2:35 AM 2 Jan 69 - Pewter Hill
Need someone to love me to sleep at night or I don’t sleep. Went to see Wild Strawberries with Devon, when we came back we were locked out. Sat in the car waiting for Genevieve to come home. Talked and talked about everything. He is anti-drug and pro physical culture. I tell him I would take up acting if I could get over my stage fright (cold turkey shyness cure) and he talks about fear of failure in sports. (He teaches tennis too.) Everyone has it at some point or other. I told him he gave me the courage to sign up for modern dance. God knows what idiocies I uttered. I remember telling him Wallace Stevens could not decide which was more beautiful – the blackbird’s song or the silence after – he reacted to this like Holy Writ. I gawped at his magnificent profile and wished so hard he would kiss me. I know I can’t kiss him first – he is exactly like that wildcat I adopted in Morocco – he had to think that everything was his own idea. He never kissed me. Take that, ego. I was looking especially beautiful, too. (He told me I am the most beautiful girl he’s ever seen. “Bone structure is the most important part of your face”. Because he’s an artist, too…) Reading Colette’s Vagabond and wondering if I could make a living as a professional letter writer I like writing letters so much. Or a diarist! 5 Jan 69 Wonder if my difficult Dad has made me afraid of older men. Whenever one displays interest (Mr. Carnahan) I start acting like a baby. Devon flatters me to DEATH. (Told me without a doubt I am the most beautiful person he’s ever SEEN.) People just don’t give enough so they do, they dazzle. I guess it’s the “never give anything for nothing” mentality that’s ruining modern relationships. (See “Le Viol” with Bibi Andersson.) 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.
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12:30 PM Flight Los Angeles to Denver Dec 6 1968
Horrible birthday in Tijuana with Uncle Clive at the Caesar’s Hotel (chef claims to have invented the Caesar salad ) – I had oysters Rockefeller and I was all I could do to keep his hands off me (right in front of his wife!!) He just wants to “pet” and thinks I should give in because my dinner & hotel bill so expensive. Ugh. I should burn these damn diaries – it’s just one awful thing after another! Forward, as Molesworth used to say, Into the Past. It’’ my rabbit hole. Reading Marcette Chute’s Shakespeare of London. Everyone should read this book. History doesn’t change human nature nearly as much as we suppose. Pastors are worried that the people are exposed to violence and sin, parents want children brought up honest & thrifty, politicians run for office to advance their wives’ status – in fact, everyone has a lawsuit pending and all are intent on moving up a class! Sound familiar? Plus ça change… Midnight – Mon – 15 Dec 68 – Pewter Hill Writing in purple pen so I can SEE. Toss called tonight concerned about lack of letters. But what is there to say? He pulled away first. I no longer have boundless trust that he will understand anything I say. If he got me alone in the dark that would be another thing entirely. No loss of honesty there. Now I face a lifetime of him bringing ME up with every significant girlfriend he ever has. “I had this horrible experience with this one girl…” The whole Freudian thing while legions of faceless girls cluck sympathetically over mutilated Alysse. I am murderously pissed at him for telling Beales. His story is we lost our “divinities” together. Hallelujah, brother. Sign up at the Phila College of Dance. They will take anybody. They pair me with the sole male who is the other Bad Dancer. (Because we are both tall?) But he can do lifts! And I can stay still and am too nearsighted to see the floor! So we are made for each other! Thinking of turning Tis Pity She’s a Whore into a dance routine for me and Spike while Genevieve pressures me about my mess of a “career”. I wish I had faith that any college I went to would actually enhance my learning as opposed to simply dumping more stuff on me I have to overcome. So far everything I am is the product of The Plumly Resistance. Enfants de la patrie, les jours de gloire est arrivee, baby. “Do all the directors in Hollywood long to become respectable in the eyes of their high school English teachers and remake THE LIFE OF EMILE ZOLA? Don’t they remember what a drag it was?” How I love Pauline Kael. (New Yorkr Dec 21 – 68) 2:10 AM Mon Dec 23, 1968 – Skiing Pinkham Notch I thrash about – prisoner of my restless brain (and body). Devon is too beautiful; as beautiful as a god. I stare at him openmouthed while he lectures me on (1) how not to ski and (2) finding God among the silent pines on the snowy slopes. Witness! He is unspeakably gorgeous with long blonde hair, tall, hard bodied but tender and sensitive as a girl. He has a trick of staring deeply into my eyes that makes me shiver uncontrollably until my teeth chatter. He took away my ski poles to make me a better skier – it didn’t work. I slam into every object. But who cares? If I lose consciousness he will carry me. Mine eyes dazzle. Avril says Toss called Pewter Hill wondering where I am. Needs an address to send his “Dear Jane” letter to. Finishing Nancy Cunard, Brave Poet Indomitable Rebel. Not much of a poet but a lot of a rebel. It’s just a pleasure to live the years of Black Mischief and Decline and Fall (not Pinfold, which declined and fell. I think Waugh’s liking for the military is the weirdest thing about him. Weirder than Catholicism.) Nothing wrong with me that a good sex life would not cure. Mom & Dad invite Devon for New Year’s Eve. Pewter Hill - Tues. Aug 6, 1968
Turns out this does NOT happen to everyone. Is it a curse put on me by Aiken, I wonder? Toss arrived in the car of his friend from across the street and drove me to the hospital where they determined I needed three stitches – they needed “family permission” since I was under age so I had Toss call Aunt Frederica who showed up and lectured everybody. She told me Toss is certain to turn gay now and it’s all my fault. Fortunately they knocked me out (after they shaved me.) Mom and Dad came home early into a BLOODY HOUSE and found a pair of Toss’s underpants on the floor with his phone number in them and CALLED HIS HOUSE. Of course he admitted everything so it was quite a crowd scene when I woke up at the hospital. They gave me a rubber pillow to sit on. Toss’s parents are not taking it well (they thought he must be on drugs to have sex with me.) They are sending him to Ohio to stay with his great uncle before he starts college. Disgrace all around. Mom very angry that people have sex without intending to marry and unforgiving that I chose to hallucinate in the bathtub instead of cleaning the house. Dad made things worse by describing their wedding night (she kept ordering more food to keep from having to go to the hotel room! She was – direct quote ”very uncomfortable”. ) But no hospital got involved! My stitches pull and my growing hairs prickle. Misery instead of the romance I pictured, Buoyed by Toss’ loving letters. We plan to get together at Toss’ college if its possible but it might not be – his parents chose the farthest place they could get that isn’t in Alaska. First Day of Winter 1968 – Bainbridge Island, Washington Rereading my Morocco diaries. I was eating a chocolate bar while writing them and years later, the exact taste of that chocolate comes back to me, sharply sweet and slightly dusty. A fresh small coming off the sound of wet leaves & seagulls… an ache in my head maybe from swimming, maybe from thinking too much…I wasn’t swimming exactly, but digging clams that come out only in the nighttime you get very wet. Art is “the reason why” that isn’t reason at all. “The fine artist is concerned with posing his own problems and answering his own questions in an individualized manner…you must be able to work independently without regard for time, external encouragements or immediate economic reward. Insight and technical qualities are not enough. Ultimately your stature as an artist depends on your quality as a human being” – Your Career In Art, Phila College of Art. I say Amen, brother. And next I say, is this slogan too long to have engraved on a medic alert bracelet? Falling in love with Colette (Mes Apprentissages) – envying her courage. Some asshole said about her, “she told too much!” Think on that, ye artists, and despair…What’s the French for asshole? Cul-something. I’m going to marry…a masseur. My body needs a pounding, I am tight all over. Contretemps with Toss – it did not go well. He warned me I would “get tired of him”, instead I showed up at his college in my short red coat with matched set of monogrammed luggage. Frenzied removal of photos & gift cards from other girls from his walls while his roommate and I take roommate’s pet wolf for a walk. I am the keeper of the watch The proper jailer of my mind To splinter up the rainbow moods That turn and slow my thrifty will… Or should it be “thriftless will?” From my upcoming collection: Poetry that Goes Nowhere. Having to pose as demure when I’m eternally voracious. Toss disappointing as he always is these days, pushing me aside the way his parents want him to. What if he runs for office someday, his mother asks, and I come tumbling out of his closet? Parents set me up on revolting date with Andre Forsythe, a sweet loving ROTC college senior who bores me to death. I literally have to hold my eyes open with my fingers whenever I take to him. Fortunately he is a film buff and we went to see The Two of Us which I’d heard was worth it. (It wasn’t. Turns out I don’t like Claude Berri. Hideous crap. Maybe I should become a film critic.) Then we had to stop by his friend’s apt for ID cards because he says Washington is very strict. Ho hum. I’ve got to rush home to Phila and find somebody male who “vibes” me back. Learning Grushenka’s speech from Dostoevsky’s Brothers Karamazov. Think it makes a good audition piece. 8:00 AM Iceland time 9:00 AM Luxembourg time – 4:00 AM New York Time – aboard Loftleidir rattling over Atlantic – Tues 23 July 68
Misery is an ill-designed aircraft. Though it beats Iberian, there is still no position in which sleep is possible. The seats are carefully placed against the windows so you can’t look out – the current of breathable air is not strong enough, you have to be a one-legged hunchback to use the johns, which can only be closed from the outside. It’s a riot. They claim they haven’t “lost a plane” in 15 years. Nothing said about Poor Us. Bought a sink at the Gare – and I really transformed myself. This is now the shortest garment I’ve ever owned but what the hell. Beales would have had cardiac arrest (and Miss Wormrest is whirling in her Living Grave.) Took Sominex but I was just pursued by confusing dreams in which Toss turned into Albert Rogers for whom I feel no passion. They woke me up to give me dinner. We landed in Iceland 4:00 AM Lux time and wandered around the airport like Lost Souls. I wanted a floor-length white sheepskin dress but alas do not have the ready cash. C’est la vie. StormFall Farm – Berkshires - 1:00 AM -28 July 1968 Toss loves Alysse, Alysse loves Toss. Toss is both handsome & beautiful. Everything suddenly seems so simple. I feel happy and complete when I am with him. Who else can I say this about. Unfortunately he has Parents. They seem determined to keep us apart. Why do people do that? His mother takes it for granted that I’m on a quest to Ruin His Life. Toss spends all his time taking pictures for his portfolio (I’m so proud of him) and his father’s painting landscapes at the dam. I spend all my time with his Mom being subjected to Culinary Abuse. This is not the way I pictured things. You should have seen me buying Emko foam. Took it home, unwrapped it and discovered it was a “refill”. A refill! Now they tell me! Plus the instructions are so unclear. Has to be reapplied every time there’s “physical contact”. What I need to know is, when does it wear off? Because there’s LOTS and LOTS of physical contact (Bless Toss’ heart.) We’d be roiling in foam if it was up to these people. Couldn’t find an applicator anywhere. Do you have to ask for them? It’s all so weird. Finally bought Perceptin, which has an applicator and at least refers to sexual intercourse. The completed kind, I’m guessing. They didn’t act like they’re talking to teenagers, which is a problem. Pewter Hill – Wed 31 July 1968 – 8:30 AM God I feel rotten. Sitting in bed surrounded by miles of bloody sheets. I guess I’m not a virgin anymore, but nobody climaxed – in fact I screamed it hurt so bad. I tried not to. He kissed and kissed my face and said, “Just lie still.” I think that’s the advice Queen Victoria used to give. When he started again it was just as bad – like I was having a hole torn in me. (Deep inside). He stopped immediately and I just lay in his arms. He was very sweet but now there’s all this blood. “Why does It have to be this way?” I grumped. “Women are faultily constructed.” “Guaranteed sterile till seal is broken,” said Toss. At six-thirty AM he began to dress – he had to sneak back home so his parents wouldn’t know he was out all night. I begged him not to go – he promised to come back. He stood there so handsome in his yellow shirt with his gorgeous face – went down to start the tea. I climbed into the bath but the water got all pink. Unfortunately they’ve turned off the hot water but I thought cold water might be better anyway – no dice. It doesn’t seem to be stopping. I mean, there’s only so much blood in the whole human body. It has to stop at some point. Put on three pairs of underpants, a towel and a white fuzzy robe and looked the opposite of desirable, I can assure you. Blood literally poured down my legs and hunks of liver fell out. How is this even possible? He promised to borrow a car from the neighbor and come back for me (he still doesn’t have his license.) Tampax doesn’t do a thing. I think we’re going to have to throw these sheets away. It can’t be this way for everybody. Had such a good day yesterday. Was up till 4:00 am cleaning my room, cataloguing my writings, putting up posters and unpacking my trunk. Called Genevieve to wish her happy anniversary a week late. T. phoned, saying he’d come for “midnight supper”. We had hamburgers, wrestled and got very excited. I said I was ready if he was ready but things didn’t go well. The Perceptin was the easy part. Our plan was to go to Maine but with my parents coming home this weekend we’re going to have to clean this place as soon as I recover. Trying to focus on the good memories – me and Toss lying in the purple Massachusetts thyme, or sharing a pint of ice cream on a crowded commuter train. Licking each other’s hands and faces. Might try to boil water and have a real bath. |
Alysse Aallyn
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