Wed 23 Feb 72 – 10:30 PM Fight with Bruce. He accuses me of not making his music of “the first importance.” (It isn’t. We are.) I watch him leave from the window, wanting to call him back and apologize but I would cry and that would only make things worse. They are going to the studio to smoke dope since I won’t let them smoke it here. Bruce is very much a when-in-Romer. He is very insulted when I tell him he would have signed right up with the Hitler Jugend but of course he would have. (Totally explains how he wound up in Vietnam. Also why my father likes him.) Bruce agrees with people he doesn’t agree with just to “smooth things over” conversationally. This puts our relationship in a horrifying new light. When I first met him I was amazed how our tastes and ambitions and philosophies were exactly the same. What miracle, I thought. Hallelujah! But he was just agreeing with me to make me like him. What a dolt I was. Now, since he is the only one bringing in money so my writing is of no importance. Then there’s the housework problem – he’ll be damned if he’ll do any and I loathe it to. Fortunately this apt is small but the prospect of moving into a vast estate with Bud & Honor is not setting my heart ablaze. I’m on the second day of my diet and diets are intrinsically depressing. There’s a lot of preparing food I can’t eat and watching others eat it and I hate that. Been feeling unbeautiful all day. Plus now that we are married Bruce never compliments me any more. This is a surprise somehow. But I can see it from his point of view. I am now just part of the furniture and he takes it all for granted. Plus there’s sex. If I can’t come before he does I don’t get to – he goes right to sleep. Annoying. Reading Eric Ambler’s Journey Into Fear and enjoying it in spite of the fact that I would never have trusted the people the protagonist trusted. He’s going to end with a knife in his ribs – duh! But it’s very well written. I can learn from this guy. Don’t feel like taking a walk. 9:00 PM Sat 26 Feb 72 I’ve GOT to take a walk tonight. Have been very good on my diet but tonight I forked in too much chili. Expensive 40 min call with A to find out what she thought of my stories when Chloe and Mrs. Stone are silent as the grave. She liked Dreamer better for the exact right reasons. Each of us cheered the other up. Reading Margaret Drabble’s Garrick Year. Exact same plot as Waterfall, really. (Which I liked SO much.) It’s the handling makes it different. I think an American editor would have told her to stop analyzing everything. Character says she never had an orgasm till after children were born!!! (With some people it works the exact opposite.) Good reason (I guess) for fixation on children. 2:15 AM Thu 1 Mar 72 Tamsin depresses me by returning my essay The Journey of Dorothy Sayers with the comment that it should be more like a New Yorker profile! What do I do with that? I really don’t want to study NY profiles but I guess I have to. Should I be paying this woman money? Then she tells me I should write for children and gives me a copy of The Treasure at Green Knowe, which is much better than I feared. (I really like the idea of instinctive natural” religion – sort of Sredni Vashtar. I can do a lot with that. Cheered up by first advance of money from lawyer – not that much but B buys a $650 stereo system and I spend $30 on second hand sofa. Reading Penzoldt’s The Supernatural in Fiction. He is very Freudian. Everything explained by an infant trauma. Passed 800 in our Oh Hell marathon game.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Alysse Aallyn
Archives
September 2022
Categories |