exists – my trusty friend – because now misery has an actual corporeal reality. Burn these sickening wails before I die. The Victorians always did. Well I’m raring to get back. Not only do I miss the dancing, I miss the bar. Ah, the nightlife. Always a party atmosphere but I could feel superior for not drinking (or getting high). I like our status and protections – I like getting paid for exercising, being admired and having fun. This pleasure just cannot be shared – Mom’s face crimps closed – and I am lost in the unredeemable beastliness and ugliness she feels certain it must be. The fact that I am a feminist and consider myself spiritually in tune with the universe also is incomprehensible to her. (Wives can get into big spiritual trouble too, but I am too tactful to bring that up.) Unfortunately there is no way to defend myself except by attacking back – her “ safe”, closed, restricted world of handmaiden to Dad, feeding and burnishing him like a racehorse, talking him “up” as if she were his sports coach, does not seem to me more inherently saintly. But to Mom self-loss is what “sainthood” is – you totally do not regard yourself in your care for someone else. The fact that you are puffing them up like a grampus, encouraging them to be completely selfish, is I guess too shockingly cruel to mention. So I’m stuck in Patient Griselda mode with undeserved imprecations heaped on my innocent head. I wonder if it would be too nasty to talk about how I am sacrificing myself for those poor lonely men who need to look upon a perfect feminine ideal while they swill beer? Guess I better not. Mom is fond of saying that love doesn’t work unless you open your heart to the other but you can’t do it without marriage! I say Jervaze and I are “courting” which is a very different thing. I don’t think I will ever open my heart again. I think perhaps it opens by itself, naturally. One might as well tear a flower open and complain about the quality of the bloom. Interesting being here with Brett and Genevieve and watching someone else’s marriage from the outside. Does not look too enviable. Reading “Eclipse of the Hero in Victorian Fiction.” He’s in eclipse everywhere else, too, I may add. Mon 27th Dec 77 11:00 AM See Dracula on Broadway – pure pleasure with some honest scares. Frank Langella very sexy. At Italian dinner Mom and Dad push island hard, but I know the old people would never leave me alone. They’d be worse than R. Still, there’s something magical about being protected from the real world by the ferry – places you can’t get to easily are wonderful just for that reason. Mom and Dad say further I can’t be serious about my writing or I’d have a job in publishing or magazines! I’m so rocked back on my heels its hard to argue. It sounds so sane. But why won’t it result, really, in another “hostage taking” of my soul, which, so, so regrettably, appears to be so fragile? Becoming one’s self is life’s greatest challenge – and it does seem necessary to abjure group (gang? Team?) endeavors. Writing isn’t satisfying unless it comes out of the wild side of me – my secret side. There’s always the temptation to rip open the spider and get the silk out faster. Dad rolls his eyes – it’s the old “I’m an artist so I can do what I want” argument again. How to tell him yes, he’s right. Yes, I’m taking advantage of my education, my family, my “advantages”; it’s who I am. No going back to some invented Dust Bowl life of drudgery just so THEY “feel good”. They insist they don’t WANT to “feel good!” It’s about what’s “right!” My turn to roll my eyes.
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Alysse Aallyn
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