Cypress was the only woman with Ariel’s troupe doing the swing tour through Washington, Philly, and New York. Ariel had said he could pick up some more girls on a swing basis wherever they worked, but he needed the men. “Humph,” Cypress kept shaking her head. “There’s four dudes wit us couldn’t do a run-run-leap without fallin’ on themselves.” But they were men. And men were prized in dance.

And men riding in cars for days and days talk a lot, about being prized and sought after, being badder than thunder in the mountains; and Cypress listened and listened. What could she say? Men talking to men about being men who like men and occasionally take a woman. Cypress tweezed her eyebrows, pushed cuticles, braided her hair, slept, stared out the windows, kept quiet, and remembered too many men. Long men standing by trees in parks. Smart men being glib. Men taking off her clothes. Men flirting with each other when they danced with her. Men eating her food; men in her bed. Men holding her, leaving her wet and lonely. Cypress didn’t say much cross-country. She remembered and nestled in the back seat. With her journal, she talked to herself.

JOURNAL ENTRY #48
everybody i know has lost they mind
sometimes i wish i was crazy too/ then i cd get some
sleep/ this way i keep lookin round
waiting for X to jump
tryin to catch Y for he picks up the one-nite-stand/
for a second time/ imaginin Z cuttin his wrists
ABC & D runnin naked on 42nd street . . .
everybody i know is recoverin from a bad affair
wishin for mister right
lookin for miz true
& i cant get any rest
i’m so tired & nerve worn
when the antelopes & gazelles peeped thru my
window
i invited them in/ the conversations i was havin
weren’t important enuf to exclude animals of note/
i bit my tongue for mentionin jean harlow to freddie
washington
my friends are ridiculous/ i haveta change my
associations/
talk abt fantasy runnin wild/ please dont anybody
say/
“& this is yr life.”

At 5th Street and Second Avenue the company set up house in a three-room draft. When Malik was turned out, then Bruce, then Pedrito, Cypress moved her things into the closet and stayed there at night after rehearsal. The lovemaking was so active and one-dimensional she preferred pulling coats round her ears, and sleeping with her face to the corner. But it was too much, when Ariel screamed across the studio to the new women:

“You whores go off with Cypress ’til ya know what in the hell you’re doin’. I don’t need no clumsy pussy out in public.”

Cypress had enough, and moved in with two women she’d met at some dance classes in the West Village.