Mon 13 Mar 67
Developed a whole new theory during German class. Possibly my exam suffered (I rushed through it) but what are classes for but to provide intellectual stimulation? I’m thinking Aiken’s too domesticated. Am I mistaking youth for originality? (That I think would be his argument.) That everybody “gets over this” and romance is a function of youth. But history and literature prove that its not. Since, however, I’m “the kid” and he’s the “PhD” I will NEVER win an argument with him. Never! And I am accustomed to winning my arguments! Trying to write a story in which I construct the Perfect Man. Anyone over twenty’s too old. He’s tall and thin and golden and had most of his toes taken off my a lawnmower. Sadly the story races away from me - my heroine isn’t good enough for him – so I’m having her run off with someone else. Not quite halfway though Queen Victoria – Born to Succeed. Ugly period – the women in their heavy clothes look very depressed. Thurs 30 Mar 67 Left a note at Aiken’s he wasn’t there (being satisfied by a glamorous – yet elderly brunette? No – working hard at the library to “gain a place in life”) and took the train to the new Penn St house. (It’s haunted!) The place was all lit up and Avril was playing the piano. The third floor has the most beautiful windows flush with the floor. Sending sunlight across the ancient, uneven boards. Delicious. Daddy not home so off to Bookbinder’s for dinner where I ordered soft shell crab. I got annoyed with Mom’s questions about Aiken so said he was a Mau0Mau with a bad case of cradle cap. She laughed so hard she wept. Our phone not yet installed so I put a jackknife in my pocket and went out to the public booth. Aiken was in – sounded cranky but surprised me by inviting me to a party. I was certain I was going to be dismissed for being too “jejeune”. He seemed completely unimpressed y the risk I’d taken to call him – probably thinking if I got raped it might clear up some of his problems. Borrowing a blue velvet dress from Avril – it so short!! A classic baby doll! But she is a champion blabbermouth and told Mom who absolutely FORBIDS IT. We WILL BUY A DRESS! Uh oh. Madras and whalebone, mark my words. I bought a man’s shirt from the man who sells used clothes at the corner of Chelten & Chew. Pink chiffon with balloony sleeves! Indescribably flattering. Tight through the body. I already have a perfect black velvet skirt. Tues. 4 Apr 67 My hand is shaking because I just left a heavy make-out session with Reed Hambro. I want to write about the awful party but the wonderful evening . I got out of the house without a problem because Mom wasn’t there. I showed Aiken all around the house – I could tell by his eyebrows he was confounded by the mixture of splendeurs et misères. I told him it was temporary and showed him my beautiful third floor where I sleep on a mattress on the floor so I can look out the windows but he was unimpressed. Oriental artifacts everywhere but they are shabby. Still he admitted OI looked beautiful. Horrible university party full of pregnant wives. Didn’t like the way they looked at me – decided to drink coke and say nothing. They seemed so doglike and uncomfortable. But I did get into a long discussion with a Prof Wylie who has a system of “personal anarchy” that sounds a lot like my own. He was drunk but funny. He kept saying “What this party needs is a little audience participation.” But everyone had to be on their best behavior because it was more like work. Strange Danish Oldern house with peek-a-boo architecture – how can you climb stairs – in a dress – that are only slats? When we got back to Penn St my mother was there. She said nothing about my clothes but she really gave poor Aiken the business while I made Earl Grey tea. She is the only person I have ever known who can lower the temperature of a room to freezing in seconds. At least she didn’t ask him his intentions. He behaved very well, just as if she was normal. He got her on the subject of Southeast Asia while I roll my eyes. Finally she had to go upstairs to get Avril to sleep. Avril’s afraid of Phila because of all the stabbing news and who can blame her? So Aiken and I were left alone…on the oriental rug in front of the fire. “I wish I could take you back to my place,” he muttered. “Why don’t we do it right here?” I suggested. To be funny. He said seriously, “Because you might bleed and we need some form of birth control.” Let’s go straight to the hospital and do it on a gurney! “I really have to go” he said. We could hear Mom creaking about upstairs. He gave me one last kiss – lifted me up completely! Bliss. When I got upstairs I saw my shirt was all torn and I had to throw it away. But it was definitely worth $9 even for only one evening.
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I was raised by a violently pacifist father and a devoted self-obliterating mother to sail around Europe and wander through African war zones. They assured me and my three sisters that everything was “fine”, but to our grown up selves admitted the peril of many of our adventures.
After graduating from a Quaker co-ed boarding school with a superior working knowledge of hypocrisy and duplicity I enrolled at Circle in the Square Theatre School in New York City where I studied under David Margulies. He was wonderful but I became disenchanted with acting, which seemed intent on bringing the world into the self, rather than birthing the self out. And my Self needed to get out. I liked my classes at The Martha Graham School of Dance much better. I loved the silence of dance, the “yoga” of dance. I began working on a novel about prep school entitled The Speechless. I fell into an early marriage with a “rock star” (dead these fifteen years) which lasted all of two years, during which we bought a 140 acre farm in Devil’s Elbow, upstate New York, where alone with my two dogs I wrote while my husband toured. I completed a novel Flycatcher about an inappropriate relationship between a widow and a schoolgirl on the make. My parents had a friend who was a literary agent; he signed me to a contract which I didn’t know at the time is never done. It ended badly. On the collapse of my marriage I found myself in Washington DC where my parents had an empty sixteenth storey apartment with a gorgeous view of Rock Creek Park. I worked as an exotic dancer while establishing myself locally as a poet; my apotheosis was being invited to read my work at The Folger Shakespeare Library. (This period of my life is commemorated in my memoir Inspired Pleasure.) But I liked dancing much more than I liked poets and I found poetry readings downright creepy. Since gothic novels were the rage at the time and I wasn’t having any luck with autobiographical stuff I wrote a romantic Victorian murder mystery entitled Devlyn. This sold over 100,000 copies and is still selling; it even got pretty good reviews for a gothic. My high school boyfriend looked me up and surprised us both by proposing to me – I astonished everyone by accepting. We bought a case of Moet Chandon and wandered up the Eastern Seaboard trying to explain it to each of our families. A cousin said: “I give it three years.” We’ve been together thirty and have two grown children. Once I’d figured out the wifing-mothering thing (that took awhile) I sold a psychological thriller Find Courtney which garnered excellent reviews (although mediocre sales). My boutique publisher sold me and my second-book contract to another publisher where my second book moldered for two years (the term of the contract) before they sent out letters saying they’d decided not to hire editors for fiction because it just didn’t pay. Unable to get anyone interested in Woman Into Wolf I published it myself to a very satisfactory reader response. I also published a book of short stories (Awake Till the End) and two more thrillers - I’ll Sleep When You’re Dead and Depraved Heart (which won the 2011 CT Press Club Fiction Prize.) Good reviews, small sales, terrifying readings – business as usual. After struggling with spirituality and the Problem of Enlightenment (the secret is yoga!) I decided I was looking for something new – an evolved experience bringing the Audience into the story. I can’t think of a better way to do that than through theatre. I started with short plays – Make Me and A Bruise A Cut A Fever and Creativity One - Death Zero (which is wordless - entirely dance.) Then I managed three full-length plays; The Honey & the Pang using only Emily Dickinson’s own words and those of her family as they squabble over her literary inheritance, meaning to demonstrate why she became a recluse: the general shockingness of Society. (“They talk of hallowed things and embarrass my Dog.”) I wrote SoulM8 about college students searching for soulmates, discovering that by slaying each other’s dragons you become all-powerful (but of course first you have to figure out what those dragons are.) I just completed Queen of Swords, which is a duel between the Woman Who Has apparently Everything and who went to apparently any lengths to get it and her justice-obsessed stepdaughter. Now I hunger for physical bodies, fresh ideas, new approaches, contrary opinions; willing to settle for nothing less than Incarnation. Like any playwright. My next project is a rock opera about twinship, bad friends, unsatisfactory mothers-in-law, murder and raging husbands. |
Alysse Aallyn
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