20 Aug 76 – 11 AM
Inside I start The Mass at St Secaire for the thousandth time with one good idea: Manage transitions by IGNORING them. Just start abruptly somewhere else and worry about it later! Outside R sits in a lawn chair playing the guitar. When he falls silent he’s writing down notes. He says I have a good effect on him, getting him writing again. In the meantime, I made a list of literary essays I want to write and to my surprise there were more than 20. When I get back I will make a folder for each one and start collecting notes and ideas, beginning when I feel I have enough. How to finish a book of poems, finish and send out a novel, write 20 literary essays while working a 45 hr week? My heart quavers. I’m afraid I won’t be able to get a job that isn’t straight typing – then I have to type when I come home. Balzac could have done it. Trollope could have done it – I don’t think I can do it. But I certainly don’t want to lose R – he is a rare being. I need a deus ex machina of some kind. Maybe my gothic will sell. So glad this is our last day. Couldn’t say that to R – he would think I hadn’t enjoyed myself. Last night he stretched me out naked on his lap and played me like a guitar – most delicious thing. Waves of ecstasy bulging, rolling and crashing inside me. He says I’m so fun to please. Talks about how he would like to adopt deaf children. This means I would have to learn sign. Sounds good but I feel lazy and stubborn. Feel like a fledgling – flight pattern undetermined. R. wrote a song called Blue Lake Blues. I wrote a poem called LifeRaft. Don’t know what I think of it. Club Shalimar, Mon 23 Aug 76 Should be glad to be back but I’m so depressed. Everything so mixed up. Promised R I’d get another job so now I have to look for one, which won’t be pleasant. God knows what I’ll have to say I was doing. Once when I was married I tried to get a loan and of course they wouldn’t give me one without “collateral” – something of which I’d never heard. Dad told me to tell them I had a basement filled with gold bullion. I guess I could just tell employers the bullion ran out. Then I walk up to the club and whose car should be there – but R’s. He had told me he wouldn’t come in as long as I was working there. He said he just needed to talk to Rick because Rick is helping him feel better. I think what will happen is that I won’t work there any more but R will drop in when he feels like it. I want to “ban” him but I even more don’t want to be having these conversations. He says I just do it for the money and because it’s easy and of course that’s perfectly true. If I got $500 a week from writing I probably wouldn’t dance. The fact that something feels natural and pleasurable and doesn’t leave you feeling depleted at the end of each day isn’t a point against it to my way of thinking. He’s just an old fashioned sexist. On the other hand he is a special person and I definitely don’t want to dance forever. Sometimes I think the whole problem is that he’s getting a divorce and he’s so unready for a relationship he’s giving me hoops to jump through. But even if we got married I’d have to be at financially independent – he’s just too different from me for me to trust that he will agree with me about what’s right for me. My theory is it doesn’t hurt to look for a job. Maybe I’ll find something special or interesting. 11:20 PM – A called – R staggered in dead drunk, said “Call Alysse and tell her I’m here and set the alarm for 5:30” and then passed out on the sofa. I told them to hide his car keys in case he wakes up and tries to go someplace. I’m glad he’s safe, on the other hand I’m annoyed that he’s been touring the bars. He plainly didn’t go to his apartment, drink and then go to my house. My guess is total strangers up and down Wisconsin Avenue have been hearing his heartrending saga of the misery of dating an exotic dancer. 11:00 AM – Tues 24 Aug 76 Lying in the same bed where R and I made love five hours ago – just finished Tyler’s Clockwinder. Puzzled by the lack of passion in her strange, sad, minor novels. Tonight R is picking me up and taking me “someplace” – I have my eye on a little restaurant – where we can talk it out. I hope he’s paying because I have exactly $177 to live on till Sept 7 and $125 of that is rent. I’m trying to look at the future calmly – I love him, he loves me – who knows what may happen? 2:40 PM Was feeling so much better I was going to work on sending out poems until I looked around at this place. A and I desperately need Maeve to live here to help out with expenses and she is not the tidiest person. A says she never cleaned her other place after the party and it smells like a dead body. I cleaned and now I feel better but not in the mood for literature – more in the mood to take my dishpan hands to the mall. However I won’t because it would just result in expenditures. 3:40 PM Obviously R doesn’t really respect me. Otherwise he wouldn’t manipulate me like this. I don’t think he cares about me being a writer at all. He would actually like it better if he could introduce me to people as “my girlfriend the insurance agent.” That makes sense in his little world. I could break up with him but I’d have to find another place to work anyway – he’s ruined Shalimar for me. One can understand and deplore and get mad, but the alternative is loneliness. All I want is to go out and have fun, have someone to play and smooch with. Finding and then cultivating such a person is incredibly exhausting – and aren’t 99% of them only going to have the same (or worse) reactions he’s having anyway?
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Alysse Aallyn
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