Wed 20 Oct 71
Honey Plage is dead. Car accident. It might have been suicide. Dr. Plage says no memorial: funerals are arcane and disgusting and life belongs to the living. I made Bruce promise to give me a funeral – told him to read Millay’s Wild Swans to my assembled ex-boyfriends. He wants zydeco. We decide to collaborate on a murder mystery in which Dr. Page somehow killed his wife so he can partake of all this young flesh eager to exchange itself for a passing grade. Messed with brakes? But how could you guarantee that she drives fast enough? I say strand her at the train tracks, wacked out on sedatives. It’s the only way. Chloe told me in playwriting class that my play Our Father’s Restaurant is the best student play she’s read in 5 years. It was a great class because Gomo wasn’t there (the speed freak who makes pig noises at me.) On a new BC pill but not getting my period. Still, pregnancy is impossible. I never forget to take it and they say if you never forget to take it you are 100% protected. Bruce says no fatherhood in his future no-how. Sat 30 Oct 71 My shoulders rise around my ears with tension at the close of another Bad Heart gig. For the Marlys Democrats, who are a decidedly unlively crowd. Band was terrible – worst I’ve ever seen them, and Avril came all the way down from Phila too. I apologized. A says Mom is better since coming back from China and that her best friend Carlee’s parents’ put her in a mental institution and won’t let A see her. They blame A (who has never even tried marijuana) for C’s “bad road”. I am reading about W. H. Ireland’s Shakespeare forgeries. Fascinating. His father died refusing to believe he was capable of such good work!!! Pretending it was Shakespeare’s was his only hope of getting Vortigern published, much less produced. Everyone wants to turn “genius” into a bronzed baby shoe. Tamsin says good writing is always published. Why would law of the jungle suddenly become suspended? I bet if Balzac brought in his stuff now, the editor would look up from the MSS and say, “Now go home and write me a story.” To me, this continual flux of talent and death and change and applause reveals no work is complete in itself, like a tree or a rock – it’s an interaction. Only interesting thing in EJ Oliver’s Balzac is that artists are criminals. They want to steal society’s values. 4-5 Nov 71 Lying in bed after finishing Shirley Jackson’s Bird’s Nest with Beau the cat sleeping on my chest. From this angle I can see where I wrote Bruce’s name on the window the first night we spent together. It hasn’t been washed since. I won’t wake him – he can enjoy it in the morning. Checked a wedding etiquette book out of the library. The ancient brides of Israel wore blue ribbons on their left shoulders to signify fidelity. No comment on what grooms wore. Bruce and I bought gold rings for our little fingers because that’s the finger Elizabethans reserved for True Love – forget who you were married to. Even my high school roommate Kristi says her Navy husband doesn’t expect her to remain faithful while he is away. But I expect it, and Bruce, also, does not feel like sharing. We had a fight tonight – Took Dixie out for a walk hoping he would come after me. He didn’t. He probably wouldn’t have come after me even if I were naked. I found out later he thought I drove the car to Philadelphia and he didn’t make a move to stop me. How can you fight with a person like this? We made up very nicely, cried and kissed. Belvedere Hotel, Baltimore – Fri 12 Nov - 71 Waiting for Bad Heart gig at 9, wearing long red paisley skirt unbuttoned to matching hot pants. Very fetching. Place filling up with video & sound people. I wanted to write about my disappointment over EB White’s Trumpet of the Swan. Awful stuff. The females do nothing but lay eggs, which gets on my nerves. Overhear Bruce telling someone I proposed to him. Stung, I correct him with the truth and he acts like he really does not remember. You can’t get away with this around a diarist – we write everything down. I recall the occasion exactly – sitting over coffee in Ellicott City. But thinking about it I decide not to haul out the relevant book and chastise him with it. The most common question people ask when they see these notebooks – are you writing about me? I’ve learned to say No. There have been times in the past when someone – sisters-roommates-mothers-boyfriends - realizes these diaries are spies from the future and then they become a focus of rage. Bruce is jealous of my friendships – God forbid he should ever realize who – or what – his competition really is.
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Alysse Aallyn
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