Mon 25 Sept 67
Feeling constricted by my Insane Relationship with Dan. Couldn’t I choose a guy who gradated from a DIFFERENT prep school? This one knows everything about Him and me and seemingly by osmosis, Us. No, it isn’t very pretty what a town without pity etc. Freedom and pride, the two main things I’ve always worked for, seem completely absent. No pleasure either. This relationship can’t work because neither of us is willing to be the other’s “love toy.” I shouldn’t have told him I love him, it would have been truer to say I need him. Or would that be worse? I’d wish I had Casey’s amorality but I don’t want her memories. They torment her. Dan and I lay in the grass yesterday and I had to admit I didn’t want him. I didn’t WANT his body covering mine – I wanted to be alone in my bed reading the NY Times! I said, “Sorry, maybe I’m frigid.” Maybe I really am! (Definitely with him.) He said he felt like he’d been kicked in the crotch, lit a cigarette and tried to think. He wanted me to try anyway but No. I have to feel it. C’est moi, c’est tout. The truth is we aren’t as comfortable in each other’s presence as we are on the phone. It’s getting creepy now, him hanging around his alma mater. After lunch he talked to Casey half an hour but told me later, “Nothing is solved.” He said he’s been too abrupt, he needs to forget his own pain and he would wait for me “forever and ever.” This is NOT what I wanted to hear. I said, “I don’t think we’re right for each other” which was not what HE wanted to hear. Impasse. When he left he said whatever makes me happy makes him happy. Here’s the problem with that: I’m not happy. Vespers calculated to “lift me higher” – moody Germanic music. Reed came onstage with his usual purposeful lope. Spoke well – I was surprised. Must have forsworn the Evil Weed. Spoke about the ARTIFICIALITY of the PLUMLY DATING SCENE. He is very dismissive of artificial markers. KOBS are just “pieces of paper.” A grade is just a “piece of paper”. A driver’s license is just a “piece of paper”. A marriage license is…you guessed it. This does not cut much ice with Me, the Archivist! I whirl in paper most days like a gerbil in a nest and I like it that way. I think paper is REALER THAN WE ARE. (Because it outlives us.) So there. Dan called Mon, pulling me out of lunch. He always calls at meals, presumably to starve me into thinness. It won’t work – I can eat through nausea, interruptions, anything. I have a hoard of revolting “emergency” sugar cookies in a lockbox beneath my bed. I told him to call me at nine. He called me at nine. He just wants to be my friend and love me from a distance and give me things. I should NEVER have told him I loved him but I was wild for affection. Now our relationship is absolutely ruined. I made him promise to stop saying he loves me and stop saying I’m beautiful. Not how friends talk. He agreed! Wow! He really must love me. There is no kindness greater than the kindness of someone who eases your fear. Sun 1 Oct 67 Revolution in the soul. The hurt we inflict on others is our own hurt, caused by our chains. Girls have been taught to make themselves as attractive as a dinner or a piece of jewelry and the number of broken men grasping after them is a mark of success. I can no longer look at fashion magazines. Glamour sickens me. Our souls are in rags. Feeling horribly guilty about Dan but I can’t imagine how to fix it. Angry that a perfectly healthy seventeen year old girl has to torment herself with the demon of frigidity just to make him feel better. (All the guys say I’m “cold’.) Poor Genevieve! Mom gave me her ruthless scorching letter in which she accused Mom & Dad of being “schizophrenic”. (She’s studying it at school.) I agreed with Mom that a daughter shouldn’t talk to her mother that way (it sounded like she was writing a paper) on the other hand Mom shouldn’t be showing it to ME! And they do want two PERFECTLY IMPOSSIBLE things from us. For instance I can’t get over the notion that Mom wants me to fail to prove herself right. (She says I go about everything the exactly wrong way. But if you want to run your own life what other way is there? Her argument seems to be shut down your brain and let others take over! Dan and I were in the train station Sat night surrounded by other couples. I felt you could judge the “success” of each of their dates simply by looking at them. Variations on hope & distance – trying to “feel together”. Bloody hard. Feel I’ll never have “a date” again. My mind will be rushing to “the ending”. How can I flirt and show myself off? I will be like a crone from a Depression era play moaning, Doom, doom! I don’t want reality any more! Reed in the infirmary. When I went down to have my TB shot checked I asked if I could say “hi” the nurse agreed but said darkly, “Be quick about it. And no carrying on!” She then said he NEEDS a visitor because he keeps his eyes shut and his lights off. I knocked on his door in case he was sleeping and he said, “Yes”. He has such a nice voice. “May I come in?” Didn’t identify myself. He looked so young and pathetic with his hair messed up wearing a hospital gown. I sat down on the other bed so nervous I was speechless. Kept remembering that horrible scene win the library with Shawn which answers the question YES you CAN make things worse! I ran my fingers over his guitar wishing I had the nerve to ask him to play. Asked if he was getting poetry out of this experience, he said he hadn’t thought about it. He was very polite – I was relieved – Shawn is a skilled cross-examiner and Reed is not. He is more natural. I said we were all worried about him. He thanked me for coming. I left feeling confident that he is not my enemy. Shawn on the other hand… Had to wait a whole hour for Dan at the 69th st. station but I had a book. Then we immediately went shopping. It is sad, I feel no desire for him at all. Where did it go? We both want to know. He bought champagne and cognac so he can make French 75s back at Villanova. Then said he wanted to go to the book dept where he was embarrassed to have me see him buying a book Mixing Drinks. He is shamed by not knowing everything! I say we don’t have to bother memorizing things if we have enough books! Arrived at the Penn St house 4 pm, Mom forgot to leave a key but the landlady was in. I made us bacon & eggs and tea with oranges, then left him downstairs with a magazine while I took a long, glorious bath. DID NOT WANT TO GET OUT OF THAT BATHTUB. Dressed in my “Thanksgiving dress” might as well – he might not get another chance to see it. Called Aynsley to see if my shike had gone as planned – she signed me in & out without a hitch. (She spent the whole day shiking in Media!) Dan and I took the train into Philly and saw Privilege. I love cinema verité! The principal actors were not extraordinary but the supporting cast was outstanding! “Britain in the Near Future” only 5 yrs from now! Not just possible but realistic. After the movie, dancing at the Trauma. Dan was so depressed I am starting to get irritated with him. People were packed in tight to hear the Youngbloods but Mandrake Memorial played first. I remembered them from Junior Wells days! They weren’t as bad as I recalled. Jesse Colin Young is electrifying! He has such a mellow, sleepy, hypnotic voice. I fell in love with him right there (I’m afraid Dan could tell.) “I hope he won’t look at you twice” he said nervously. (We were right up front.) They are as good as the Blues Project. But there were really too many people and we had to leave. I was getting claustrophobia from having Dan’s hands all over me. On the way home we talked it out well. Somehow I dredged up the courage to tell him I’m just not ready in my life. I didn’t say something about his life is putting me off because what good would that do? But he insisted on spending the night with me in the other twin bed. Very chaste! He still wanted to talk but I drank a glass of water and fell asleep immediately. The alarm woke us at 4:30. I pretended to be asleep in the subway so I wouldn’t have to make conversation. He liked having my head on his shoulder. At 69th street he didn’t expect me to kiss him so just a hurried goodbye. Brrr! Walking from Milltown to Plumly at 7:15 AM on a Sunday morning is a glorious experience! Birds singing, etc. I was on time for chapel. Noticed Reed was out of the infirmary. I gave a reading saying it is not the POINT that matters but the pursuit of the point while Miss Beeston nodded her head uncontrollably (she “agrees” with everything now.) Down to the Crypt to pick up my NY Times. Then slept the light week of the wicked. “We are but a moment’s sunlight, fading on the grass…”
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Alysse Aallyn
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