Sat – 15 Feb 69
Devon amazed me by bringing me to his parent’s house at Tamarack. Jesus, I didn’t know I was coming into this. 5 cars, 2 dogs, 1 cat and 11 people and a father who’s continually trying to get everybody naked in the sauna (no luck so far.) D’s elaborate pretense that we are not sleeping together is blown when his older brother walks in on us. He smirks and zips his lip. If you trust him which Devon doesn’t. Devon and his brothers are crabs in a barrel, struggling to climb on each other’s heads to get out and lay a case before these difficult parents who drink a lot more than would be good for anybody. I feel Devon is “guarding” me all the time. (Probably from that father frightened of his sons’ good education and radical ideas.) When his back was to everyone I stroked D’s nipple and he leaned and whispered in my ear “I love you.” I said it back. Every time I take a shower he runs to get in with me. I got all dressed up yesterday in my 3 piece tartan suit with the ruffled shirt and said, “Devon, I must pack” and he said, “Don’t you dare” and threw me on the bed and completely undressed me! In a bedroom without a lock. Indescribable physical bliss. It was like being inside an organ playing Bach’s Toccata & Fugue in D minor. And where was everyone else? Everyone was drunk except the dogs. (The cat was definitely drunk. Or possibly it’s ear medicine.) Devon leaves in a month to teach skiing in Chile! D’s father offers to drive me home! No thanks. I said, Why can’t I just come back with you? And we analyzed and tore at the problem like we learned in school. He says, “Publicity will kill this thing.” He’s afraid I’ll tell my parents I was staying in his room because I haven’t got the sense to lie. Fears being accused of crimes he hasn’t committed. D reading Brothers Karamazov because I recommended it. Finished Hesse’s Demian. Reminds me of Chesterton’s The Man Who Was Thursday. Too pedantic; character analysis fails in light of messy desperation for a salve. “One day the questions die on wings of chance you fly… and when love comes there’s nothing more to say and now you know you don’t have to understand…” Tim Buckley Accepted at Circle in the Square Theatre School & San Diego College of the Arts. One’s a college but far away – the other actual theatre and close by. Easy choice. Wonder if I’ll ever be ready to REALLY write about prep school? Sat 1 Mar 69 Every time the phone rings I’m s afraid it’s Devon calling telling me to “bag it”. We were on the phone an hour last time – he said he was on the edge of “flunking, cracking up he just wants to get out of there. “Alysse, why don’t you just COME? Don’t tell me, just arrive!” I was so confused. He really wouldn’t like that at all – he’s alternately rejecting me and wanting me- shows how he feels. Torn. Held my pride in check and listened. “Alysse, I love you…” He said it! I dropped the phone. I said I’m coming. I’ll go skiing with the others – Pretend along with the Aallyns! and come up to see him Sat or Sun. I’m already in a tough situation with Mick. I’m so afraid he’ll call and say, “Don’t come.” He knows he won’t get any “You promised me” phony baloney. Fighting the urge to “you hurt me so I’ll hurt you.” I inherited the “icy withdrawal” tactic from my mother. (What do you bet it snows tomorrow and no planes will fly.) I’m afraid the bus trip is three hours at least. Trying to figure out a pen name. Can one write and act under the same name? 40 pages of No Champagne veering into Rosemary’s Baby territory. When I’m with Devon I’ll take out a pen and attack it (probably 10 p good stuff.)
0 Comments
Tues 11 Feb 69
We saw Elvira Madigan and were both so overwhelmed we jumped into bed and just held each other for hours. I don’t know how to talk about Elvira Madigan – it’s beauty demands silence, its truth demands reverence. I’m so sex starved I’m considering going out to roll in the snow. No wonder the Swedes bet each other with branches – it’s starting to sound good. Now I’m sitting at the desk, he’s sitting on the bed, I’ve been trying out ideas on his typewriter but nothing’s coming. Devon says he’s going to drive me home this weekend. Going to be tough to look my mother in the face. She already thinks I’m a Lost Cause. Dad slip that she called him “a dirty old man” once in private because he tried “something frisky”. God, I wonder what it was. Baldwin’s book such a picture of ruin, of ultimate corruption seen through eyes of an artist sensitive enough to know he’s rotting physically but unable to do anything about it. Wed. 12 Feb 69 Almost one but I’m still in bed. Got to get up in a half hour and meet Devon for lunch. Sometimes I worry about whether I’m doing the right thing. He may be older than me but he seems so boyish and defenseless. I feel like I’m taking advantage of him, “marking him as mine forever”. Last night we had fun staying up till 2 AM, he dictated a paper to me while I typed it. We both got to laughing hysterically and he said, “Oh, Alysse, I love you.” Last night was the most sustained, the most passionate ever. He whispered tome, “Are we doing the right thing?” I said, “I hope so” he said, “I don’t think so.” Here I lie in bed eating pumpernickel bread and drinking tea (without sugar because Devon doesn’t have any) and outside the classical buildings jammed with lusty males are softened by a massive snowfall. Who would guess the turmoil within? This fake, pretend-safe world glows with an eerie beauty. “The Time has come for me to leave you, stop my foolish hangin’ on” says the radio. “Time has painted all my dreams blue…pieces falling all around you, around you, around you.” (The Youngbloods.) Devon thinks I must be bored but he doesn’t really know me. Reading Chekhov, Kazantzakis, and Edna St. Vincent Millay. Devon has a surprising artistic talent – these drawings are Picasso-esque but I am having no luck getting him to part with any. He’ll tell me when it’s time. 7:30 PM - I am starting to feel a bit useless. Never has writing been so difficult for me. I used to be obsessed with characters and action, now its all mood pieces going nowhere. I think I’ve got to get out of here if this guy is going to graduate. Mon morning, 10 Feb 69
I should be on a poorly maintained commuter train rattling towards dance class, but instead I’m in Devon’s bed! I arrived at the airport (dragging my skis) he kissed me lightly and told me I could stay in The Guest Room (a closet) or I could stay with him. Hands off. “We’ll just cuddle.” Easy choice! He gave me a sign to put on the bathroom when I’m in there. When I asked what his fraternity brothers would think he said, “They’re wishing they were me.” I can hear the chimes playing out in the quad. This is a very small room: a bed, a desk, a wall of windows. We were so excited to see each other –the moment we closed his door we fell into bed together. We’ve been to parties, skiing and playing in the snow, dancing to Melvin & the Blue Notes but most of our time is spent In Bed. We’re so compatible, and Devon is so grateful and passionate. He hasn’t asked if I’m a virgin – and I haven’t asked him – the less discussion about the Toss disaster the better. Isn’t it more like I was in a riding accident? Though we have not yet gone “the whole way” we are both very satisfied – building a house of cards with lips & hands. This morning he missed two classes because he just couldn’t stand to get out of bed. Of course I felt guilty – I am “interfering” with his life. He says no, no, no and grabs me again. Coexistence is so peaceful…our green parkas side by side, my ruffly nightgown across his denim shirt. Complexity slash simplicity. The bed is small but we fit just fine, unconscious dancing, all night long. 8:10 PM – Interruption – visit from Jolene, a girl who’s staying here who’s snowed in, too. She is a tiny little fragile thing; wispy, pale dependent. She told her date she was coming out to lunch with me and Devon – met him at the Inn but her “date” never showed. She thinks he’s “sick” of her and I think he’s scared of her (it comes to the same thing.) Devon always orders Boston crème pie! It’s adorable. Right now Devon is at the library writing a paper. A fraternity friend of his “stopped by”. Lonely. Asked me if I was a skater because of my thighs (which I found vaguely insulting.) We listened to John Wesley Harding before I was able to get rid of him. Had dinner with one of D’s professors who makes his own Mexican food and who looked back and forth between the two of us with wild surmise. Devon spent the whole afternoon trying to draw me. He learned this new technique where you don’t lift your pen or look at the page – surprisingly he produces some terrific stuff but he is never satisfied. When I ask for the pictures he REFUSES to give them to me BECAUSE THEY AREN’T ANY GOOD. The next one, I’ll get. Always the next one. He says, drawing is a way to get close to people but I’m so close to you already I haven’t the skill to reflect it. I feel we are stuck in the Vale of Unworthiness. Devon has the most beautiful body I have ever seen. Nothing like world class high mountain skiing to create those long, strong muscles. And he shines from within, his soul glows through his skin like a lantern in a frosted window. We talk about our childhoods, our scary futures and the world we’re creating in our bed. He says between the ages of 12 and 17 he was in “agony”. Got a poem - Paradise Without eyes Ambitious goldfish float And dream of skies Where fins are wings And lily pads are clouds Dreams carried tight In gullets Swollen like seed pearls Safe forever from Vengeful sea salt or Killer Reality. Who can say if in their time of death Those dreams don’t live Burst their skins with tails Like comets Scatter scales like stars Spilling pond and soaring limitless To be whales To be gods To be free? Should I tell you everything? About how we match perfectly, about his mouth moving gently over my breasts, his hands in the small of my back, our legs entwined in fantastic positions. We do everything but. His eyelids shiver when he sleeps as if he’s running in his dreams like a wolf. To spend the night without him – I can’t foresee it at all. Reading D’s copy of Baldwin’s Tell Me How Long The Train’s Been Gone. Should have it finished by tomorrow. 12:01 6 Jan 69 “Night of the Salamander”
(Symbol of art to Osbert Sitwell.) Such depthless loneliness that last night I had to sleep in my sister’s room. Mom gave me a copy of John Lehmann’s Sitwell study, Nest of Tigers. How did she know? Fabulous, fabulous book. Shouting with recognition as I salute long-lost friends in the mad Sitwellian world. Their sense of themselves as artists rescued them from the prison of their times. Full to bursting with plans, ides & crazy intensities. Also a desire to please and a too-thorough knowledge of my own faults that keep mocking my ideals and exaggerating my failures. Trying to rid myself of a morality based on The Most Efficient Middle Class Consumption Unit. Snow across the park, all the way to the lights of my century, my city. We are hosting a Russian schoolteacher – humiliated myself when she was describing the “lost, over-privileged generation” by running weeping from the room. I am not fit company. I am the rat within the cage. Now I have to convince myself I’m sane so I can go on. 8 Jan 69 Lovely letter from Devon. Says he misses me, says needs me. He does NOT say he loves me. (I am trying to write a love story where the word “love” does not occur. 12 Jan 69 To New York City by train to audition at Theatre in the Square Theatre School (very famous) and San Diego College of the Arts East Coast auditions (they are brand new. First year of acting school is next year! Audition was in a hotel room where I had to kneel on the carpet in front of people sitting in armchairs! Still, they were super friendly. Circle much more disorganized –got the definite feeling they’d take anybody. I have gradually in the past few months been sorting my writings and shoving off into a chest of drawers all the cast-off ideas, theories and dreams from age nine onward. It’s really only the sheer volume of the thing that saves it from destruction – all that work! In ONE notebook I’m trying to assemble “all the things that went right” even if its only a few words. Serious descriptive writing I do worst – satire is my best. I like fantasy, distortion, exaggeration, but I was shocked to read the first few pages of No Champagne for Me. It’s the closest I’ve ever come to writing about prep school as it actually existed with all its destructive potential. I well recall writing it the spring of my senior year, one afternoon after tennis, sitting in my dorm room with Casey. Alas – it’s a flash in the pan that goes nowhere. I’m no child genius. 1:25 AM 5 Feb 69- Wed Devon invited me to Winter Carnival at Amherst! I was astounded. Shows you can have a big effect on people without even knowing it. Says I can stay at his fraternity (of which he is president) and he will pick me up at airport. Suddenly I am afraid to see him again. In Colette, loneliness is a duty. Am I afraid of loving him or of love itself? Shock! I think I’m afraid of winding up frustrated… I’m afraid of crumbling before him like a biscuit. |
Alysse Aallyn
Archives
September 2022
Categories |