Mon Jun 27 – 66
Here I am at the University of Minnesota! I’ve hit the big time! I would not be writing at all but we are in the basement because of a tornado warning. Ah, the joys of the Midwest. Just us theatre students and a bunch of nuns who wear funny underwear and caps with strings. You wouldn’t think there would be an order of theatre nuns would you! Well there are! They are called the Franciscans and I must say they are making the idea of the convent look attractive. (Not the clothes though. But there is talk of fixing those.) They even have a swimming pool which Mimi my roommate and I sneak into – naked – in the middle of the night. A fat one named Sister Glory is praying out loud. They told us to bring “something valuable on our way down so of course I brought you! Next time I will bring a blanket and pillows (the floor is very hard.) Writing hard too because whatever I put down is played back in my brain very discouragingly. I am studying Acting One, Fencing, Makeup and Fencing. I love theatre people! (even uns.)But we don’t spend nearly as much time on those as on building theatre sets – obviously we are Slave Labor. This is even worse because the slaves didn’t pay to work. So far the only thing I’ve learned is how to mix “dope” to stiffen unbleached muslin into walls. This will take me far in life. As usual my intellectual life is alive. Reading The Carpetbaggers in which sex warps into hate (Beales!) Turgenev’s Hunting Sketches (adore!) and The Prince, which is sort of a drag. I am Mrs. Smith in The Bald Soprano. The director asked us when our periods are due before casting. (He is very superstitious.) Fri. July 22 – 66 The fact that I am still a virgin’s not my fault. I am sitting in the coach of a New York Central Train headed (eventually) for Philadelphia – because there is an airline strike. I am headed to Charlaix to meet up with family aboard The Gryphon. It will be a long, laborious journey, which is good because I have had a monumental hangover (my first!) for three days. I am eating liverwurst & onions to keep away the sailors (it’s working.) I was dating this fantastic college student named Trey (Très très)! I was too absorbed even to write about him! He has the most glorious bod – how I wish I had a picture – and is very tan. Runs around Minneapolis St Paul in a little loincloth & flip-flops. He’s covered all over with a glittery platinum fuzz. Alas he was just as interested in my roommate Georgy as he was in me but she was not interested in him. (Thank God.) He’s six feet six and has to wear coke bottle glasses but since I can’t really see as far as his face that doesn’t matter. He took me to see The Skin of Our Teeth at the Guthrie – fabulous. (A sailor sits beside me. He grins. I grin. Blast of onionated liver. He departs.) Trey gave a going away party for me at his house (parents away.) It’s a teensy little garage way out in the suburbs I’m surprised humans can fit in there. But it has a big back yard. I wore a bikini , sundress & sunglasses and brought my Village Fugs album – they loved it. Trey opened up the booze cabinet and started mixing whiskey sours while 4,000 of his closest friends trooped past scrutinizing and then ignoring me. Finally I announced I had to be going. (Early train!) He told me he would drive me. I said he didn’t have to – I could get some actor to do it – he said – “I want to” gazing deeply into my eyes. That gave us more time (all night!) together. Unfortunately. I was handling the whiskey sours, it was the Purple Jesus that did me in. Jesus! Never again! Nothing purple EVER! Trey went out cruising around for supplies leaving me alone with Leechy Friend who mixed me this awful drink and I was too drunk to turn it down. I threw up all over Leechy Friend who kept patting me and saying “Don’t worry, this happens all the time.” (Around HIM!) Trey came home and was quite upset by my condition. He got me a sleeping bag and put me to bed in his parent’ room. Later on I hear this noise like someone coming to bed with me. “Trey?” “No.” It was the Leechy Friend! I tried to escape from him but got stuck in the crevice between the twin beds and was still too drunk to escape! I yelled “Trey!” and didn’t my hero appear to rescue me! Minus his loincloth. I begged him to stay. He knew I was a virgin but he said, “There’s a lot of other things we can do” and there were. I had several “seizures” and I think he did too. If I had any criticism it would be that his penis is a little skinny- and ribbed – like a dog penis. But still! A night to remember! Life is no fun if there’s no one to play it with!
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Thurs May 5 - 66 Study hall but no one’s studying. The proctor is either dead or asleep. Aynsley got a disturbing chain letter about buying a bus for negro voters. She feels bad about breaking the chain but she lives in Wallace country and can’t think of anyone to send the letter to. She’s just taking names out of the of the phone book. I am trying to read Zoe Oldenbourg’s Catherine the Great. She accuses Catherine of lying In her memoirs. If she insists on that kind of honesty we are all doomed from the start. Clearly we see ourselves as sympathetic characters, which is automatically different from the way we appear to everyone else! I have tried writing my memoirs countless times. Beales says I have an exaggerated sense of self-importance but better that than no sense at all. Sun May 8 – 66 I’m in love with 5 boys, none of whom is Beales. I can’t get away from him, we are shackled by invisible chains. Each of us alternately bores and torments the other but it is too late to break up. (Plus he wouldn’t believe me.) I am starting to get a grudging respect for this school’s apparent policy to put you through a series of bad marriages before you actually go out in the world so at least you won’t make THOSE mistakes. I mean, after all, those Grab Anyone Who’s Going mistakes are the most obvious ones. Poor Beales is unrelentingly cynical, insulting and gloomy. He seems to have decided in advance that Harvard will be awful so there is nothing one can say. I was fooling around with Hale & Dawkins at the Gifsto the other day and I stole a penny from Hale and he told me now I had to go out on a date with him. Dawkins said I could have fifteen dates with him for the same price! If only. Then there’s Blair Manteo who’s tall and dark and thin as a knife. He is my biology partner so we are always having to go outside together to check on the chickens. We sneak up and down the stairs pretending we are James Bond. (Beales refuses to play like that.) Then there’s Travis Kitchener who walked all the way around the school with me clinging to the window ledged. When I almost fell he grabbed me and stared deeply into my eyes! “I don’t know how girls can stand the way he looks at them,” complains Beales! Travis promised to take me helicopter skiing in the “Persian Alps” someday – as good as a proposal! Thurs May 26, 66 HAD to break up with Beales – he just went too far! Said he’s going to date Genevieve because she’ll be the only person he knows at Radcliffe. (All he’ll find out is she’s different from me.) I said that’s it, buster! I know he was just goading me – even promised to “do better” but I was glad of the excuse. He sent me a formal invitation to his graduation and wrote on it “I hope I haven’t mucked up your year like you mucked up the end of mine!” What an Eeyore. I told him brutally he is impossible to get close to and I’m tired of giving more than I get. He said, “You’re right.” Now he hopes I will pity him but its not going to work. He then asked me to Casper the Grasper’s rose garden party. I told Beales I am going with Blair Manteo. I will wear my strawberry linen dress. Blair rescued me and I am really grateful. Because I’m not seeing Beales I have lots of time for other things. Reading Shelley Mydans’ Thomas, The Leopard, and Hercules My Shipmate. All this historical stuff has inspired me to write a novel entitled To Command or Hold Your Peace. About Napoleon. Fleur has moved in not that I am unattached. She calls herself a clinging vine and I am fending her off which is difficult because she is a long distance crier. She can sit through an entire meal looking at me and crying. Te staff does nothing. It is happy people like me who are constantly chastised and badgered. 6-6-66 (Obviously a significant day.) Got into all sorts of trouble for skipping the special math study hall designed to pass fools like me -,didn’t know it was required. Mr. Benson says I am very disobedient – I said my attitude is not one of disobedience but negation. Needless to say he didn’t understand. I can study after dinner. I’ll be fine if they don’t ask for too many square roots. I’ve got to get out of this hellhole. Try to talk my parents into sending me to an art school but every time I bring it up Dad threatens to send me to Catholic military school because Plumly is “the most progressive school in the universe.” This CAN’T be true. All the seniors are deteriorating on their way to graduation. Genevieve has stopped lecturing me on sex (“stay out of classrooms with boys!!!”) Beales says he is suicidal ( he is not my problem any more) and the girl who fell from the window BROKE HER BACK AND WILL NEVER WALK AGAIN! Imagine what she is thinking lying in the hospital staring up at the ceiling! No school is worth this. Two boys who were graduating cum laude have been suspended and another one expelled but I’m not sure of the facts since the headmaster is a notorious liar (and proud of it. That’s “leadership”. All honest communication in this foxhole goes One Way Only. Casey says they were screwing the headmaster’s wife but this is impossible. She has baked, served and eaten more doughnuts than are good for her in her academic career. Our boys are (horribly) choosy. Another out-of-body experience in German class. I died for fifteen minutes. No vital signs, no memory, nothing. Preserving my sanity is becoming very difficult in this milieu. I have a permanent headache that is like a wrinkle in my skull. For protection I am wearing only white. Met myself on the stairs today and am thinking of writing about it. Thurs. June 9 – 66 Yahoo! Summer is officially here and I am FREE! Mom & Dad aren’t coming till tomorrow night so I have noting to do but take walks, pack, and try to avoid Blair who is becoming a little much for me. He moves with such incredible slowness and he has to have all my ideas exhaustively explained to him. He likes to read Ezra Pound’s poetry out loud while I lie under a tree with my eyes shut. Since this is the only thing we share I’m afraid to tell him I just don’t like Ezra Pound. I don’t think he can stomach Millay. Oh dear. While he talks my inner music plays Let’s Get Lost on a Country Road by the Kit Kats. Speaks to my condition as they say. Merrill’s wedding June 16 – we have nightmarishly ugly bridesmaid dresses to wear – Mom had them made by some disabled woman she took pity on. We are the ones deserving of pity for having to wear the damn things. Mon Jun 27 – 66 Here I am at the University of Minnesota! I’ve hit the big time! I would not be writing at all but we are in the basement because of a tornado warning. Ah, the joys of the Midwest. Just us theatre students and a bunch of nuns who wear funny underwear and caps with strings. You wouldn’t think there would be an order of theatre nuns would you! Well there are! They are called the Franciscans and I must say they are making the idea of the convent look attractive. (Not the clothes though. But there is talk of fixing those.) They even have a swimming pool which Mimi my roommate and I sneak into – naked – in the middle of the night. A fat one named Sister Glory is praying out loud. They told us to bring “something valuable on our way down so of course I brought you! Next time I will bring a blanket and pillows (the floor is very hard.) Writing hard too because whatever I put down is played back in my brain very discouragingly. I am studying Acting One, Fencing, Makeup and Fencing. I love theatre people! (even uns.)But we don’t spend nearly as much time on those as on building theatre sets – obviously we are Slave Labor. This is even worse because the slaves didn’t pay to work. So far the only thing I’ve learned is how to mix “dope” to stiffen unbleached muslin into walls. This will take me far in life. As usual my intellectual life is alive. Reading The Carpetbaggers in which sex warps into hate (Beales!) Turgenev’s Hunting Sketches (adore!) and The Prince, which is sort of a drag. I am Mrs. Smith in The Bald Soprano. The director asked us when our periods are due before casting. (He is very superstitious.) Tues Mar 29 – 66 – 12:30 AM
Bugged at the world. My parents went into a tizzy that I was invited to Beales’ house. I got the Birth Control Lecture: (“Don’t do it”) disguised as Information it is really Fear Tactics. To tease him I said, “I heard whipped cream is good” only to be screamed at for 30 hours. I meant foam of course (everyone calls it whipped cream.) Too bad I am a member of the Pill Generation – they think the pill is just AWFUL. People might have intercourse without even THINKING of babies! Imagine the ghastliness of that! I’m still a virgin so what are they worrying about? If only they knew Beales! He is a SUPER virgin. He too is in a state of high anxiety about this approaching Summit Conference. He has called me TWICE (Beales the cheap! Probably charges it to his father). He lays down the law: school clothes – NO JEANS. Nice slacks are OK, but I am under NO CIRCULSTANCES to make fun of his relatives or compare ANYBODY to characters from Wind in the Willows. (Still smarting from being told he looks like Toad. A very hairy Toad.) Guess I should write about My Big Night. Standing in nothing but stockings and garters I was called to the phone. An irate Beales wanted to know: “How fast can you dress?” “I don’t know,” I said. “Is it a contest?” (Other boys want to know how fast you can UN dress. I WOULD get stuck with Beales! “We have to be in the receiving line. Get down here right away.” Click. Here’s the downside of dating a Bigwig Senior. I haven’t worn White Gloves since Dance Class back in Wantage, Massachusetts. “Lindles!” I screamed. “Fix me! You have to do my hair RIGHT AWAY!” Then Aynsley and I could NOT figure out the strapless bra! Far from being strapless it had thousands of straps going in all directions, around your head, etc. We tried it all ways – finally gave up and went without. (Empire dresses grabs your boobs anyway.) But there is the Fallout Problem so I took a safety pin to convert my corsage to PIN ON and use to it tuck myself in at the same time. I was looking ravishing I must say, even in low heels. It was all worth it just to see Beales’ face. He WAS impressed! Handed me my plastic box (Yup, green-dyed carnations just as I thought) and I gave him his boutonniere. Arab through the ceiling right on schedule. We had to go into a classroom to argue since all the other couples were staring at us. Meltdown averted when I brought out my pin, discarded his Fake Butterfly, gave him one green dyed carnation and pinned the rest and the orchid on me. (He got compliments on it all night and never said a thing. Is this my fate? Buying my own self orchids?) Crisis #2 came when we had our first slow dance and he felt around for my bra. He gasped and almost fainted. You would have thought my breasts were going to attack him. “Listen, I tried,” I explained. “It just didn’t work out.” He almost fainted that he’d invited this houri home to meet his mother but I swore up and down I’d wear a bra to SLEEP IN. In the SHOWER. EVERYWHERE. This seemed to calm him down somewhat but he refused to fast-dance to Barbara Ann (one of my all-time favorites.) What a fogey. Spent most of my time at his house with his mother whose head – let me say this in the nicest way I can – is filed with whipped green jello. The very first night she showed me a bracelet made of her own gallstones I thought Beales would collapse. I was nice about it and offered up the cyst on my head. The next day Bill and his father went somewhere and his mother and I arranged flowers all day. I was on my Absolute Best Behavior (I told Beales I was wearing two bras.) My room had only a shower! I was so disappointed that I couldn’t have a bath, but Beales calls baths “floating in your own slime.” He’s so glad we’re too modern for that. I say it bodes ill having a boyfriend who doesn’t understand total immersion. Went to The Lion in Winter on Broadway in the eve – I loved it, Beales hated it. Fell asleep in the car on the way home so I wouldn’t molest him. Honestly we are so cold to each other I think his parents are amazed we’re still together. They drove us back to school stopping by his married sister’s house – she breast-fed her baby right in front of us. Ha ha! When I complained about our empty weekend (we didn’t even take walks like we do at school) he said deprivation is the only thing keeping me interested. Honestly it was a relief to get back to school and sink in the morass. Wed May 4 – 66 Last night I had an out-of-body experience! I was leaning out the window thinking of nothing but the beautiful soft spring night when the electrical connections between living things that you can hardly feel during the day became so obviously savage and real that the clouds became a giant that sucked me up overhead and rolled me over the top, then back down again till my feet dragged in the wet leaves, then over the top another time. When I was back with my elbows on the stone windowsill it felt as real as if I’d really done it! Amazing! Now I think I understand the exalted crazy mood that makes people fall out of their own windows (we’ve had two so far this year). Today Beales and I had another meaningless fight. He is so childish I’m tired of humoring his bad moods. He was accepted at every college he applied to – all Ivy League of course – but of course he’s going to Harvard. I tried complimenting him and he said, “Shut up, you don’t know anything about it!” Later that night he wanted to make out but I insisted on watching The Man From Uncle. Who’s deprived now? He can’t see that life’s beauty lies in its IMPERFECTIONS. He thinks WAY too much about “education” which can be a soul murderer in my experience. I believe there’s “good education” out there I just haven’t run into any. Whenever I try to explain my philosophy to him he tells me I’m advocating chaos. He won’t listen that things work themselves out NATURALLY. The weirdest thing about Beales is that he is MISERABLE ALL THE TIME and he does absolutely NOTHING to fix matters! It’s not his fault entirely. Happiness has a bad name at this school. They are very stern about it. If you are having a good time CLEARLY you are doing something wrong. I tried to explain to my father that this school’s definition of “progressive” is that we should be depressed and anxious all the time. (The best students are the most depressed.) My father says they want you to understand the issues so of course you’re depressed. But I don’t buy it. And if I ever get out of this place I’ll prove it. Thurs Mar 17, 66
“Lights out!” screams the proctor and for once I might take her advice. I have been imagining what would happen if earth gets destroyed and nothing was left but this diary and sixty eight million years from now the glubules find it floating in outer space. “’Ere, ere, wot’s this?” asks First Glubule rhythmically beating his cilia against the night air. “Dunno” says Second Glubule. (In Glubulian.) He snags it with a projection hook and slams it into the Translatron. Should it bother me tonight that they might get The Wrong Idea? Aynsley and I are planning a new Johnny Raid*. I like Aynsley. She is very southern but we understand each other. She certainly appreciates my sense of humor. (*Johnny Raid: At a Prearranged Signal Glubule One rushes into the hall shouting “Johnny Raid!” whereupon we all rush to the Tower and flush the toilets like mad. While teachers swoon. Smelling salts all around.) Dear Glubulians: don’t get the idea that I am typical. I am not. Fri. Mar 18, 66 – Spring Prom Stretched out on bed “sleepy golden eyes wild with birds.” One half hour to transform self into Most Beautiful Girl Beales has Ever Seen. It won’t be easy since he is very picky. Criticizing in particular: • Bras • Breasts (see above) • Makeup • Faces (see above) • Hair • Stockings • Fashion • Jewelry • High heels • Femininity Doesn’t give a girl much leeway. I’ve found it best to just ignore him. I may love Beales but I am not blind to his defects. Fortunately most of his peculiarities merely annoy me but some make me foam with rage. Fortunately the back of his neck makes up for almost everything. (How I love to cover it with kisses.) It’s a tense struggle. I’ve taken my shower and am waiting for the blood to dry from razor nicks (alas I am wearing a short dress. Very short. Beales’ turn to foam – pleasantly, one hopes. Fat chance. Much more likely that I will be treated to a Lecture on The Scarlet Letter. He and Nathaniel feel everyone should be veiled at all times. I have taken to calling him My Arab. Occasionally Beales can laugh at himself, but sometimes not.) I should have known better than to borrow Fleur’s razor – this must be the one she uses on her beard. (Or pubes.) Admiring my dress, which hangs from the top of the closet door. Very Pushkin it has a green velvet overskirt, a light green chiffon underskirt and puffed sleeves. God I adore it. Everything goes with green (flowers) so I told him to surprise me. (I’m afraid I will get green-dyed carnations. That will NOT be a surprise. (I know I will shock him – got him an orchid for his boutonniere. Oh he will foam!) All these spoiled guys complain endlessly about the “expense” of a dance! Since Beales’ favorite reading is along the lines of Growing Up Absurd and Generation of Vipers I can expect to be treated to disquisitions on Women Are the Reason Men Are Fools (they wouldn’t let us have that excuse) instead of compliments on my beauty and elegance. Very dull and not like the NY Times Leisure section at all. Classes this AM were so silly I wonder why they bother. We were running and screaming and throwing sponges throughout Biology. (Vacation fever?) Poor Mr. Nichols invited us to class at his house – they have a hovel littered with broken tricycles on the furthest edges of the grounds. I had been curious to see it but it is very scary. His wife wears bobby sox, has deep circles underneath her eyes and they have hemorrhoid medicine (did I spell that right?) in the medicine cabinet. Remind me never to get married. Or be a teacher. The food was good although Mrs. Nichols thinks growing teenagers need only one sandwich apiece (dream on.) Well, time to pull out the curlers and let ‘er rip. I must say I am looking forward to it. It’s at the Cabin in the Woods, which is the perfect place for a dance, and they will have a live band. (Ted Jones says I have more fun than people who actually like this place.) |
Alysse Aallyn
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