12:50 AM Plush Palace – exhausted and bathed in sweat. Guy tried to crawl onstage with me. He was in the mood to dance! Every dancer (except me and I guess him) is using Darla’s overdose death (suicide or accident? I say why not murder?) as an excuse to not dance. I like dancing. Passes the time faster and the tips are better. Steve managing tonight – he looks just like Dylan Thomas. I keep expecting a Welsh accent when he warns the old men with their balls hanging out. Great tales from new dancer Charmian – she has toured the entire country. Just dancing. (She has the body of a seven year old. Plasters pasties on her completely flat chest. ) There’s a townhouse in New City I like the sound of but nobody EVER answers that phone. Tomorrow dinner with poor A and that awful Mason whom I loathe and despise. Couldn’t get through Babs Deals’ The Walls Came Tumbling Down – and Crystal Mouse was so good. Fortunately I have Steven Marcus’ The Other Victorians which is excellent. Pornotopia, indeed! Should have $1000 in savings by the 24th June.
3PM Wed 25 May 77 Weighed myself – I shouldn’t have. Lost two pounds but I can gain it back through thought alone. Reading Gore Vidal’s essays – like them better than his novels – unsettling man. A says Dad’s taken hotel rooms for everybody in NYC. New City townhouse a terrible shock – NOT to be thought of. R. called to invite me to the Emmys June 4. He had the nerve to say I’ll “always come back” to him. So I have to be careful not to, even when at night I howl like an animal. I can’t trust him to “take care” of me. 7:45 PM Thurs May 26 Who knew the worst was yet to come? I was talking to A at Broadcast Agency and a call came in and it was Ryder. “Hello Broadcast Agency”. I said, “You’re on the wrong line.” He said, “Your private line is busy and I’ve got to talk to you. Come clean and beg your forgiveness.” Uh oh. Yup. He invited another girl to the Emmys BEFORE me (that’s his story) she said she couldn’t afford to come, he invited me, then she contacted him to say she managed to get a plane ticket. So he’s disinviting me! I disconnected him immediately. He’ll be lucky if I ever speak to him again. I ought to be glad it happened – I was dithering. Needed a decision maker. I said to Charmian this evening, “Are you happy? I’m taking a poll.” She said, “Well, I feel all right. All that bothers me are assholes.” So true! I think the pain is over if I decide it is. Struggling not to be feel ashamed of ever loving that man. Distance is required. Distance & discipline. Dancing makes me feel better. I kicked really high. Audience enjoyed it. 3:10 AM Home dreading he would be here – if so I was prepared to scream the place down. He wasn’t. Just a note – saying I was “right to get rid” of him. Calling himself a worthless shit! He said he’s “sinned” ever since he met me by refusing to admit how much I mean to him. The problem is it doesn’t matter. We are the wrong people for each other. 8:30 PM Fri. Plush Palace May 27 1977 The only place I can sleep is work, dozing off between sets. Not even masturbation knocks me out. Tempting to make Mon my last day but I should last out the week – I need the cash. Still have so much packing to do. Keith in my office the last day of Broadcast Agency work – I told him about the Emmys – he said it didn’t sound like a deathblow. Men! I had considered inviting him to the wedding – this decided me against it. 3 weeks alone in NYC house sitting for Genevieve while she’ on her honeymoon. The Blessing is an awful book. Nancy Mitford not cut out to be a novelist; she’s really not interested in motivation. Only wants a forum for her retro opinions. 4:30 PM Sat 28 May 77 – Plush Palace A girl left early so Laverne and I are splitting her sets. Courtly Jim of the hush puppy body and the Elvis Presley hair realizes he has to pay us more to keep someone onstage. Good tips – holidays make people feel richer. Only 3 days left. 7:30 PM Sun 29 May 77 Packed for six straight hours, ate yogurt and chicken, walked dogs now I’m lying on mattress more exhausted than I’ve ever been. Shoulders has agreed to store my furniture – we don’t need a van since his house is right across the street. Told him he can use whatever pieces he wants. Jim will be in to pay me Fri so I don’t need to trust the mails. Called phone, gas, water, elec people. Don’t think I like EM Forster (where Angels Fear To Tread) – Henry James without the Henry James. Edwardian didacticism makes me miss James’s scrupulous objectivity. Why did he write this book? Because he’s “The Literary Type”. Compare with Woolf’s Unwritten Novel. Stagger about forcing myself to gulp Yuban. So enjoying throwing things away. Wed. 1 June 77 – 8:30 PM Plush Palace $770 to take off with – not bad I think. Ryder tells me I am “fleeing.” Damn straight. Mom asked me what was going on – I said I proposed to Ryder and he turned me down. She was squeaking on the other end of the phone like a gerbil but I couldn’t help it. It’s almost true – I didn’t take her advice but showed him my true self! Too bad! Reading Forster’s Longest Journey. Still feeling another story trying to get through. Pretty sick of the glory that wasn’t Greece. Everyone in book sanctimonious prig. 12:30PM Forster so foul I reread this diary. Deeply shaming. Maybe Forster is right: whatever you do, don’t write about what is actually going on – nobody may ever recover. Opal took me out to lunch at Apple Tree – painless. Crab quiche and 2 Brandy Alexanders. An elegant poem unspools in my head about the difference between hummingbirds and hawks. Will I go round in circles? Or will I fly high like a bird up in the sky? Shadowe Island 23 June 77 11 PM Walked around corner of house to deck – there’s Devon sitting with his Mom and my Mom and Dad. Waiting for me. He is still dreamily beautiful; cut glass profile, muscles shining through his clothes; a star. The understanding between us electric as always – hope I did not gape too obviously. I felt a “reaching-out” from this shy man – seemingly frightened by his own beauty bubbling up from the deep wells of his most secret personality. Obliterating poor Ryder, which is just what I need. I must have babbled something as they gave me a huge Tanqueray gin and tonic. Mom has that wrinkle between her eyes whenever she looks at me like there is no book I can publish, job I can take, no man I can marry to iron out that wrinkle. We hear them talking about us as if we weren’t there: “1972 was such an important year for them, that Winter Carnival;” “Why don’t they get together if they love each other?” “Kids these days think marriage just a piece of paper.” Just a piece of paper? You won’t get a rise out of me over that. I pass my life in a blizzard of papers, which may (or not) survive me. May (or not) have any ultimate meaning. His Mom offers me studio apt in their ski chalet - $125 month utilities included. Staking an early claim to any progeny I may produce. I say, No thank you, I need a city. Still, it gives one furiously to think. When Devon left he lifted up my chin to kiss me – tight familiar “everyone’s watching” mouth and prickly blond moustache. He says he’s going to England for a week. Invited me to Boston after. I imagine us unpeeling at the station, two nude souls confronting one another. Rank terror. The body reacts first, hands trembling violently. All I could do to keep from just savaging him in front of everybody. I could hardly hold my drink. I am an easy catch, too. He quoted from my poem “the one you wrote on the bus” when I visited him at Amherst – I had completely forgotten about that one. Quote from my own works and I become your slave. Poor Ryder! He never thought of that! He will “feel” the moment I lose interest in him; he will lift his head – wherever he is and whatever he’s doing – and come after me. Just when I don’t want him any more. The quote: “memories like stones I’m free to choose and in life’s rivers, eventually lose” Still true. Barnacle - Sat June 25 - 77 I can tell it’s early by the light but can’t find out what time it is without waking someone. Health complete. Walked the dogs all over Heath Island, ran into Paul Morris who just bought the Burnside Inn. He invited me back for coffee and brandy, to show me the changes he has made. He sneered when he asked me if I thought “exotic dancing” was “art”. I said Sure, why not.? It can be. He read Boston globe “exposé” on “strippers who are just little girls. They were all molested by their fathers.” I think they get better tips by calling people “Daddy”. Now Paul has a mysterious live-in girlfriend who refers to herself as The Sinister Chambermaid. Helping him renovate the place, traveling with him from Boston where he is a university professor. Since they are not married I wonder about their “financial deal”. Let me guess, she invests labor, you own title and invest cash? But now I have a good excuse to stay at the Inn and I am considering it. They have electricity for my typewriter and the Barnacle doesn’t
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