Party Castle 8:20 PM Fri May 18 - 1979
Fasting all day so feel much better. Two more sets. I am the only dancer willing to dance to Baker Streetso they keep playing it for me and it is a tiring song. However all that stretching is good for my muscles probably. Reading A Time to Keep Silence. St Secaire has got me on a religious kick. Genevieve’s Apt. off the Park – NYC – Sun 20 May 79 It’s me laughing and joking and eating a whole box of Entemann’s cookies – and it’s not me. Family. The constant pain of having so little of myself accepted. It’s like being with people like Usher, really – they want such a little piece of you. The worst part is, you get so used to the pain you can’t imagine life without it. Thank God I am usually content to be alone. Went to the Whitney – gave me some ideas to recast Gift – unfortunately not ones people will like. I want to make it even more choppy and episodic– rather than “telling the story –“ which is what everyone seems to want. But that’s the only way I can get excited about it – I would like reading it to be like visiting an art gallery. Queen’s Chapel Rd – Tues 22 May 79 That trip helped. I feel better, more focused. My new agent submitted Gift to Putnam who loved it but said they had just published a book with incest theme! Goddamn it all to hell. But their reaction cheered me up – they didn’t say anything about choppy, episodic, incomprehensible motives, etc. So maybe I’m a real novelist and not just a poet hungry for money. Started The Lives of the Dancers– a poem for each one. Fun. More fun than novelizing with such a hideous plot – can’t seem to get my people out of the airport. Fasting again today. So horribly fat right before my period it would not surprise me to go into labor onstage. Apparently no one else has noticed I have lost my waist. Have agreed to see Devon in Boston next month. I am going off birth control so we will see what happens. I feel sure I can get him into bed. But never telling him he is a father? Can I pull it off? I will try. Getting past block in my novel by having different characters tell different parts of the story. I give up on Pamela Hansford Johnson. Holiday Friend is The Perfectionists all over again– but not as good. Castle 12:35 AM – Fri 25 May 79 Funny how it all comes together sometimes. Dancing tonight has been ecstasy – is it the fasting? I am cutting my schedule at the Plush Palace – the audience here is so much better. They are really quiet and intense. Probably because it’s so close to the FBI. They get the same relaxation from watching us that you get from a tank of tropical fish. Except of course with a sexual frisson that reminds you you’re alive. Read Laura Hobson’s The Tenth Month– pretty shocked by a doctor who would prescribe Nembutal to a pregnant woman. But of course that’s the way they were back in the Dark Ages. Now I’m on Highsmith’s Edith’s Diary– which is fabulous – the review in New York Times was downright immoral. Books should not be reviewed by the stylistically tone deaf. Reviewer should be open to many styles – I don’t think that’s too much to ask. The idiot. Went on stage glittering with body jewelry – big stones. Big tips. Queen’s Chapel Rd – 28 May 79 – Memorial Day Very staid and old-lady weekend working on the house. We have a wonderful big backyard with gas grill – A. and I “broke it in” yesterday for shish kebab. Last week’s trip seems months ago already. Thought about poor D all day. Am I using him? Is it wrong? Nah. I am giving him a chance to be more than he is – and he doesn’t need to know if he can’t handle it. I haven’t even told A about this – and I won’t unless it actually works. With my irritating body I might not be able to get pregnant just because I want to. A and I saw Peter Sellers in The Prisoner of Zenda– just awful. Sun went back to the Unitarian Church – unfortunately it was a downer. The worst memories of childhood surfaced as we were lectured on current events as if we were a class of high school students. I would rather hear about personal fascism than international fascism – that is the real spiritual problem. Bullying a captive audience seems eminently fascist to me. We recovered at Ms. K’s Toll House – such a fun place. Spent the afternoon trying to write a poem about how beauty and finiteness are the same thing – when we love someone’s beauty it’s their mortalitywe are in love with. Not laying a glove on it. Saw Alien in the eve – the treat of our lives – what a rollercoaster ride! We both adored it. I’m now officially giving up on reviewers – the Washington Post said it wasn’t as good as Star Wars. What is wrong with people!!! Apparently reviewers have to pass some sort of idiocy test. The “cure” was completed when I crawled into bed with Bloomsbury Portraits.Fabulous people. These are the ones my father refers to as the “sexual degenerates.” I adoretheir interior decorating. Going to ask Maureen to make me a dining room mural. By sheer good luck I don’t work till Wed. So I get a real rest. That feeling of pressure negatively impacts my work. Slept twelve whole hours – which means I may be up half the night – but I don’t mind if it’s productive. I especially like walking the dogs in the middle of the night so I can ignore the leash law. They are so good about voice command. 2pm 30 May 79 To my surprise novel goes well. Finished first bloodletting scene. Reading Flannery O’Connor’s The Habit of Being– love it. Dreading work tonight – not ready to get back. 1:15 AM 31 May 79 Hard night. Feel like I have had some protective coating scraped off my eyes and I can see everybody’s pain. Everyoneis in pain. Not pleasant. Plush Palace Fri night 1 June 79 7:50 PM Had to stop at dance store to buy fishnet Danskins on my way to work. (Kristi darns hers but I’m too lazy). Horrible traffic jam coming and going – then they were out of the ones with the seams which are the only kind that properly shape the buttocks. So I bought a black pair. They only look good close up. So I arrived in an automatic bad mood – put on my black costume with the little mirrors. I’ll go to the Maryland Danskin’s tomorrow. Feel better after a couple of bourbons. I can see how dancers get into the booze not to mention the bute. I am trying to do too much. Working, fasting, writing the Great American Novel (it’s turning into the Great Canadian Novel) – something’s got to give. Two bagels, two bourbons, then I’m cutting myself off. Zachary coming in tonight. I feel I’ve had it with the purely recreational sex (with quarrelsome underpinnings) that is all he has to offer. At least I have a good excuse to turn him down till June 22 – I’m booked solid. Idly reading George Weinberg’s Self-Creation. Ho hum. Working with Kristi tonight. She has the most perfect body I have ever seen but is totally neurotic about it. She can’t appreciate it herself. I speak to her in monosyllables because I don’t want to get sucked into her game of “How can we improve me” that she lays on other dancers. She’s a “yes, but”, never pleased with anything. Fatima came in hawking her used makeup. She is so bizarre. Claims she needs to sell everything for an “important medical operation.” Won’t say what it is – she probably just wants to ruin her breasts as is the fashion lately. Maggie’s breasts are hard as stone. She’s ruined her body. The air is heavy with female paranoia. Specific personal worries degenerate at a moment’s notice into far-flung government conspiracies. Nervous about upcoming visit with D – at least twice a day I decide not to go. If he knows me better than I think he may guess what I’m up to. 8:30 PM Sat 2 June 79 Rescued today – got four nights work instead of a possible six. Thank God. Bought wonderful music on the way to work at discount store – all Tchaikovsky’s orchestral music and Purcell’s Fairy Queen. Therapeutic listening after boogy-oogy-oogy. My parents finished Gift– want to know who Oz is based on. Uh oh. That rattled me. Should I tell? Decided not to and feel like a coward. But they wouldn’t believe me any way and thatwould be waytoo painful. They translate any vulnerability or sharing into “no wonder you’re so sick”. D’s most recent letter suggested canceling our date – he’s about to be ordained and must “purify”. He wants to escape from his past – which I’m a part of. Get it? He knows me so well he psychically intuited where I’m at, or more likely he inhaled a whiff of neediness and we can’t have that. Hemust be the needy one. Zachary and I went out to breakfast after work last night. For an “artist” (I use this term very loosely) he has less intuition than a stone. His compliments are so over the top I am filled with disgust but he doesn’t appear to notice. Had a horrible insight I now can’t get rid of. I am his Devon– the Great White Whale. Horrors! Will he now try to get pregnant by me? Thank God the sexes AREN’T the same. Feeling a little slowed up by O’Connor’s prejudices in Habit. She seems too content to be a creature of her era. Tried to read Caroline Gordon because of friendship with F – but notmy cup of cappuccino. She is Edith Wharton strained painfully through Somerset Maugham. Instead I am branching into a self-help jag – brought a book tonight called TheGift of Grief. Is this a gift anybody wants? Avril and I trying Silver Spring Unitarians tomorrow. Party Castle Tues 5 June 79 – 12:35 AM D ordained Sunday. I blew up under all the pressure yesterday – sobbed and sobbed. A. said she would go out, get a part time job and just give me the money. I am so jealous of her for being a full time student I guess. What an idiot. I apologized. I am experimenting with giving up writing. Why force myself to do it? I just won’tdo it – enjoy life and job at least for awhile – till I have to write. We’ll see when thatis. Trying to read bio of HP Lovecraft. There’s an object lesson wrapped around a cautionary tale. Thurs 7 June 79 2:40 PM Foolishly agreed to go to the Belmont Stakes with Don, my patent lawyer who is now a regular at the Castle. (He has forgiven me for my hair.) Now I want to back out. He says we can have separate rooms, he’ll pay for everything, etc – he is going up with a whole party of people. I can’t believe I am going to get into this whole ordeal of having to get to know someone again. What would he do if I said absolutely nothing about myself? He doesn’t even know I’m a writer, for example. And if I go to Belmont, can’t see D. It’s all too stupid – have to think of an excuse to get out of this. If I ruin him as a big tipper what a dope I am. I guess this means I have gone through the whole dating thing and emerged out the other side. Ready for the next stage – whatever that is. Invited again to present at the Writer’s Conference at Coltsville. Shall I tell them I’ve given up on writing?
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