"I want my children to be conceived by the sea," Marty said. And suddenly she was right. Naked bodies, two, on the rocks, under the big sky, the big stars, the big night wasteland. So much more frightening, so much more clean than if they lay, side by side, on a hot, narrow bed, in the small thick dark box of a man-made bedroom.

  Lying on my stomach on the flat warm rock, I let my arm hang over the side, and my hand caressed the rounded contours of the sun-hot stone, and felt the smooth undulations of it. Such a heat the rock had, such a rugged and comfortable warmth, that I felt it could be a human body. Burning through the material of my bathing suit, the great heat radiated through my body, and my breasts ached against the hard flat stone. A wind, salty and moist, blew damply in my hair; through a great glinting mass of it I could see the blue twinkle of the ocean. The sun seeped into every pore, satiating every querulous fiber of me into a great glowing golden peace. Stretching out on the rock, body taut, then relaxed, on the altar, I felt that I was being raped deliciously by the sun, filled full of heat from the impersonal and colossal god of nature. Warm and perverse was the body of my love under me, and the feeling of his carved flesh was like no other - not soft, not malleable, not wet with sweat, but dry, hard, smooth, clean and pure. High, bonewhite, I had been washed by the sea, cleansed, baptised, purified, and dried clean and crisp by the sun. Like seaweed, brittle, sharp, strong-smelling - like stone, rounded, curved, oval, clean - like wind, pungent, salty - like all these was the body of my love. An orgiastic sacrifice on the altar of rock and sun, and I arose shining from the centuries of love, clean and satiated from the consuming fire of his casual and timeless desire.

  I am tired, and the evening world beats dead, flat, numb. To sleep, no, never to wake and turn in thoughtless rest to sleep again. To wait, rather, while the dawn comes early, and wetly shining. To rise to the day, and to the crises and the indecisive lulls. And to wait, taut, smiling, till evening, and the time after eight o'clock, again, to the time you go to bed, which is yours, which is brief and private. To take, from the closet occasionally, your yellow dress, not yet worn, and hold it up against your dark tan, and smile, and say, "Oh, Dick, how wonderful to see you. Stop; don't move. Just let me look at you." Two days more of living, and then Dick.

  Variations on a theme:

  Letter form: A strange time, indeed, to compose letters is five thirty in the morning. However, with the well-timed punctuality of an alarm clock I awoke in a gray dawn today, listening instinctively for the cry of the baby which never came, only the crescendo of sleepy musical chirpings of birds in neighboring trees.

  Quiet, cool and green is the early morning world, after a violent rain last night, bright flickers of lightning and sharp cracks of thunder. It is with an odd and victorious sense of going home that I shall return to Swampscott to lose myself again in the fresh, wholesome and thoroughly theraputic company of children.

  And so it is that with my leaning toward allegories, similes and metaphors, I suddenly find a vehicle to express a few of the many disturbing thoughts which have been with me since yesterday. I mentioned that I would try to describe the feeling I had toward an anonomous part of the Massachusetts coastline. Simple as this task may seem, I wanted to wait until I could do it even partial justice because it forms the core of my continually evolving philosophy of thought and action.

  On a relatively unfrequented, stony beach there is a great rock which juts out over the sea. After a climb, an ascent from one jagged foothold to another, a natural shelf is reached where one person can stretch at length, and stare down into the tide rising and falling below, or beyond to the bay, where sails catch light, then shadow, then light, as they tack far out near the horizon. The sun has burned these rocks, and the great continuous ebb and flow of the tide has crumbled the boulders, battered them, worn them down to the smooth sun-scalded stones on the beach which rattle and shift underfoot as one walks over them. A serene sense of the slow inevitability of the gradual changes in the earth's crust comes over me; a consuming love, not of a god, but of the clean unbroken sense that the rocks, which are nameless, the waves which are nameless, the ragged grass, which is nameless, are all defined momentarily through the consciousness of the being who observes them. With the sun burning into rock and flesh, and the wind ruffling grass and hair, there is an awareness that the blind immense unconscious impersonal and neutral forces will endure, and that the fragile, miraculously knit organism which interprets them, endows them with meaning, will move about for a little, then falter, fail, and decompose at last into the anonomous soil, voiceless, faceless, without identity.

  From this experience I emerged whole and clean, bitten to the bone by sun, washed pure by the icy sharpness of salt water, dried and bleached to the smooth tranquillity that comes from dwelling among primal things.

  From this experience also, a faith arises to carry back to a human world of small lusts and deceitful pettiness. A faith, naive and child like perhaps, born as it is from the infinite simplicity of nature. It is a feeling that no matter what the ideas or conduct of others, there is a unique rightness and beauty to life which can be shared in openness, in wind and sunlight, with a fellow human being who believes in the same basic principles.

  Yet, when such implicit belief is placed in another person, it is indeed shattering to realize that a part of what to you was such a rich, intricate, whole conception of life has been tossed off carelessly, lightly - it is then that a stunned, inarticulate numbness paralyzes words, only to give way later to a deep hurt. It is hard for me to say on paper what I believe would best be reserved for a lucid vocal discussion. But somehow I did want you to know a little of what your surprising and perhaps injudiciously confidential information did to me yesterday. A feeling that there was no right to condemn, but that still somehow there was a crumbling of faith and trust. A feeling that there was a way to rationalize, to condone, if only by relegating a fellow human from the unique to the usual.

  So there it is. The rock and the sun are waiting on the next day off - and solace.

  It seems to me more than ever that I am a victim of introspection. If I have not the power to put myself in the place of other people, but must be continually burrowing inward, I shall never be the magnanimous creative person I wish to be. Yet I am hypnotized by the workings of the individual, alone, and am continually using myself as a specimen. I am possessive about time alone, more so now that my working hours are not spent studying for myself, but dancing attendance to a family. Here I am in the midst of a rich, versatile family, as close as I could get. I have made my wish come true - almost - and, as It were, picked up the roof of this lovely, spacious white house and walked in. True, in actuality I am relegated by my position to a circumscribed area of confidence, but even so, here I am. Yet so constantly am I moving, working, acting, that I do not often think "How strange this is ... I am competently frying eggs for three children on Sunday morning while the parents sleep. I must learn more about these people - try to understand them, put myself in their place." No, instead I am so busy keeping my head above water that I scarcely know who I am, much less who anyone else is. But I must discipline myself. I must be imaginative and create plots, knit motives, probe dialogue - rather than merely trying to record descriptions and sensations. The latter is pointless, without purpose, unless it is later to be synthesized into a story. The latter is also a rather pronounced symptom of an oversensitive and unproductive ego.

  Now I am not sure about that letter I sent. Not sure at all. For was I not the one who acquiesced, mutely responsive and receptive? Was I not guilty of letting a boy be drawn to self-hatred? And yet does it not all come again to the fact that it is a man's world? For if a man chooses to be promiscuous, he may still aesthetically turn up his nose at promiscuity. He may still demand a woman be faithful to him, to save him from his own lust. But women have lust, too. Why should they be relegated to the position of custodian of emotions, watcher of the infants, feeder of soul, body and pride of man? Being born a woman is my awful tragedy. From the moment I was conceived I was doomed to sprout breasts and ovaries rather than penis and scrotum; to have my whole circle of action, thought and feeling rigidly circumscribed by my inescapable feminity. Yes, my consuming desire to mingle with road crews, sailors and soldiers, bar room regulars - to be a part of scene, anonomous, listening, recording - all is spoiled by the fact that I am a girl, a female always in danger of assault and battery. My consuming interest in men and their lives is often misconstrued as a desire to seduce them, or as an invitation to intimacy. Yet, God, I want to talk to everybody I can as deeply as I can. I want to be able to sleep in an open field, to travel west, to walk freely at night ...

  July 19 - This morning I awoke into dampness, the windows white and vague with fog. This afternoon, while all the family was out the first big storm came. I had just washed my hair, and the rain began, big, wet drops from the great spread of sky. The house was darkened, and the lights burned weakly, it seemed, in face of the great noise of falling water outside. As excited as a child, I called to Marcia, who was playing the piano, and ran down the long carpeted hall to the front door, where I could look through the screen to the wildly heaving trees, the gray ocean, angry with white foam, the crackling blasts of sheet lightning and the immediate whip cracks and rattling, banging, earsplitting bursts of thunder. Water ran in rivers down the pavement, and suddenly I remembered to shut the windows. But even as I ran from room to room, trying to close the fourteen or fifteen windows on the side where the rain was coming in, it was too late, and the sills were wet with puddles, and the water was collecting in streams along the floor.

  Tonight, after playing ping pong down in the Blodgett's" basement playroom I walked back into the house with a perceptible sense of proprietorship. If nothing else, in one month I have come to regard this place with an air of home. Upstairs, especially, I am complete sovereign. I still remember the day I drove up with Dick and stood in awestruck fear outside the gate, gazing at the great lawn, the long white house, the clump of huge copper beech trees spaced carefully on the grass. Never, I thought, could I walk with carefree equanimity on that carefully clipped lawn. But I do now. Yes, and tonight I felt the wetness heavy about me; leaves, pregnant with water, soaked the sleeve of my jersey as I brushed past the bush by the kitchen steps. Up the carpeted stairs to my room, lighted only by the moon, which shone across the porch and the wet window sill with a liquid luminosity. An inexplicable quiver of intense, almost contraband, excitement filled me as I pushed open the screen door, swollen shut by the rain, and walked out onto the porch. I sat down on the cold, slick tile roof and stared at the moon shadow of the porch railing, slanting across the floor. Somehow, I think, I have a delicious feeling of presumptuousness which comes perhaps from a secret enjoyment of living with rich people and listening to and observing them. It is like hearing a supposedly confidential conversation. You wonder only how you can ever bear to live anywhere else, away from the sea, the physical ease, the sun, the spaciousness. Seated on the porch, straight ahead was the ocean, above was the big sky, with a hazy, faintly orange-tinged moon. The moon and stars seemed very small for such a big sky. Down below stretched the lawn, the street, the beach, in a line of open view. How hard it will be to return home, where the little green pine trees grow in such a close square around the house, where you can't move freely in a room without bumping into the furniture, where mother serves cranberry juice in cream cheese glasses on an old white celluloid tray. Here the lawns swoop to the open sea, the rooms are lofty, with great picture windows, and sparkling green and golden cocktails are served on cracked ice and silver trays. How to return to the smallness, the imperfection, which is home?

  Under the greenshaded lights, Elaine, still in her white maid's uniform, was playing pool. Her face was red and shiny as she leaned over the table, trying for a long shot.

  Marcia slouched over the piano, her tan a golden brown against her blue sweater, banging out a jazzy version of "Ja-Da."

  Wicker chairs were scattered in profusion about the pine paneled game room. The spasmodic click-click .... click-click of the ping pong ball sounded as Cynthia and Joan banged out an irregular ralley, stopping to chase the round white ball under the intricate path of chair and table legs after wild shots.

  "Sorry," Cynthia said, serving a high one too hard, so that it missed the proper green square.

  "Heck," Joan chased it up to the fireplace, reached behind an andiron and extricated it.

  The click-click ... click-click started up again.

  Elaine poised for another shot, slid the stick through her fingers and drove a yellow ball into the pocket. She put down the stick and went to sit on the bench beside Marcia, who had stopped to have a cigarette.

  "Donald's out tonight," she said. "Some girl called, and I left a message on his pillow."

  "Did you turn down the bed corners?" Marcia grinned.

  "Yup. Almost decided to put in hot coals to warm the sheets." Elaine grinned back.

  "You've got it rough. I'd be mad as anything if they made me wear a uniform."

  "You've got it easy. You can just take care of the kids. That way you're part of the family. I'm lower; I'm only the maid."

  "Hell, don't talk that way. You're just as good as they are. Besides, it's just for the summer."

  "I know. But still."

  "Sure. Don't you suppose I feel it? In the morning when I sit in the kitchen with the kids, drinking canned orange juice from a jelly glass, while Donald gets his tray on the porch, fresh squeezed juice in a goblet! Let me tell you, I wonder why he's the one to get waited on, instead of me."

  Cynthia and Joan had stopped playing, and moved over to sit on the floor by the piano.

  "This is a terrific set up you two have got here," Joan said to Marcia and Elaine. "Don't they ever use this game room? If I lived here, I'd use it every minute."

  "Yeah, it's neat," said Cynthia. "All I do is file letters and write down numbers on big sheets all day."

  "What's it like to work in a big insurance company?" Marcia asked, grinding out her cigarette in a grimy little snow of ashes.

  "Oh, it's O.K. Every week there's some anniversary or somebody's leaving, so they have a shower, and you go up and see orchids all over the place. My section is mostly married women though."

  "Tell us about it. Do you get to know them much?" Elaine wanted to know.

  "Well, there's people like Harriet, the old maid. One of the women came back to work pregnant, after Harriet had kept telling her she'd never make a good mother. 'Well, don't you think I'll be a good mother now?' the woman asked Harriet. 'No, I don't' Harriet sniffed. 'You shouldn't of done it.' "

  I was out in the kitchen doing the dishes, scraping the soggy puddles of cereal and milk off the sticky plates, when Dr. Mayo walked in in his white jacket, hair slicked back from his thin face. He stood for a while, making cocktails. At last he said:

  "Oh, to be young again..."

  "What brought that on?" I asked, peering into the cupboard for some Bab-o.

  "Oh, so I could enjoy these things more."

  "You don't do too badly... "

  I was suddenly struck by the comedy of the situation. Here was a young, tan eighteen year old girl perpetually doing dishes, while a husband and wife in the thirties went to one dinner and one dance and one cocktail party after another. Somehow, it seemed, the situation could well be reversed.

  Mrs. Mayo rustled into the kitchen, tall, slender and darkly beautiful in a flowing nylon gown of aqua - three tones of light, medium and dark which blended and flowed into one another. She stood and made cheese crackers to go with the cocktails.

  "Seems I always end up cooking in a formal," she said.

  The blonde girl stood in front of the mirror in the ladies Room of the eastern Yacht club. Her head thrown back, fringed by a copper scallop of short curls, her hips slanted boldly forward, she tossed her black and white stole from one shoulder to another, striking a seductive pose each time she did so.

  "Ah could weah it lak this," she drawled, twisting the scarf of material about her narrow waist. "Or lak this," she wrapped it about her neck, the long fringed black ends trailing cape-like down her back. The girl seemed oblivious to all except her own reflection in the mirror before her. Would she never stop twisting the material about her body?

  The fat woman who was her mother sat in a wicker chair, smiling, her carefully drawn red lips curved in a calculating grin. Her arms and hands moved slowly, plumply, like twining cobras. Little dangerous insinuating sparks lighted in her eyes, compelling, fascinating. One fleshily soft thigh crossed over the other under the rough textured linen of her dress.

  Out on the porch, the young boy was very drunk. He grinned at his date, and turned to the plump, arch woman, letting his hand caress her thigh. On the porch railing the blonde girl kicked her leg high, drawling "Oh, chi-chi veree chi-chi." Gurgling, laughing, she kissed her husband on the nose.

  The blonde girl's sister sat lustreless, her long silver hair drooping to her shoulders. "I am a peeg," she said over and over again, showing her waist and full, slenderly pointed breasts under the Indian print dress she wore.

  "Come here," the young, drunk boy said to her. "Sit next to me. I can't hear you talk."

  The Manhattan slithered from his hand and fell to the floor with a soprano tinkle. Clumsily he wiped the widening stain which darkened the dress of his date. The table, covered with a transparent cloth of plastic, held the pool of spilt liquor. The boy tried to drink from the glass, but the cup of the goblet was split, and he cut his lip.

  Gray fog shredded thin along the flatwashed duncolored beach. Small dullgreen waves folded over upon themselves in a slither of dirty white foam, spreading out in sheets of water, reflecting the soiled morning sky. The blue tendrils of mist drifting up from the shore bleached out color in a pale soapy haze. Over the continuous in rushing sound of the tide came the shrill screams of the children, puckering the moist air that blew in smokily from the sea.