10:30AM Sun 20 Feb 77
R and I went on ski weekend to Massanutten. Didn’t work. Never felt so far from him, and he realized it. Opal & Garrett over for dinner last night – their relationship is boring when I’m alone and don’t have R doing all the work for me. Drank too much out of sheer boredom and because I was depressed over R, then I get depressed over being depressed and drink more. Clearly he’s worthless and I must be too if I can get depressed over him. No good work on novel. Filing, cleaning, paying bills takes up all my time and my room still looks like a filthy hole. Hermiting seems only option (cheaper, too). Must learn to roll with the punches. Fantasizing about Devon because 24th is his birthday. Bad sign. 1:00PM 21 Feb 77 Dizzy from dieting. Not dancing very bad for my body. Current weight 122. (Opal says I have the perfect body. Glad someone appreciates it.) Ryder suggested jogging – bad mistake. Instantly attacked by colds & flu. Instead of eating go to library on my lunch hr to take out books. Went to see The Sentinel somewhere in the burbs with Avril and Mason, who drove like a crazy person (“I’m not afraid of death!”) Never again. Ghastly flick. Mason moving in – his money is good. Another secret to be kept from landlord. A guy at work (Keith Dalrymple) is courting me. He looks all right, though he has receding hairline. Kind of old. Asked to read my novel. I gave him my poems instead. He needs to hit the ground running. Tues. 22 Feb 77 Mason trying to talk A into moving to Calif with him. Uh oh. Maeve also wants to move out because I’m critical of her “dating” her married boss (they have sex in the supply closet). She believes his tiredest lines. “Drop him – he’s outrageous and destructive,” I say. I’m one to talk. Will use her room for my study. Try to live without roommates. Sent Devon a long grey silk scarf for his birthday. 3:40 PM Wed 23 Feb 77 Keith Dalrymple amazingly told me he loves my poems. Wow. Having good literary taste definitely works with me! Having a drink with him tonight. Had to struggle to keep myself from hurling cash at a gorgeous $50 suit in going-out-of-business dress shop on Dupont Circle. Slogging through Mrs Dalloway – it’s her best book. But all this blind struggle not my thing. Require some consciousness. I guess we were reptiles in those days just turning amphibious. Thurs. 24 Feb 77 Cocktail bar buffet with Keith (A calls him a “dim bulb”. We are very critical of each other’s honeys.) He’s a Woolf novel – smooth glossy surface, violence and trauma beneath. He is intelligent – quoted Frost – 38 yrs old – divorced (was married 15 years!!!) I sat swilling Scotch and giving him the hairy eyeball – do I have the strength for this? He blanched when I ordered escargots chablisienne. Wouldn’t even kiss him. I demand exceptionality and refuse to settle for less. Whatever else you can say about Ryder, he’s definitely one of a kind. I am in a unique position compared to other women writers. Given the chance to rise above sexual strictures. Bought an exquisite pair of very high-heeled boots. I tower over Ryder – in more ways than one. Heheheh. Fri. 25 Feb 77 I fuss, I fume. I shriek and scream. I circle my desk warily. Cannot get into this awful novel. Stare hard at the clutching sisters in the Victorian photo for inspiration. None comes. Instead slapped together a first poetry collection – In the Vein. 5:20 PM Sun 27 Feb 77 Ryder will be here any minute. Driving straight through from Pittsburgh because he “misses me so much.” Flank steak marinating, turnips, parsnips & parsley, tomatoes & sour cream – everything ready but wine. Too lazy to drive to the Tick Tock. Day of ecstasy sorting books in new study. Sections are: crime writing, Victorians, Great Novels, the Occult, Women Writers, Cinema, Politics, Science, Children, History & Murder Mysteries. (Move those downstairs.) Hating Orlando. Why did Bowen write Afterword if she didn’t like the book? Mon 28 Feb 77 – Broadcast Agency Bad sex. Sore. Feel like I’ve been run over. Something’s up with him. Mauled me again in the middle of the night. Guilt? Surprise visit from landlord – heard about “violations” from Montgomery County. Ha ha. Obviously only two people living here – (nothing visible of Mason’s.) Landlord calmed. Says he wants to sell the place. Would we allow to be shown? I said sure. Everybody happy. Sorry to lose such a beautiful house but it is too expensive for one person anyway. Thurs. 3 Mar 77 Long talk with Avril about Mason. He is a racist. She says how is it possible to feel superior to and inferior to someone at the same time? Human condition, I say. Spring wind makes me long to shed my clothes! Poor Ryder! It’ll be halter tops and hot pants the minute temp hits 65. Got a V. Woolf poem – the Membraned Sieve. Keith and I still talk but he has made no moves. Relief. Mon 7 Mar 77 Ryder says he talks so much about me to associate director Kyle he’s asked to meet me. (He told Kyle he doesn’t deserve me. It’s the truth!) I said he can’t come to our party at The Plum – we have no room. Sex too rough. Experimenting or letting his anger out? Maybe I’ve stopped lubricating - my body’s ready to quit even if I’m not. Wants me to wake up and smell the coffee. Lunch w/Maeve at Carmac’s, me splendid in orange leather suit, boots, bracelets. Bloody Marys. I gave her her phone bill – also letter from collection agency about plane bill she said boyfriend paid for. He’s obviously running a scam on her. She says she found a Bethesda efficiency $180/month. Had to rush to get back to work – then saw List of Adrian Messenger with A. Made up schedule for Secaire. But the minute I start I get idea for another work – story about father/ daughter/ stepmother war– A Demon Roused. Who’s the demon? Reading The Ring, the Book & The Poet.
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10:40 AM Wed 22 Sept. 76
Woke up after horrible nightmare in which Jacqueline Susann showed me her cancer to have R drive me to the station. We’re in a financial nightmare – A’s rent check bounced twice so expenses going up. R says I have to start an exercise plan – since I can’t dance. He’s hilarious! Lunch with Ruby and my agent. Agent (Ruth) was euphoric. Starting to feel the book was written by a stranger. I tried so hard to make it English and Victorian – I NEVER want to do that again. Can’t say THAT, obviously, especially after Ruby remarked I was “so good looking we should make it a series.” Devlyn’s best gothic they’ve ever read! They both drank heavily while disagreeing with virtually everything I had to say about poetry and literature. Their recommendation: write a love story. Pity we don’t know what love is, isn’t it? I MIGHT be able to manage a sex story. Oh well. Genevieve full of secret divorce-and-getting-together-with-hush-hush-sweetie plans. Don’t tell Kent anything. He asks me what’s going on – I play dumb but not too well. He must know something’s up. Awkward! Walk to library and back thinking about St. Secaire. How make that a love story? Everyone’s a predator or an idiot. Fri. 24 Sept 76 Checked my acct - $54!! Don’t know where it came from but I will spend it. Sent poems to Chloe Aparo, borrow bike from Shoulders. Ryder wants to go horseback riding, we went to see The Tenant instead. (Cheaper). R managed to discuss it intelligently. Trying to research the occult for Secaire. Reading bad suspense novel – Geoffrey Turtons Devil’s Churchyard. I liked all his other books. Dump it for Aleister Crowley’s Diary of a Drug Fiend. $10 to live on for 2 weeks. Mom & Dad sent emergency check. 6:25 PM – Sun 3 Oct 76 Fabulous dinner party last night. Steak tartare, crab and cheese casserole, lots of wine. R and I fall asleep in each other’s arms. We have more sex “broken up” than when we were dating. Got offered $3.50 an hour for 4 hr a day legal secretary!!! Out of their minds. Trying to sell my wedding dress for $150 – got one porno call. Tues 5 Oct 76 4pm appt with Environmental Defense Fund. Howard Nemerov such a relief after Auden. Thurs 11:30 PM 7 Oct 76 Typical Tyler St evening. Lying in bed (alone) powdered and polished from bath. Maeve and Avril out on dates. R is working, I’m reading Quest for Theseus. Got too depressed reading Shirley Jackson. Her life solutions: food and cigarettes – plenty of both. Lost EDF job – as soon as they turned me down I decide I want it! To WTTG to apply for “production asst” job – 200 people spilling into street! Didn’t bother. How write about love if it’s impossible? I owe Maeve money – she doesn’t like it and I don’t like it. Tension almost unbearable waiting for my check. R offered jobs in Pittsburgh & Detroit. (He says he doesn’t ever want to leave though it’s the only way to make more $$.) 12:55 PM Wed 13 1976 These are the times that try women’s souls. Desperately accepted switchboard job at Broadcasters Agency because it looks easy and I can think my own thoughts. Replacing a girl going on maternity leave so I’m not stuck if I don’t like it. Agent sent check told me not to cash it for a week!!! Thinking they’re all scam artists. Reading Diane Johnson’s brilliant Lesser Lives. Avril depressed over Mason. Maeve depressed over George. I am buying diet pills because of sedentary job. Switchboard Broadcast Agency 9:15 AM – Fr. 18 Feb 77 New notebooks such a thrill. Always a fresh start: I could almost become anyone. Worked 3 full days this week – more $$ in the coffers. Avril coming in to Broadcasters Agency to apply for Zelma’s old job - $8500/yr for 7 hr day. Hope she gets it. Brought in The Voyage Out today – I WILL finish it – bring it to its knees. Perfect example of everything usually wrong with first novels. Don’t like her novels as much as letters and diaries. Talk about peering through a glass darkly. Oh well. Still drinking coffee and picking the fuzz out of my eyes. Period’s arrived with its usual exquisite timing. Once I’ve finished Secaire (needs a final burst) can rewrite Find Courtney. 3 Sept 76
Just back from the worst vacation of my life. Both A and I took completely unacceptable men to our parents’ island – alas, my man was the most unacceptable – doing nothing but fighting and sulking. He finally said such unforgiveable things I had to drive him to the ferry and push him off into space. His last words were “I love you.” Day late and a dollar short. The worst things he said were that I dress like a slut, anyone looking at me would instantly assume I was a prostitute. This was said to me while I was wearing my gorgeous emerald scarf tied around my breasts and my long denim skirt and Nefertiti necklace and looking like a goddess for parents’ dinner party. He said if I don’t start wearing a bra my breasts will be “ruined” and he doesn’t want to wake up age 35 married to only a “mind”. (The mind is in fact quite unimportant in his world.) His wife, he assured me, always dressed most tastefully – nobody desiring her ever. Didn’t cross his mind that the fact that she was dead-on-arrival in the sack and her inability to enjoy and celebrate her own body could be in any way connected. He told me my poems are awful and self-indulgent and I live entirely in my own head. I was finally forced to tell him that what with his long hair, leisure suits, stacked heels and man-purse most people just assume he’s gay. But who cares what “most people” think – and would we even know? He really got on my bad side seemingly justifying rape – women “ask for it” with their clothing, male self control not an issue. I said if a crazy girl escaped from an institution and ran down the street naked would men be “ justified” raping her? He said yes so obviously it was over between us from that moment. The truth, of course, is that he was overwhelmingly jealous from the moment he arrived on the island – possibly earlier – by the fact that I am a separate human being, who has ever existed out of his sight. 17 Sept 76 It really is over with R. My fault for going so fast. R leaving messages on my answering machine every day, trying to make me jealous with “don’t call back tonight I won’t be in”. Finally decided I owe it to him to tell him where I’m working – I know he thinks I returned to dancing – the scum. Sent him a card saying we should meet for dinner in a couple of months. Appt. with Georgetown Employment Agency 10;30 AM tomorrow. 12;25 PM Ryder came by to pick up his jackets. He said, “You’re the most valuable person in the world to me.” Trying not to goad him into pyrotechnics, so, showed nothing. He was calm, played with Dixie, kissed me on the cheek and said “I love you” and left. He is worthy of a hefty Freudian tome all to himself. I want to send hi a copy of The Intimate Enemy but he wouldn’t (couldn’t) read it. He’s totally about not wanting what he has, having what he doesn’t want, wanting something else and hating himself into the bargain. I pity anyone involved with him – mainly I pity me – still fixated on his worthlessness apparently. Washing the dishes in floods of tears. I bragged to him that I didn’t want to change him – that isn’t true. I don’t feel I have the right to change people while he wants to specify every detail about me. The worst is I know how he would exult in his power over me. Still wearing his black coral diver’s cross as a charm. When R says dismissively “Be free” he means “Be alone”. Sun. 12 Sept 76 – 12:05 PM Yesterday turned down job at art gallery that would have been wonderful but paid dirt. They say I “might” get commissions on sales. Have a feeling Mom and Dad would push for it – it was very upscale – just didn’t feel right to me. FINALLY letter from agent; Pyramid offering $2500 advance, 6% to 150,000 copies, 8% thereafter, a few minor revisions. Always less than you think but not as bad as the gallery – I say hells yes. Still have to find job; something that lets me write. I called Ryder with info, left message. Have to go to NY to sign contract so job hunt suspended for now. Mon 13 Sept 76 Avril and Mike met me and Ryder at The Royal Warrant for drinks to celebrate my book. I wore long sexy purple lace-up dress – nothing he’d object to however. (Royal Warrant because their drinks are huge.) Wore sandals with kitten heels and I was still taller than him. I wonder if that’s what this is about. I invited him home after and he accepted. He concentrated on making me come. Said he can’t consider dating a girl who doesn’t wear a bra. I said I might wear one in my first pregnancy. Gave him my copy of Intimate Enemy when he left. Reading Brownmiller’s excellent Against our Will. 11:45 AM 14 Sept 76 – Tues. Boiling hot. I need a full-time psychiatric nurse, vicious guard dog and a secretary. Phone ringing off the hook. Agent called reversing charges. Ryder wants to celebrate salary bump. How can two people who despise each other as much as we do want to have sex all the time? Beats me. Ryder’ s latest charge is that I wrote a novel for money. Get it? I’m a prostitute! Then he marches off to his yessir, nosir job whistling. You can’t win with him. Cheered myself up reading old diaries about my marriage. At least it’s not as bad as that. I used to lock myself in the bathroom to howl. Reading Simenon’s Venice Train. He is too mannered. Ryder forced me to look at his island pictures – I am the ugliest beautiful woman in the world. He tries to use this against me but of course we were fighting the whole time. No one can be lovely under such conditions. Does “love” entail not just “sacrifice” but loss of identity? Went out and bought a pair of six inch heels. When I am with Ryder, I love him but when I’m away, the cloud lifts. Attempting to seduce Devon with a copy of the poem Cedarwood Chest. God knows what he’ll think but I know he’ll give a better reaction than R. Lunch in NY 12:30 Tues – have to take the 7 AM train to make it work! 7:45 AM Mon 20 Sept 76 R’s latest accusation is that I fell in love first!! So weird. Reminiscent of Bruce. Some version of gaslighting? It’s a definite power grab. He said he was “embarrassed” by my emotional intensity! I have a feeling he’s trying to cobble together a story he can tell other people. As for me, I’m trying to figure out what really happened. Used to think R’s lack of experience wouldn’t affect us but I can see it really has. Got my hair cut; of course I think it’s too short. Dreading what Genevieve will say.
10:40 AM Thurs 26 Aug –76 – Club Shalimar Yesterday morning Maeve and I lingering over coffee and chat – no one wanting to return to their life – and the phone rang. It was editor Ruby Jenkins at Pyramid wanting to make an offer on my book. She says it has a lot of wit and depth and is really extraordinary and if they don’t take it someone else will. Two editors on my side. Asked all about me – so I told what I was doing, schools, what I’d had published – that Harcourt just turned down Find Courtney. She’d called Maine because she couldn’t get in touch with my agent but left a message. I just put the phone down and screamed for 20 solid minutes. Then went to Shalimar and quit – gave them a week’s notice. Didn’t tell them about book – Carmen guessed about Ryder – narrowed her eyes into slits and tried to tell me a lot of terrible stuff about him, about how he always pursued dancers – although she admits, after me, not any more. She said if I ever need the job again, they’d give it to me. That was nice. Randy the bouncer had tears in his eyes because he says I’m so amusing and no one else can make him laugh. R’s “celebration” was to take me to Garfinckel’s at the Montgomery Mall to buy me underwear. He takes it strangely personally that I don’t wear a bra or underpants half the time. This could have been a fun, even erotic experience but he was so weird I almost had a nervous breakdown – so bizarrely controlling like he doesn’t know what presents are. The missionary purchasing fig leaves for the natives! Felt offensively “managed”. If he had bought me lingerie and given it to me that would have been one thing. I could take them back if I didn’t like them. This was if he were my parent or something – I really can’t explain why it was so insulting. I let him buy me a pink silk robe, which I refused to try on – of course it will fit. Duh. We should have been celebrating. Not only can I quit dancing but they’ve put him on the eleven pm news and now we could have mornings together. But at the Japanese steakhouse he really acted wooden headed. I think it’s some sort of a gender problem – men understand that their self-respect is tied up with autonomy but they seem to think the opposite must be true about women. I’m trying too hard not to despise him. Anything I could say sounds hurtful. At the very same time he’s trying to “tether” me he’s trying to free himself. He said, what if I want to take another girl out? And I said, well you can but you have to tell me about it before hand. He said, I know how I’d feel if you said that to me. I told him he probably doesn’t have to worry – I can’t imagine wanting another man. Now he’s “scared” I’m going to become a famous writer! So we went back to my place and made love for three hours and it was very satisfying. He was all over me and it felt like the last time in some critical way. To me he seems less like a man getting out of a marriage than some kind of shipwreck victim who has never seen or imagined our society and is becoming increasingly excited about the sexually liberated possibilities. How can we avoid breaking up over this? Can’t I just get a fat check from my book and be a young writer about town? I sincerely hope that’s the way it will go. Reading Rose, my years in Service about Lady Astor’s maid. Sat 28 Aug 76 Shalimar Ryder tried to pressure me not to go to work by saying “we shouldn’t be seeing each other”. I remind him we have a dinner party coming up and a vacation in Maine! Why the hysteria? Reading Henri Peyre’s The Failures of Criticism. Last set. 3PM Mon 30 Aug 76 Wakened by air-conditioner going on – Ryder climbing in bed with me fully clothed so there would be “no sex” – of course that didn’t work. He is very upset about my sense of physical freedom – said wouldn’t “let” me be painted in the nude by Andrew Wyeth! I pointed out that his wife was his ideal woman – totally restrained and untrained and ignorant and unavailable in every way he wanted – and he hated it. Can’t understand why he has to be such a jackass when all his dreams are coming true. |
Alysse Aallyn
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