Thurs 2 AM – 27 June 1968
Things are not happening right! Toss, where are you? Remember how, when we were riding in the car, I pressed my lips to your knee? I know your smile and I trust your hand. But I can’t tell you my problems. Then there’s Ian MacLauchlan (sp?) Mom’s friend – I like almost everything about him. He is really attractive – knocking back the bourbon and assuming I wanted ginger ale. I wanted him. He asked all about Toss and when I told him said, “He’s too young for you.” He took us to a trendy club and we heard the whole of Sgt Pepper. Mom didn’t see him holding my hand. Then there’s the night porter. Cute young Irish lad named Donald O’Brien knocked on the door three times to see if I need anything! He is really cute! We had a pillow fight and bragged about our scars. (He way outclassed me.) But that was all I needed, thanks. (Little did Mom know she was checking me into the Passion Flower Hotel.) So then he brought me coffee and I didn’t even order it – but I’m drinking it anyway. Coffee never keeps me awake, if that’s what he was hoping. Coffee goes well with the strawberries I bought this morning at Oxford Circus. Tonight Ian took me to the movies we saw Le Bonheur (snooze) because I had already seen A Man and a Woman. Ate dim sum with towers of dumplings. Lunch date with Ian tomorrow. He is giving me a ride to the docks to catch the Saga for Sweden. Think I better tell him I’m a virgin – he is getting way too excited. Aboard the ship Saga – evening of 28 June 1968 Sitting at a table by the window in the long saloon, starving to death. The concept of “snacks” is unknown to the Swedish. This is the “parade” hour when the handsome young rugged things parade up and down. Some are very appetizing but I make bad decisions on an empty stomach. Hope I can make it to their (very late) dinner before I implode. Wrote Toss a letter, telling him we could have a week alone at Pewter Hill when I come back. A wedding night. How could we miss that opportunity? I am such a private person it seems so unlikely that I will find anyone else – or they will find me – but as I have said, there are certainly a lot of bodies parading about. This is a beautiful boat, clean and modern. Their food problem is the only one I can see. Ian’s partner Chris was at his flat for lunch – they are working on a film – Ian very fatherly – so we had quite the decorous lunch. (Pizza. Very small. They all starve themselves on principle – I think it has something to do with The War.) I declaimed my party-piece poem, Evolution (my very own Letter to Maria Gisborne, the only one of my poems I have memorized) to general plaudits & huzzahs. (Chris thought it was Keats!) This world that seems to us so still And echoes no reflection of our will Somehow produced the seed that in us all Resurrected us from worm to fish, to crawl Upon the earth, to stand and then Return a child to creep and crawl again. In some unending pattern sane or not (Judging by the brain that this same seed begot). And yet within our every cell lies curled A revolutionary flag to be unfurled And take us on to who know what potential end Beyond the reach of enemy or friend? Could it be that simple balls of spinning glass Possess the strength to lift from this morass All that we are – though we don’t understand This torch we pas so tenderly from hand to hand? Then Ian drove me to the docks and insisted on a kiss. Not too bad, all things considered (no tongue). Reading Iris Murdoch’s Under the Net, highly recommended by Ian. I don’t like it. (Intellectually pretentious.) Disliking the leading character is a serious drawback. But Ian liked Le Bonheur which I thought was shallow. Moral: “Try to feel and think less and you’ll be fine.” I think I can do better – fantasize about writing The Summerfield Blues. (To the music of John Wesley Hardin.) “Finn won’t even get into bed if I’m not there. I find him leaning up against the door with his eyes closed.” Ah, imagination! It feels all, sees all, knows all and heals all things. Saga’s lounge on the way to Goteborg - Sat aft June 29, 1968 Swedes in suits read magazines, French mother plays cards with her bald children – ordinary life Goes On. This is the first class lounge; there is a second-class lounge (which I’ve also been in.) Think its weird of the democratic Swedes to submit to this kind of thing. Looked in mirror, realized I was thin, bought an enormous chocolate bar to celebrate (ate half of it.) The food around here is all “smorgasbord” – no bread, only crackers, lots of cold fish and blood pudding (which I sampled. More honored in the breach than the observance.) Plenty to eat – slept ten hours!!! Pouring rain. 5 PM – After a good stiff walk and staring at the wake for about an hour, crawled into my upper berth of our 4 berth cabin where I lie picking at my toes like a baboon (two other snorers are oblivious.) Feel ill for some reason. (Pudding.) Took aspirin. Brooding about all the ways our Wedding Week might not come off. If Mom invites someone to live in the house, par example, as she has been wont to do of late (and a lamer assemblage of ducks you’ll seldom see.) If Toss has to work in his wretched park, if there are workmen hacking up the kitchen (Mom has remodeled the kitchens of every house she’s ever lived in) but my optimistic brain fights back. Won’t bother us! We’ll never leave the third floor! Sleep in each other’s arms. Memories…me lying beside the pool, Toss with the sun behind his shoulders pulls off my sundress and kisses my jutting hipbone…ah. Wish I could stop worrying that the peach ice cream goddess he is in love with does not exist. What will happen when he finds out some people think I’m positively ugly? Toss’ face, too, is inexhaustibly interesting. Dig toes into sheets, pant and wail: Juliet in search of Romeo. Finished Miss Murdoch for all the good it did me. (Would have made a SHORT compelling story in New Yorker. At least 200 p. it didn’t need. I think the most important thing an author can know is When To Fall Silent. Reserve blathering on for sketchbooks like this one – aphrodisiac exercises for future consolidation.) But what about the Demands of Poverty, asks the ghost of Balzac. Well, Byron lacked that excuse. (Flourish.) Prefer to re-read Jessica Mitford’s Hons & Rebels after brief detour through Don’t Tell Alfred. Sweet Nancy of the Pursuit of Love has gone stodgy on us (as of p. 81).
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Alysse Aallyn
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