Plush Palace – 6:45 PM Fri 21 Apr 78
Wonderful walk along Powder Mill Road thinking about the mystique of money. I eternally fight a rearguard action. M & D call at noon – Genevieve had little girl – Belinda. Avril delivers my new lens – bounce notice in mail – I tear my hair in a frenzy. I get to dance 2 sets for GiGi - $200 – she tells me about her night of sin with Louie. And she wants another one. Life’s a soap opera. Management says there’s going to be a drug raid with dressing room search warrant. Panic among the girls – but not me. Check out the customers with a more intense interest. Are they here? Everyone planning to leave town except me. I offer to work tomorrow night. Reading an interesting study of Iris Murdoch novels – the Disciplined Heart. Too much coffee – I’m switching to tomato juice. Sat night – 22 Apr 78 8:30 PM My whole body hurts from dancing 5 nights in a row. It’s not good for tips, either. Poor May Sarton is trying to exorcise Eliz Bowen. Good luck with that! Elizabeth so contemptuous of “schoolgirl crushes”! Real love in EB’s world seems strangely synonymous with corruption & loss. Old fashioned view and more male really – “ejaculate” and die. We women get children, poems & novels out of it. A. stood up for dinner by Shoulders. Uh oh. Beginning of the end. Apparently saying “yes” is fatally unsexy. She & I will be eating her pot roast tomorrow – fine with me. Fatima came down early but Lori refused to go up, pointing to her watch! Much excitement & hissing. 7:45 PM – Mon. 24 Apr 78 Good Gift scene – Miss Pruitt vs. Viv. Now I need a boathouse picnic. Every time you get to the mountaintop there’s just more mountain. Then you’re supposed to “prune” at the end – if you have any energy left. Trying to read A Literature of Their Own but Showalter too hard on poor old Woolf. Women have always owned literature, it’s the publishers, editors and critics we apparently can’t have. 60,000 words on Gift tells me it’s time to celebrate. No novel could EVER be this hard again. I demand a party. Strange letter from Devon – he is involved with some “Jewish woman” and it isn’t going well. She seemed “inaccessibly foreign” and he is “losing faith” in his “ability to pick a friend.” Is this a plea for help? He specifically asked where I would be this summer. Said he loved me. Took his glamour pic out of the bin where it has lain and put it up, then went out with A and bought a bikini. She and Shoulders are so mired in excuses, lies and expectations no new relationship seems possible. Intensive sunbathing season starts tomorrow. 1PM Thu May 4 -78 Comparing lovers. “It’s Devon in the stretch with Jervaze winded by the wayside”. Finished Gift last week. Letting it “perk”. It feels already “swallowed up” by the past. A read it, disappointed by the ending. Wants murder at the very least. But is that real life? I think I agree with her that it should be. People should kill themselves when you are done with them. Sadly they’re all whimper and no bang. How to fix? When I’m not engaged on some important work my “real life” ceases. Car to its “first service” Mon – involved ferrying each other around and jockeying with one car. Why don’t M & D appreciate this? It’s like they want us to be ashamed of needing each other to survive. Mom staying in NYC with the new baby but then coming here Sat. to inspect our dissolute lives. Uh oh. I won’t have any trouble getting time off but I hate to. Can’t work though when she is here. Living two weeks off one paycheck can be done. But I will feel obligated to battle Mom for the check. Finished Glendinning’s Bowen. A life rich and strange but hardly enviable. I’m being pestered by old “college friend” but I am officially “not home”. She sneaks around the house, sniffing. Sat. 6 May 78 – 1:30 PM Cleaned & waxed kitchen and bathroom floors, sitting with newly creamed hands and cup of coffee in recliner. Muse time. Emerge blinking like a ground hog into a new and spring-like world. A year ago I was a rat in a cage. Critical never to let the “merchants of neurosis” trick me into limiting myself. Tues. 9 May Plush Palace – 9:15 PM Mom spent the last two nights at my place – sleeping in my bed since guest room has no bed. Me on sofa – doesn’t matter since I can’t sleep anyway when she’s around. Up at 7 to make breakfast get Mom to airport for 10 o’clock plane thank God. A. came over with blueberry muffins and gazpacho to discuss the visit. Everything Mom said felt like an attack. (She did give me $100 but I spent – and lost – more than that on her visit.) Avril says the island has been worse for Mom because she’s never confronted with a life that would contradict her narrow-minded theories, so its all, “Why can’t people get smart and live exactly the way I do?” She tries to make her personal tastes “emotional law” – and if you don’t agree with her – or God forbid, want to explore something different you’re “the sick one”. Rough stuff. We took her to our favorite Ellicott City restaurant – she wanted Avril to “explain” Mason and me to “explain” my clothes. She said my clothes trigger “weirdos” following us – it was completely in her imagination! She cries. No one decent will “have” me! I say, what if I don’t want to be “had”? I’d ask her about her life but she isn’t honest – she doesn’t know Dad has already told us that her ideology is untrue. She insists when you find Mr. Right everything’s peachy, but Dad says she was uncomfortable and unwilling about sex at first - didn’t care for it. They had to “work hard”. I said we have more experience of pain than Mom ever had – A says she “refuses to learn.” Creepy. Turns what pain she does have back on others somehow. Can’t wait to resume my privacy and my routine, reading book about Forster (The Cave & The Mountain) in my own bed. I think realizing your mother’s limitations is part of maturity, and I’ve been slow because I’m unwilling to adopt my sister’s methods – “Don’t give her anything – tell her what she wants to hear.” I thought better of her than that but I struck out. Since their definition of success is so narrow, I don’t see how I can ever satisfy them.
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11:45 PM – Thurs 13 Apr 78
Safe & warm in my gilt-canopied bed, happy in spite of my cold. A & I got “El Diablo” inspected today - $70 – But at least she can take it to the MVA tomorrow and have it put in her name. That great feeling of “starting out fresh”. In spite of dribbles & wheezes, blissful dog walk followed by deep-dish pizza & wine at Armand’s. No painful memories. Cherry blossoms are out. Saw Coming Home with Jon Voigt & Jane Fonda. Good, if somewhat earnest. Bruce Dern acted like he was in a different movie. Rough part deserves a hero’s commendation. I stare at the casually interdependent couples – it’s been a year since I could lay a hand on another’s thigh with that proprietary air. Poor A dissolved in tears towards the end – too reminiscent of the “endless pain” of vets like Bruce and Mason. I’d be more sympathetic if they didn’t take it out on others. What they learned apparently is how to “stage a war”. The people we love inflict the worst damage. A’s at the stage where she’s still haunted by Mason but feels it’s “boring” to talk about him so she bottles it up. I tell her get a diary. Hope to finish Powell’s Agents & Patients tonight – but it is a little dull. Plush Palace –Fri 14 Apr 78 – 3:50 PM Only 3 more sets, with 4 dancers. Still, made enough tips for groceries. Buy wild birdseed for the birds cavorting outside my desk’s bay window. Daringly went on without stockings – such a savings if we didn’t have to buy them but Eddie told me No Cigar. Too bad – they’re hot in summer. Alvera says Yvonne’s back at Mother Joe’s. I thought she wouldn’t be able to eat enough shit to stay in her music clerk job. We goddesses spoiled by our pedestal. Called A in the afternoon to see how she was doing – Shoulders was there flexing his muscles at her and she is over the moon. Trying to be glad for her but in spite of his obvious beauty I’m afraid he is a bit of a shit. (See testimony past burnees plus eviction notices.) I feel I must disappear deeper into solitude and see what’s down there. Gift (new version of Courtney) coming along interestingly but slowly. I’m afraid it has no plot other than my own life, when what it needs is a couple of murders. (Same thing my life has always required.) Tried to read Phyllis Bottome but she’s a fatal cross between a didact and a pleaser; sort of like a barky little dog. Most unpleasant. And that casual anti-Semitism pretty shocking. Plush Palace – Sat 5:50 PM 15 Apr 78 Halfway through novel – can’t figure out if I’m satisfied or not. All my discoveries so agonizingly slow. Can’t afford fuckups – then I’ll have to go through it all AGAIN. Slept late, breakfast at A’s. We did laundry together, then played gin. I was the first one here thank God (means I’m the first to leave). Got my schedule – 4 nights in a row, 2 days off. Good. Congratulate myself on my intellectual freedom as I wrap black lace around my throat, recalling all the put-downs suffered as the “architect’s helpmeet”. Reread Alvarez’ description of Plath’s suicide – I don’t agree her death was some “by-product.” Her mother raised her to be murdered by other people – Nazis or husbands. There had to be a “bloodletting” – Mrs. Plath’s ulcer – Sylvia’s “suicides”. If you don’t “accept” martyrdom someone will have to die in your place. Kid yourself it’s” freedom” if you choose time & place. It bothers me terribly that they shared a bedroom during Sylvia’s formative years. Death would seem inevitable just to get some privacy & distance. Poor Sylvia offered those magnificent poems to Alvarez and he backed away terrified because Art is terrifying. $30 for lost contact that came out when a necklace scraped my eyeball while I was hanging upside down. Teach me to wear contacts onstage. Who needs to see the audience anyway? 7:15 PM Sun 16 Apr 78 Spent the day in bed eating oranges, coffee, peanut butter. A’s spending the night at Shoulders’ new place – then tomorrow we’re going to the new Cassavetes film and I’m excited. Jervaze in for last set to invite me to his going away party. I slept nine hours. Horrifying Who Made the Lamb – author really lost control of this one but I bet she would say she was just “reporting”. Books do Furnish a Room much better than Powell’s previous – has a sense of direction. “Trapnel himself always insisted that a novel is what its writer is”. I would agree. Style follows taste, I think. Realize Dad and I don’t mean the same thing by the word “intellectual”. He means a person who knows specific things, (education) I mean a person who thinks a certain way (style). Twain never meet. I am not respectful of an artificially acquired patina of “points of view”. Wrote the infirmary scene – just what I wanted to say. Maybe I need to give up sex and even male companionship – just can’t afford them. 11:30 AM Friday, 24 March 78
Staggering down for my first cup of coffee when I heard Harvey’s voice in the kitchen. Thank God I heard it in time – if he had seen me in my baby doll nighty I guess he would have considered himself justified in pinning me immediately to the floor. He brought me a hibiscus flower as a peace offering. A more significant peace offering came from Mom and Dad who gave us each 100 more shares of stock. I tried to refuse it – they insisted. I warned them I’ll only sell it. Maybe I’ll be able to buy a new car when I get back. I could use it. Spent last night trying to read Welty’s Bride of Innisfallen, couldn’t get my mind around it. Read Faithful Are the Wounds instead. Very like a stage play – which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Powder Mill Road – home – 8:30 PM Sun 26 March 78 Can’t describe the ecstasy of being in my own place. On the island I am hideous – here I am beautiful. The loss of confidence is so severe as to actually induce delusions. Now that I am back I am ready to tackle my existence brilliantly. As always. We got in last night in the pouring rain – 11:30 PM – A had coffee and left. I read a soppy love story and slept in my Own Bed. Today we did laundry, went to see a bad movie – actors working madly away to no effect. Tomorrow I get mail – hope there’s lots of it. Did get a beautiful poem out of the island – Peacock Pavement: The Poet on her walk - submit to Denver Quarterly – who has been very polite about me lately. They’ve shown an interest in my stuff though nothing has ever been exactly “right. Plush Palace – Mon night 27 Mar 78 Am I glad to be back. Really missed the old place. Walked in and there was Jervaze, big as life. He was quite plastered but acted very pleased to see me. I feel he has turned a definite corner. He could have been somebody, could have made choices, but he seems to have decided to live in an ever deepening blur. I am well out of it. I asked him what happened to my ring. He promised to look for it. He has a new plan of course. His brother is trying to talk him into returning to school. So he’ll talk that to death for a while first one way then the other way till his kidneys and his liver and his brain go. Then it won’t matter any more. But I have to get a picture of him now while he still looks good so I can show my grandchildren. He was dressed all in white like an angel and is letting his silver gilt hair grow long. I can hear it now: “You dated Wild Bill Hickock?” Yes kids. And it was really wild. Called my agent and demanded to know how much I am actually going to get from HBJ. The answer is $1993, so it’s a good thing I got that stock which I sold today. April 5 I pick up my new car – a Fiat. (A takes the Gremlin.) Money in the bank – need to settle in for a long writing session. Trying to concentrate on my book – Bowen’s The Last September – but it just feels too distant from my own life. I feel like I’m slowly surfacing, like a corpse that has been in the water for three days. Last night I finished Anne Tyler’s Searching for Caleb. Her most beautiful novel in my estimation. Today A and I bought plants, put money down on car. I’m exhausted and out of love with my own life – don’t understand why I personally need to do everything backwards. 4:30 PM Fri 31 Mar 78 Barrage of criticism from Mom and Dad that I spent stock money on car. How do they expect us to live in two different places and have one car? Doesn’t make sense. A has car today for her eye appt – will pick me up in 45 mins. I am struggling with Bowen’s The Little Girls. She uses writing for disguise. Last night A and I went to dinner at an Italian restaurant – she had the clams, I had the shrimp, we split a bottle of wine. Then we went to see what A described as “one concentration camp film too many.” I bought tickets to Bonnie Raitt concert – Mom and Dad suggested I “look up” their friends’ son Peter Pauley. I may invite him, I do remember him as cool and handsome. But brunette. Oh well, can’t have everything. Got check from agent – less her percentage – which I forgot to calculate. So I hope I get paid enough Sat to have money for car. My future emerges through a glass darkly – don’t know yet whether I like it or not. 2:50 PM Sat April 1, 1978 - Starlight Working a double. My latest realization is: I can never have enough money. Curse you, Marc Kramer for suggesting I invest in real estate. In spite of this I’ve decided not to take on doubles unless I’m in a jam (as I am over this car.) Interesting new dancer – big hips and no boobs but a wonderful attitude. Her laugh can be heard by fishing boats on the distant Chesapeake. Alvera. She works in a lawyer’s office during the day. I’m trying to imagine her in her suit typing briefs. The Little Girls is Bowen’s worst written book. She’s not a narrative writer but a prose poet – always falls down over narrative. Plus I feel a loss of joy in her art – maybe because she “had” to write it? This is really a book about despair – which To The North also was – but one book was good and the other isn’t. I think writing is a lot like cooking – some ideas can’t be rescued through editing – they just get worse and worse. 10:30 PM Tender is not the night thank God – three more sets and it will all be over. The next one will be the worst – the last two I won’t even notice. I called A – she’s despondent. Feeling chained to the apt I’m sure. I agreed we’d see An Unmarried Woman tomorrow – go out and have some fun. Mon after her classes we’ll watch The Oscars at my place. Bought 3 costumes from Kerry that I can ill afford – but they were a steal. Sent Harvey the Brownmiller book. There’s no excuse for such ignorance. Plush Palace – 8:50 PM – Thurs night 6 April 78 So ends one of the happiest days of my life. Woke this AM two minutes before clock radio – breakfast in bed reading – good work at typewriter. Long walk with dogs – came back to find Green’s Mag took my whole “suicide” series. A showed up helped me play with my car – first and second tough to get into and out of until the salesman professionally broke its little hymen. Seems all right now. Book going well. Most of the time I feel I have the ideal existence – plenty of sleep, plenty of exercise, plenty of time to write, plenty of privacy. Paradise. J called. He is really going to Alabama this time. Said he loved me, thereby proving my point that the less of a relationship we are having the more important it is to him. If we never see each other again, I bet he will remember me as the perfect girlfriend. All future women in his life will curse my name. Good letter from Mom and Dad apologizing for their explosion about car. Part of the problem dealing with them is they try to preserve a “united front” which means they have to frantically whisper and negotiate behind the scenes, then speak awkwardly together like an ill-rehearsed Greek chorus. I can kind of speculate about who really thinks what – not that I want to. A and I liked Unmarried Woman - much better than Goodbye Girl. I tried Peter all day – no answer. Reading Storm Jameson’s Journey From the North – it’s like watching a slo-mo car accident the way she beats up on herself. Why this sense that honesty requires one must utterly disown all one’s earlier versions? CS Forrester did exactly the same thing in Long Before 40 – will I feel compelled to do the same some day about this life I am leading now? Foolishness is youth’s necessary clothing methinks. Think I will dump this book without finishing. Try Angus Wilson’s The Middle Age of Mrs. Eliot. 9:25 PM – Plush Palace – Sat night 8 April 78 Beautiful day. Off to Columbia, testing my new car. A & I had lunch at Clyde’s – talked about what fun it would be if we each had a full time man – and they liked each other. We could double date. Feels impossible. Walked around lake – bought baby clothes for Genevieve. Home, walked dogs, then to work. Boring evening. Few unenthusiastic customers. GiGi brought in a bottle of champagne – I broke my rule and had some out of sheer boredom. A father in with his 2 ½ yr old daughter – sent her up to the stage with a tip for me. Depressing fact #2 – tried to read a short story about rape in Fiction called The Intruder – it was awful – turned me off the whole magazine. Angus Wilson’s Middle Age merely stupid. Will I have a go at No Laughing Matter? Still no Peter and no explanation. If he is away on vacation his parents don’t know about it. Feels suddenly difficult to be independent and alone. 10:10 Pm – Sunday night 9 April 78 A met a guy she likes in one of her classes who likes her. Fingers crossed. As a result I spent Saturday alone, which I don’t mind. It would be OK with me if every day were the same, wake at 10, write till 4, then off to work. On Sun we played in Adelphi Mill Park – swam in the falls – wonderful picnic of brie and cherries – played with dogs. Phoned Peter – a girl answered! He came on very brisk and businesslike – had been in Venezuela. I asked if she was “the housekeeper” – he hurried to get off phone – said he would drop by club. Always wanted to see me perform. I told him my schedule. I figure if he and she are seriously involved so that I shouldn’t move forward – he’ll tell me. Chloe’s friend Dennis called and tried to make me feel guilty enough to go out with him. Little does he know how far past that “Since I can’t think of an excuse you’ll accept I guess I’ll just be forced to go out with you” stage I am. He turned hostile – said I’d “led him on”. I refused to rise to this, portraying self as a naturally friendly but also naturally private person. I guess I’ll have more of this stuff with J gone. He was sort of protection. Everyone wants someone who doesn’t want them. Highly entertaining if one were bored enough. I am not. Interesting conversation with A where we discussed the “courting rules” we’d learned. Pretty grim – we’ve had to ditch them completely. Got into another one of our “Is Satisfaction Possible” marathon debates. I always say it is, she says, what if it’s not. I refuse to consider this option. Mom’s advice to A is loiter around art galleries and art museums to get the right guy. This sounds expensive & time consuming. Plus, I know too many artists to be in love with this idea. They are the worst. I want someone stable. I have to admit my chances of finding someone like that in the job I’m in seem small. But I only need one guy. I’m special – so would he be. A insists things were better in the past – “pre-liberation” but I’m not buying it. Opal’s marriage very instructive on these points. They are both beautiful, can think and have work they love. Why fight and sulk nonstop? Each feels the other does not truly “value them” and fusses for increased respect. Each thinks the other is “holding them back.” So they claim. With any encouragement I think they would jump into a threesome. Non merci. 10:30 PM – Plush Palace – Mon night 10 April 78 Two more sets. I’ll live. Finished study of Mary McCarthy by Doris Grumbach. Much prefer that to actually having to read McCarthy who reminds me of Aldous Huxley – Is it possible to be too contemporary? Trends of modern writing a little too sketchy for me. No book should feel like flipping through a magazine. Sensory overload sans enlightenment. As for Angus Wilson – we are parting forever. I read all but two stories in Such Darling Dodos – back on the shelf he goes. Wonderful day – up before 7, read New York Times, sent out poems – magnificent walk with dogs – explored abandoned house. Haunted by novel – so went back and got six pages – one good new idea. Called publisher – ordered ten more books. Little self-promotion. While working got call from the Plush Palace – would I come in two sets early for Glory, who is sick? Love to. Just feeling bankrupted by the drycleaners. I was justified too because first set got a big tip. ($300)! P called – said he would have loved to go to the Raitt concert with me but had to go to Vermont. He certainly talks differently when his girlfriend/housekeeper/telephone answerer person is not around. He hinted that his love life is impossibly complex and he doesn’t want his parents to know. I’m guessing that she is married. He promised to get in touch when he gets back. I’m in the ladies room because the airconditioning in dressing room not working – it is suffocating in there. Yesterday evening thoroughly enjoyable – steaks wine and hot fudge sundaes at A’s then watched Richard Brooks Happy Ending which really was a bomb. Trying to read Anthony Powell’s Venusberg but feeling nothing yet. Tried Sarton’s Miss Pickthorn – a hash of all her other stuff – very slight. A. not home for past four hours – out on date with Jordan. Can’t wait to hear how it went. 2PM – Shadowe Island Sat Mar 18 – 78
Every time I come back to this beautiful island I wonder why I ever leave. Dogs are in paradise. Mom and Dad relaxed, involved, charming. A all defensive about the “failure” of her life with Mason so I am off the hook – temporarily. I’m reading The House In Paris – restores my high estimation of Bowen. The trouble with this island is that the rest of existence vanishes totally when I am here. I am eating too much but the food is so fabulous it would seem immoral to resist – roast lamb, new potatoes, spinach quiche, sour cream gravy, stuffed mushrooms, strawberry trifle. We stayed up late reading Ruth Rendell’s mystery stories aloud, then I fell asleep and I had the most delicious erotic dream about J – much better than the real thing. Felt what it would be like to be a deep-throated cello vibrating endlessly. Mon Mar 20 7:00 PM Why is it around my parents my self-confidence takes a nosedive? Every fingernail becomes deciduous. I had better call Plush Palace and get put on next week’s schedule. Finished House and began Heat of the Day. My mother asks questions that reveal her to be jealous of all the reading I do. Her delicate hint – she would feel “lazy” doing so much reading because there must be something that she would be neglecting. I tell her I, on the other hand, if I were not reading, would feel guilty. (As well as deprived.) Thus we must differ. The great thing about Eliz B – she writes like no one else. To criticize her would be like saying the plumed flycatcher has a little too much plume. Managed to prevent Mom from inviting “young people” to a “weenie roast on the shore” for me and A. We are here to HIDE. She was very nice about it. Do imagine I could live here. Listening right now to Haydn’s Clock Symphony. Now that would be a great title for a short story about an unattached woman in her late twenties… A and I have wonderful conversations in our twin beds like a pair of teenagers home on holiday from school, listening to the distant waves crash on the dark shore. I realize we could still be feeling like this even when we are a pair of decrepit old maids – which is probably why families like to stay together. You are timeless for each other. She asked me which of my boyfriends had known me best. I think Toss Sheffield – certainly better than my own husband. But this is not a flattering conclusion since he seems to have run wildly in the opposite direction. Wed Mar 22 78 – 4:15 PM Waiting for cocktails, I discover a flaw in the divine Miss E B. She doesn’t like to admit that she is of the same clay as her characters. Those creatures based on the Mosleys she repudiated utterly as if creatures from another planet. I’ve got news for her. Creatures from another planet are not that interesting. Last night was one of the most traumatic family evenings I have ever experienced – I think my eyes are still puffy. I heard we would be having Island People to dinner – he used to be a university president/professor so presumably would be good company – they met because somebody was the bridesmaid of somebody else’s bridesmaid so there is a connection. It started with me wearing a green silk shirt, my denim gauchos and hardly any makeup (yes I wore eyeshadow) and being told by Mom that my “get-up” was “more suitable for a bar.” (All of a sudden she’s an expert on bars.) Harvey and Edna turned out to have “heard of my job” – I gather in some commiseration session on Incredibly Unsatisfactory Children – however they refuse to accept that there is any difference between being an exotic dancer and being a stripper (hello! I don’t strip) and somehow Harvey segued from castigating “exotic dancers who try to feel superior to strippers” to criticisms of “ total sexual freedom” which apparently means that “everybody should jump on everybody.” I tried to dignify this mess by explaining that it is actually the reverse – in the “old days” under the “ancien regime sexuelle” a dancer could expect to be “jumped on” by “anybody” because of her job (like poor old Degas’ ladies) but that actual freedom for women would mean a world in which one could be a barely clothed dancer (I would think anyone would admit nudity is at least an equally valid way of expressing the art of muscle, line and form as heavily costumed artificial approximations) without it becoming some sexual signal that one has “lost caste” and therefore privacy and choice. I recommended Susan Brownmiller’s book to this painfully ignorant male (God knows what he taught – he had never heard of Brownmiller – seems to have her confused with Ti-Grace Atkinson assuming she must write books no self-respecting intellectual would read (maybe he was the type of university president who just brings in wads of cash). He challenged my premise that the ultimate societal freedom would be for unattached females to not to be under the threat of rape every minute. Harvey insisted – with a perfect straight face that women rape men every bit as much as the reverse – “psychologically of course” which he says is just as terrible – and in fact probably even more so since we all know the “physical thing is no big deal” and often does people a “favor”. I must say this does not reflect very well on his wife Edna but she was smiling smugly so I think she may have just been too obtuse to follow any of the arguments. I really could not cope with this free-for-all avalanche of idiocy especially when my parents played their trump card – if bars where women sit in front of a drink and watch barely clothed men cavorting don’t exist, therefore this is an antifeminist exercise and my claim to be a feminist is a sham. I think it was at that point that I burst into tears. Which of course was totally demeaning. I sorely missed Avril’s assistance – she refused to jump in but made peacemaking noises like “you both have a point” (untrue – their “points” are a disgrace). Ugly Harvey apologized – what a monster! but there could be no satisfaction in it for me at that point. Avril went walking with me until they left. Alas, waiting till they were gone did not end the discussion. Mom and Dad pounced on us to drive home their point that the male animal is a violent dangerous creature barely contained by the civilizing influence of the female. (Guess they can’t get behind Harvey’s “female rapist” idea.) Of course they are going to rape any female who lets down her guard for a second and it will all be her fault. (Didn’t R make this case? I’m ashamed to share a world with these people.) Any kind of a sexual display (I guess the beach would certainly qualify) is a declaration of “Jump in boys! It’s free today!” At least they recognized Harvey’s behavior as extreme (“Two drinks and he’s lost” was Dad’s comment.) Basically as long as I work at “this bar” I’m the “lost cause” and if any decent male finds out about it our relationship will be over in a trice. This kind of thing makes me wonder why I bother to visit them. Fortunately I’m leaving soon, but the whole ferry reservation problem means one loses the right to fight irretrievably with one’s hosts on this island. Dad’s big mistake was giving me an example of a good marriage as Lillian Hellman and Dashiell Hammett! Did I blow my top! He probably thought I’d listen to him if he produced a literary example. He wasn’t aware that not only were they not married but Mr. Hammett was married to someone else and cheated on poor Hellman whenever he could manage to stay stiff long enough. (I really didn’t want to “get in” to the alcoholism problem. Lillian tried to make him look like a “mentor” but honestly she was his keeper and bail bondsman.) |
Alysse Aallyn
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