Last Summer in Rockaway

LAST SUMMER IN ROCKAWAY

LAST SUMMER IN ROCKAWAY 1991

RICHARD GRAYSON

Superstition Mountain Press Phoenix – 2012

Copyright © 2012 by Richard Grayson. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. Superstition Mountain Press 4303 Cactus Road Phoenix, AZ 85032

First Edition ISBN #: 978-1-105-53194-1

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For Helen Klein

Last Summer in Rockaway 1991

Wednesday, April 17, 1991 7 PM. Tomorrow’s the big day, and so far I’m not terrified. I’ve been making lots of trips to the bathroom today – now I can understand why I had that hemorrhoid trouble when I went to New Orleans last year – but plenty of Kaopectate seems to have that situation under control. I packed everything in my suitcase and stored it in the garage, where it’s not bothering Mom’s carpeting, and where I’ve also got my carry-on bag stored.

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I slept okay but not enough. Up at 6 AM, I was at Broward Community College around 7 AM and graded all the papers that I needed to return for my first class. In both classes, I reviewed the research paper and saw individual students. During my break, I exercised in my parents’ family room – luckily no one else was home – and prepared for the trip. I read the Times, which I may forgo in California; I need to become more flexible regarding all my habits. Tomorrow Bush and new Education Secretary Alexander will announce an education program that sounds pretty good, but I’m skeptical. The Dow finally hit 3000 today, a rail strike began, and U.S. troops have been sent to help get supplies to the Kurds in northern Iraq. My Florida Atlantic University chemistry final was pretty easy, and I’m certain I scored 90% at least, so I’ll get an A – not that it matters. I learned more about nutrition, and the class was worthwhile for that. But, as usual, I’ve become a bit too rigid in my food habits. The prospect of a trip – and not being able to eat the way I usually do – causes me worry, particularly about tomorrow’s plane ride. This will be my first transcontinental flight and the first time

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I’ve ever had to change planes, but I’ll be a veteran after I make it through tomorrow, right? What am I nervous about? Getting an anxiety attack on the plane, first off – though 25 years ago I had panic attacks every day in high school, and I survived every one of them. I never vomited despite all those times I felt overwhelmed by nausea. The Triavil not only works against panic, but it’s supposedly an antiemetic. Naturally, I’m also worried about dizziness. Like nausea or panic, it’s a feeling of loss of control. But I get dizzy every night when I lay my head on my pillow, and if the plane makes it worse, well, I’ve deal with it before. The most extreme vertigo has to stop sometime, even though I fantasize about spinning forever, totally out of control. If I get nausea, vertigo, diarrhea, faintness, I’ll get through it. It can be very painful and uncomfortable, but I won’t die from any of those things. And I’m always saying I don’t fear death, anyway. I got the schedule for the writers’ conference. Registration begins Saturday at 8 AM, and Alice wants all the speakers to be at the 9 AM opening session and to have lunch with conference attendees at noon.

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My short story workshop isn’t till 3:15 PM and it will end at 4:45 PM, when I’ve got the reading with Steve Kowit. Then we’re going out to dinner, but if I’m tired, I can skip that, I suppose. On Sunday my self-promotion workshop is from 10:30-11:45 AM, then lunch, then my office hour from 1:00-2:15 PM, and then we’ll have a final general session from 2:30-3:15 PM to answer any other questions. It sounds like work, but I’m used to teaching a lot; I’ll just have to make sure I prepare on Friday and on Saturday morning, and I’ll rely on the skills I’ve learned, mostly doing the Teacher Education Center workshops in computer education, to make connections with new groups quickly and easily. I know tomorrow will be a long day – literally, it will be three hours longer for me. And I know it won’t be easy, and I’ll have moments of fear, anxiety and panic. I brought a tape at Bookstop – Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway – and I’ve got all my tapes and pill s and goodies for the trip. If planes aren’t late – and I know they’re always late, and things never go exactly right (for me, that uncertainty is the real terror of traveling) – it won’t be any longer than the eight-hour bus ride I took in September 1987 from Keene, New Hampshire, to

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New York City when I left MacDowell. Ah, but I was on the ground then.

Thursday, April 18, 1991 7 PM Pacific Time. I have a raging headache and diarrhea, but I made it to California. I’m pretty scared right now, but I guess somehow I’ll handle tonight in this Best Western motel near LAX. Last night I played the Feel the Fear tape and found it inspiring, even if it dealt with risks more than phobias. I did get some good rest, but I was up at 5 AM. An hour later I exercised to Body Electric and took a shower and had breakfast. All the while I wasn’t very nervous at all. Dad drove me to the airport at 7:45 AM, and I had to hang out only about twenty minutes before I boarded the Delta 727 jet to Dallas. After fifty or sixty flights, my heartbeat rarely races at takeoffs anymore, although when we encountered turbulence due to thunderstorms near New Orleans, I got a bit nervous. I traded my eggs and potatoes on the lacto-ovovegetarian meal I had with the elderly couple going to Las Vegas sitting next to me in exchange for more fruit, and I listened to the Feel the Fear tape.

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Because we went around the bad weather, our flight got into Dallas/Fort Worth late, and I had to scramble to make the flight to Los Angeles, which of course was at a gate all on the other side of the U.S.’s largest airport. I didn’t even have time to think about being in Dallas or Texas for the first time, and although I rushed to get on our flight, it didn’t take off for a while because people kept coming from other flights. Apparently, Dallas, like Atlanta, is a Delta hub, and nobody can get anywhere without stopping at one of those two cities. Anyway, the second flight was longer, but it seemed shorter because it was a larger plane (a 767), they had a movie (Pistol, a mawkish, amateurish film about basketball player Pete Maravich – but it passed the time), and it was smoother. God, I just had a heart-pounding vertigo attack. That’s the kind of thing I was afraid of. Well, let’s get on with it: We landed at LAZ at about 1:05 PM – which was, of course, after 4 PM for me. I got my luggage, and then, about an hour later, I’d gotten the rental car from Avis and was checked in here at this motel. What were my first impressions of L.A.? Well, I liked seeing snowcapped mountains as we flew and seeing hills in the background even as I drove to the motel. I

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didn’t stay here long, and perhaps I should have rested, but I decided to ride around. My method was to follow the map as best I could, which meant I got lost a lot. I drove up La Cienega into Fairfax Avenue and went to Wilshire Boulevard and saw the County Art Museum and the La Brea Tar Pits. Then I backtracked on Wilshire into Beverly Hills (the famous sign, probably one of many, guided me) and I found a parking space on Rodeo Drive, so I walked around. The tony shops were all familiar to me from New York of Florida – Cartier, Tiffany, Ferragamo, Giorgio, VanCleef & Arpels, etc. – and I wasn’t overly impressed, though I did like the still-unfinished Via Rodeo Drive, a sort of movie-front continuation of the street, which is architecturally more interesting. I drove out on Santa Monica Boulevard past the Mormon Temple, and then I got on I-405, the San Diego Freeway, and was stuck in traffic just like a typical Angeleno. Looking for a Wendy’s salad bar, I got totally lost in nearby Inglewood, though I did see the L.A. Forum and Hollywood Racetrack. Finally I bought some carrots and cabbage at a Ralph’s supermarket in a nearby, mostly black, neighborhood, as well as a McDonald’s garden salad (weak) and low-fat frozen yogurt.

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The bad diet I had today doesn’t help my stomach, and all that flying and maybe even riding around has probably screwed up my ears. I did call Dad but spoke only a minute to say I’d gotten in okay. Los Angeles? Well, it’s sort of like half New York, half Florida – and I’m sure I could live here. Because of TV and films, I’ve seen L.A. so much in images all my life that it seems pretty familiar, though things like street signs and walk/don’t walk signs are different than those I’m used to. Anyway, I got back to the motel after 6 PM; I’ve kept the TV on even as I’ve written this because I’m nervous. My right ear throbs a little and I’m afraid to lie down because I don’t want the room to start spinning. But I can handle it, I guess. That’s what the Feel the Fear shrink says we should tell ourselves: whatever happens, we can handle it.

Friday, April 19, 1991 8:30 AM. My head swam as I put it down on the pillow last night, but I ended up falling asleep during the 10 PM news. The opening credits of Fox’s show Beverly Hills 90210 featured the Rodeo Drive scene I’d had been on just a few hours before.

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I slept sporadically, but basically I got a little rest. NPR’s Morning Edition came on at 3 AM, when I was wide awake because my internal clock – and the familiar voice on the radio – told me it was 6 AM, my usual wakeup time. I managed to fall back asleep two hours later with the help of Excedrin PM, herbal sleep capsules and exhaustion. At 6:30 AM, I worked out very gently to an aerobics show, and then I showered and dressed. It’s a dark, cool – about 55° -- morning. My stomach is a bit upset, probably because it’s not used to the “breakfast” I had: two Hostess low-fat blueberry muffins (they aren’t available back East yet), a fruit bar, yogurt and orange juice. It’s not what I’m used to, but maybe I could use less fiber with my stomach so loose. Because my contact lens disinfecting unit seemed to break, I spent $22 on a new one, which is heating up my lenses as I write this. * 6 PM. I’m in my luxurious room at the Hyatt Regency Long Beach, and I intend to stay here the whole evening. I’m tired and disoriented, and late this afternoon I had a bad experience.

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I took a drive by myself to Orange County, and near Knotts Berry Farm, I found an El Pollo Loco fast food restaurant. I’ve read they have good, healthy stuff, and I ordered their charbroiled chicken salad, which tasted delicious. But in my car just a few minutes later, I got such bad diarrhea that I soiled my briefs and even my jeans. I used a bathroom at a Carl’s Jr. but I was really scared: I terrible liquid diarrhea and I was miles from the hotel, with no clear way to get back. I panicked, but now I see that I did “handle it”: I’d brought along my drug kit and I took Kaopectate and a Triavil for my nerves, and instead of relying on the freeway, I managed to return by taking streets – which I followed on the map – that contained enough fast food places so that I could make emergency bathroom stops. First I thought I had food poisoning, but now I think it was a combination of jet lag, fatigue, a very drastic change in my predictable and bland diet – even the Egg Beaters frittata I had for lunch must have kept my stomach wonder what I was doing to the poor confused organ – and also it was a test: it was the worst panic attack I had in a long time. And I handled it. Even though my stomach is still rocky, I feel better psychologically. I’m nervous about tomorrow’s conference, of course, but I’m also

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disoriented about all the new stuff my mind and body have absorbed in the last couple of days. At 9:30 AM today I checked out of the Best Western and took the San Diego Freeway into the Long Beach Freeway and then purposely got lost so I could see Long Beach. The one overriding impression I have of Southern California is of its vastness. South Florida is hemmed in by the Everglades and the Atlantic, but the Los Angeles Basin sprawls in all directions, peninsulas and mountains, valley suburbs there, and freeways everywhere. I do like the gripper roads and the lights that allow two cars to enter the freeways, and I’m pretty good about keeping up with things, but I guess it was all kind of stressful. I’m also spending more money than I expected. Except at the conference, my meals aren’t being taken care of, nor are any of the incidentals at the hotel. But it was great to see Alice in the lobby when I arrived, talking with her friend Vanda, a Women’s World writer who lives in Santa Monica and came for a visit. After checking in, I immediately had an early lunch with Alice. She keeps thinking I’m going to law

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school to practice law and make money and can’t seem to understand how I’d enjoy the intellectual experience. It’s our typical breakdown in communications: she’s profit-oriented and can’t see things any other way. (I had to tell her that Long Beach State probably won’t care if they make lots of money on the conference. They’re a university run by the state, I said, and they can’t spread out the profits to the faculty or administrators.) Her diet book was taken by Long Meadow Books, which is an imprint owned by Waldenbooks, and they’re giving her “only” a $15,000 advance, so Alice is unhappy. Sometimes it’s hard for me to explain the way I see things to Alice. Peter joined us, and we were going to tour the Spruce Goose until we found out that the admission to Howard Hughes’ airplane, near the Queen Mary, was $17, so we just drove around instead. Peter has been walking along downtown Long Beach. Like me, he enjoys getting the feel of a new place. Tonight he’s taking buses to a Clippers basketball game. I like what I see of Long Beach: a nice ethnic mix, including lots of Cambodians; good public transportation, including the new light rail train to

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downtown L.A.; a nice convention center and beach (the bleachers from last week’s Grand Prix auto race are still up); a glitzy downtown, including bank buildings and the Greater Los Angeles World Trade Center. It’s all too much to take in, though. I need to center myself tonight, eat sparingly, and get ready for tomorrow.

Saturday, April 20, 1991 10 PM. This has been an extraordinary day in my life, and I feel very good. Whatever else happens on my trip to California, the last day has made it well worth all the cost. Last evening I was about to go out for a walk when I got a call from Steve Kowit, who’d just arrived from San Diego. I met him downstairs and we spent the evening together. He was older than I expected, 53, but a lovable and shrewd and hamishe man; I’m thrilled we finally got to meet. We talked about writing and teaching English at a community college (he teaches at a terrific school) and my future plans and his buying a house near the hills of Mexico and his MFA program at Warren Wilson College in North Carolina.

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I watched him eat dinner, and we were so engrossed in conversation that it was an hour before I noticed Alice was at the next table with other speakers who’d also recently gotten in. Steve and I talked till about 10 PM, and I came back to my room and promptly fell asleep. Up at 5:30 AM, I had breakfast an hour later and took a drive; I’m really getting to know Long Beach. It’s not the most beautiful place, but I still can’t get over the mountains and the Pacific Ocean. At 9 AM, in a ballroom, all the staff members were introduced by Alice (who, Peter and I agreed, still has great legs) and we gave spiels about our workshops. There are about a hundred registrants, which isn’t bad for a recession. Since I didn’t have to appear till 3:15 PM, I left after the introductory session and went to the fitness center, where I rode a stationary bike and used the equipment for half an hour. Then I found a Wendy’s near CSULB and had the salad bar and afterwards had my usual Weight Watchers cheese and rice cakes I got at Ralph’s supermarket. With more of its usual food, my stomach fared better today. Before I went off to lunch, I did catch the last halfhour of Steve’s poetry writing workshop, which was

Richard Grayson

dynamic. At the official lunch back at the hotel, I talked to some participants and speakers, and then I attended the interesting soap opera writing workshop run by Richard Allen, co-head writer of Days of Our Lives. Richard’s wife Sherrie is an actress in commercials, they’ve got two kids, and last week they met Wesley Strick at a kids’ birthday party. (I must call Wes; the Allens said he and Marla just bought their dream house and that Wes “still looks like a boy.”) At 3:15 PM, miked up for audiotape, I began my workshop, “Get Your Short Story Written and Published.” I feel I rambled, but people came up to me afterwards and said they felt they got something out of the workshop, and they applauded, and people told Alice and Terri Browning of CSULB (who’s very nice) good things about me. During our reading immediately afterwards, Steve and I had to compete with food and clinking glasses and preparations for a wedding reception, but despite having to strain my voice, “But in a Thousand Other Worlds” went over extremely well. (I’m a ham.) Steve did a nice job, too. We introduced each other, and Steve’s praise was so fulsome, I made a show of slipping $20 in his pocket, making people laugh. It’s such an ego boost to have people appreciate my work.

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At 6 PM all the speakers assembled in the lobby and we went out for dinner, courtesy of the university, at Mum’s, a nearby Italian restaurant just up Pine Boulevard downtown. Sitting at a long table, I got to speak with Sherrie and Richard Allen, the Oscar-winning songwriter Joel Hirschhorn (“The Morning After”) and his actress wife, cookbook author and chef Rena Coyle, book reviewer Alan Ryan, and Ellen Byron, a playwright, performer and article writer. From them, I learned a lot about the L.A. world of people connected with “the business,” the entertainment industry (many of them seem to be Jewish or Italian or ex-New Yorkers, some of them now bicoastal). This was a whole group of talented, dynamic people who’ve done a million amazing things, who have friends all over the place, who know the same restaurants and acquaintances. I tried to listen more than do my usual blabbing so I could learn stuff. I walked back to the hotel with Peter, Alice and Terri, who seems to feel the first day of the conference went very well indeed. I know I do. There’s a lot more I could write, but I’ll be assimilating all this stuff for weeks.

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Grant gave me directions to get to his house in Van Nuys tomorrow evening. Before that, tomorrow I’ve got my publicity workshop, office hour, and our wrap-up session.

Sunday, April 21, 1991 10 PM. I’m in the Fletchers’ cozy guest cottage, lying in what had been my old friend Mrs. Judson’s bed when she visited here, and I feel really happy. Grant and Libby have gone out of their way to make me feel comfortable. Today was as good as or better than yesterday. The conference was an unqualified success, and they’ve asked Alice to run it again next year, and Alice has asked me to come back. It’s too early to think about that, but I’ll always be grateful to Alice for getting me out to California and to Libby and Grant for allowing me to extend my stay. I woke up at 5:30 AM and exercised for half an hour, creating my own routines in front of the mirror. Then I packed in preparation for checking out at noon, and I went out to the Denny’s on Long Beach Boulevard to have the same kind of breakfast I had yesterday, only for the fifth of the price of the Hyatt Regency’s restaurant.

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Back at the hotel, I attended Richard Allen’s sparsely populated workshop, and at 10:30 AM, I began my own “Promote Yourself” workshop and had five times as many participants, so I ran out of handouts. I guess I was good because I got positive feedback from people, lots of laughs, and amazingly, all the books I brought with me sold out. I ended up with $36, which covered the $31 for incidentals like meals the hotel charged me for when I checked out at noon following my workshop. I had lunch – my own – with Alice and Bonnie Nadel, her agent friend. Out of all the sixteen speakers, Alice said, only one was a dud: Richard Green, the stereotypical obnoxious Hollywood agent. Robert Ferrigno may have come immediately before his one workshop and left immediately after it, but he was well-received, and as our most famous writer, he really was doing a mitzvah just be showing up. After all, his Horse Latitudes is a best seller, and he sold the movie rights to it for half a million. At 1 PM, I had my office hour, during which I met with fascinating people: a hacker who created dBase III and who’s written a book on dBase IV that Macmillan is publishing; Gary Gordon, a former mayor of Gainesville, Florida, who’s published a Zebra Books Western and who moved to California to

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break into screenwriting; and Kraig, a 21-year-old Santa Barbara college student whose story I critiqued. The final panel session featured questions and banter and a raffle of our books. So many people complimented me that I got a lot of practice trying to gracious rather than just embarrassed as usual. Alice was elated as the conference ended. She and Terry really did an excellent job even if Alice modestly said that she lucked out with good speakers. For hours, we sat around the bar talking: me, Alice, Peter, Steve Kowit – what a joy Steve turned out to be: a good teacher and a good friend – and Alex Petrucelli, who replaced Alice as Redbook’s entertainment editor, and Susan Farewell, who’s a travel writer. (I was flattered that Susan said she thought I must know Southern California really well by the way I talked.) This writers’ conference really strengthened my friendship with Alice and Peter, and I’ll always have fond memories of the weekend I spent in Long Beach. I got into my car at 6:15 PM and was in Van Nuys in less than an hour. Going over the mountains on San Diego Freeway at dusk was thrilling because the scenery was more beautiful than I imagined; it puts flat South Florida to shame. The hills are great.

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I know I sound inarticulate, so I’m going to leave until tomorrow my narrative about my first evening with Libby and Grant and Lindsay and Wyatt except to say they’re great, too.

Monday, April 22, 1991 4 PM. I realize my California diary entries haven’t been articulate, but I’ve been experiencing so many new things, it’s hard for me to put into words what I’ve been feeling. I got to Grant and Libby’s house around 7 PM yesterday, and immediately I felt welcomed. Grant answered the door and we finally met. “Your old friend is bathing her kids,” he said, and in the bathroom I saw Mommy Libby taking care of Lindsay and little Wyatt (or not so little: he’s 23 pounds, huge for a six-month-old) in their bath. This is a lovely house which Grant, a contractor, fixed over. His business of cleaning up asbestos from buildings is expanding so fast, the recession hasn’t hit him. He works out of this place; I can hear his employees in the next room now, although he’s gone to take a rest after an incredibly long work day. We talked for a long time after we had some salad (the Fletchers are like my family: junk-food

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vegetarians), and I like Grant a lot; he’s smart, kind and generous. He’s done a lot of work for Hollywood big shots and knows the bullshit of the people in the industry. Libby is as sweet and loving as ever, and she’s obviously a brilliant, caring mother. Lindsay took to me right away – “I like this guy” – and although my visit has excited her, she’s still a terrific three-yearold. And Wyatt has an incredibly placid disposition. This morning I was up at 6 AM and watched the local news, not coming into the main house until 7:45 AM. Libby was breast-feeding the baby while Lindsay and I had breakfast (my oatmeal, her eggs). At 9 AM I went with Libby to take Lindsay to her preschool at a local Presbyterian church. Because Yolanda, who helps with the cleaning and babysits, came this morning, we had time to go up to Griffith Park Observatory on a high mountain that overlooks the L.A. basin. It was thrilling for me to see the whole area, the Hollywood sign, downtown L.A. and the other downtowns. Libby said Alice could have told me what was what but she didn’t really know. We saw the Greek amphitheater, the zoo, an odd monument to James Dean (Rebel Without a Cause has scenes at the observatory): a bronze bust on which someone had stuck a cigarette in his mouth.

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Also, there was the equestrian area of Burbank where Libby used to board a horse. We stopped at a little Burbank bakery, and then we drove around the Valley before picking up Lindsay at 12:30 PM. Lindsay and I played outside for over an hour, and although I didn’t get any formal exercise today – I didn’t shower, either – I got quite a workout running around with her. By 2 PM, she needed a nap, and while I too was pretty tired, I was also famished, so while everyone was resting, I drove down Victory Boulevard to Coldwater Canyon Avenue and tried the new McLean Deluxe, the low-fat burger McDonald’s introduced today. It was good, and I didn’t get sick from it. My diet has to bend a little, but I’m still keeping track of my food, and I know I’ll return to my usual rigorous diet when life settles down. I called Mom and Dad from an outdoor phone as elderly Jews and Mexicans passed by (I love the fact that L.A., unlike Florida, does have some street life) and I told my parents I was having a good time. Mom’s big news was that I was admitted to the law school at the University of Florida although the letter said nothing about the joint program with the journalism school. I’ll have to think about that when I

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return to Florida, as I’d been assuming I’d go to Florida State. Before heading back, I bought some nonfat milk and yogurt (Libby has 2% fat dairy products because of the kids and her lactating) and diet Cokes. Holding Wyatt, I tried to feed him juice – he only seems to want breast milk from Libby and tried to find my nipple – and I had a ball playing with him, as I did earlier with his sister. We’re going out to dinner later.

Tuesday, April 23, 1991 5 PM. After his long workday yesterday, Grant was too tired to join us last evening, so he watched the baby while Libby, Lindsay and I went out to Lido Pizzeria on Victory Boulevard and had whole wheat rigatoni with meatless sauce. It was a pleasant dinner, and Libby and I talked about old friends from Brooklyn and other stuff. Back at home, I read some books to Lindsay and played with Wyatt before I came back to the guest house and tried to exercise a bit before I fell asleep at 10:30 PM. I slept fine, waking up at 6 AM. An hour

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later, I went to the house to shower, and after dressing, I had breakfast with Lindsay. When Yolanda arrived to take care of the baby, Libby and I dropped off Lindsay at school – the parents are all our age, as are the teachers – and left Libby’s old violin for the kids to look at and play with. Living with the Fletchers gives me a sense of one family’s life in Los Angeles. Libby and I went out via the Ventura Freeway, seeing magnificent mountains and canyons and new developments that looked like those in Florida. We went south on Las Virgenes to the Pacific Coast Highway at Malibu, where the Pacific meets beautiful beachfront homes and high palisades (no wonder those mudslides keep those homes from staying put after heavy rains). I loved the drive to Santa Monica, where we stopped for breakfast at the Boulangerie, a neat place where birds fly free indoors. From Santa Monica, we went to the Venice fishing pier. There, Libby and I walked along the beach, which is tacky and honkytonk, a look that I of course love. Then we drove around Marina del Rey, where Dad stays during his sales meetings, before coming home to Van Nuys. Lindsay and I played in my car and we sat in the tree out front and moved to the backyard,

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where played various games of her devising, most of which involved dirt. Lindsay just came in to tell me we’re going out to dinner in five minutes, so I’ll stop here and get ready. * 9 PM. I smell baby smell on me, probably because I was holding and feeding Wyatt. Back to where I left off: After I managed to get Lindsay to go to Libby and take her nap, I took off on my own and went to downtown Hollywood, where I walked around Sunset, Vine, Hollywood Boulevard and the skeevy neighborhood featuring the Walk of Stars, homeless bums, cheap stores, and various industry businesses and banks. But, as in Venice, I like the mélange of nerve and urban despair I found in Hollywood. At the out-oftown newsstand I bought the Times (New York, that is) and U.S. News, which featured the rankings of the 25 top law schools. Naturally, no Florida law school made the list, but they quoted a University of Florida prof and author who’s in the forefront of reforming the curriculum; I do remember UF allowed lots of electives.

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Perhaps I should go to Gainesville if I want a better legal education, but I can’t decide just now, even though I’m already thinking hard about my options. The Times had a feature article on short stories, stressing what I said in my workshop, that the vast majority of American short fiction appears in little magazines and makes no money for writers. We all went out for dinner at this neat little outdoor taco stand, Henry’s, on a corner in North Hollywood. With the two kids in their restraints and the stroller and bottles and diapers, it was really a project to get out, but I enjoyed the atmosphere and my rice-andbeans burrito. Libby and Grant were feeling a bit sick afterwards, but I felt fine. They both work so hard. In three days I can see how raising two little kids can be exhausting. At home, I watched videotapes of Lindsay (at five months old, she looked exactly like her grandmother Mary Judson) and played with her and the baby. Grant’s asbestos removal business is taking off, but he still works very long hours. He told me he and his partner just want to make a lot of money so they can take the money and do something else. If he’s successful over the next year, he’ll buy another house and then use this one for the business.

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Although he’s a vegetarian, Grant is overweight, and I worry he’s jeopardizing his health. Nobody in this house eats very nutritiously except maybe the kids. Of course, I’m a bit of a nutrition nut these days. I called Dad to tell him my flight number, and he said that my bankruptcy discharge notice arrived in today’s mail. It says none of my creditors can try to collect their debts now, so I’m officially out of debt except for my in-abeyance student loans. I called Wesley and Marla but got a message about a new number, and when I tried that one, Wes said they had company at the moment but asked me to come over tomorrow to their new house in the Hollywood Hills. I’ll call Wes in the morning. He said a few days ago he dreamed about me. That’s odd. What’s also odd is that driving around this last week or so in Los Angeles, I’ve had the feeling that I always somehow knew I’d be here, that I’d actually been to L.A. before and felt comfortable here. Pumping gas at an Arco station the other day, I thought: I feel more like me here. Whatever that means. This afternoon, going out for my drive, I left my maps at home, but I had no trouble finding my way to Hollywood. Basically, I’ve got a rough idea of where everything is, and I’m sure that’s better than Alice and Peter have, despite their many trips here.

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Once again, I feel inarticulate, and it’s taking me a long time to write these California diary entries because I keep pausing to muse and reflect. I know this trip turned out better than I ever could have expected, and it has taught me to keep on taking risks.

Wednesday, April 24, 1991 4 PM. I’ve just come from seeing Wesley’s house. I had been expecting grand but I was unprepared for what I saw. It’s Jack LaLanne’s old house, high up in the Hollywood hills; it’s a movie-star house from the 1930s. God, it must have cost a million dollars. I knew Wes was a successful screenwriter, yet I didn’t realize how big the payoffs could be. Naturally, I can’t help comparing myself to him, and I think my anxiety about it caused my vertigo and insomnia last night. And I suspect I must look like pretty much of a superfailure from Wes’ vantage point. Is this meeting, like an episode of a TV sitcom, going to put me in one of those “reevaluate-your-life-in-light-of-your-moresuccessful-friend” funks? Well, I’m not sure. But if I can use this to grow, it will be a valuable experience.

Richard Grayson

I spotted Wes from the narrow, winding Las Presas Drive, as I parked the car. At first he didn’t recognize me; he remarked that I’d gotten so thin and changed so much, he would have passed me by on the street. He introduced me to his kids, Jake, 4½, and Sam, 3, and the inevitable Hispanic maid. And Marla came out on the way to spend more of Wes’ money (so he said); we kissed and said hi. Both of them still look very young. There were about 25 workers all over the house, which clearly needs a lot of fixing up and which is getting it. All of the details of remodeling are lost on me, but even an ignoramus could see that all those contractors and painters and plasterers and carpenters were doing expensive work. The house was grand but kitschy, and Wes said they were trying to do away with the nouveau riche effects. Hell, I don’t even have the vocabulary to describe this stuff. The views from the terraces and windows and lawns and pools were breathtaking: on a clear day, Wes said, you can see the Pacific (people are always saying that, I expect, and the clear day never comes). Anyway, we sat out by the pool for a couple of hours. Wes and the family actually were in Fort Lauderdale for four months this winter. He’s the screenwriter for

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Cape Fear, and he said if only he’d known I lived there, we could have gotten together. They even filmed scenes, of course, at the building I work in at Broward Community College; I’d known Marty Scorsese was filming, but not that Wes was involved. Actually, I’m glad he didn’t know I was living with my parents; then I’d really seem pathetic. Of course, Wes said he himself was depressed lately. The very first script he wrote was going into production in San Francisco today, and he’d been taken off the film by snotty kid director. I can’t remember the name of the movie, but Wes said Richard Gere and Kim Basinger were very difficult to work with (Uma Thurman was great). I know I read something about this in the gossip columns. Wes not only wrote True Believer and DOA but also fixed up Arachnophobia and other films. The whole problem in the film industry seems to be control, and Wes wants to avoid getting the blame for stuff the director did – the way critics skewered his screenwriter friend Steve Zaillian for stuff he fought tooth and nail with the director of Awakenings, Penny Marshall (Wes’ next-door neighbor) to take out of the movie. Let me just freewrite here. Wesley was hard to read. Obviously he likes me and wanted me to hook up with him as an old friend, but I have no inkling of the

Richard Grayson

kind of world he moves in, and I have a horror of anyone thinking that I’d want something from a successful friend. I’ve never been interested in writing for Hollywood, though of course it’s very glamorous to be interrupted – as we were by the pool – by a phone call from Marty Scorsese. I couldn’t really tell if Wes was trying to impress me or to do the opposite, be down to earth. Maybe I overdid it, telling him about my going to law school in the fall and how I’ve lived these past years, down to my bankruptcy. “Richard Disgrace-on,” he said jokingly, and “So you’re a schnorrer.” And, to be honest, I have no idea if his final “See you soon” meant just that or “Don’t ever call me again.” Stuff I can make use of: As we looked at the view, Wes remarked that it was a good incentive to keep him from divorcing Marla, because then he’d lose the house. He said that Jake, the older boy, is very attached to Marla and totally Oedipal: when Jake hurt himself while I was there, Wes came in and Jake said, “I want my mommy.” “What’s wrong with Daddy?” Wes asked, and Jake screamed, “Go away, you stupid old man!” and Wes stood there, stunned.

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Wes explained to be how he got started: his friend Howard (the arrogant guy I met in Manhattan years ago, a classmate from Berkeley) got into screenwriting and sold some scripts that were never made. Howard told Wes to forget about New York book publishing, where people are always thinking up reasons to turn you down, and to come out to Hollywood, where they need people who can tell a story even just reasonably well. So Wes and Marla came out here to stay with Howard and they saw LaLanne house on sale and loved it. Three houses and several years later, they bought it from the couple who got it from the LaLannes and who really couldn’t afford the upkeep (hence the disrepair). Wes also told me that his father retired but got bored and is now touting some electronic keyboard artist I think Lou is managing. When I mentioned to Wes that the former mayor Gainesville told me he liked Wes’ work and that the guy wanted to be a screenwriter, he said, “Don’t give him my number.” I had hoped Wes would know me better and know I’d never think of doing something like that. Naturally, despite what I told Tom, I never intended to show Wes Tom’s little screenplay and at this point I

Richard Grayson

don’t think I’ll tell any other people that I even know Wesley Strick. Lindsay just came in to play, with me, and I’ve got to pack and get ready for dinner. – Well, it turns out we’re not going out to dinner but eating here at home, which is fine with me. I slept only four hours last night because I was so dizzy (I just realized I never took my Triavil). I’ve just been playing with Lindsay in the car and babbled on to Libby, who was peeling potatoes, about Wes and his home. Rachel, the Israeli girl across the street who wants to be a writer and who’s read some of my stories, came over to say hello. We talked about my writing and her writing, and when she said goodbye, she added, “Good luck with. . .” and I jokingly finished, “. . . my pathetic career.” And so my little trip to California comes to a close. What with rush hour traffic tomorrow and the car rental return, I have to be out of the house by 5:30 AM if I’m going to make my plane. If I can get five hours of good sleep, I’ll be happy. Bonine and Drixoral seem to have alleviated my worst vertigo.

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Hey, look: I’m a success just because I have great friends and have been able to make this trip to be with them. It’s really been an interesting experience for me. Whether it’s in Tallahassee or Gainesville, now I think I can handle going to law school on my own. I know I’ve got a unique life and a unique perspective. Once I get on the plane, I’ll have hours and hours to think. On Friday I’ll be back at BCC teaching composition for $20 an hour. Hey, stop it! As Peter keeps telling Alice, money is not life’s report card. I’m the last one who should need to be reminded of that.

Friday, April 26, 1991 5 PM. I really did have jet lag, and I’m still exhausted right now. I have twenty CLAST essays to grade for the Saturday class at South Campus tomorrow, and I’ll either grade them early in the morning or during the night if I have insomnia. I did get eight hours of sleep last night, but I probably needed more than that. I didn’t do much more than chat with my students at Central Campus today. Having been in California, I feel even less a part of Broward Community College than I did before, and that wasn’t much.

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I have made a big decision. It may not be such a good idea, considering the jet lag, but I’m going to attend the University of Florida for law school rather than Florida State. Gainesville is a much older, more competitive, and better law school: the best in the state. My one English 1102 student who wants to be a lawyer was really impressed I got into UF because he knows how many applicants they reject. Gainesville probably isn’t as nice as Tallahassee, but it’s closer to transportation: it’s at least an hour to two closer to South Florida by car, and it’s just a couple of hours from Orlando, Jacksonville and Tampa. Compared to Tally, it’s more Florida-like, less Southern. I sent UF the acceptance card and the financial aid form. I also did send the application to the L.A. fellowship in screenwriting, but that’s the only thing that would keep me from going to Gainesville for law school. And I xeroxed my final discharge from bankruptcy and applied for a deferment on my MHT student loan. Dad and I cleaned out the warehouse, throwing out lots of cartons of With Hitler in New York and keeping a dozen cartons in the new, smaller warehouse space. I bought a videocassette player and exercised. By the

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way, it turned out I didn’t gain any weight on my trip. I’ve got nine days left in South Florida, and they will probably be the last days I ever live here, except for brief family visits. Aunt Sydelle called Dad early today and wanted to come here because Will beat her up. He’s a louse and a compulsive gambler. He’d said that she looked like an old hag, and Sydelle said, “Your first wife, oh, she was such a beauty!” Will went bananas and started hitting her. He threw the photo of Grandpa Nat and Grandma Sylvia out the window because, he said, he hates them for creating Aunt Sydelle. Sydelle wanted to come here, which put Mom in a panic, but of course Sydelle later ended up forgiving Will. The members of my family are sick, sick, sick.

Saturday, April 27, 1991 9 PM. It will be nice to have the option of sleeping in tomorrow morning. Actually, I have to be up early for morning classes only on Monday and Wednesday and a week from today, and otherwise I can allow myself to sleep later.

Richard Grayson

These ten days in Florida between Los Angeles and New York City are an odd time and a busy time. I graded all the Saturday papers last night or this morning. Although it’s been over 90° every day since I’ve been back, we had no air conditioning at South Campus today. I gave my students the option of taking a final (writing an essay) either this week or next, and I graded most of the research papers that came in today. That will make less work for me later on, and this way I could excuse some of my students from coming in next Saturday. On Monday morning I’ll get the 8 AM class’s research papers, which should be abominable, and at noon I’ll give the option of an 1102 final to the students who don’t want to come in for the scheduled exam from 12:20-2:20 PM on Friday. Tuesday night I’ll have my final lit class and collect their take-home exams, and on Wednesday from 8-10 AM, I’ll give the 1101 final. Tomorrow I’ve got a lot of papers to grade, but I’ll do the best I can. I know I’m grading too leniently, but I don’t care; I won’t be back at BCC, even though I don’t quite believe that yet. This afternoon I worked out and read newspapers and magazines and left a birthday message for

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Teresa. I also called Tom, who’d written that he sold an option to Head in a Box. There’s new interest in the novel now, and if the book is published, Tom will get more money for the script, but it’s all Hollywood dickering that’s beyond me. I’ve applied to the Writers’ Film Project but of course I don’t expect to get a fellowship. If I did, however, I’d take it – because it’s L.A. and $16,000 without working and I’d feel it was fate. But 99 chances out of a hundred, I’ll be in Gainesville in mid-August. Tom is in bad emotional way because he’s being forced to choose between Susan and Jessica. Susan, unhappy in grad school at Princeton yet academically ambitious, has offered to quit her $12,000 fellowship and come home if Tom will stop seeing Jessica. For the moment Tom has put both of them on hold and is very conflicted. He’s dying to sell his novels, screenplays and story collections; all that desire to succeed as a writer is beyond my comprehension these days. I’m not sure Tom believes I can go to law school – but I’m certain I can and will.

Richard Grayson

Monday, April 29, 1991 6 PM. Again, I slept heavily. At BCC this morning, I graded the few 1101 papers I hadn’t gotten to and I printed out my finals and letters to FSU (telling them I wasn’t coming), to UF’s housing office (asking for advice), and to Uncle Marty (about my staying at Grandma Ethel’s in Rockaway). I felt sleepy, but I didn’t have much to do today except grade papers; however, that’s a tiring business. Most of my 8 AM ENG 1101 class handed in their research papers, and I’ll try to have them done by their final on Wednesday. All but a few of the noon ENG 1102 class took their final today – I let them collaborate, and the essay questions got them to use creativity – so I won’t have to see some of them again, although a few will return on Friday during our scheduled exam time. The noon class was a nice group, and I’ll miss them. I probably won’t grade anyone lower than a B, which is my parting gift to BCC students. On the other hand, I’ll be hard-pressed to hand out as many as two A’s in the 8 AM class. I brought copies of Hitler to school and autographed books for Phyllis, Eleanor and Gordon. Later in the day, after I got my boarding pass for next week’s flight on delta, I went to the Sunrise and Lauderhill

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branch libraries and deposited copies of my books there. I rarely go to that neighborhood anymore, but I have fond memories of living in that dark condo on NW 16th Place from October 1981 to July 1983 (except for summers). Part of it was I remember my pleasant routines in the first apartment I had in South Florida, and I also remember that just about nine years ago, when Sean would come over and we were so close. It’s odd that I’m going to live in Gainesville, where Sean moved when he left South Florida. I have the feeling I’m going to get involved with someone up there. After all these years, it’s about time, and law school is going to keep me in one place for a while, and since I’m going to be away from friends and family, it’s likely – I hope – I’ll make a few new strong attachments. Donahue finally aired Alice and Peter’s reappearance, along with other couples from previous shows. By now, Alice and Peter appear as comfortable on TV as they do with each other, and watching the show, I felt proud that I’m their friend. I exercised at 3:30 PM and then read the papers: I still don’t see signs of an economic recovery, and the state budget cuts haven’t even kicked in yet. It’s possible

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we’re on the edge of an upturn, but bad policy or bad luck could turn this into a depression yet. Elihu sent a revised list from the LaGuardia group and wrote that he’s got the new Brooklyn College Alumni Directory; I’ll call Elihu when I get to New York. It will be odd telling some friends I’m going to law school, and I expect an especially hard time from attorneys like Mikey and Scott. A week from now I’ll be in New York, and a week ago I was in Los Angeles. I do like the idea of y being forced to handle novelty. Yesterday I read that some babies seem to be born with predispositions against dealing effectively with novelty. If my problem, and that of my family, is genetic as well as psychological, I still know I can overcome it. Since seeing Wesley last week, I’ve had to think a great deal about my own success or lack of success. It hurts that I’ve never made money or had my own family, but on the other hand, I feel that, considering where I started out, I’ve done very well. Someone seeing that homebound, neurotic, paralyzed 17-year-old kid that I was back in Brooklyn in 1968 and 1969 couldn’t have predicted I’d ever have a career as a college teacher (when I then couldn’t face even sitting as a student in a classroom) or that I’d

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have lifelong friendships (when I had no friends back then) or that I’ be able to publish my weird takes on life. I don’t think it’s silly to give myself the benefit of all doubts. Well, tomorrow April ends. This year, it was for me the kindest and not the cruelest month. If I was lucky, I also helped to engineer my own luck. God, I must seem nauseatingly self-congratulatory – but then, self-castigation and self-hatred are even more nauseating.

Tuesday, April 30, 1991 9 PM. I just came home from BCC, and from Dad’s stance in his bedroom, I could see something was wrong. But it was Jonathan, terrified like a rabbit, who told me that Mom was so sick she thought she was dying but wouldn’t go to the hospital. I found her sitting on the floor next to the bed; she felt a little better, she said, but she had terrible gas, so I gave her a simethicone tablet. And with Dad, I told her if she doesn’t stop eating the way she has been – her belly is enormous – she will die sooner than later. Fat people tend to eat fast when they’re hungry, as Mom said she did tonight, and they eat a lot, so naturally they get indigestion.

Richard Grayson

If Jonathan thinks I’m insensitive, I remember how he got on the phone to chuckle when I was wretchedly ill from food poisoning last August. I know his laughter was caused by panic, as is his current frantic sate, but I can’t feel sympathy for panic even though I know how painful it is. Why? Because, unlike myself, Jonathan won’t admit there’s something wrong with him and won’t seek therapy or any kind of help. I myself have diarrhea and gas tonight. Maybe I’ve got a stomach virus. I kept tonight’s class for 90 minutes, ending our look at 20th century American literature by comparing Hemingway (“The Snows of Kilimanjaro”) and Hurston (two chapters of Their Eyes Were Watching God): the white male writer who’s the 800-pound gorilla in the literary landscape, and a black female writer who did her best work when she had no audience and died unknown and poor. At least Hemingway was a rich and famous suicide. It strikes me that in a sense I was justifying my own literary status or lack thereof. Oh well. I love all the people who ask me why I’m going to be a lawyer when there are so many lawyers: won’t the competition be too tough for me? Baby, you should know how few people get to even where I’ve gotten as a fiction writer: books published and reviewed.

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The odds against that are a lot worse than trying to get a partner’s slot at Dewey, Ballantine or Sullivan & Cromwell. Wes has had five screenplays become films, but he couldn’t sell any of his books of fiction. And I don’t think 600 attorneys apply for a job that pays $23,000, as I did – and was a finalist for – at Rockland Community College. And how many lawyers, after practicing for sixteen years, have to settle for being paid $20 an hour as I am as a part-time teacher at BCC? Not many, I’ll bet. At least with the law, I’ll have a profession to fall back on; teaching college English or computer education didn’t provide that. If only I’d known, I would have applied to law school decades ago, when I first came to Florida. Sometimes I think getting those 1981 jobs at BCC were bad luck, not good luck. I visited South Campus today, and there was still no air conditioning. I got Adrienne out of her office and into the relative coolness of 85° outside, and we talked for a while. Although everyone wanted her for the English position, Betty was told to give it to Bill Maxwell, who wants to return from Gainesville. And Bill should get the job, because he’s a fine teacher and BCC needs black faculty. Unfortunately,

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Adrienne is in the same position she was a year ago, with her yearlong temporary full-time position ending. At least she’s got summer work; I advised her to apply for unemployment the day after the summer term ends. The Fed cut the discount rate to 5½%; the economy is bad.

Thursday, May 2, 1991 8 PM. I started feeling quite dizzy this evening, but I think it’s just that my sinuses are bad, not that I’m about to have another really bad bout of vertigo. Last evening I spoke to Ronna, whom I told about my California trip. She said Gainesville is a pretty little town, and Billy and Melinda will be moving back there so he can finish his Ph.D. in psychology and maybe she can get a masters. Ronna isn’t sure if they’ll return for the fall or spring semesters; their wedding is going to be down here in Fort Lauderdale in November. It will be nice to have Ronna visit me when she comes to see her brother in Gainesville. I was just looking at a map of Florida, and Gainesville, though far, is a lot closer than

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Tallahassee. Orlando, Tampa/St. Pete and Jacksonville are all within a three-hour drive. It still hasn’t quite hit me that I’m actually going to law school in Gainesville, but I know I will, unless by some fluke I got that film writing fellowship in L.A. I couldn’t refuse the $16,000, and I‘d use the year to learn about screenwriting and the film industry and to establish California residence so I could apply for in-state tuition at one of their law schools, like UCLA’s, assuming film didn’t work out for me. I don’t even know why I think I might have a chance at that fellowship – my stories aren’t particularly cinematic – but I won’t be surprised if I do get it, just the way I wasn’t surprised about getting the Florida fellowships or the New York State grant for Rockland. But I doubt Gainesville will turn out to be a myth in my life; it won’t be like my plan to move to Albany to start grad school in 1979 or going to New Orleans to work with Tom at NOCCA in 1981. I’m no longer afraid to be somewhere new, and I’m starting to get psyched up for law school. I like studying. Look what my greatest pleasure was on a day of leisure: I went to libraries (Broward West Regional in Plantation, Dade North Regional in North Miami Beach) where I read – and dropped off copies of Hitler and Dog.

Richard Grayson

Okay, so magazines and reference books aren’t law school texts, but the point is I love studying. Alice said she’s never heard of anyone going to law school with the attitude it would be fun, only something to be endured, and Tom wondered if I can cope with the academic bullshit, but I feel comfortable as a student. (MY FAU grades came today. Hey, I got an A in a chemistry course – the department that my Food and Nutrition class was in.) Last night I watched two movies on Cinemax: Jim Jarmusch’s Mystery Train and then a lousy movie about a TV producer, which I loved only for the L.A. shots and scenes of “the industry.” I still think about how badly I behaved when I visited Wes, mostly because I’m not yet wise enough always to take pleasure in my friends’ successes. I reacted by not being as warm as I do feel toward Wes, and by seeming blasé and coming off like a total ne’er-dowell. Why did I have to tell him about my bankruptcy when I didn’t tell Libby and Grant? Well, I’m sure Wes has better things to consider than my idiocy, and if he is one of those people – yes, I’m afraid I’d be one – for whom success is sweet only if it’s accompanied by others’ failure, then I made him happy. But I don’t think he is.

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I miss California. Oddly enough, I especially miss Lindsay. When Grant, nodding toward his daughter, said, “This is what it’s all about,” I understood completely. Remember how Lindsay would do her best Valley Girl: “Cool, baby, dude, cool. . .”? It’s blazingly bright and hot here, and I think I’ll welcome the kind of dark, chilly days I experienced last May in Rockaway. Probably I should have graded papers today, but I couldn’t. I did toss off a short note to Crad, to let him know I’m still alive (but I’m not giving him a return address). I caught up on the Times, including the issues I missed out in L.A. Next week I can start getting the local, not the national, edition. Dad offered to give me $300 in spending money for New York, but I said I didn’t need it for now.

Monday, May 6, 1991 9 PM in Rockaway. I feel quite tired but I know when my head hits the pillow, it will start spinning like a Chanukah dreidel. I never had such bad vertigo on a flight as I did today, but it was a particularly bad flight.

Richard Grayson

Starting at takeoff, I had a huge anxiety attack rivaling the ones I used to get in high school, with even that weird electric sensation of my body being left behind. I know I’m an agoraphobic and therefore overly sensitive to movements and physical feelings others don’t notice, but I had taken two Triavils, and I didn’t think I’d get as bad as I did. I couldn’t do more than pick at the fruit on my plate, and I could barely comprehend the action in an Arnold Schwarzenegger movie, Kindergarten Cop, because I felt so sick. And when the pilot announced that Kennedy Airport had been closed, I felt that an awful reprise of my last terrible flight, with the emergency landing in Fort Myers, was coming up. Circling made me dizzier, but at last, we did get to land at the reopened airport. I struggled with my luggage – I still don’t know if the videocassette player was damaged because I haven’t tried it yet) and got an unlucky cabbie to take me to Rockaway. The apartment didn’t smell as musty as I’d expected; perhaps the heat never came on all winter and the cold preserved it. After calling Dad to let them know I’d arrived, I went to Key Food, a dump compared to Florida and Arizona supermarkets like Publix,

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Albertson’s and Ralph’s. Their selections are crummy, and the Healthy Choice dinner I bought looked as if had thawed, so for dinner I had broccoli, Weight Watchers cheese on rice cakes, blueberries and a yam. Luckily, the microwave works okay. I spent most of the last 3½ hours putting stuff away and trying to clean up. There is so much to do, all I can handle right now is major damage control, like removing dead roaches from the bathtub, and taking care of necessities, like setting up what I need for tonight. Teresa phoned to say she was going to Italy on Friday night. Things got very bad with David and Christine and Brian, for whom something snapped last week. Brian wants to cool their relationship, isn’t ready for a commitment, etc. All the stuff with David and Christine, her former employers and friends, is just the past repeating itself with new names. At first Teresa decided on a trip to San Francisco, but Cynthia couldn’t get a day off from the university lab, and when a friend wanted to take a vacation, they called around and found a great deal on Alitalia. Teresa said if I meet her at Kennedy Airport, I can have the car while she’s in Europe. It just might work out.

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Off that I find myself sexually aroused now, though perhaps it’s being alone in my own place for the first time since last year. Or maybe it’s the kind of erection I get when I sleep. Last night, for the first time, I realized I not only dream I color, but I dream in smell. I met an old man whom I knew to be Sam Hellman, father of my Hebrew school classmate, Mitchell Hellman, who used to drive me home and leave me off at the corner instead of in front of my house. I recognized the guy from the cheap stink of his after-shave lotion, which he hadn’t changed in thirty years. Actually, of course, I don’t remember what Sam Hellman smelled liked. Maybe, if I get out the sofa bed, I could sleep. At least if I can’t, I have lots to keep me busy tonight in the apartment, cleaning and straightening up. I’m still worried this will be like the time I came to Rockaway from Florida in January 1980 and I got first a wicked stomach virus and then that long siege of vertigo. Go, go. . .

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Tuesday, May 7, 1991 9 PM. The sound of ocean waves crashing is a pleasant one. Maybe that’s one reason why, contrary to expectations, I slept soundly last night, dreaming dreams of success. In one dream, I read in Newsweek about my Sylvia Ginsberg Fan Club idea; in another, I found half a dozen of my story titles on a New York Times Book Review-type best seller list along with titles by Stephen King. I awoke feeling refreshed at 6 AM. The VCP works, but I found Body Electric on WLIW/21 at 7:30 AM and exercised to the show rather than a tape. After breakfast, I vacuumed and dusted, and then at 9 AM, I left to visit Grandma Ethel. It was a bright, mild day. The Woodmere office didn’t know how I could get to the home by public transportation, but someone told me that it was just off Central Avenue, and I recalled there were Nassau County buses that went up that street that I could get in Far Rockaway, so I took the Green bus there. On Seagirt Avenue, I found the N31 bus and asked the driver to announce my stop. The bus headed past the familiar avenue of Lawrence, Cedarhurst and Woodmere, and I got off just after it turned into Broadway.

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At first I went into the nursing home by mistake, but they told me the health-related facility was next door. Actually, I had been favorably impressed by the nursing home, which was nothing like the war zone Grandpa Nat lived in in North Miami. At the HRF’s desk, I was told Grandma’s room was 321, and as I approached, a walker stuck out of the door and Grandma was behind it. She stopped for a moment and so did I as we stared at each other; then I went over and kissed and hugged her. She looks bad, but no worse than she did last September in the hospital. In fact, she’d gained weight and just had her hair done. But she’s still depressed, as I discovered as I sat on her bed in the room she shares with another woman. She’s just waiting to die, and Grandma feels she’s not getting medical care when she wants it. Her gums, tongue and lips all bothered her – that bitter taste again, though her lip did look infected – something that just began a few days ago. They force everyone to get dressed and out of bed every day. Last week, she said she felt too sick to get dressed, and they didn’t give her the four usual meals until she got up and put on clothes for the dining room.

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I assume they were trying to condition Grandma to fight depression. Marty, in his weekly visit yesterday, had told her I was coming, and she asked me about the apartment and my family in Florida. We talked, and then she took me to the TV/smoking room, where we sat around. Some residents are mobile, others are in wheelchairs, and some, like Grandma, use walkers. It’s not exactly a great place, but the people there aren’t totally out of it, and I could see from the bulletin board there are numerous activities – movies, religious services for Jews and Christians, current events discussion groups, and the like – and a good menu, which adhered to all the laws I know from having to make up such a menu for my nutrition class. After Grandma exhausted her complaints, we started to run out of stuff to discuss, but together we sat and watched TV until they called her into the spotless dining room for lunch. Hungry myself, I had a fruit bar and a bag of defatted peanuts while waiting for the bus (with the same driver I’d had on the way there), and in Far Rock, I took a Haitian van to Beach 116th Street, where I went to the bank, got some Korean salad bar and groceries at Waldbaum’s. (Everything here is about 40% more expensive than in Florida.)

Richard Grayson

After lunch, I spoke to Mom, who had called, and then went to visit Aunt Tillie, who holds her hand over her mouth because she doesn’t wear her teeth anymore. She also complains, but Tillie, despite her many elements, has more strength than Grandma. Like everyone else, Tillie seems to think it’s best to give up Grandma’s apartment this summer. At 5 PM, I excused myself from Tillie’s, and I came home to have dinner, read the Times, and listen to All Things Considered. I left messages with my phone number here with Justin and David, Pete, and Josh, and I didn’t talk long with Sat Darshan, whose kids just returned from India last night; I’ll call her next week, as I’m sure she’ll be spending time with Gurujot and Gurudaya this week on her vacation. I did speak with Elihu, who’s still working at that accounting firm he hates, but he said he may get a job with a pleasant boutique firm. In any case, Elihu plans to be out of there soon, but he’s still Mr. Straight-Arrow Employee With a Mortgage. He seemed surprised I’m going to law school, but what’s he gonna say: “You’re nuts”? I expect some of my old friends will think that, however.

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Living here in Rockaway last September, I began to consider this place my own apartment, and it’s becoming that once more.

Thursday, May 9, 1991 2 PM. It’s a gray day, almost gloomy, but I don’t mind. Ronna phoned last night at 10 PM, when I was falling asleep, but we spoke for a little bit. She’s been seeing this guy, Ralph, who answered her ad in Jewish Week, and after a couple of months, it sounds serious. Although I had back-of-my-mind fantasies about getting together with Ronna – I guess I’ll always find her sexy – I’m glad her involvement with Ralph precludes that this summer. It’s so much better for us to be platonic, and hey, maybe Ralph can convince her to marry him. If so, he’d be ahead of Jordan and Steve. I wish Ronna would get married already because time is running out if she wants kids – and I know she’d make a great mother. Odd how some women get marriage proposals from every guy they go out with seriously, as Ronna does, and others get just the opposite, guys who run away from commitment, as Teresa does.

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Yesterday I spoke to Alice and complimented her and Peter on their Donahue appearance. After thirteen years, Alice and Peter have about the best heterosexual relationship of all my friends. I slept soundly again, though the sofa bed, like the one I slept on in Florida, isn’t great for my back. At 7:30 AM, I exercised, then had breakfast, and after showering and dressing, I walked to Beach 116th Street, where I left about a dozen books of mine in the library’s book drop, and where I got a salad at the Koreans’ and some stuff at Ark Drugs and Waldbaum’s. Although I returned home at 10:20 AM, I was at the home in Woodmere by 11 AM, thanks to a quiet ride in a van and the fact that I quickly caught the Nassau bus; it was already pulling out at Seagirt Boulevard, but I ran fast and made the bus by the stop in front of the Far Rock library on Central Avenue. Grandma Ethel was in bed today, though dressed, of course, and I noticed she seemed to be having trouble breathing. She looks very old, but her wrinkled skin always gave her an older appearance. Grandma definitely wants to give up the apartment, as she feels she’ll never “get better.” I left a Mother’s Day card with her, and today she told me not to bring her any more clothes because she had no room for them in her small closet.

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The health-related facility may not be the best place to end one’s life, but it reminds me of artists’ colonies or the military or a school dorm, and I’m sure I could enjoy being in place like Grandma’s if I weren’t too sick when I got old. It’s half a century too late for me to change my grandmother’s gloomy attitude, so I just cluck sympathetically as she complains and despairs. Hopefully, she won’t drag out her life too much longer. I got the bus and van back, stopping at the McDonald’s by the Cross Bay Bridge for a McLean Deluxe. (I had a 91¢ coupon for the 91% fat-free burger – which of course is misleading, since most food is largely water and thus fat-free, but I know the sandwich has 320 calories and 10 fat grams.) Then I came home, via the boardwalk, to the apartment. I sort of like living in Rockaway and taking buses and vans and seeing how people live here. I’m vain about my ability to be “street smart” and rely on public transportation and the gypsy vans driven by Haitians and West Indians. I’d have liked to try buses in L.A. and gotten a real feel of life there, but I did go to supermarkets and drug stores and fast-food and health-food places. Alice may be a travel writer who’s gone everywhere,

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but she sees only top-notch hotels, restaurants, and tourist places. Ronna said her brother could probably recommend some apartment complexes for me in Gainesville. Housing is my most pressing problem right now, but I’ll get it settled by early July, one way or the other; I’ll handle it. I left messages with Harold and with Mikey and Amy, although nobody but Ronna returned my earlier messages. The truth is, I don’t have that many friends left in New York City anymore, and all of them have full lives without me. With Teresa’s West 85th Street apartment unavailable and this place in Rockaway gone after the summer, I think I may decide to go to summer school in Gainesville next May, June and early July.

Sunday, May 12, 1991 3 PM. Yesterday’s entry is embarrassing, but it that was me at my worst, I’m not so bad. Because I’ve been alone and sick, my mood swings violently, and yesterday, listening to my Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway cassette helped me regain some control.

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I did some cleaning out of drawers; Grandma has many duplicate pieces of paper with the same recipe for carrot cake or rice pudding or the same phone numbers again and again. Some of her stuff, like a tube of Vaseline camphor ice, seemed worth saving as a design antique. Little by little, I’ll clean the place out, but that’s emotionally wrenching, too. My grandparents had a life here, and now there’s no place for the artifacts of that life. I’ve never been to the cemetery to see Grandpa Herb’s grave, and maybe I need to do that now; I found directions to where he’s buried. If I used to think of colds as little deaths in which recovery is linked with an integration of loss, maybe it’s obvious why I have been sick this week. Dizzy and congested, I barely slept last night, and today I feel no better, but at least I don’t feel much worse. Up at 6 AM, I again forced myself to exercise lightly – that’s pretty good – and I read the Sunday Times by 10 AM. Bill Maxwell managed to get an op-ed column, about the irresponsibility of black fraternities, in the paper, which impresses me and should impress everyone at Broward Community College. In a way, I’m sorry Bill won’t be up in Gainesville when I’m there.

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I’ve been reading my How to Succeed in Law School book with trepidation and also anticipation. When I assured Justin he’d have fun in Brooklyn College’s Theater MFA program, he told me I didn’t realize everyone isn’t a “school person” like me. Justin and Teresa and Alice and other friends viewed their undergraduate career as something to be endured and gotten over with, and they don’t feel comfortable on college campuses the way I always have. Justin reasons that although law school will be a novel experience, it will be familiar because I’ve been in a college classroom for every year of my adult life. That’s true. New York City, to change the subject, really seems to be doing under again. Even if Dinkins’ budget cuts turn out to be less severe than he threatens, some services will never come back, and the important amenities like parks and libraries won’t be what they were. All New Yorkers seem to feel the quality of life is deteriorating. I bet the city will come back, but maybe not for a while. The decline that started in the 60s and accelerated through the 70s, when people like my parents left, is happening all over again.

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I took a ride around Brooklyn this afternoon, which was warm enough so I could wear shorts. The older I get, the more associations flood my brain when I pass my old house, my old schools, familiar stores and corners and hangouts in Brooklyn. Driving around Mill Basin, Flatlands, East Flatbush and Marine Park reminded me of so many moments in my life. I remember having a cold one May in high school, and reading Franny and Zooey, which I’d bought at the stationery store next to Waldbaum’s on Avenue U. I remember a Mother’s Day, probably in 1970, when we went to Aunt Sydelle’s house in Cedarhurst and I wore a tie-dyed T-shirt, and using Grandpa Herb’s Minolta, I took photos of Grandma Sylvia and Grandpa Nat and baby Michael in the backyard. Passing the Meyer Levin Junior High School playground, I remember one of my only moments of semi-athletic glory, like making something like 27 foul shots in a row. I wondered if the basketball hoop there now is the same one. There were too many memories for me to process. I may sound more cheerful, but I do believe I’m a mess, as I wrote yesterday. The difference is that today I believe I need to go through this “mess” to come out better on the other side.

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There’s no short cut, and the only way to avoid the pain that comes with change and growth is to live in total fear. When I feel anxiety, panic and terror, I need to stop fighting and resisting and let the fear overwhelm me. That way, when – not if – I survive, I’ll be that much stronger.

Monday, May 13, 1991 7 PM. I’m trying my best to cope, but I’m extremely congested and I had several attacks of vertigo today. My sore throat and postnasal drip went away, replaced by a fountain of mucus coming from my nose and a hacking cough. My right ear feels full, and no doubt that’s the source of my dizziness. Whether this will turn into a months-long battle with vertigo like in ’80 or ’89 remains to be seen. Sometimes I wonder why people would be interested in knowing the future. I wouldn’t, ever, because all the good happenings would no longer be surprises, and I don’t think I could take advance knowledge of bad experiences. I slept somewhat better last night, but tonight I’m really dizzy again, and I may have to get these tissues

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surgically removed from my nostrils. Still, I’ve been trying to get through the days and be constructive. Yesterday I did the laundry, and at Kings Plaza, I bought ten-pound dumbbells and some health foods. I’ve been overeating, if only because I’m alone, bored and using sugar-containing lozenges, and I weigh 143 on the scale here. I’m annoyed because the woman across the hall told the UPS man on Friday that no man lived here, and I think they sent my packages back to Florida. It’s a real pain in the ass. The woman wasn’t wrong, just stupid, but the company shouldn’t have left it up to a neighbor as to what to do. On the other hand, if UPS were on the ball, I never would have gotten that VCR that was mistakenly delivered to me in Davie and left with a neighborhood. The package I was supposed to get had my exercise tapes and some cereal and food and clothes in it, and I hope it turns up. I got an acknowledgement of my unemployment claim from Florida today, but I don’t expect word on my eligibility for days or weeks. If I’m denied benefits, I’ll file an appeal.

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Scott phoned and invited me to a housewarming party next Sunday. He told me to take a 1:30 PM train and he’ll pick me (and others) up at the Hartsdale station. If I feel well enough, why not? The problem is getting home late via public transportation; this isn’t the greatest neighborhood. But if I get a bus that leaves me right off in the back, I’ll lessen my chances of being mugged. Irene Krasner phoned after the woman who takes care of her was on the boardwalk, passed this building and noticed a light on in what she knew was Grandma’s apartment. Irene had no idea where Grandma, her oldest friend, has been all these months. Irene said she herself is lucky to have her neighbors because otherwise she’d be in a home, too. Aunt Tillie came over this morning, but after searching in vain for the pink sweater she lent Grandma a decade ago, she grumpily concluded that Grandma must have given it to one of her nieces. I showed Tillie the video of Mom and Dad’s house; at least somebody got to see it. This afternoon I drove to Beth David Cemetery in Elmont. I’d been there before, to see the graves of my great-grandparents (Ginsbergs and Cohens) on my father’s side.

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The Louis Lerner Benevolent Association plots were way out near the cemetery’s edge, and I saw “Sarrett” on the headstone from a distance right away. They got a double one, with Grandma’s side on the left waiting to be filled in. The headstone had Grandpa’s name in English and in Hebrew (Chaim Pesach ben Yitzhak), his birth and death dates, and “beloved husband, father and grandfather.” I placed a pebble on the stone but I couldn’t feel anything. I thought, well, there’s a skeleton or decaying body under here, but what does that have to do with my grandfather? Maybe I was denying what I felt because I couldn’t face the enormity of it. But at least I saw Grandpa Herb’s grave since I didn’t attend his funeral or unveiling. When I did my genealogical research in the 70s, I enjoyed going to cemeteries, and they really don’t bother me. Today I noticed on a plaque that Ben Krasner, Irene’s husband, and Max Shapiro, Grandma Ethel’s father, and Dave Tarras were members of the Lerner society – although Great-Grandpa Max and Uncle Dave are buried at Old Montefiore with the Shapiros. I enjoy making up stories when I see tombstones of people I don’t know, and imagining or trying to

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figure out what these people’s lives are like, but I know I want to be cremated. Going back to Rockaway, I decided to take a long ride, so I went with Linden Boulevard instead of the parkway and passed through black neighborhoods like Cambria Heights and St. Albans. Mom called me and told me I’d inadvertently addressed the letter I wrote to Beach Drugs to their house. The pharmacy’s address is 200 Beach 116th Street and I must have written “2001” and kept going with the familiar address, 2001 SW 98th Terrace. Mom said she and Dad will go to Gainesville before the end of June; if they don’t, I’ll go up there myself. She spoke to Grandma yesterday, but reported that it took forever for someone to answer the phone and then a long time before Grandma came on. Grandma told Mom she’s just waiting to die. What Grandma lacks – and I hope I never do – is a sense of curiosity. She’s so self-absorbed, she never thinks to ask about other people. It’s important to remember what not to do when I get old. If I get old. At least being sick gives me something to do with my time.

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Friday, May 17, 1991 4 PM. Just now I got a call from the Florida Unemployment office, asking if BCC had given me reassurance of hiring for the next term. “No,” I said. “They said because of the budget cuts, they weren’t hiring part-timers.” “Thank you very much,” drawled the lady. BCC must have challenged the determination that the Unemployment office made to give me $174 a week in benefits. Last year the Florida Labor Department ruled against them at Florida International University, which also had challenged my claim, and I hope they will again this year. In today’s mail I got the good news about the $174 determination and I hope my celebration wasn’t premature. As I told Alice, it seems absurd that I should be paid $174 a week in benefits but net only $265 a week for teaching four college English classes I the spring term. Too good to be true? Why not “too bad to be true” regarding salary? Anyway, I’ll rest a lot easier once I find out I’m definitely eligible for the checks. That will make my summer much easier. I’ve decided that starting on Monday, I’ll begin writing – or editing, or redrafting – my 1980s diary

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book, a project which would keep me busy all summer – and after I print out the manuscript, I figured I’d sent it to the Brautigan Library as a companion volume to A Version of Life. Oddly, I got a call from a Boston-based Wall Street Journal reporter just as I was reading the Journal today, and he told me he was doing a story on the Brautigan Library; the director had given him my number as someone who’s had books published but who has a book in the library anyway. We had a twenty-minute conversation about the idea of the library and why I’d sent my book there. He was driving up to Burlington this afternoon to see the library, and no doubt he’ll look at A Version of Life – a fact that embarrasses me, given the personal nature of the material. It would be the most ironic thing I could think of if The Wall Street Journal will mention my diary in an article, but it’s a funny old world, as Margaret Thatcher said when she got the sack. I went to the home at 11 AM today, and Grandma Ethel wasn’t doing too well. She’s more congested than I am, and she told me she wishes she could just take a drink and be dead. A Times article yesterday, illustrated with a drawing of an old woman with a walker like Grandma, said

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that modern medicine has allowed people to live longer but at the cost of them having extra years of poor health. After trying on the pants that mom got for her, Grandma became exhausted. (The pants were too tight due to all the weight Grandma has gained at the home.) I asked Grandma if she wanted to be kept alive by extraordinary methods, like on a respirator, and she said definitely not, that that would be horrible. I hope that Grandma will never be tortured the way Grandpa Herb was when they operated on him and put in a pacemaker the night before he died, when it was obvious he was at the end of his long battle with lung cancer. I like the way Grandma Sylvia died of an aneurysm: quick and simple. Or Mrs. Judson: dying in her sleep of a heart attack. On Friday, June 7, Alice and Peter plan to take me out to celebrate my fortieth birthday. Previously I’d asked Alice to forget about giving me a party. Last night I slept well, dreaming that I was happily returning to California. And I dreamed of China; it’s weird how I could have become so attached to a dog.

Richard Grayson

I finished How to Succeed in Law School. The torts cases that made up the last part of the book were challenging reading, but I found them intellectually interesting. When I was a Poli Sci major at BC, Professor Berkowitz told me that law school was all rote memorization, but I can see great intellectual challenges in the issues raised by case law. It’s cooler and cloudier here at the beach today, but I like it because the boardwalk is less crowded. I’ve grown used to the crash of the waves and the squawks of the seagulls. Rockaway has been a part of my life every summer since I was a baby, but that will all end after this year.

Sunday, May 19, 1991 7 PM. Tomorrow marks two weeks since I left Florida for New York, and today was the first time I got to Manhattan. I had planned on going to Westchester, to Scott and Joon’s housewarming party in Hartsdale, but even though I left at 11:30 AM, two hours simply wasn’t enough time for me to catch the 1:30 PM train at Grand Central that Scott told me I could take.

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I’d gotten up early and done everything so I’d be out of the house and prepared. I made myself extra-wellgroomed, brought a gift (Nancy Reagan-style, I recycled one of Grandma’s pretty candy dishes), etc. But neither the Queens or Brooklyn buses came for over half an hour, and by the time I got to the Junction, it was 12:40 PM and I realized there was no way I could get to Hartsdale. Even if I took the 2:30 PM train, I’d be staying at their house maybe three hours and spending eight hours traveling – about as long as a transcontinental trip. Rather than return to Rockaway, I got on the subway and though you would have figured I’d all The Big Thinking that I could bear while I’ve been alone (and sick) lately, I thought the entire ride into the city. One of the things I thought about: Really, I no longer have day-to-day friends in New York City. I have a number of good friends here, people comparable to Libby and Grant in L.A., whom I could have a great visit with, but nobody I can interact with daily or even regularly. The run-down: Alice and Peter are close to me, but they’re really the only friends I have remaining in Manhattan. Ronna is busy with Ralph, who probably lives outside the city, and I can’t go on depending on

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her, particularly – as I hope – when she gets married and has kids. Josh is still in Manhattan, but he’s crazy. Scott and Joon, and Mikey and Amy aren’t really close friends, and they live in inaccessible Westchester and Riverdale. Harold will be leaving the city soon. Teresa is out on Fire Island or in Oyster Bay, and she’s not likely to ever return to the city. In Brooklyn, I have Justin and David, who are busy with each other and their own careers and close friends; Sat Darshan, who’s got her kids and the people at the ashram; Elihu, who I’m not close to; and Pete, who spends much of the year traveling around the world. I had more daily contact with teachers, secretaries and students at BCC when I was in Florida. That’s why, I realized, going to law school in Gainesville will give me a chance not only to start a new career and live in a new place but meet a new group of friends. Obviously law school is the kind of environment where people get close, if only because not too many others can understand what they’re going through. If I could make two or three good friends in Gainesville, I’ll be happy.

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Part of me wonders if, at my age, I still have the ability to get close to new people, but I’ve got to believe I do. I’m worried about affording law school, but the University of Florida is such a bargain, I’ll find a way to come up with the money. Maybe I don’t sound motivated about law school, but at Nutri/System my psychological profile said I wasn’t motivated enough, either, and look how determined and successful I was at losing weight. I respond well to the kind of discipline law school calls for. I got off the IRT at 72nd Street and once up those narrow stairs, I emerged on the Upper West Side, a place I will always love. They finished the new Alexandria tower on the northwest corner – probably the last of the mammoth Upper Broadway buildings of the 80s boom. As I walked toward Lincoln Center, I noticed new stores but the same wonderful, eclectic mix of humanity. For seven summers I took strolls on Broadway for granted, but now I’ll have to make the most of my rare visits uptown. I used the men’s room at Philharmonic Hall, where marchers from the AIDS walk mixed with Fordham

Richard Grayson

graduates in caps and gowns and refugees from the Ninth Avenue Food Festival. I made my way down to Columbus Circle, where, for the first time, I read the base of the explorer’s statue (1992 will be the quincentenary of the 1492 voyage to the New World). Then I ate a McLean Deluxe at a vest-pocket park at 56th and Eighth. Today’s high was 65° and I was bundled up while others lolled in Tshirts and shorts. At least I had a few hours to spend in the city. As long as I’m staying in Rockaway, my visits to Manhattan will be few, and I can’t see coming home after evenings there. I now remember why I never went back and forth to visit Grandma Ethel in a single day. I have a lot of associations with Manhattan, though, and I feel that no matter how bad the present fiscal crisis gets, there will always be those magnet parts of the city people will want to spend time in. I picked up all the little free neighborhood weeklies so I could get a sense of the city in 1991, and at the Donnell Library, on my way to the downstairs bathroom, I heard pleasant music and got treated to seeing Filipino folk dances on stage in the auditorium. These little pleasures – like the organist at St. Patrick’s Cathedral, the wedding party on the church’s steps,

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the street performers outside 100-year-old Carnegie Hall – are what make New York New York. Unfortunately, today’s the last Sunday the Donnell will be open due to the budget cuts, and the recession has given rise to these posters announcing TUE NIGHT OUT, a campaign to get people to spend money on dining and entertainment on a weeknight. Passing St. Bart’s on Lexington Avenue, I went into the 51st Street station and used the new transfer point to take the E back to Queens. The subway had only one beggar, a young white guy giving away baseball cards in exchange for coins, and one musician, a blues guitarist. Three stops later, I got off at Roosevelt Avenue and waited for the Rockaway bus amid signs in Korean and handouts for a porno line, 970-BUSH (not something for Presidential supporters to call). I tried to make out some skywriting: Did that word say GANE? Oh, GANE UNA CARRERA – it was Spanish skywriting. In the city I saw two AIDS walkers with T-shirts that read NADIE SABE QUE YO SOY GAY. I was back in Rockaway after 5 PM.

Richard Grayson

Thursday, May 23, 1991 7:30 PM. The ocean and beach look so pretty from the bedroom window now. Summer is starting, and even if it’s much cooler here than the 85° temperatures in the city, I like being in Rockaway. In the two weeks I’ve been here, I’ve made a little life for myself and have worked out a pleasant routine. It’s also great to be living by myself again, the master not only of my living quarters but of my moods and interests. I didn’t work on the diary book today, not only to avoid getting too caught up and obsessed with it, but also because my neck hurt, probably as the result of cricking it and compressing my upper vertebrae. I’ve been sleeping well here, going to bed before 10 PM and getting up before 6 AM. This morning I went out at 9:30 AM; after aerobics, Morning Edition, a glance at the paper and a shower. The Journal story on the Brautigan Library hasn’t yet appeared, unless it’s been in a place in the paper I didn’t expect (because I haven’t been buying the issues, just looking through them). After returning from Beach 116th Street, I put away my lunch salad and went out to Woodmere. In the

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back, I met Aunt Tillie and told her I’d stop by over the weekend. Because I missed the bus connection in Far Rockaway, I didn’t get to the home until 11:30 AM. Grandma was sitting out in the hall with other ladies. Her cold seemed better, but she complained bitterly about her lips (which looked chapped) and tongue (which looked fine to me). I’d bought her plastic utensils and scissors, as well as an apple – one of those new New Zealand varieties – because she’d asked for all that. Next time I have to bring her some summer-weight blouses or dresses, and I’ll get her Chapstick. She wants her sunglasses, but I think I may have thrown them away when I emptied the drawers, so I’ll buy her a new pair. Grandma’s cousin Sylvia Frank, to whom I’d spoken on Saturday, was as good as her word and actually did drive from Bayside for a visit, which is remarkable, since Sylvia is about Grandma’s age. However, she sounded to me like an educated woman, and that can make a difference, along with a greater zest for life. Grandma said the “personal problem” Sylvia referred to in our conversation was the death of the man she’d been living with, who left her his house.

Richard Grayson

When lunch came along, I left, but again I just missed the N32 bus and it wasn’t until 1:15 PM when I got back in the neighborhood. I had the van let me off at Beach 92nd and I went to the McDonald’s by the bridge to use the last of my coupons for a 91¢ McLean Deluxe. From there, I walked home via the boardwalk, where I saw Hispanic teenagers enjoying a day at the beach. Mom called with a bit of news. First, I got a letter of acceptance from the College of Journalism and Mass Communications at UF, letting me know I’m in the joint J.D./M.A.M.C. program. I’d wondered what happened with that. Although the two degrees will take four years, I plan to accept. For one thing, it will give me a base outside the law school and in the graduate school, widening my contacts, broadening my horizons (cliché?) and giving me more career options. Next, Mom and Dad plan to go up to Gainesville on Monday and Tuesday and find me an apartment. Later, I went to the post office and by Express Mail sent them the off-campus housing packet I’d received from UF. I got Billy’s address and phone number in Orlando from Ronna, and I’ll call him in the next few days to ask his advice about apartment complexes. Dad just got back from L.A., where it was still as chilly as it had been a month ago when I was there.

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Dad told me the people in New York told him business is totally dead here even though national economic statistics have led many people to say the recession will end this quarter and that it may, in fact, already be over. Nobody predicts anything other than an anemic recovery, and I still think we could slip back into recession, if not depression, because of all the coming cuts in government budgets. CUNY may turn away 10,000 community college students and fire 900 faculty members and staff, though that’s under Dinkins’ “nightmare scenario,” generally believed to be scare tactics to win union concessions. However, with no state budget yet, the nightmare could become real. Another nightmare is today’s 5-4 Supreme Court decision upholding the ban of government-funded clinic doctors and personnel from even mentioning abortion, not only because it means Roe v. Wade will likely be overturned – thanks to Souter – but it also has chilling implications regarding fee speech, which seemingly can be regulated if federal money is involved. For example, the NEA could probably control the work of grantees under the logic of today’s decision, I’d imagine. For a long time, I’ve felt the U.S. is moving toward a kind of dictatorship, a national

Richard Grayson

security state where the executive branch holds more and more power. In the mail, I found out the Florida unemployment people had dismissed a challenge from FIU, but the challenge I’m worried about is from BCC, and I won’t be able to get benefits until that’s resolved. I did get a $100 check from State of California for the writing conference. Ronna, who’s going to visit Russ and Pat and their kids in Pennsylvania this weekend, said that I could stay over at her place the night of my birthday, though we were both embarrassed to explain that, well, nothing was going to happen. I wasn’t sure how to say it, but I wanted Ronna – and her boyfriend – to know how I felt. Sleeping over allows me to spend an evening in Manhattan, and so I’m grateful for that. I’ve been reading Teachers College Professor Frank Smith’s Insult to Intelligence: The Bureaucratic Invasion of Our Classrooms. All the mindless workbooks that purport to teach reading and writing may be reason why my BCC students don’t really read or write. Unfortunately, computers have been used mostly to promote more of the same mindless busywork and drill and practice in education. I’m convinced that they system is hopeless, that it’s too late to fix it.

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Monday, May 27, 1991 5 PM. A warm, cloudy Memorial Day provided me with the opportunity to enjoy myself by reading, writing and doing laundry. I got through with all of the 1984 entries in my diary book, which means I’m a third of the way through the manuscript. Today I thought about how Neil Rogers sometimes calls his radio program “the honest show” and it occurred to me that that I could title this manuscript The Honest Book if I had the balls. It might be very foolish to open myself up for charges that I wasn’t really honest – and of course I’m not, for who could be? My fantasy is that by using the Brautigan Library, I could create a mystique about my manuscripts so that publishers would go up to Burlington, read them, and be convinced of my genius. But I’d tell them I was pretty certain I did not want the books published and they’d raise their ante until I got a great deal because nothing entices people as much as a refusal. Obviously this is a fantasy. What publisher in his right mind would bring out my diary books in today’s publishing climate? That publishers should want to grab such manuscripts isn’t the question. Anyway, whether the Wall Street Journal article mentions A Version of Life or not, someday someone

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will recognize what I’ve done. And I love the purity of writing a book and not wanting most people to read it. By sending it to the Brautigan Library, I’m assured that I’ll get only dedicated readers who can’t take the book from the room. In my case, my total powerlessness makes me totally powerful, because the truth is I don’t have all that much to gain from publication, and what I might gain, I’d probably be better off without. It’s a chance for me to test my ideals and attitudes about publishing – the ones Chauncey Mabe thought were ridiculous in his piece on me a year ago today. I’m almost finished with Frank Smith’s exhilarating Insult to Intelligence. I keep wanting to shout “Yes! Yes!” when he describes what good teaching can be: collaboration, willingness and desire of the teacher to be a learner, spontaneity, initiation into the literary club – I’ve tried all these methods lately, except they’re more attitudes than methods, and I feel secure that my BCC students get a lot out of my classes, particularly ENC 1102, where I felt free to share my enthusiasm for writing and literature. It’s too bad educational reforms just make things worse with more testing and programmed instruction, and of course, computers in the classroom aren’t usually introduced by people like me who understand their dangers as well as their promise

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(simulations, subversion of the usual paradigm as teacher as the most knowledgeable person in the room). If I was asked, as Harold was, to teach a lesson on fragments as part of a job interview, I’d start by asking the students why they thought I’d been asked to teach such a lesson and find out how they feel about their own writing and if they thought their professors had learned not to write fragments by listening to such lessons as the one I was supposed to teach. Thank God I’m old enough to have missed language instruction as a medley of skills to be mastered one at a time. In P.S. 203’s fifth and sixth grades, we were provided with loads of books – good, real books and not silly skills workbooks – and we read them avidly. When I tried to read John Dos Passos’ Manhattan Transfer and Clifford Schwartz attempted 1984 in sixth grade, Mrs. Zweig praised us to the assistant principal even though she wasn’t sure we’d succeed; today, teachers would tell us we hadn’t yet mastered the proper cognitive skills and make us do mindless exercises. What else would you call the bureaucratic requirements I had to put up with at BCC? However much I may know Smith, Calkins, Graves, Atwell, et al., are right, I also know the system will not change, and that’s a tragedy.

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Tuesday, May 28, 1991 8 PM. Mom and Dad called yesterday from Gainesville. I was surprised they’d gone up there without calling me. They told me most of the apartments they’d seen were junky, but there was a new one a mile away from the law school that had all these great features but was $450 a month. That sounded steep to me. This morning they phoned again, from the rental office. The new apartment had an August 1 certificate of occupancy scheduled, but it could be delayed. Most other apartments had a very late starting date for a lease – after the start of law school – but was one I could have had if I wanted it, for $390; however, my parents said, it was “disgusting.” I told them my tolerance for “disgusting” was higher than theirs and to use their judgment. I just called them, and they had just that minute gotten in the door. They were tired and had a lousy trip home – Dad got a blowout on the Turnpike (“Thruway,” he mistakenly said) – and I don’t know which apartment they took because right away Mom read me a letter denying me any scholarship or fellowship money, and then another call clicked on, and I told them to phone me tomorrow when we were all thinking clearly.

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Right now I feel confused. I’d pretty much counted on some kind of financial aid other than a loan – and I don’t even know if I can get a loan because of my bankruptcy and my delinquency on outstanding student loans. All of a sudden, my life – which had seemed to be falling into place – now appears to be falling apart. Today I also got the letter from UF officially admitting me to the joint J.D./M.A.M.C. program, and I mailed back a letter of acceptance. I guess if I explain that I have no money, they’ll try to do something for me at the school, but maybe I can’t afford even UF’s bargain-rate law school education. I’ve just been sitting on a bench on the boardwalk for the last hour, trying to sort everything out. Today it hit 95° and it was terribly humid, too uncomfortable to try to get myself to Woodmere to see Grandma, who’d just complain about her awful life. Hey, according to her, all she’s got to do is want to die. Some problem! I’m all mixed up now and this isn’t coherent; it’s not the kind of diary entry I wanted to write. God, yesterday’s fantasy about achieving fame through my diary books sounds so juvenile now. The Wall Street Journal article appeared today, but it didn’t mention me. Maybe I wasn’t “bad” enough to list

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among the authors represented in the Brautigan Library; maybe a section about me was cut for lack of space. Who knows? I got up to typing July 1985 today, and my confidence in the diary book project is starting to lag. What if A Version of Life and this book are interesting just to their author and boring to everybody else? How could I ever have the balls to even think about the title The Honest Book? In a week, I’ll be 40 years old, and I’m scared and just starting to realize it. I can’t, I won’t, teach at Broward Community College again this fall, and I can’t, I won’t, live with my parents again. What if I just can’t afford to go to law school? I’d better ask for a Stafford loan application right away. I know I’m not thinking clearly, and I also know my mind is racing ahead of itself and things will look different in a week or a month. If I truly want to go to law school, I’ll find a way, no? Otherwise, at this point, what’s left? I’m out of options, and I’d don’t have Grandma’s: I can’t just want to die, and I’m not depressed enough to kill myself because I do know that things change, unless you’re dead.

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* 11 PM. I’ve been going to bed so early these past three weeks in Rockaway, I think this is the latest I’ve stayed up. What I wrote three hours ago was honest. It was embarrassing, melodramatic, full of self-pity and confusion, but it was honest. I just watched the last episode of Thirtysomething, a show I probably would have liked if I’d watched it regularly because it seemed more honest than most network TV. After Thirtysomething, there was a commercial for the United Negro College Fund – you know, a mind is a terrible thing to waste – about a grandfather being asked why he never achieved his dream to become a doctor and it had some new slogan I can’t recall exactly but it had to do with keeping dreams from dying. Mikey called at 9 PM. I blabbed on about Grandma and the apartment and getting laid off and hating teaching at BCC and applying to grad school and law school and finally I told him about the University of Florida and the J.D./M.A.M.C. program. I expected Mikey to be discouraging, but he thought it seemed like a good idea. Maybe it was because Mikey has gone through changes of his own and

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enough stress to get him thinner than I’ve ever seen him. He and Amy are getting divorced. “I’m surprised,” I said, though I wasn’t shocked because nobody’s divorce would be surprising these days except maybe my parents’. Amy and Mikey seemed happy in the few times I saw them together over the past years. He said they separated amicably. Amy moved out in September, and then he got a sublet in the city in December, and Amy moved back into the Riverdale co-op. Mikey just got a new sublet on Fifth and 11th Street, and he didn’t get back to me because Amy got the message, of course, and I didn’t get it to Mikey till last week. She’s looking for a new job, but they want to sell the co-op and get the money from it soon. Probably in July they’ll sit down and do the paperwork and their divorce should be final by the end of the year. I talked with Mikey for an hour, and he said he’d take me out to lunch next Tuesday. It must be hard for him to face the end of his marriage, and it made me feel kind of stoopid: after all, my little problems with money are nothing compared with the divorce that Mikey and Amy or Sat Darshan and Harigopal are having to deal with.

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Somehow I’ll get the money for law school: Stafford loans, SLS, National Direct Student Loans, whatever. Begging, if I have to, and I still have $5000 in credit card cash advances I can use – but I have to pay it all back now that I can’t go bankrupt again till 1998. The hero of Thirtysomething ended up saying he needed to find out what he wanted to do when he grew up. I know the feeling. Is it only our generation who’ve had to deal with that? Tomorrow I’ll go to the home and bring Grandma Ethel her summer blouses. Was it easier in her day, when people just stopped growing? Well, they had different problems, as my grandmother herself can attest. Alice called; she’s making this big deal about taking me out next Friday, and we agreed to meet early in Brooklyn Heights. Actually, Alice has to go to somebody else’s 40th birthday party at 9 PM that night, so I can get back to the beach early and she can celebrate the birthday of someone who wants it celebrated. At 7 PM today it finally cooled down enough to enjoy the beach, and the sun fell behind the buildings here, so I could sit overlooking the Atlantic and be in the shade.

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For the first time, I noticed I could see the Atlantic Beach Bridge way off to the east; when the drawbridge was raised, I could make it out. I never realized I could see that bridge before the drawbridge went up and the image of it moved a little in my line of vision. Is that some profound insight or metaphor? If this were a novel, it could be, but this is just real life.

Friday, May 31, 1991 4 PM. I’ve kept to myself the past week, not even venturing out of Rockaway except to nearby Woodmere to visit Grandma Ethel. Today was a carbon copy of yesterday, only the severe thunderstorms began earlier, a couple of hours ago. I just got off the computer, having finished the entries for January to March 1986. I’m approaching the halfway mark of the book, although the stuff from August 1986 to July 1991 is probably longer than the first half of the decade. It’s hard since I began this project, not to be selfconscious about writing in this diary, but I’ll probably pick out a May entry that doesn’t mention the diary book project.

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Last night I fell asleep very early, and so I again awoke before 5:30 AM. As is my usual routine, I opened the door and picked up the paper, scanning the Times’ sections’ front pages as I put on WNYC, and after 6 AM, I made breakfast: oatmeal, skim milk and grapefruit. At 8 AM, I did aerobics to Homestretch, and after I cooled down, I shaved and showered. Before dressing, I applied self-tanning lotion, which I bought yesterday along with sunblock. The products actually cancel each other out, I know, but at least I’m protecting myself – I hope – against skin cancer. I put the air conditioner on and read the paper and listened to the radio. All the recent economic statistics, including today’s third monthly rise in the index of leading indicators, suggest the recession is nearly over, but everyone seems to be predicting an anemic recovery. What if we get one or two quarters of slightly positive growth and then a new decline caused by state and local budget cuts and tax increases and layoffs? Also, people are too much in debt to make major purchases, especially because their incomes aren’t rising. I can’t believe the imbalances in the American economy can be solved by this recession. William Greider argues that the big banks are already

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insolvent, and the government should shut Citibank and company down now. But they won’t. Just as in ‘88, when the politicians didn’t deal with the savings and loan mess, Bush and his ’92 opponents won’t talk about the banks or anything else of substance. If the issues of ’92 were crime (as personified by Willie Horton), the pledge of allegiance and the “unAmerican” ACLU, Bush and the GOP will make next year’s campaign issues racial quotas, crime and Kuwait. Will it work? Are the American people idiots? Yes, and yes – unless things get so bad economically that even idiots can see through a smokescreen. Unfortunately, the Democrats are so inept, they probably couldn’t even a turn a Depression to their advantage. Mom sent along the letter from the law school financial aid office turning me down – though telling me I’m an alternate for a scholarship, but that is probably just to make me feel better. “We hope that you will still be able to enroll in our law school,” the letter ended. Fella, I’m going to try. There’s more money available for second- and thirdyear laws students, and maybe if I get good grades, I

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can get some. It’s the first year that will be the killer all around, and if I make it to this time next year, I’ll be halfway there. Mom also sent a copy of the leaflet about College Park Estates, where my apartment will be. My address is going to be 334 NW 17th Street, Gainesville, FL, though I don’t know the apartment number or the ZIP code. I may actually be going back to Florida on the day I’ve currently got a flight back, Monday, August 12, and I probably won’t be able to move in before then anyway. In any case, I still have at least two months left in New York City, which is enough time to get myself ready for law school at UF, see my friends just a little, and finish my diary book. They say this was New York’s hottest may on record, and it has felt much more like summer than spring. Except for California, where it’s still cool, I’ve been having an endless summer.

Monday, June 3, 1991 8 PM. Obviously ABC-TV knew what it was doing when it showed the last episode of Thirtysomething last Tuesday. They couldn’t put the show on

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tomorrow night because tonight is my last night as a thirtysomething. How’s that for narcissism? Well, tonight NBC Nightly News had a segment on baby boomers in the 90s. Trends include healthy eating (that’s certainly me, though I doubt one woman’s claim that carrot juice will be the margarita of the decade even if I’ve always preferred it), convenience foods (how did I ever live without a microwave?), an emphasis on kiddie products (there I’m atypical, unless I buy them for myself; after all, life does begin at 40), and roomier Levis (once again I’m an exception: my 30-inch waist is a lot trimmer than it was when I was 30 or 35). My quintessential turning-40 story concerns my toothache that began on the subway Saturday night and continued off and on since. At 3 PM I put down the newspaper and decided I’d better try to see a dentist in case I was facing an abscess or some dental disaster. Not only did the dentist on Beach 116th Street answer the phone himself; he told me to come right over. With kids growing up with fluoride, I guess now dentists are as lonely as Maytag repairmen. Anyway, he looked and prodded, and then shut the overhead light. “I could take an x-ray if you want,” he said, “but it’s pretty obvious what this is. It’s very common among

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older people.” My gums are receding – not as visible an insult as a receding hairline, which I thankfully don’t have, but it causes exposed areas unprotected by enamel to be hypersensitive. He gave me a toothpaste that I’d always associated with middle age and said the problem will either clear up or I’ll live with it. At least he was kind enough not to charge me for bringing to my attention physical proof that at 40, I’m getting decrepit. I couldn’t stop chuckling the entire walk along Rockaway Beach Boulevard home. My vanity at looking young and being healthy and lean and strong and smart is embarrassing when I’ve practically been told, “Lay off the citrus fruit, Grandpa!” (I had one Spanish orange left, and I ate it tonight in a ritual of saying farewell to my youth.) Last evening Ronna called to tell me to meet at her apartment at 6:30 PM tomorrow, and she said we could do anything I wanted for my birthday. She and Ralph spent the weekend in Philadelphia, where her sister turned 35 yesterday and looks great, having lost weight and begun an exercise program. I fell asleep early and slept well, having a dream in which I got a letter from BCC, from Dr. Grasso, wanting to know why I “thought long and hard” about a grade I’d given a student named Richard

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Grayson since records showed he had never attended my class. I ended up giving him a W for withdrawal, but Dr. Grasso thought I’d failed him because he was the cousin of another student. Back in Florida, I felt intimidated by Dr. Grasso but decided to say that I had been joking when I told her that I’d “thought long and hard” over assigning Richard Grayson a grade. Boy, is that dream obvious, or what? Up at 6 AM, I was out by 9 AM and at the Woodmere home an hour later. Grandma Ethel had just taken her semiweekly shower, which tired her out, and she lay in bed during the visit. She again complained again about her mouth. I brought Grandma the slacks I bought and she kept asking me why I’d spent “so much money” (five dollars) to have the hems fixed. Unlike me, Grandma isn’t keeping careful track of her age, because I had to tell her she was 81, not 82 as she’s been thinking. Of course, I’ve been telling everyone I’m 40 for nearly a year, figuring tomorrow would be less traumatic that way. When I got home, the phone rang. It was Sat Darshan, who invited me to the party some woman’s Gramercy Park apartment on Saturday night. I’ll stay

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over at Sat Darshan’s in Brooklyn; she says the kids always sleep in her bed anyway. We talked about Justin’s party for David on Saturday, Mary Judson’s funeral last November, Mikey’s impending divorce, and other stuff. When I returned from the dentist, the phone rang once again just as I opened the door. It was Josh. He hasn’t gotten word about layoffs yet, told me he’d seen the galleys for the first of two children’s books by Denis (there’s my role model: an attorney/author/ art gallery owner), and advised me to call Todd, who hasn’t published anything lately and who feels like a failure. I told both Josh and Sat Darshan about the apartment I’ve taken in Gainesville; maybe if I talk about it enough, it will seem real to me. My parents sent a card: Son, we’ve given you some static [Mom and Dad dogs trying to fix a TV set for Puppy] Even blown a fuse or two. . . But we hope the picture’s clear by now [Fixed TV screen says:] We think the world of you! Happy birthday, Love, Mom & Dad

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And there were two $20 bills enclosed. A nice, appropriate card; I’ll call them later. I got a call from Avis. Apparently I owe them $100 not reimbursed by American express from my accident at Kennedy Airport one year and one day ago. Paying that leaves me with only $600 in the bank, but I figure that since I totaled their rental car and escaped nearly unhurt, the money hardly matters. Actually, surviving that accident exhilarated me, and I’m sure it had something to do with my thinking up the Trump Rescue Fund and Radio Free Broward that week. I plan to leave for Manhattan at 11 AM tomorrow, have lunch with Mikey, and spend my birthday wandering around the city until Ronna is home from work.

Wednesday, June 5, 1991 3 PM. I had a fine fortieth birthday yesterday. The weather changed drastically, and it turned rainy and chilly. Alice called to wish me a happy day and to make arrangements for Friday; I told her I’d meet her

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in the lobby of the St. George by the Clark Street subway station at 6 PM. Felling like getting out of the house early, I left at 10:30 AM with my bag of clothes, food, eye stuff and drugs. (I’ve used the same moth-eaten blue Sportsac since 1988) and I was in downtown Manhattan by noon. By then the sun had come out, and since I had an hour to kill, I walked up and down Broadway, from City Hall Park to the Battery and back. It had been a long time since I’d been around Wall Street, but I liked seeing the crowds of business people; street vendors selling hot dogs and hot videotapes and comic books; out-of-work actors giving free samples of Häagen-Dazs’ new frozen yogurt; a camera crew above a building, filming a promo for next Monday’s “Welcome Home, Gulf Troops” parade. At the cemetery by Trinity Church, I noticed most of the tombstones were of people who lived less than forty years – some a lot less – but those were people from 200 years ago, of course. Mikey looked thin and Yuppied in red suspenders and that yellow tie everyone used to wear years ago; if I kept up with fashion, I might actually know if he was stylish or behind the times. On the other hand, Mikey is probably the best-dressed of my male friends.

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We had lunch at Ottomanelli Café. I didn’t press for details about his divorce but he said Amy had expected “perfection” and was dissatisfied with anything less. “In some ways we were well-matched,” Mikey said, “but in other ways we were opposites.” On a blind date a month ago, he met Didi, a 46-year-old, 5’10” (Mikey is my height) assistant to Liz Holtzman , who’s now Controller, and they’ve been seeing each other since then. He hates the boxy $850 studio he’s subletting and tries to stay out of the apartment as much as possible, although he’s got it till next May. His job is okay, but because of the separation and upcoming divorce, he had to put off plans to start a private practice. Business is bad, and even Mikey’s state job might be imperiled by budget cuts. In any case, he’s got no hope of advancement or even a raise in the near future. Mikey said he found legal education to be “intellectually dishonest,” and his first year of law school was hard: “You have to learn how to read and think in a different way, and the professors can be brutal, and sometimes you won’t have a clue as to what is going on.”

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But he admitted that I’ve always liked school more than he did and said I might not dislike the experience. When I left, I told him to visit me in Rockaway, an invitation to which he seemed receptive. I took the A train to 59th and the #1 train to 79th, where I got some Korean salad bar which I ate on a bench by Margaret Mead Green outside the planetarium. (I remember once going with Gary to a class he was taking at Columbia with Margaret Mead, who lectured brilliantly.) It started raining again as I finished eating, so I ducked inside the American Museum of Natural History, which I never once visited in all the years I lived a few blocks away. Spurred by Mom’s and Jonathan’s interest in birds, I spent a lot of time the bird exhibits and then caught North American Mammals and Eskimos before I went to the 4:30 PM showing of The Blue Planet, a largescreen film with great shots of the earth from space. At Amsterdam Avenue, I had some TCBY, and then at Shakespeare & Company, I spent time looking through the little magazines (The Review of Contemporary Fiction put my chapbooks on their “Books Received” list) and new books.

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There are so many good books published, it makes me feel lucky to have had the success I did. That’s a better attitude than my sometimes paranoid dejection over my work not being more widely recognized. After all, though I may be a good writer, many people are terrific writers. It felt odd being around my old West Side haunts. As I walked up Broadway, I noted that the variety store run by Arabs that I used to go to has closed, that diet Tasti D-Lites has replaced Mrs. Field’s Cookies (a sign of the times?), and that the Boulevard house, unable to sell its co-ops, is attempting to rent them. Ronna looked good when she opened the door; her hair was up and it was a little grayer. We chatted over water, and she told me about Ralph Seliger, who’s 42, works for the Human Resources Administration monitoring contacts, is a CCNY grad who was active in socialist/labor/Zionist activities, and is the editor of Israel Horizons, a magazine I looked at while Ronna was on the phone. Ralph writes well, and after reading of his parents’ horrific odyssey out of Poland through hostile nations like Greece, Turkey, Syria and Iraq, I can understand why he’s a Zionist – but he’s a very progressive one. He’d like to write for The New Republic or work for the national Endowment for democracy, and he seems like a really intelligent guy.

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Ralph lives only a couple of blocks away, in his parents’ old rent-controlled place, and his widowed mother, still vibrant at 80, is in Florida most of the year. Ronna wants me to meet him and also her friend David, the Yeshiva University assistant dean with whom she often goes to the theater. At first David seemed to be coming on to her, but after a few months he told her he was just coming out. It must be hard to be gay at an Orthodox school. Anyway, he happened to see my photo and thought I was cute. Ronna’s family is well. In northwest Philadelphia, her sister and brother-in-law have a nice townhouse, and Susan looks fantastic; she was always a sharp dresser, but now she can wear stuff that she couldn’t wear when she was much heavier. Billy and Melinda will be returning to Gainesville, in August, so at least I’ll know somebody in town. Ronna’s mother is coming for the weekend to New York; she just got a part-time job doing merchandising, similar to what she did for Richardson/Vicks, and Beatrice hopes it will lead to a full-time position, even if the product is baseball cards. Ronna and I had a great dinner at Empire Szechuan Gourmet, and I liked being around Manhattan people and overhearing the conversations of academics,

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dancers and video artists at nearby tables in the crowded restaurant. Ronna insisted on paying both for dinner and the movie we saw afterwards (Soapdish, funny, at the Paramount) and even the fare back and forth from Columbus Circle. Before the film began at 10 PM, we walked around Lincoln Center beforehand and we didn’t get home till after midnight. Once she got her clothes on the floor out of the way – her room is still knee deep with stuff; I recognized a frog beanbag I must have given her in 1975 – Ronna made up the futon for me. We chatted till she fell asleep in her bed. I was dizzy and didn’t drift off till maybe 3 AM and I woke up at 7 AM. While Ronna took a shower, I had breakfast – I’d brought with me packets of oatmeal, grits and cocoa – and talked with Leah, who came in this morning, having spent the night at her boyfriend’s. I kissed Ronna thanks as she went to the uptown train to Yeshiva and I caught the downtown. A couple of hours later, I was back home, where I exercised, showered, and dressed. I told Josh I wasn’t up to coming into the city tomorrow, so I’ll call him next week.

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Thursday, June 6, 1991 8 PM. I didn’t get too many pages into One L last evening, but it was far enough so that I had anxiety dreams about law school. I’m terrified that the experience will be as filled with dread, anxiety and intensity as that which Turow describes. His Contracts professor sounds very much like The Paper Chase’s Professor Kingsfield, and I don’t know how I’ll hold up in such a classroom environment. I’ve always performed well in school, but I’ve never tested myself in a high-powered environment before, either. I know the University of Florida isn’t Harvard – and probably Harvard Law School isn’t the same as it was sixteen years ago, in Turow’s time – but I’m worried about the trial by fire that is the first year of law school. Yes, I could say for me that law school isn’t a life-anddeath matter; it’s not as if all my hopes and dreams are riding on a legal career. I’m more concerned with survival: emotional survival. It’ll be hard just moving to Gainesville. Will I be able to withstand the pressures of learning how to think in a different way? Will I become a different, unrecognizable person? What if I’m humiliated in class?

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Well, for one thing, I’m probably not as concerned with my status at law school as Turow was. Although I always did well in school, I was never a “star” and I doubt I’ll do better than be in the middle of my law school class. I do try to do my best, within reason, but I know from writing, teaching and computer programming that perfectionism impedes success and perfectionism isn’t worth the cost. I don’t want to give up healthy eating and exercising or reading the newspaper. I don’t want to be a law student who is constantly working and getting little sleep. The pace Turow describes seems almost inhuman. As a teacher and someone who’s taken a lot of graduate education courses, I can see the value in the Socratic method, but I can also see its glaring faults – and I don’t believe that inducing fear is ever helpful in getting someone to learn something. But I also know myself and how I can get obsessed with competition and “excellence” and all that crap the Harvard Law students get caught up with. I remember how hard I studied to understand the concepts in FAU’s Money and Banking class in 1986, when was absolutely no reason for me to be so determined to get an A and to boost my early mediocre quiz scores.

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Of course, getting the A in Money and Banking was an even sweeter achievement because of the struggle. Right now I’d be thrilled simply to graduate with a J.D. It’s not as if I plan to be a corporate lawyer, after all. For what I want to do – no, I’m not sure what I want to do, but I do know what I don’t want to do – law school grades don’t matter very much. I stayed in all day, reading and doing the usual. I’d better enjoy the next two months B.L.S. – before law school – and relax a little.

Monday, June 10, 1991 4 PM. I’m going to leave for Manhattan soon, taking the A train all the way, hoping to avoid a tie-up downtown due to the Gulf War homecoming parade, which started five hours ago and is still going strong. I had diarrhea after Dad called at 2 PM and told me to meet him at the Days Inn at 6 PM, but I feel better now. I’m not going to take my diary with me because I want to carry only my blue nylon bag and can’t vouch for its safety; besides, it would take up too much space. I might stay over Tuesday and Wednesday in Manhattan, too; we’ll see how it goes. If I catch Dad’s

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cold, at least I’ll know I’ve been forewarned. I doubt I will get sick because I had a cold only a month ago; anyway, I’d rather be sick again now than when I’m in law school. I finally finished reading the newspapers last evening and got to sleep at about 11 PM. Tired when I awoke despite seven hours’ solid sleep, I exercised lightly and went to Woodmere to see Grandma Ethel, arriving just as the aide took her for a shower. She’s still complaining about her mouth and tongue, but at least they’ve given her some medicine to put on it. When Grandma returned from her shower, we watched the start of the ticker-tape parade and then sat out on the terrace. I told her about my activities and Tillie’s illness, but as usual, I couldn’t do anything to help relieve Grandma’s despair. “What am I living for?” she sighed, and all I could say was, “I know how terrible you feel.” Marty, who visited her yesterday, says he’s not ready to give up this apartment because he’s busy involved in a new business. Grandma lamented the weight gain Marty’s had lately. I see I’m fighting genetics as I continue to monitor my diet. Marc began the Jenny Craig program, Mom

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said, but Marc will go back to the yo-yo syndrome until he changes his whole way of eating as I have. I wish I had time to work on my diary book, but I’m sure I’ll finish it before I leave New York for Florida. Well, here I go to Manhattan.

Wednesday, June 12, 1991 7:30 PM. I’ve been away for a couple of days, and it was nice change for me. Not only did I get to spend time in Manhattan – something I took for granted when I lived at Teresa’s – but I got to see Dad and deal with staying at a hotel. Since I’m so obsessive and compulsive, I like to have to sleep in different places, and over the past week I’ve spent four nights somewhere other than Grandma’s, either at the hotel or at Ronna or Sat Darshan’s. The A train from Rockaway seems a better way to travel to the city than going to Brooklyn by bus and then getting the subway there; it’s been fairly quick, but then the past trips were during rush hour when trains run more frequently. On Monday I got to the Days Inn at 5:45 PM, but there was no answer when I knocked at the room

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number Dad had given me. Thinking he might not have heard me, I phoned his room, and when I got no answer, I figured he’d been delayed. I waited in the lobby nearly an hour and began getting worried when Dad came down. He’d been in the room all the time but didn’t hear my knock, and his room number wasn’t the number of the phone extension I’d called. Anyway, we were both starving by then, so we went out to dinner at Circle West. Dad’s cold got better, he said, and his Wednesday afternoon appointment was moved up to Tuesday, so he had Wednesday free, and because he had a non-cancellable flight, he couldn’t leave earlier. We went for an after-dinner walk around Midtown, where we saw people still just coming back from the Welcome Home parade. Supposedly, there were over one million people downtown, but that seems unimaginable. Dad and I made our way through various streets and avenues and ended up eating frozen yogurt at the fountain by Lincoln Center. My bag weighed me down, but it was good stamina training. When we got back to the hotel, Dad gave me my own key (electronic card) to his room and he showed me my mail, which was mostly junk although GRE

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Subject Test in Education did count and I got a score in the 93rd percentile. Dizzy and achy, I slept sporadically and was up early, before Dad went to work. He left about 8:30 AM for the Empire State Building, and after breakfast – I got hot water to make oatmeal and grits and also bought nonfat yogurt and a banana – I lay in the hotel room bed, catching up on my rest. It seems I can’t seem to let myself relax like that at home. At Teachers College I looked at the summer session catalog and decided I’ve already taken most of the interesting courses: Howard Budin’s compute workshops, AIDS education, Creativity, Computers and the Arts, and the Teaching of Writing Conference. Still, I liked being back at TC and had a salad in the cafeteria and wandered about the familiar halls. The M5 bus took me to midtown, where I ate in the most elegant McDonald’s in America, with its art deco dining room on the second floor overlooking 57th Street. At B. Dalton I decided to use the $40 gift certificate Alice got me for my birthday for something practical: the $38 Black’s Law Dictionary, which weighed a ton. Back at the hotel, I rested, read the Times – Miami, along with Denver, will be given a new baseball franchise – and did impromptu exercise for half an hour.

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Dad was back at 6:30 PM, and over Chinese food, he told me his income will be cut drastically this year. Not only is business bad and department stores disappearing, but nobody knows who Introspect is since they haven’t begun advertising the name yet. Dad applied for Medicare, and he can get Social Security benefits whenever he’s able to retire; since his checks currently would be less than $1,000 a month, of course, Dad couldn’t do that for the foreseeable future. As far as money is concerned, Dad never planned at all, and I guess it’s a trait I’ve inherited. At least I watch what I eat. Dad ate so much of the mu shu vegetables that he felt bloated afterward and was sick even this morning. And I also plan ahead by always having an umbrella handy. Actually, it sure didn’t help me later in the evening, when Dad and I made it through Central Park to the opening celebration of the Met’s 25th season of opera outdoors. We arrived as Mayor Dinkins was speaking, and while we didn’t have a blanket or a picnic basket from Zabar’s, we found a good bench where we could hear Luciano Pavarotti’s voice and see James Levine’s conducting the orchestra in an all-Verdi program.

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Suddenly, though, we were engulfed in a downpour. Despite my umbrella, Dad got soaked and I got totally wet, too. We tramped through the mud with thousands of other opera fans, getting drenched in the process. Back at the hotel, we dried off and went to bed. Today Dad and I first tried to get into the Museum of Modern Art, which I didn’t know is closed on Wednesday, and then we went to the Gotham Book Mart and to an exhibit about Broadway musicals at the IBM Building, and at Worldwide Plaza, we saw Spike Lee’s Jungle Fever. I realized that the scenes of Annabella Sciorra walking up to her house, which I saw being filmed last September around the corner from our old block, were actually put in different parts of the movie. So Spike hadn’t been asking her to do the same scene over; it was all shot out of sequence. This film, though a bit preachy and pompous, was up to the level of Do the Right Thing, and it was a pleasure to attend a movie that actually dealt with ideas. I’ve never had an interracial love relationship, but then again, I haven’t had many love relationships at all; still, I find some black men attractive and think it would be interesting to date one. Dad said when he goes out with the woman who works with him in L.A., as he did this past month –

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Glenda and her little girl went with Dad on a Sunday to Universal Studios – they get incredible stares that are curious and sometimes hostile. We ate dinner early so I could get home before dark. It’s easier than my having to get up and leave very early tomorrow morning with Dad.

Wednesday, June 19, 1991 8 PM. I’m starting to become enthusiastic about attending law school as I think about the power being an attorney could give me. I see so many things in American life going in the wrong direction, and maybe legal skills can help me make more of a difference than I ever could as a fiction writer. As I go through the 80s with my diary book, I see I got progressively more interested in political and social issues. At this point, when children are treated shabbily, when gay people and people with HIV infections are discriminated against, when women’s abortion rights are in danger, when health care is bankrupting families, when young adults aren’t being educated properly, when racial minorities are victims of a backlash, when everywhere, it seems, the bad guys are winning, I’d like to work for change.

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Right now that’s more important to me than expressing myself on paper. I don’t know. I don’t know. But there has to be more to life than writing hermetic fictions and resenting the world for not gasping awe of them, and I tend to think that’s what Tom does. Yesterday he did show his mean streak in remarks about successful young writers like Amy Tan – I don’t know her work, I’ve never read her, and for all I know, she may be very good – and his calling Spike Lee “a nigger Nazi.” I frowned at that, and Tom knew I disapproved. He’s been my friend and my literary champion, but with his rigid views, I can’t help thinking that if he was the one who ran things in the literary world, they would be no better than they are now. Years ago I stopped bothering to disagree with him. I liked Jungle Fever, but even if Tom despised it, it’s only a movie. Books are only books, even the ones we ourselves write. Literature isn’t life. Speaking of life – you remember life – today was cool and rainy. I used the dollars vans to get back and forth, along with the Nassau County buses, to and from Woodmere. I took the N31, not the N32, for the first time today; it travels down West Broadway rather than stay on

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Central Avenue, so I came to the home from the other way, past the LIRR tracks, and I stopped at Genovese Drugs and Key Food for some stuff beforehand. I couldn’t find Grandma Ethel I her room or in the hallway or TV rom, but an employee suggested she might have gone to Mass on the first floor. And as I peeked in the room there, I saw Grandma, her gray hair recently styled, sitting with her walker in front of her as a young priest celebrated Mass for thirty old people. Not wanting to disturb anyone, I stayed out of the room, but I watched Grandma move her lips to the unfamiliar Roman Catholic prayers and I felt good that at least she was out among people. Her friend Christine in the next room had persuaded Grandma to attend. Upstairs, Grandma showed me that her upper dentures wouldn’t stay on properly because she broke the hook that holds it one side. Hopefully, they’ll get her to a dentist soon. She complained about her tongue and lips again, and of course uttered the sentence I never miss hearing, “I’m so disgusted with my life,” a sentence Aunt Tillie has taken to using, too.

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I gave Grandma some candies I’d bought, and we talked until they called her into lunch, and I left Woodmere for Rockaway. This afternoon I called Philadelphia and spoke to Ellen as she was monitoring Jesse in his bath; David and Gabriel were out. David again got turned down for tenure at Penn, but he was hired at every one of the schools he interviewed with at the MLA. At first he thought he’d go to Purdue or DePaul or Tennessee or South Carolina, and at first he decided not to consider Texas A&M, but then he visited all the campus, and when he phoned from College Station, Ellen could immediately tell how he felt about the place after he’d found Purdue a drag even though he would have tenure there; West Lafayette felt isolated, and they couldn’t offer Ellen a job. On the other hand, he was surprising impressed with Texas A&M, and Ellen went down there for her own job interview and liked the openness of the people. “So we’ll be Southerners again,” Ellen said. “College Station is a neat little town.” They’ve met some nice colleagues and Gabe won’t have to be an outcast for being smart and liking school there. If David has had to adjust to what he perceives to be a comedown after Penn – and they’ve been in therapy (everyone in the same situation, being denied tenure, goes into therapy) – Ellen said there

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are advantages she perceives in “not swimming with the sharks” in the topmost rungs of academic superstars. Texas A&M agreed to put David up for tenure right away and to hire Ellen, maybe on a tenure-track line herself. The McAllisters’ academic experiences are so far removed from mine. Selling their beloved house in Regent Square was difficult, and the people they sold it to are horrible, but they bought a new house in Texas into which they’ll move in just three weeks, as David needs the money he’ll make teaching summer school in July. I’m glad the strain is over for the McAllisters and I told Ellen they should enjoy their adventure. “I think you’ll enjoy your own adventure in Gainesville,” she said. Ellen and Sat Darshan hasn’t been close lately, and she’s not certain how her sister really is, given that Sat Darshan’s ex-husband will be marrying his girlfriend in a few weeks (even though, Sat Darshan told me on Saturday night at the party, her divorce papers hadn’t yet arrived): “She gets mad if I’m too concerned and gets mad if I’m not concerned enough.” I know Sat Darshan doesn’t relish divorced status, and I think the worst part of the past year was when her Indian friend J.B. told her he didn’t want to marry

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her. They’d met because he was a Sikh interested in marriage, but although he likes Sat Darshan as a friend, she’d hoped for something more, and I know how disappointed she seemed on Saturday when J.B. didn’t show up for the party. But I didn’t say anything about this to Ellen. I always make certain not to get into the middle of family dynamics and took down the McAllisters’ College Station address. Ellen said if I ever get any money, I should pay Texas a visit. Soon after that call, Josh phoned. Like hundreds of other city workers, he got his layoff notice on Monday. His boss was out, and it wasn’t till yesterday that he learned she has planned to get him another position in the office down the hall. It’s definite, at the same salary, but Josh was so miffed by the way it was handled, he’d contacted headhunters and put out feelers for jobs in private industry. Probably he’ll end up staying at the agency because Josh needs the security, and there are very few jobs open for programmers and systems analysts right now. As much as I love New York City – and Rockaway in particular – I’ll be glad to go to Gainesville in August.

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Saturday, June 22, 1991 11 PM. I had a great time with Justin. He arrived, as I expected, after 4 PM, mostly because he had a lot of work to do. He got on the train to New Lots (the 3) instead of the 2 train to Flatbush and had to go back; I told Justin he’d better learn the difference when he starts his MFA program at Brooklyn College. But the Rockaway bus came right away, so he made pretty good time. It had turned cooler and cloudy by the time Justin got here; he said there had been a downpour in Brooklyn, but it didn’t rain in Rockaway and it was still pleasant enough to sit on the terrace. Justin was smart enough to wear long pants and have different clothes in his bad; later he changed into a long-sleeved shirt. He showed me a brochure for the Theatre Factory’s summer reading series that he made up with his new computer and desktop publishing software. With that equipment, he’s starting a typing and typesetting service; if I was going to have another chapbook done, I’d have Justin do it. Not having much to entertain him with, I showed Justin photos from my bar mitzvah album and Marc’s and the video Marc and I made in Florida. We went over to McDonald’s for a dinner of McLean Deluxes

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and garden salads; there really isn’t any other place for me to eat out here until the Ram’s Horn reopens. Over dinner outside, Justin said he felt he had to convince himself he deserved the computer, and we talked about our mutual problem of denying ourselves rewards because something tells us we’re not worthy of them. Of course, I deny myself a lot more than Justin does, but then, I had no interest I furniture or records or all the tchotchkes that clutter his and David’s apartment. Justin and I are very different, although I have to admit none of my friends shares my apparently strange lack of interest in settling down to a cozy domestic life. He and David seem well-suited, and they’re growing into a middle-aged couple. Already I look younger than Justin; he’s up to 185 pounds and doesn’t exercise or eat right, but he says he needs to fix himself up psychologically first. We went to the 7:50 PM show of Thelma and Louise at the Surfside Cinema out back. Both of us enjoyed the movie and couldn’t understand why there’s been a fuss about the violence in it. To me, it was a 90s version of Easy Rider, and I liked the two women a great deal precisely because of their role as outlaws, not in spite of that.

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I started to walk Justin back to the Q35 bus, but we caught the Q22 bus on the run, and I got a transfer for Justin to use. As we were walking up Beach 116th, I told Justin that because the Q35 made three left turns after pulling out, “we could catch the bus even if it pulled out now . . . which it’s doing!” We ran fast and he got on it with no trouble at Beach 117th Street; I used his transfer from when he came to Rockaway (since he’d walked from Beach 116th) to get the Q22 bus for the eleven blocks back home. It was good to go to the movies on a Saturday night and to have a friend visit me out here. I think Justin liked Rockaway. This morning I was up at 5:30 AM, had breakfast, exercised and read the Times by 10 AM, and finished the April, May and June entries for this year for my diary book. Todd returned my call, and we chatted for a while. He’s had some successful times with nonfiction, but only occasionally does he publish I magazines. Todd is still working on the umpteenth version of his Corvette book, which he’s now sick of. Todd’s block is now mostly populated by Puerto Ricans, and he feels down on New York City; the family’s about to go upstate to their country house for the summer.

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In a way, Todd’s naïveté is pathetic, but he does have faith in the system; he believes the publishing industry will be interested if he just hits the right editor. I’m glad I’m a lot more cynical.

Thursday, June 27, 1991 8 PM. This might be a good time to become a lawyer. When I got home a few hours ago, I turned on the radio to learn that Justice Marshall had resigned on the last day of the Court’s term as it handed down more decisions weakening individual rights. With Brennan gone, Marshall probably realized it was futile to keep on going in a tiny minority at the age of 83. This year showed that the conservatives are firmly in control, and now they should consolidate their power well into the 21st century. Roe v. Wade should be overturned soon as the Supreme Court reverses previous expansions of individuals’ rights. Just as the liberal Warren Court lasted through a conservative era, the Rehnquist Court will probably endure even when the pendulum swings to more liberal times. I expect the Court will hasten those liberal times as it swings too far to the right. Maybe poor people, gays and lesbians, minority kids, disabled people and

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people with AIDS will need lawyers in this chilling climate. Last evening I got to West 4th Street on the A train just before 6 PM. I hadn’t been in the Village since last summer, and I flashed back to the first time I ever got off at that station, in 1969, and I had this fantasy that I’d reach the top of the subway stairs and outside it would be 1969 again. Walking down West 8th Street, I looked at how the stores on the block had changed and thought about how many different memories I had: the Postermat in ’69, the old Eighth Street Bookshop, dinners at Shakespeare’s, junk food at Nathan’s and Orange Julius, the old Cookery (now BBQ), the Art Theatre and 8th Street Playhouse. The people on the street seemed as idiosyncratic as ever and part of me decided I still love the Village. Getting through the security at the co-op, I made it to Josh’s 19th floor apartment, which looked neat and cheerful and homey. Josh, too, looked healthy, and there wasn’t much sign of his paranoia as we spent hours together, walking, eating at Benny’s Burritos on Greenwich, sitting on a bench on the “good,” eastern side of Washington Square Park.

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The big news involved a statistics class he’s currently taking at The New School. He’s been studying hard, as he needs statistics because he plans to start grad school at John Jay in the fall: their M.A. program in criminology, with a concentration in computers. At work, his boss, a black woman whom Josh says is insecure because she knows Josh is very competent and on the other side politically in the department, used the fiscal crisis as an excuse to fire Josh (I’m sure this is true), but the people down the hall were happy to get him although he’ll be working 30% of the time for his old boss. Josh turned down a job with the Parking Violations Bureau because it would have been on the block where he lives and he feels the need to exercise on his walk to the DOT. But if the City Council gets its way, they’ll cut 10% of the DOT’s staff, so like many New York City workers, Josh isn’t totally secure. He has a girlfriend whom he sees on weekends, and he’s watching his diet. James Hughes, married and living in St. Louis, has Stage 4 Hodgkin’s disease but won’t get chemotherapy. Elaine, his mother, who refused a mastectomy when she had breast cancer, has James seeing a lot of quacks and faddists, and Josh thinks James will end up a kind of suicide. Josh’s own mother is a mess: she’s all but blind and crippled, nearly incontinent, and to make things

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worse, his father – who sort of went crazy when he found out he didn’t have prostate cancer – is seeing a woman in Brighton Beach. I talked about my bankruptcy – Josh said I was proved right in my predictions for the economy – and law school and my other friends, and Josh walked me to the train. It was a beautiful evening, dry and mild. When the train came outside after Euclid Avenue, the sky was inky blue streaked with scarlet, and when I got to Rockaway and descended the el at Beach 105th Street, it felt refreshingly breezy. Back in the apartment, I watched a panel called Out in America, part of WNET/13’s Gay Pride Week programming. One reason I’m looking forward to Gainesville is I’m interested to see how people relate to me once I‘m out of the closet. I don’t intend to broadcast my sexual preference, but I’m not going to let people assume I’m heterosexual. The best weapon we have against homophobia is coming out, and I feel guilty I’ve waited so long. This morning I used my Optima Card to buy stuff at Ark Drugs. I made certain to buy items I’d ordinarily buy, and I used coupons to get $2 off (plus I found $2 in the store). I don’t intend to make credit cards a

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habit, but I want to pay my bills to reestablish a record. At 2 PM I went to Woodmere via buses, but they told me that Grandma Ethel was at the dental clinic at Peninsula Hospital, so I went to the WoodmereHewlett Public Library for an hour and read magazines. I hope law school doesn’t force me to give up my daily hit of The New York Times. (When I asked Josh if he liked his job, he said, “Well, I make over $50,000 and still have time to read the Times every day.”) If necessary, I will, however, and start subscribing again to USA Today so I can at least get some news, pathetic though McPaper is. I found Grandma back in her room, befuddled and complaining. (She didn’t even realize she’d been in Rockaway, at the same hospital where Grandpa Herb died.) She’s starting to get a little more confused. For the first time, I got a dollar van in Woodmere – driven by a Hispanic man – to Far Rock, where I got another van home. I know the vans are dangerous, but they’re fast, and I like seeing how people in the ghetto live: listening to the conversations of black teenagers, watching a 12-year-old peel off a dollar from a huge wad of bills, hearing about violence (yesterday a 5-year-old girl was shot in the leg six

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blocks from here when two men got into an argument about making change for a dollar). I didn’t get my unemployment check, but I did get a copy of P’an Ku from Patrick. The interview with me looks good but I’ve allowed myself only to glance at it so far.

Friday, June 28, 1991 8 PM. This morning Sat Darshan and I decided to cancel our date this evening because it’s so hot (96°) and humid. Perhaps she and a friend will come out to the beach on Sunday. Gurujot and Gurudaya are spending another week at their camp, and yesterday Sat Darshan did finish the two-mile Manufacturers Hanover Corporate Challenge race, although she felt like death at the end and injured her good knee. I spoke to Pete, who’s going to Montreal by train for a jazz festival over the holiday weekend and taking a courier flight to Milan for a week later in the month. He asked if I’d be interested in attending a farewell party for Harold that Jack Roth is planning, and I said sure.

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My unemployment check didn’t come, but I called Tallahassee and they said it was mailed out on Monday, so I should get the claim card so that I can send it out soon. When I visited Aunt Tillie this afternoon, she was very ill. Her hiatus hernia was making her miserable, and she has numerous other complaints. Although more stoic than Grandma, Tillie has taken up Grandma’s lament of “I’m so disgusted with my life.” It must be so hard to get old. When Justice Marshall asked what his health problems are, he crustily replied, “I’m old – I’m just falling apart.”

Saturday, June 29, 1991 5 PM. It’s hard not to get depressed. Dad called with UF’s financial aid letter. It seems the only aid I’m eligible for, according to what he read, is a PLUS/SLS loan for the spring and summer semesters. That wouldn’t be enough to enable me to go to law school at UF, not really. I could do it, but what’s the point? I’d be struggling and more in debt. If I can’t afford the cheapest law school in the country, what’s the use?

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I’ve really got to figure out what to do. All my eggs were in the law school basket. I cut my ties to Broward Community College and I’d rather kill myself than go back there anyway. I don’t want to return to South Florida and live with my parents. I suppose I could stay here, but where would I find work? Even lousy adjunct jobs at CUNY are unlikely with the city going down the tubes financially. Maybe I should kill myself. I just tried to watch a Degrassi High episode about suicide, but typically for today, Channel 21 wasn’t coming in at all and I couldn’t understand or see the program clearly. I feel devastated. Can I say yes to this? Do I have a choice? All of this – not getting my unemployment check, running out of money, the news from UF – all coming at once. See, I told myself that I’d had it too easy. A thought: I’ll kill Grandma Ethel. She wants to do, and then I’ll become a celebrity and the state will have to house me in prison. It’s a measure of my mental state that that sounds rational now. What do I have left? There’s nothing left of my career as a writer or a computer education trainer or an English teacher. I have fewer friends than I’ve ever had, and nobody will be devastated if I died or was sent to prison; they’d be upset but not devastated.

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At least if I planned to kill myself, I should kill Grandma first, so she would be spared the bad news. Is that a Woody Allen joke? Part of me always suspected law school and Gainesville were fictions. (Okay, that’s a line stolen from the end of Sunday, Bloody Sunday, when the Peter Finch character says, “I always knew Italy was a fiction.) Or am I giving up too easily? As usual when things go wrong, Dad didn’t want to talk, and I have nothing to say to him anyway. Suddenly I feel old. Am I overdramatizing? “Beware of overdramatization,” Ms. Stein wrote on a freshman comp paper I wrote 22 years ago, a paper I which I described my emotional problems and sessions with a shrink. Where do I go now? What do I do? What do I want to do?

Saturday, June 30, 1991 Noon. Sat Darshan and her friend Gabriele are coming over in an hour or so. I sounded like an asshole yesterday. The universe won’t notice if I do or do not go to law school. But I

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think that even if I don’t attend law school, I want to move to Gainesville. That might seem silly, as I know nobody I the town, but I think I need to start over in a new place, and there are more opportunities in a university community than in either New York City or South Florida. Also, the lifestyle is better and cheaper. In the law school catalog, it says that you can’t defer entrance unless you’re in a joint degree program. Maybe I can start in the College of Journalism and go part-time and work. Maybe I can get a job at Santa Fe Community College or some work-study position or assistantship at UF. Maybe I can use cash advances for my first term; I’d like to experience at least one semester of law school. If I had to drop out or do something else after that, at least I’d know I really like studying the law. In any case, I’m better off in Gainesville; even if I haven’t yet set foot there, I know it’s pretty and quiet and 450 miles from my parents and it has mild winters and lots of cultural and social activities at the university. It will be a chance for a fresh start, and if I can be happy in Gainesville, make friends, do more than just survive, and keep growing. I’ll feel a lot better about myself in Gainesville.

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At least I now no longer feel victim to that awful negative thinking for more than a day. Years ago I’d put myself into a funk like yesterday’s that would last for weeks. I don’t want to see myself as a helpless victim but as a resourceful, capable winner. I need to change my life, and I can change my life.

Monday, July 1, 1991 6 PM. I had a nice afternoon yesterday when Sat Darshan and her friend Gabriele, a German woman who works with her at Bayerische Landesbank, visited. We spent several hours on the beach, the first time I’ve gone to the beach since my skin surgery last year. I’ve been trying to keep pale, but even with applying sunscreen, I manage to get dark in my walks around Rockaway. Like most of Sat Darshan’s friends, Gabriele is interesting, somebody who’s traveled all over Europe, the U.S., and Latin America, intelligent and sophisticated. They found the beach crowd a bit tacky and were appalled by the boom boxes in the subway, but here we get mostly minority beachgoers from the worst

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neighborhoods of Queens and Brooklyn. To me, they’re well-behaved; a lot of them must think it’s a paradise at the beach compared with East New York or Bushwick. Sat Darshan and Gabriele left around 5 PM, and I spent the rest of the evening finishing the newspaper, munching and watching I, Claudius. Up at 6 AM today, I got out of the house by 9:30 AM. This was the day I’d planned to do errands in Brooklyn, a perfect day because it was a mild, dry lull in a hot and humid week. Taking the bus to Kings Plaza, I walked around the mall for few hours, picking out sundries at CVS and vitamins at GNC and browsing at Macy’s and Waldenbooks, where I found a guide to law schools. It called UF a relaxed place, where everyone’s informal and where most students are conservatives and kids of well-connected Floridians. But it said older students are well-integrated into the student body although the UF undergrads keep to themselves. It bothers me, not knowing how I’m going to pay for law school, but I do want to go for at least one semester. Then, if I have to withdraw for financial reasons, I can always come back and be reinstated

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after I’ve earned some money working. At least I’ll get the chance to be a law student. My other options are deferring law school while I go for my masters in mass communications and either work part-time or rely on a possible assistantship – or if I was offered it, taking the $16,000 Writers Film Project fellowship in Los Angeles. Of course, I probably won’t get accepted for that, but right now, without financial aid, L.A. would be a better option. Silly me: I expect to get their reject any day now. Once I do, I’ll know that I’m going to Gainesville in August, and I’ve got to think about leaving here earlier than I’d planned so I can prepare for my new life. I’ve got to see what Mom and Marty plan to do with Grandma’s apartment. Gabriele thought some of the furniture could be sold to antique dealers, though the stuff I thought might be valuable, like the lamps, she said was junk. And what I considered junk because it’s so old – like the mirrors, bed, and table – Gabriele figured would be worth real money. I’ve been consciously avoiding calling my parents and waiting to hear from them instead, and when Mom calls, I’ll press her to get moving on this apartment.

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After six weeks, it won’t be my responsibility anymore. Anyway, today I walked through my old neighborhood on the way to Deutsch Pharmacy. Our old block still looks lovely to my eyes. I was walking across the street from our old house when I saw Evie come to her door, and she invited me in to talk with her and Lou. Lou’s mother died three weeks ago after being sick in the hospital for months, and obviously their family went through the usual nightmare, only Mrs. Wagner died before they’d finished arranged nursing home care for her. I guess Lou is retired now; Scott works at Merrill Lynch; Bonnie was visiting earlier today with her kids, who are 9 and 3. Evie told me about the depressed real estate market, Arnold and Doris’ separation, the pregnancies of the wives of the Bergman brothers, Fran’s daughter starting law school, and other gossip. But the highlight of Lou and Evie’s life in the last year seemed to be when Spike Lee filmed Jungle Fever in the neighborhood. They went on and on about all the fun they had watching the action on the next block. I must tell Dad that I was right when I thought the candy store in the movie was Avenue N.

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Anyway, I left the Wagners’ and went to the drugstore, where Mr. Deutsch gave me my Triavil 2/10. Across Avenue N, I caught the Flatbush Avenue bus and took it to the Junction, where I xeroxed the P’an Ku interview in the same copy shop – though it’s moved across Hillel Place – where I used to go to in the 1970s to xerox all my story manuscripts. The owner, John, looked grayer, balder and paunchier but much the same; I probably last saw him in 1980. This really felt like a kind of a homecoming. After I had a McLean Deluxe, I got some Korean salad bar which I ate on the benches in front of Whitehead Hall on the Brooklyn College campus. Twenty-two years ago I started BC when I took Poli Sci 1 during the summer of 1969, and I remember hanging out in the grass on the same spot. The next year a temporary building was constructed on the site, although none of us really believed it would be there only for a few years. Not to sound sappy, but all buildings are really temporary, no? I got back to Rockaway and said a silent prayer as I opened the mailbox. Thank God I got my unemployment check and claim card; otherwise I would have had to schlep to Jamaica to report.

Richard Grayson

Upstairs, I turned on the radio for the 2 PM news and when I realized Bush was about to name his Supreme Court nominee, I flicked on the TV. Marshall’s successor will be another black man, Judge Clarence Thomas, a doctrinaire conservative in the Rehnquist/ Scalia mold. Well, I figure: let a right-wing court undo all the progress of the last thirty years. If they reverse Roe v. Wade and start taking away individual rights, maybe people will wake up and stop electing Presidents like Reagan and Bush. The pendulum may finally swing left once the right goes too far. I walked to Beach 116th Street and deposited my unemployment check and mailed my next claim card. I took a $200 cash advance on my Dollar Dry Dock Visa because with my Florida check so late, I was totally out of money. I obviously don’t plan to make cash advances a postbankruptcy hobby unless it’s to get me through the first term of law school.

Tuesday, July 2, 1991 4 PM. Last night I went to bed with a bad sinus headache, but I’d forgotten about it by the time I woke up. Leaving the apartment at 9 AM after

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exercise and breakfast, I went to Woodmere, where I had a pleasant visit with Grandma Ethel. When I came in, she was sitting out in the hall with other residents, and it was the first time I got to talk with some of her – what’s the word? Not colleagues. . . Compatriots? Fellow inmates? Whatever. One man, 78, had just come out of the hospital and was in a wheelchair. An Irish bartender, he lived in Bay Ridge his whole life and talked about hitching rides on the 86th Street trolley to Coney Island. Another man, also in a wheelchair, told me that he’d been forced to give up a subsidized $129 studio by his doctor six months ago when he was hospitalized. One woman also just got out of the hospital, where they implanted a pacemaker, and two other women who sat down nearby were out of it, neither ever said a word. I guess one consolation of getting old and sick is that if you’re in a place like Grandma is, you have lots of people around you in the same boat. For example, Grandma and this man exchanged complaints about their roommates. Grandma actually seems to be one of the more clearheaded people there. I brought her a couple of plums and a baby banana as well as the monthly newsletter from the temple sisterhood.

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After I left, I read for a while in the WoodmereHewlett Public Library, then took a bus and van back to Rockaway Park. It turned cloudy this afternoon and will probably rain, but I like the cool breeze we’ve had all day. I wish I knew what my mother and uncle plan to do with this apartment so I could start making my own plans to sell furniture and stuff – not that Grandma has much that’s valuable.

Wednesday, July 3, 1991 4 PM. It’s a cool, cloudy day, and I’ve felt in tune with the weather. Since last night I’ve been bothered by a soreness, a tenderness, under my left jaw. It might be a swollen gland or it could be a problem with my wisdom tooth, but the imagination of a hypochondriac knows no bounds, and I figure I’ve got whatever disease is the most deadly. Mom phoned last night, and while she didn’t speak to her brother, she intends to write Marty that she’s coming in at the end of July, probably three weeks form Saturday, when Dad’s got a meeting in New Jersey.

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Then, she figures, we can sell the furniture and other belongings, throw stuff out, and get rid of the apartment. I guess I’ll have to go back to Florida with my parents. Mom also sent the award letter from UF, giving me only SLS money for the spring and summer. That’s $4000 maximum, and it will be very hard to get through the year for me. If by chance I do get offered an assistantship in the College of Journalism and Mass Communications, I’ll feel obliged to defer law school. If I don’t, I guess I’ll try to scare up the money to survive somehow. Justin called today, and he’s facing his own financial aid problems at Brooklyn. There won’t be any fellowships in the Theater Department; however, Justin has no outstanding student loans from Brown, and I’m certain he’ll manage to get a Stafford and an SLS. I’m not even certain I can get an SLS because of my bankruptcy. But I can’t complain; I used the student loan system to my advantage in the last decade. Just last summer, I lived on the money left over after Teachers College got their (exorbitant) tuition. However, I know I’ll be struggling financially and that’s not a prospect I contemplate with delight. Last night I went to bed after dinner, the news, and about fifty pages of Kate Chopin’s The Awakening,

Richard Grayson

which I’ve long meant to read. This morning’s darkness made me feel like staying in bed, but I forced myself to work out at least half-heartedly to Homestretch. I did accomplish finishing my diary book manuscript, using Monday’s entry as my final, July 1991, monthly passage. Justin said I can print it out at his apartment. I’ve abandoned plans to proofread it; instead, I’ll make ink corrections when I number the pages (because they’re in so many different PC-Write files, I don’t know how to paginate them successively). Once I get the book off to the Brautigan Library, I can forget about it – as everyone else will, except for the few souls in Burlington who want to slog through the 350 pages. Also today, I went to Key Food and did some laundry. Otherwise the day seems to have passed in a fog; I haven’t even finished today’s Times yet. Probably I won’t stay for the fireworks at Sat Darshan’s tonight, but I need to get out, so I’ll meet her and her friends in downtown Brooklyn for dinner at an Arab restaurant.

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Thursday, July 4, 1991 4 PM. It’s a clear, crisp, cloudless Fourth of July. Last evening I put on my freshly laundered jeans, which felt snug, and for the first time in about a month, a sport shirt, not a T-shirt, and I took the Green buses to Beach 116th Street and then the Junction. Since I had my standard problem of having to go to the bathroom, even though I tried drink less than usual, I took a short detour to the Brooklyn College campus to use the restroom in Whitehead Hall. Even though it was the start of the holiday weekend, they were holding evening classes, and I sort of envied the teachers and the students there. Sometimes I like to pretend I’m a kind of Jude the Obscure, who’s never managed to get inside the walls of real learning, but of course that’s nonsense. Still, I wonder about being taken seriously at UF, the first real university I’ll be attending. CUNY was great, but it was a commuter school and very urban, and Teachers College was isolated from Columbia University. Anyway, I got to Borough Hall a bit early, and decided to walk down Court Street to meet Sat Darshan, who’s easily spotted from four blocks away

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in her white outfit and turban. We walked back up to the Municipal Building, where she pointed out “Mutt and Jeff”: tiny Diane and lanky Alex. The four of us strolled over to the Lebanese restaurant at the corner of Atlantic Avenue and Clinton Street, near where I used to have therapy sessions with Mrs. Ehrlich in the early 70s. Sat Darshan says she feels comfortable among the exotic ethnics of Atlantic Avenue: not only her fellow Sikhs but all the many Arabs (mostly Palestinians), the Hare Krishnas in their saffron dhotis, and the Black Muslim women behind their veils. It was a pleasant meal: I indulged a little in soaking up babaghanoush and hummus with pita bread and sampled pickled turnips (so-so), and had a delicious eggplant stew with potatoes, onions and tomatoes. The conversation at the table was lively, as we discussed the varieties of American English, our terrible educational system (naturally Alex could not believe just how bad it is here), and food, of course, among other topics. Diane is sarcastic and funny, a Boston-bred ChineseAmerican, and Alex is sweet and even-tempered, perhaps a bit quiet because he underestimates his fluidity in English.

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I showed them one of Grandma’s pieces from that set of dishes I found; they were marked with a seal from Bavaria, but Alex said the brand, Thomas, isn’t really fine china although it was probably a good set. In the apartment I’ve also found two watches on chains, both in working order; I’m going to see if a dealer can tell me what they’re worth. Grandma doesn’t want them, and maybe I can get some money for them. And I finally found some of the cash hidden in the apartment: a ten-dollar bill stashed in a Band-Aid tin. After collecting everyone’s share of the dinner, I paid with my Amoco Torch Club/Diners Club card; as we walked around, Sat Darshan egged me on to tell Alex and Diane my credit card story. We stopped off at a Korean store for some soda – the Koreans always assume Diane is one of them and can understand their language, but it is gibberish to her. (Sat Darshan says in Chinatown, Diane will speak to merchants in Chinese and they answer her back in English.) Back at the apartment, Sat Darshan got out some old photos because Alex and Diane wanted to see her in her hippie phase. I told them we didn’t think of ourselves as hippies, but in retrospect, it looks like we were.

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I remember Avis in 1971, with her long, silky hair – as a Sikh, she has even longer hair now – and the way she looked with Helmut (with his very long blond hair) a few years later. Gurujot and Gurudaya are coming back on Sunday, but I was glad to be able to spend time and get close to Sat Darshan again; we’ve really strengthened our friendship. Unbolting the door to the roof, we stood outside waiting for the fireworks. I was surprised I wasn’t uncomfortable, for the tar roof was all open, and usually my agoraphobia reasserts itself when I’m up high like that in the open. But I felt exhilarated to look out at lower Manhattan and downtown Brooklyn. The South Street Seaport fireworks were delayed twenty minutes beyond the 9:30 PM scheduled start, and for a while we began to think we’d been fooled into waiting for nothing except the Virgin Airways blimp. Finally, though, the pyrotechnics began. I’m not much of a fireworks aficionado but it was a decent display, with a couple of genuine “oohs” and “aahs.” I hadn’t intended to stay so late, and at 10:30 PM, once we’d gone downstairs, I took my leave and got to the Bergen Street station on the corner of Smith Street. The G train took me one stop to Hoyt/

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Schermerhorn, where I hopped on an A train crowded with people, changed at Rockaway Boulevard for a Far-Rock-bound A before the first train went on to Lefferts Boulevard. At Broad Channel, I finally got an H, the Rockaway Park shuttle, and when I got off the train, I walked briskly and in the middle of the street until I got inside Dayton Towers. It was midnight and I had some snacks before I settled into bed. Up late today, I’ve been relaxing. I finished Chopin’s The Awakening, a fine novel, even if I’m one person who’s never given into passion himself. I can’t say I regret it, either, though I may not know what I missed in life. In the spring and summer of 1972, I thought I was in love with Avis, and I’m so glad I never told her. It also would have been idiotic to tell Wesley how I felt about him eight years later. Those were probably just crushes, of course, and if I really had felt awakened by overpowering love for an “impossible” person, I couldn’t have controlled myself so easily. Was I in love with Avis or Wes? There were times when I thought so. At times I thought I was in love with Shelli or Brad, but I can’t imagine that those feelings were healthy enough to be called love.

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Notice I make the assumption that true love is healthy. Well, this is a subject I’m not qualified to discuss beyond saying I know I’ve felt love – for Ronna, for Sean, and maybe for others.

Tuesday, July 9, 1991 3 PM. I’ve been feeling a little fuzzy all day, though I slept enough. In an hour, I’ll phone Alice, and if she says she’s leaving the office on time, I’ll go to Manhattan, have dinner with her, and then attend the reading of Talley’s Folly just up Waverly Place from Alice’s house. Last evening Ronna called. I gave her directions so she and Ralph can come here on Sunday. At least I know I won’t lack for company this weekend. Probably what I need is some stimulation, to be with people. Since I’m not working or attending classes or writing a book or story, I’m at loose ends. I’ll be happy to go back to Florida in a few weeks and get on with my life. This time in Rockaway has been great, really special, but I need to face challenges, even difficult or unpleasant ones. Ronna and Ralph had a nice holiday weekend in New England; they rented a car and drove to see friends

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and relatives in Connecticut, New Hampshire and Boston suburbs. It’ll be interesting to meet Ralph at last. I’d thought for sure Ronna would marry Jordan, then Steven, and I’m not sure she’ll end up marrying Ralph, but I wouldn’t be surprised: How many times can Ronna refuse marriage proposals from decent guys? Of course, I don’t know if Ralph is as hot for a wedding as Jordan and Steven once were. Today I did the usual: aerobics, the Times, the radio. I didn’t go out for a Korean salad bar and relied on frozen veggies instead. Whatever that swollen gland problem was last night, it’s gone away now.

Wednesday, July 10, 1991 3 PM. I know I’d feel better once I got myself into some activity, so after writing yesterday’s entry, I put on an exercise tape and worked out for half an hour, after which Alice called and we made arrangements to meet at 6:15 PM for dinner. However, just before I was about to leave, she called back and said an office emergency at Women’s World had come up, and we rescheduled for Friday. Pete

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also called, and on Thursday afternoon I’ll meet him and Harold in the Village. With some time to spare, I sat on the terrace and read Bob Siegle’s book, which is slow going but stimulating. I read the first and final chapters and am now reading about Kathy Acker. Why did I never get involved with the East Village scene as Pete and all these other writers did? I’m more mainstream than they, I guess, but I do share their value systems. Maybe it was their self-consciously hip style that put me off: all those black clothes and pseudo-nerdy looks never fit my own style. Also, I tend to be a loner, though I am sociable. Am I just shy? I never seem to fit in anywhere. In New York City I feel like a Floridian, and in Florida I feel like a New Yorker. I never feel more Jewish than when I’m among non-Jews, and I never feel more gay when I’m with only heterosexuals, but I have conflicts regarding my religion and sexual orientation when I’m around people who share these things. I feel too experimental to be mainstream, too mainstream to be experimental; I’m an academic except when I’m in academia; and so on.

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The truth is, I always thought the Lower East Side was grungy. I spent a few evenings or afternoons at those places Siegle romanticizes – the Life Café, ABC No Rio – and wasn’t that impressed. Am I oblivious to obviously important art and artists? It’s possible. Pete did get me a couple of readings at the Darinka Café and 8 BC, and I seemed to be well-received by Lower East Side people. I also liked all of Pete’s friends from that scene: Joel Rose and Catherine Texier (who did publish me in Between C & D), Alan Biely, Lynne Tillman and others Siegle mentions. Perhaps I was in Florida during the crucial years of the Lower East Side renaissance and I was concentrating on my own brand of conceptual art like my grandparents’ fan clubs and my political campaigns. I do share the concerns of most of the writers mentioned in Suburban Ambush. Anyway, reading Siegle’s book is a good project; I’ve even found myself getting ideas for stories. I got to West 4th Street at 7:15 PM and then got slightly lost as I failed to trace Waverly Place beyond Seventh Avenue South and got tangled in the West Village’s crooked streets. But I got to the theater before the reading started and plunked myself down

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behind Kenny and David, who’d read parts in Kelly Masterson’s Against the Rising Sea last night. Talley’s Folly is part of Lanford Wilson’s Talley Trilogy, and I remember Justin working for the company which produced the original with Judd Hirsch. Justin played Hirsch’s role of Matt Friedman, and a very talented actress Gloria Ptak, played Sally Talley. The play was a bit too formulaic for me, as in the two big revelation scenes wherein each character in a twocharacter play must expose his or her most painful memory or vulnerability. But Justin made a nice rumpled Jewish accountant, and he and Gloria had great timing and pacing, and the reading moved swiftly. All in all, it made me realize how good just a reading of a play can be. Julia – whom Justin directed in the Werbacher twins’ What Would Esther Williams Do in a Situation Like This? – directed them through a couple of rehearsals. I guess I was the only one there who’d seen Justin act before when Sat Darshan and I attended that Molière farce in Park Slope in ’79 or ’80, an experience so bad it led Justin out of performing until now. After the show, I encouraged him to do some more acting. I didn’t want to go out with David, Justin, Kenny, Julia, Diane Fox Perunka (the president of

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Theatre Factory) and her husband Charles because I’d get back to Rockaway so late. As it was, I got off the Rockaway Park shuttle after 11:30 PM, with the train’s conductor urging me to walk faster, waking me up to the dangers of the late night. But there were a couple of transit cops outside the Beach 105th Street station and a pair of security guards on the grounds of Dayton Towers. I had a snack and went to bed, sleeping later than usual and not getting out of bed until 10 AM. Soon after, I caught a van to Far Rock. The driver was playing WNEW-AM with offerings like Shirley MacLaine singing “Hey, Big Spender,” a far cry from the usual West Indian music or gospel or R & B; I guess the drivers are too old for rap, even if I myself was listening to Public Enemy on my Walkman. After a bus ride from Far Rock to Woodmere, I spoke to Grandma Ethel’s friend Christine before I saw Grandma. Christine is an intelligent lady who’s fixed up her own room with a cheery red bedspread and lots of dolls and stuffed animals and flowers. Grandma complained bitterly about the bitter taste in her mouth and the itching on her back. An Orthodox dermatologist came in to look at Grandma, and he really couldn’t see anything on her back; he was more concerned with the probable basal cell carcinoma on the side of her nose.

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(I must not see anything. I’d never noticed anything amiss about her nose, although Grandma said Marty had been calling the home about it for weeks.) The dermatologist said he’d give Grandma a salve for whatever caused the back itch and will make an appointment to take care of the skin cancer. Apart from her complaints, Grandma seemed pretty sharp today, even warning me about riding in the dollar vans because she’d seen reports that passengers had been robbed by drivers. When she’s not numbed by depression, Grandma seems to have the same mental acuity as she always did. Not that she was ever that sharp, but it’s clear she hasn’t lost any of her faculties. That’s heartening. All my grandparents had their wits about them except, of course, Grandpa Nat after his brain damage. We checked on the progress of the white pigeon nesting on the ledge outside the bathroom window. Recently pigeons have become prey for the peregrine falcons which are returning to New York among the skyscrapers. See, I try to be more observant. I have more time to observe on the long subway rides to the city, the van

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rides through Rockaway’s ghetto, the bus ride through the Five Towns. When I got home at 1 PM, a radio talk show was discussing the way old people have to pauperize themselves to get nursing home care, which is paid for by Medicaid, not Medicare. The senior citizen groups like AARP seem to concentrate their lobbying efforts on the young-old and their benefits. But the old-old, even if they have $100,000 in savings, can lose all their money fast if they need long-term care. One reason I’d like to become a European citizen so I could avoid an impoverished old age. The U.S. ignores its children and its elderly and its poor. It’s not just a question of more artistic freedom or more culture; Europe is superior in the nuts and bolts of providing better lives for its people. With that blockhead Bush sure to be reelected – no credible Democrats are running against him – I now feel that we’ll never deal with the changes needed here.

Richard Grayson

Sunday, July 14, 1991 8 PM. As I look out the window, I see the sky is still blue with a tinge of pink as the sun begins to go down. Yesterday it was raining when I awoke, and I stayed in bed till 10 AM because it was so dark out. I didn’t do much and hoped the weather would clear up for Ralph and Ronna’s visit today. It did, but only slightly; the sun played peekaboo most of the day. Ronna and Ralph got here at 1:30 PM and left an hour ago. I’m pleased to have met Ralph Seliger, who’s bright, kind, witty and interesting. I liked Ronna’s other boyfriends, so I figured I’d like ralph, but he’s nicer than I expected and someone I could see as my friend. Physically, he’s sort of Wallace Shawn-ish; he looks like a middle-aged, balding Nee York Jewish intellectual, which is exactly what he is. From watching them, I know Ronna really likes him, and he seems fond of her, too, though he’s not as overtly demonstrative (if you can call glances demonstrative). As usual, I probably talked too much and didn’t learn enough about the other person; that’s a hazard for me, because I’m alone so much and when I see people, I love to talk.

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But I know Ralph’s parents’ background from the article he wrote in his magazine, and I know he’s a progressive Zionist. I’d guess he’s about 43 or 44. Probably I’m vain enough that I’d like him less if he were young and stunningly handsome, but I can’t imagine Ronna being happy with that kind of guy anyway. We sat on the terrace and then walked along the boardwalk to McDonald’s, and later, back here, I brought down towels and blankets so we could go on the beach. Ralph is a big swimmer; at their temple, he goes in the pool nearly every day. But by the time we got to the beach it was a bit too cool for even Ralph, although I said he should teach Ronna how to swim. Back on the terrace, we at the delicious pineapple they brought for me, and the seemed to like Entenmann’s fat-free Louisiana crunch cake I’d gotten at Waldbaum’s. We talked about everything from political correctness to Arnold Schwarzenegger movies, and I learned a little more about Ralph’s background and ideas and world view. Obviously it’s not for me to approve or disapprove of Ronna’s companions, but if there’s anything I could

Richard Grayson

do to encourage her and Ralph to get married, I’d do it. Why? Well, I’d like to see Ronna married to a good guy, and it also would make me feel like a chapter of my own life was closed. Not that there’s any chance Ronna and would ever get involved again, but I’d like to see something happen that would foreclose even the slightest possibility. I thought Ralph handled me really well because even with me being the (ahem) gracious guy that I am, it could be slightly awkward when Ronna and I bring up people and events he doesn’t know. Of course, for many of the twenty years that Ronna and I have known each other, we’ve been friends, not lovers, and when we talked about Milton and his brothers of what Ronna’s grandmother thought of my grandmother (Sarah always would describe Grandma Sylvia as “fine”), it certainly isn’t because we were any closer than just friends. For a time Ralph lived in Montreal, and he suggested that feeling the way I do about things, I might prefer living in Canada, probably Vancouver. He himself hopes his editorship of the magazine can lead to his writing articles for paying publications.

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Basically he’d like to write on political and social issues for places like The New Republic. His sister is a poet, and he also has a brother with grown kids. Ronna told me that Billy and Melinda took their old apartment in Gainesville and want me to call them when I get there so we can get together. Ronna’s going to take off a week in November to attend their wedding in Sunrise, and I assume Ralph will go, too. His mother lives half the year in Delray, at Kings Point, and at 80, she swims every day and is very active. I walked Ronna and Ralph out back to the train station and I hope they don’t have to wait too long for a ride home, but at least they’ve got each other for company.

Tuesday, July 16, 1991 4 PM. I’m intending to go to see Justin’s play reading in a couple of hours. Last evening I sat out on the terrace and read my way, skipping here and there, through Siegle’s Suburban Ambush. Today I sent the book to Patrick as a thank-you for the P’an Ku interview. I doubt he’ll get through any more of the impenetrable French critical terms than I did,

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but perhaps he’ll enjoy skimming the book. Last week I looked it up in Book Review Index and didn’t see a single review, so I doubt his next book will have any influence. However, I did send Bob my P’an Ku interview. As it turned hotter and more humid, I was up at 5:30 AM today with a bad sinus headache. WLIW/21 is now running Body Electric at 6:30 AM, and I actually worked out at that early hour. I was out of the house at 8:30 AM and at the adult home an hour later, finding Grandma Ethel walking about and fiercely complaining about the bitter taste in her mouth and the itch on her back – complaints I believe have no basis in anything physical, which is probably why the doctors get annoyed with her. I told her that my parents called last evening, and Grandma said Marty went ballistic when he was told Mom was coming in to give up the apartment. He stormed on about how she’s never called him – I had to tell her a dozen times to call him and I had hoped she’d listen to me – and said he was not going to give up the apartment. Actually, of course, I’d much rather Grandma was able to keep the place, for I like the idea of being able to come here over school vacations and maybe even next summer. If Mom was coming just to sell the

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furniture and arrange for the apartment to be sold, there’s not any point in that. Maybe she’ll still come to see Grandma. I can understand Marty’s annoyance; as I told Grandma, her daughter is a little weird. Mom never calls Grandma, either. When I got home, I phoned Fort Lauderdale and left a message on the machine for Mom. She’s at work today at the flea market, I imagine, and I told her I’d be out tonight and to call me tomorrow after she’d phoned her brother to discuss the issue. In a way, I like having this over Mom: the fact that she went about this in such a half-assed way, as it gives me ammunition when she wants me to do things her way. The certificate of occupancy for the Gainesville apartment should be ready this week or next, and I can move in any time after that. Although I’d like to stay in New York City longer, I believe I’m better off moving to the new place as soon as possible so I have a few days to adjust before law school begins. It will be traumatic enough having to go up there and buy furniture and deal with my parents. I’d much prefer to go there with Marc than with Mom, who’s so obsessive, and Dad, who’s so nervous. But I’ll get

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rid of them as soon as I can, and after that, I won’t have to deal with them. Mom’s already talking about buying a couch and about having put away sheets. I’m crazy enough, planning things ahead of time, without her lunacy. Anyway, I plan to leave here earlier than my scheduled flight on Monday, August 12; I’ll go home in the first few days of August whether my parents come up here or not. Maybe I’ll try to call Mom again now – Well, Dad just answered. He said Mom is sick today, that she seems to have a fever and has been sleeping. Dad gave her the message, but Mom was half-asleep. Like me, he said he doesn’t get involved with Mom’s relationship with Marty but said she’s the one who’s been paying the rent – something I hadn’t realized. Well, I said, then she can stop sending checks and let Marty pay for the place until he no longer wants to. Perhaps he knows that the Dayton Towers co-op plan is going through and that the apartment will be leaving the Mitchell-Lama plan and the apartment can be sold at a profit. I plan to stay out of it and selfishly hope at this point that Uncle Marty’s view prevails because at least that would be easier on me.

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Saturday, July 20, 1991 9 PM. It hit 100° today, but I just took a walk on the boardwalk, and there’s a cool breeze blowing in from the ocean, although it’s still very muggy. But all in all, with the windows wide open, this is one of the most comfortable places I could be – except for Los Angeles, where it was only in the 70°s. (I hadn’t realized Southern California summers were milder than New York’s.) Last evening I took the new Brooklyn phone book, which I put in my bag when I saw stacks of them near Elihu’s elevator. I’ve been looking up people: old friends, neighbors, acquaintances. I noticed a Vito Panzer no, “arty,” on Clark Street, and when I phoned the number, there was Vito’s familiar voice on the machine. I’m glad to know he’s still alive. I spent the evening with the news shows, from NPR’s All Things Considered to the network newscasts and PBS roundtables. Bush is in his element now that he’s out of the country, announcing a START treaty to reduce missiles with Gorbachev, who got support but no cash from the G-7 leaders in London. Secretary Baker got the Saudis and Syrians to agree to talk with Israel, and Bush is in Greece and Turkey

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now, hinting at U.S. help in solving their dispute over Cyprus. Bush really should be President of the World, not of the U.S.; our domestic problems bore him or are too difficult to deal with or require money we don’t have. With his usual demagoguery, he’ll manage to get people to vote for him and against their own best interests next year. The likely Democratic field – I discount Tsongas, the only current candidate – includes Governor Clinton and Senators Rockefeller, Harkin and possibly Gore, none of whom have much support or are well-known, and the race is starting very late. Actually, the Democrats should go back to nominating their candidates in smoke-filled rooms. Despite the heat, I went to see Grandma Ethel this morning, and of course today would be the one time I didn’t get an air-conditioned bus. Grandma said I looked flushed, and actually, I felt kind of sick by the time I got to Woodmere. If anything, going out today made me even gladder I didn’t go to Justin’s yesterday. At the home, they made certain all the residents had their windows shut and air conditioners on because of the ozone alert as well as the heat wave.

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Grandma complained about her bitter taste and I clucked sympathetically and of course she exclaimed, “How expensive!” when I told her what my haircut cost. (The next time she asks, I think I’ll give her a ridiculously low figure like five dollars and see if she still goes, “How expensive!”). I said she should tell Marty not to worry, that Mom isn’t coming to get rid of the apartment, and I called Grandma over to the bathroom window, where the pigeon family has been nesting for weeks. Through the glass we could see the father bird fly home and feed the two babies by the old back-to-back regurgitation method. From Teresa’s house, I know July is usually the month in which pigeons hatch. When I got home, at 1 PM, I wasn’t going anywhere for the rest of the day, at least not until my walk an hour ago. I ate frozen veggies rather than go to the Koreans’ for a salad bar, and I spent the afternoon reading the Times (the arts and leisure, book review and magazine sections come on Saturdays) and watching junk TV. This evening I phoned Florida, mostly to wish Dad a happy 65th birthday tomorrow, when he’ll be at the menswear show all day. He said he doesn’t even want to think about it, which is the way Dad always deals with everything troubling: by ignoring its existence.

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Mom said the apartment is ready, and I think my Gainesville address will be 334 NW 17th Street #342, Gainesville, FL, 32603. I changed my flight to 8 AM on Monday, August 5, two weeks and one day from now. Mom said we can go up on the Wednesday after I arrive in Fort Lauderdale, which gives me a week in Gainesville before law school begins. I told Mom I might have to drop out after one term because of lack of funds but made sure that she understands that whatever happens, I’ll handle it on my own. Perhaps my going to law school is as halfassed an idea as my trying to start grad school at the University of Miami’s Ph.D. in English program eight years ago. But I no longer believe in making mistakes – that is, the notion that one course of action could be a “mistake” doesn’t seem possible. Gainesville will be the first time I’m really on my own, and although I am terrified, I know getting through the bad times will make me stronger and more experienced and resourceful. If I intend to live abroad one day, I’ve got to start somewhere in a place where I have no family, friends or familiarity. Is this “sink or swim”? Perhaps I can’t swim, but I expect that if pressed, I’ll stay afloat somehow. It’s sort of a test for me. At age 40, I’m finally taking risks.

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Tuesday, July 23, 1991 4:30 PM. It’s 98° now, but heavy thunderstorms are on the way, promising to break the heat wave soon. There’s even a tornado warning out. I got to sleep late but at 5 AM found myself wide awake, so I had breakfast, looked at the stuff from law school, worked out, and at 7 AM I realized I need a better copy of the last few pages of my diary book manuscript. I also felt bad about inconveniencing Justin and figured I could him a favor if I, instead of he, went to Manhattan to buy the needed cartridge. However, when I woke him up, he told me not to bother, that it was less trouble for him to do it because he knew exactly where to go and what to get. Since I was already at the Q35 bus stop with a transfer, I decided to keep going, and I took the IRT Lexington Avenue line (the 5 train runs to Flatbush Avenue during rush hour) to 59th Street, where it was already steamy. Needing a bathroom, I went inside a building I’ve passed all my life but had never entered: the Plaza Hotel, which sort of looked like what I expected inside.

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I walked to Broadway along Central Park’s southern edge and took the bus uptown, getting off at 72nd Street, where I spotted a new store that advertised computer time on Macs and PCs. And for $17 for ten minutes’ time, I printed out my last chapter (1991) on the laser printer I was familiar with from Broward Community College; it’s so much faster that Justin’s inkjet printer, but the quality isn’t very different. I also bought some vitamins, a folder for the pages I’d printed, and a mailing envelope so I can send the manuscript to the Brautigan Library. In addition, I got a black pen so I can paginate and proofread it, although I’m somewhat abashed at the thought of discovering how worthless my diary “book” may be. It was nearly noon by the time I got back to the Junction, where I had a McLean Deluxe before hanging out at the college library for half an hour. Home at 1 PM, I was glad I’d left on the air conditioning this morning. Manny Hanny again rejected my application for an unemployment deferment, and when I called, I kept getting the runaround at the student loan office. So I phoned again, saying I was calling from “the office Walter Shipley”; he’s the president of Chemical Bank, which is buying Manufacturers Handover Trust.

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Finally I got someone who explained that the person who looked at my application must have assumed the Job Service of Florida was a private placement service and not the state’s public employment agency. Maybe this time they’ll get it right. Miriam sent a handsome new book of her poems in the mail. I tried to catch up on my newspaper reading; I don’t know if I can kick my addiction to the New York Times but law school may require it. The Gainesville Sun is a Times-owned paper, and perhaps I can get by with that, but I’ll miss my daily fix of the last few decades – of my whole adult life, really. One reason I’m interested in the Master of Arts in Mass Communications program is that it can provide me with a better reason to saturate myself in the media. I still haven’t really looked at the material the University of Florida sent me, but I see I’m going to have long days at law school. I’ll check it out tomorrow, when I’ll also go to see Grandma Ethel. NCNB and C&S/Sovran merged into NationsBank.

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Wednesday, July 24, 1991 9 PM. As I look out the bedroom window, I see the lighthouse in New Jersey much brighter than on recent nights as the light turns. The past few weeks, I’ve noticed that I see the flash of the light every six seconds. Probably it looks sharper tonight because the haze is gone, or maybe the full moon helps. It’s going to be hard to leave Rockaway. I’m going to miss my little life here. Last evening Josh phoned when the violent storms, which lowered the temperature twenty degrees, stranded him at the office. He got an A in his stat course at The New School, and I know he worked hard for it. Josh is bright, but I’m still convinced he’s not over his paranoia and psychosis. It’s not any one thing he’s said, but rather a pattern of slightly odd responses or inappropriate questions and comments. Well, I guess if you’re going to be paranoid, New York City is the best place to live. Josh couldn’t sustain his fantasies of being followed in a car culture or in a small city like Gainesville. I caught up on my sleep last night and did aerobic exercise at 8 AM today. My back has been hurting me when I wake up, and I’ve been trying to lie, not on my

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stomach, but on my side (I really should lie on my back, but that’s always been too difficult). It was warm – 90° – today, yet the low humidity made it quite comfortable. When I visited Grandma Ethel, she had her usual complaints. She’s going to miss my visits terribly, but what can I do? Seeing her twice a week or more this summer was more than anyone but Marty would do. Neither Mom nor my brothers have been to see Grandma at the home in the nine months she’s lived there, and I’ll probably see her again even after this summer before they get around to a visit. She again said she has “no future,” but there’s no way she could care for herself at home. Perhaps someday there’ll be a better system of home care so elderly people like Grandma can get support and care while still keeping their own homes. After I got back from Woodmere at 1 PM, I had lunch and spent much of the rest of the day with my Thirties/Eighties manuscript. I’ve read and corrected typos for more than half the book, and I should be finished in a day or two. I still feel the book reads well, but it’s hard for me to put myself in the place of a reader. With fiction or less personal nonfiction, I’m better able to judge how a stranger would react to my writing.

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In a week I’ll finish the 22nd year of diary-keeping, and on August 1, I’ll begin my 23rd year of doing this. Certainly I realize my diary entries, like this one, have little or no literary merit, but maybe my books of oneentry-per-month make for a decent narrative. In the Times I saw Bill Beer’s obituary. He was a young sociology professor I had at Brooklyn, and later he became a good friend of Gary. Bill Beer was married, had a couple of kids, and was very active in community and professional organizations. Dead at 48, he’d been suffering with cancer for a long time. Whenever I feel a twinge of despair related to money problems, I’ve got to remind myself the most important thing in my life is my health. Most people take good health for granted and feel astonished they could be affronted by serious illness. What anyone with a fatal or serious chronic disease wouldn’t give to trade places with me! Being broke and having to give up going to law school certainly won’t end my life. Nor will all the miseries my neurotic side sees happening in Gainesville. In the next ten days I’ve got some emotional work to do, adjusting to what I’ll be facing in Florida.

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Friday, July 26, 1991 9 PM. Three weeks from tonight I’ll have experienced my first day of orientation at the law school, assuming the fickle finger of fate doesn’t point me in an unexpected direction. It’s hard to believe. Isaac Bashes Singer died in a Miami nursing home at 87. Over the years, I saw him a number of times eating at the diners on Broadway – Four Brothers at 87th, the American Diner at 85th – or at Danny’s in Surfside. A waiter at Four Brothers once remarked to me that he wondered how Singer had the strength to write, since all he seemed to eat were vegetables. He was quite a character; for a Nobel Prize winner, he was about as unpretentious as you can get, though I never quite bought his Old World mysticism. But the man was heroic. He persevered, even after the world he grew to manhood in – Jewish life in Poland – was utterly destroyed. Singer brought that world to readers, and he kept it in his mind. I remember back in high school or college reading his family saga The Family Muscat over a couple of weeks. Probably Singer loved the Upper West Side because it reminded him of Europe; at its best, my old neighborhood, and his, is probably the most European place in all of the U.S.

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When I read parts of the articles about Singer to Grandma Ethel at the home and remarked how he, a wealthy writer, ate the $5.50 special at the 72nd Street Famous Dairy Restaurant every day at lunch – he and Alma went to the diners for dinner – Grandma said, “Well, sure, that’s a lot of money for lunch every day, but I guess he could afford it.” Grandma was sitting in the alcove with Christine when I got to the home this morning. I bought her some oranges and apples. She had a bandage on her nose, the result of a visit yesterday to the dermatologist to remove that skin cancer. I assume it was only basal cell carcinoma, but of course the biopsy isn’t back yet. Back in her room, I asked Grandma, who always is complaining about something, what time in her life was the happiest, and she said it was the early years of her marriage, before children, before the Great Depression took hold and she had to move in with her in-laws. She and Grandpa Herb had an apartment on East 98th Street near Rockaway Parkway, and Grandma didn’t work. When I asked what she did to pass the time, she said she couldn’t remember: cooking and housework, mostly, and she played cards in the afternoon.

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Soon there won’t be too many people of Grandma’s generation left: not only the Russian immigrant Jews of the early part of the century, but people who were newlyweds in 1929 and 1930. Grandma told me about the eccentricities of various residents, including one old lady who was constantly cursing out a West Indian nurse, who took the abuse matter-of-factly and didn’t let the insults stop her from helping the woman. I got back here at 1 PM. Both the vans I took today were nearly empty, and I suspect there’s too much competition for riders. Sometimes I see three or four vans together, each vying for passengers. I spent the cloudy afternoon reading the papers, watching Another World, and making up some packages and boxes to send to myself in Fort Lauderdale. Lately I haven’t been contacting any friends, though I did speak to Ronna the other night. She was busy with work for her synagogue so I told her to phone me back. This weekend I’ll start calling people to say goodbye. My stay here will be exactly thirteen weeks: a season, three months. I’ve collected some New York City subway and bus maps, and I can use them to decorate my apartment in Gainesville, along with a big road

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map of the USA and maps of Los Angeles and Florida. The map placements I eat on here – the ones I got at Roof’s on Beach 116th Street – got me looking at geographical names I’d never seen before. Remember how, as a kid, I loved maps and even thought I’d like to be a mapmaker when I grew up. Is that because it was a way I could go to exotic places without leaving my room? I get sleepy so early, but that’s because I wake up soon after 5 AM every day. My first law school classes start at 9 Am and my last ones end at 4:30 PM or so.

Saturday, July 27, 1991 10 PM. I got home a little while ago. Once again I was the only one to exit the H train at Seaside/Beach 105th Street, but the streets here weren’t deserted, and I didn’t feel in danger. It’s pleasantly cool here, and there’s a full moon over the Atlantic. God, with a week to go in my Rockaway summer, I’m already starting to miss the good times here. Well, not getting nostalgic for the present for the present [sic].

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Last night I slept well and dreamed about being in a college cafeteria that was sort of like the one at Boylan Hall in Brooklyn College, but I also knew it was the University of Florida. I can’t remember the dream’s details, but I think my unconscious is preparing me for the big change in my life. Today was definitely not a beach day, as it was dreary and cloudy. I spent the morning lolling around, listening to the radio (I heard one of my favorite pieces, Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition), exercising lightly, reading the paper (I called and canceled my subscription after I’m gone) and eating and drinking the tap water, which I shouldn’t have done, according to a sign posted yesterday afternoon which I saw only when I went out at noon. I took a couple of jiffy bags of books, including phone books and Black’s Law Dictionary, and at the post office I mailed them to myself in Florida. On my way home, I noticed the annual Irish Festival was starting up. Maybe tomorrow I’ll go over and see what’s doing there. I left Rockaway at 3 PM, as usual just missing a subway. But I got to West 4th Street/Washington Square by 4:30 PM, early enough for me to buy some supplements (chromium picolinate and gingko biloba) at the Vitamin Shoppe, one of the few stores that takes Diners Club, before I went to Alice’s.

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As it turned out, June and her daughter, Kylie, were there. Alice had decided she couldn’t work today and so took Kylie, about four or five, to a carnival near the Intrepid, and June was picking her up. I was thrilled to see June, who looked fine. She just had her second child, Deidre, a couple of months ago; the baby was at home with Carl. June’s mother has been living with them, and at 78, she has lots of health problems. We spoke about early childhood education – June was uncomfortable with the idea of invented spelling in teaching creative writing to kids – and how older patients are treated by young doctors and June and Carl’s decision to buy a VCR even though they have only a black-and-white TV. Kylie was mesmerized by a Bugs Bunny video Alice had rented at Blockbuster, after it was over she and Alice told about the nauseating-sounding rides they’d gone on this afternoon at the carnival. June decided not to join us for dinner at 6:30 PM, so Alice and I ate by ourselves, once again outside at the Riviera Café. She’s almost finished with the book and told me about an insight she’d had while doing stuff for her mother and brother. The favors for them both involved lying – saying that Alice’s mother wasn’t in Australia to the food stamps

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people and that she, Alice, lived at the Wall Street apartment she and Michael own (they actually rent it) so they could qualify for a better mortgage rate. Alice realized she hated doing these things – she’s incredibly ethical, at least when it involves legalities – and she realized that she had been lying for her mother all her life since she was a little girl and told mother’s friends that her mother was ill when she just didn’t want to see them. Alice said her mother will freak out when Alice tells her that she will no longer lie for her. However, Alice’s therapist encouraged her to stop enabling her mother’s behavior. Huh. I wasn’t surprised when Alice told me she wouldn’t have the courage to move to a strange city the way I’m doing, but I don’t feel particularly brave. We hugged goodbye on the corner of Sixth Avenue and Waverly Place before I descended into the inferno of the subway.

Sunday, July 28, 1991 6 PM. Next Sunday night will be my last here in Rockaway. But now I’ll be going to Gainesville with a lot less worry.

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Mom phoned an hour ago and said that yesterday I got a letter from UF telling me I’d won a Ralph R. Bailey Scholarship of $2500 for each year of law school provided I maintain a 2.85 index and carry a full load of classes. It’s a relief to know I’ll have that extra money, which will basically cover my entire tuition. That makes it much more likely I can continue beyond the fall semester, but I’m going to take things one semester at a time. Alice was right last evening when she said the money for law school would come from somewhere. Finally, being a bona fide Broward County resident paid off. Thank you, Ralph R. Bailey: I always did like Bailey Hall at BCC-Central. It’s odd, but I feel myself not quite believing this good news; however, I didn’t believe I got other fellowships or publications until I saw them happen in some concrete way. Either I’m naturally cautious or else I feel I don’t deserve good stuff (although I’m pretty quick to feel slighted when I get rejected for one of these honors). I slept well, having great dreams toward morning, including one in which I became great friends with Hume Cronyn and Jessica Tandy, who were living in Rockaway for the summer.

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Today was a glorious day: warm, dry and sunny. I spent my usual Sunday morning, mixing newspaper reading with watching public affairs shows. After lunch, I walked over to the Rockaway Irish Festival and paid $5 to listen to Irish music and wander about. There were hordes of people and lots of green and orange, plenty of beer, and the usual carnival/street fair junk food. At the flea market there were all these Irish limericks on plaques and other merchandise, from kitschy T-shirts with sayings like “American by birth, Irish by the grace of God” and “IBM – Irish By Marriage.” I looked at all the stuff with family crests but I guess Grayson isn’t an Irish name. Generally I like Irish people. Sean looked really Irish, and at least his mother was Irish, but he had no ethnic awareness. That’s probably common today among the lacecurtain Irish and WASPified types, but Rockaway brings out a lower-class crowd. It’s interesting that their pro-IRA stance supports a radical organization when many Irish-Americans are conservative – but of course there always have been fiery Irish radicals in the U.S. I like Gaelic music and of course Irish literature, and I can understand why Norman Mailer always liked to think of himself as an Irishman. The new immigrants

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are providing fresh blood to New York City’s IrishAmericans. From the festival I went over to visit Aunt Tillie, with whom I sat for over an hour as she told me stories I’ve heard before: about Morris’s early generosity, which was legendary, and how it led to his meeting Tillie and how he could never stop throwing money away on luxuries like expensive barbers (for which she blamed his early baldness: “The barber told Morris to use a steel brush!”) and how he delayed seeing a doctor about his appendicitis until peritonitis set in. Aunt Tillie seems to me even sadder than Grandma, although she’s much stronger and more intelligent. But her whole family is now dead – her three brothers and two of her sisters-in-law – or in adult homes (Grandma and Irving) – everyone except Aunt Minnie, who can’t drive from Great Neck to see Tillie. Really, she has nobody, and she said she worries about her will. First her brother-in-law Ruby Metz was her executor and he died, and now Uncle Irving’s incompetent. It’s sad. I feel a sense of responsibility toward my great-aunt, if only because there’s no one else around. I wish I had a car so I could get Tillie and Minnie together. I’m going to remember Aunt Tillie’s stories; they’re great oral history. My grandfather, her brother, told

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stories the same way, making myths and legends out of ordinary life.

Monday, July 29, 1991 8 PM. I fell asleep soon after I, Claudius ended last night. I’ve been having vivid, complex dreams, and I suspect my brain is working overtime because of the impending big changes in my life. In one dream, I walked into a doctor’s waiting room – not the sleek new kind with high-tech furniture and all those media from Whittle Communications, but an old-fashioned waiting room with plush chairs and couches, resembling an English parlor, the kind my pediatrician Dr. Stein or my psychiatrist Dr. Lipton had. But this room was for meditation, and it had been a gift from some physician who died and wanted a place for people to think about their lives without actually being spurred to do so because of a health problem. This morning was dark and cool. At 6:30 AM, I worked out and a couple of hours later, I was out of the house, making two trips to the post office to send off three boxes of stuff to Fort Lauderdale.

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Then I hopped on a bus to Far Rockaway. The Green Line drivers may go out on strike on Thursday because they’re resisting givebacks to management. I’m glad I won’t be here to deal with the strike, if it comes off, except for its first few days. For the first few months when I lived in Rockaway in 1979, the Green bus drivers were also on strike, and it caused me a lot of inconvenience, even though I had a car then. At the nursing home, I first saw Grandma Ethel walking in the hall. We went to her room, where I took out the oranges and applies I‘d brought on Friday and neglected to leave there. Grandma’s complaints were the usual. “Instead of getting better, I’m getting worse,” she said, meaning the burning sensation and bitter taste in her mouth. I cluck my tongue and say, “Terrible, just terrible,” and wait for her to change the subject and go on to some other topics: Marty’s weight, her daily meal schedule, the pleasantness of some of the nicer workers at the home. I know I’ll never convince her that she’s not sick any more than I could make Josh realize nobody was harassing him. Perception always beat reality. I stayed with Grandma until noon, when she and the others went into lunch. It’s going to be very hard on

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her when I leave, and my twice-weekly visits are a memory. Instead of taking the bus, I decided to walk down Central Avenue to Cedarhurst, about twenty blocks, but it was cool and pleasant and hadn’t yet started raining. As the homes of Woodmere gave way to the stores of Cedarhurst, I mingled among the frum (Orthodox – Ronna uses the term) and had frozen yogurt at TCBY and a big salad at Supples, an upscale deli. For a change it was nice to have my salad in a restaurant. At the bookstore I found the newest edition of the guide to law schools, and this one seemed to imply that the University of Florida was more competitive, if still relaxed. Their videocassettes and computer files in the law library sound up-to-date, and UF is probably a well-heeled law school. Obviously if I’m getting a scholarship, I assume someone sent back a “cancel” form when they got the stuff about orientation last week. I hope I prove worthy of the scholarship. Their offer of it makes me feel more warmly toward UF’s College of Law, as ifs they are really concerned about me. Perhaps I’m going to blossom in Gainesville. I know I’ve got to make sure I don’t come off as some snotty know-it-all because of my age and experience. As a

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laws student, I’m no more experienced than a 22year-old who got his B.A. this year. I want to try to fit in at the law school and university and wider community. At Broward Community College, I always felt alienated and different, and I’m tired of being an outsider. I hope I can be hard-working but also friendly and helpful. We’ll see. I just don’t want to get off on the wrong foot. My tendency is always to criticize, if only to myself, when I’m in a new group – even at artists’ colonies. For a while I’d like to be just one of the guys. Back home, I spoke to Pete, who just got back for Europe – the hated Milan but he liked Lugano and other places – and is on his way to San Francisco to earn triple mileage on Pan Am before the airline totally disappears into Delta, United and/or TWA. I read that Southeast Bank in Miami is close to failure; it must be the $6700 I owed on my Preferred MasterCard that put them over the edge. Tom Person sent out a xerox of his New Pages column, in which he reprinted his review of Narcissism and Me. It’s fairly dopey, but at least I get one good quote blurb from the one review of that chapbook.

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Manhattan D.A. Morgenthau indicted the Bank of Credit and Commerce International but the scandal’s reach is global, and BCCI seems to have been a Ponzi scheme involved with every evil enterprise from money laundering to bribery to covert actions like Iran/Contra and other arms sales and even murder. The CIA, the Medellin drug cartel, Neiman Marcus, Arab terrorists – it’s as if somebody’s paranoid fantasy about a worldwide conspiracy of evil came true.

Tuesday, July 30, 1991 8 PM. An hour ago I broke a tooth eating a potato, but so far I’m not in pain, and maybe I can get away with without seeing a dentist. A week from tomorrow I’ll be in Gainesville. Talking to Mom today, I learned that I really screwed up my address. I seem to have a psychological block, but it also confused Mom. It turns out 342 isn’t the number of my unit but my street address. The complex as whole has a street number of 334 but each unit has its own address because they are like townhouses. In other words, my address is 342 NW 17th Street with no unit number in Gainesville. Mom kindly took care of my phone, and my number will be (904) 372-9842.

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Mom also ordered a bed from Burdines to be delivered. I appreciate her taking care of stuff, though I could have done it myself next week in Florida. Mom also told me she’s been paying a few of my bills as they’ve come in; I’d assumed that. Dad is coming home from New Jersey tonight when his meetings end. He didn’t feel so bad because the other salesmen were also having trouble selling Introspect’s holiday line. His menswear show in Miami was a disaster, and his income from commissions will be cut drastically. Not only is retail business bad, but he’s selling tooexpensive goods of a product which nobody’s ever bought before; their fall line first goes out next month. And aside from the MTV commercials, the advertising hasn’t been rolled out except in Los Angeles and New York. Up at 6:30 AM, I left the house at 9 AM. It was a clear, mild day, and I thought I’d take a little trip. I figured that maybe I could go to the Great Neck library and find Aunt Minnie there and that she’d give me some of the books she has for Aunt Tillie. Anyway, for the first time this summer, I took the Q53 bus into Queens, to the last stop at Woodside, where I hopped on the LIRR’s Port Washington line. I’d taken that line, one of the few that doesn’t run through

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Jamaica, from Douglaston when I spent Christmas 1984 with Teresa’s family. Great Neck was only about fifteen minutes away. I figured the public library would be near the train station, but following people’s instructions – everyone warned me that it was too far to walk – I strolled north along Middle Neck Road until the tony shops became plain and fancy housing gave way to less expensive houses. I enjoyed my walk – I stopped off at TCBY and a park – but I’d been stomping around for a couple of miles without a clue, so I finally admitted defeat and got a Nassau County bus back to the train station, where I had lunch at the new Pro-Portion Café, a franchise specializing in diet foods, using the exchange plan and giving diners the number of calories for each item. Even if I didn’t accomplish my goal, I had a pleasant journey and saw Great Neck and all in all, I had a nice little adventure. Ronna and I said goodbye over the phone. She’s been fine and said she’s glad I like Ralph because she does too: “If only I could get him to communicate more about our relationship.” In a couple of weeks she’ll be in Fort Lauderdale for Melinda’s bridal shower, being given by the maid of

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honor. Ronna congratulated me on my scholarship and wished me luck in Gainesville. Justin called and said he’d been at Brooklyn College, where he got material from the department and spoke to people at the financial aid office. He also interviewed for work-study job doing PR at the BC Performing Arts Center, a position he’s wildly overqualified for. I hope Justin has a good experience in grad school at my alma mater; so far, he reports everyone there is quite nice. Josh and I talked, and I may see him on Thursday.

Thursday, August 1, 1991 3 PM. I’m going to be fairly busy my last few days here. I finally called Teresa, and of course she wants me to come out to Fire Island, but I first asked her to come here tomorrow, when I ‘ve invited Mikey for the day. She had company so I left her off and she’ll call me back. Although it’s a 90° day, in a few hours, I’m going to meet Josh at B. Dalton and we’ll go out to dinner. This will be my last trip into Manhattan, I guess.

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I phoned Sat Darshan, who told me that last night she was out with friends, who took her to an offBroadway revue. She’s been depressed, has been taking L-phenylalanine as an antidote, and has been keeping busy with the kids and avoiding J.B. Sat Darshan fears she’ll crash into despair when Gurujot and Gurudaya go back to India in a few weeks, and she’s Fed-Exed three letters asking Yogi Bhajan for advice. (He didn’t answer earlier letters, and she blamed the secretaries for not giving him his mail.) She said that usually she’s run away to a new place, even a new country, “and that would give me a few years before my problems started to reassert themselves,” but she can’t go anywhere now. Maybe she can write this all out, I suggested. I’ve sent out a dozen postcards with my new address and phone, and I was going to send one to Mikey when he called to say he’s on vacation. Tomorrow’s the best time for him to visit, as I’ll be seeing Grandma Ethel on the weekend. I don’t know when or if I’ll get to see Justin, but I did spend more time with him than usual this year. This morning I did aerobics and went out at 11 AM to the post office and the Korean grocery. The Wall Street Journal has an article about lawyers who are leaving the profession to become novelists, but as one

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attorney-turned-writer said, unless you’re Scott Turow, writing novels is “the ultimate in pro bono work.” Mikey said he’ll be over in the late morning, so I don’t want to get back from the Village too late tonight. Right now I’m doing the laundry and feeling a bit rushed, but I’m glad that Marty decided to keep Grandma’s apartment. * 10 PM. One thing I’ll always remember about this summer is the cool ocean breeze hitting me as I’d return from the city on a hot night and descended the platform of the el. God, it’s such a gorgeous feeling. And I’ll remember sitting at the desk in my grandparents’ bedroom as I am right now and hearing the sound of the surf and seeing the lighthouse blinking in the distance, the light disappearing for six seconds and then reappearing. It’s going to be hard to leave Rockaway, but I’ve savored the time I’ve had here even more because I knew it had to end. I got home in an hour tonight, hopping right on a C train, which was not air-conditioned but which went express from Utica to Euclid, so I didn’t have to get off and change trains.

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The B. Dalton store was closed for renovation, but I met Josh on Sixth Avenue after I spent an hour in the Jefferson Market library. We had dinner at Empire Szechuan on Seventh Avenue and later sat on the steps of St. Vincent’s Hospital, talking. I think Josh is still mentally ill. At the end of the evening he told me he was punched in the face early last month by a white man who’d bumped him in the street. Josh said he said something to the guy before the guy hit him, and Josh followed the guy all over, looking for a cop, but the man finally got away. Josh went to the police station but was unhappy because they didn’t do much. He said he had a visible black eye and wanted to press charges, but the officers just treated him as if he were a nuisance. I’m not certain I believe Josh, and I found myself going over the details of the incident just the way I used to when I got sucked into his stories of continual harassment a couple of years ago. I’m sure this interest in criminology and John Jay’s M.A. program is tied into Josh’s paranoia, as is refusing to take a vacation outside New York City despite his constant complaints about how blacks in his department discriminate against whites.

Richard Grayson

It’s an interesting case in abnormal psychology, but Josh is/was my friend, and it’s sad his life is so obsessed.

Friday, August 2, 1991 9 PM. I’m making the most of the rest of my summer vacation. Last night I had pleasant dreams, including one in which I renewed my childhood friendship with Steve Hellman and his sister Leslie. Steve and I were neighbors but an odd pair because he was mature for his age, a great athlete, had lots of girlfriends, was good-looking and muscular, while I was short and skinny, shy and bookish, babyish and unathletic. The last time I spoke to Steve was in the early 70s, a long time after we’d previously seen one another, and I remember telling him I was thinking of going to law school – of course I didn’t actually apply for almost twenty years after that – and Steve said, “Good. We need lawyers.” I know what he meant – not that we need greedy corporate lawyers. Steve was referring to us, guys who didn’t have much in common – by then he was a Vietnam veteran and recovering drug addict – except

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long hair and a sense that “we” were part of a generation that was going to change the world. Is it much too late for that now? For me? At 6 PM this evening I took myself across the street to see 23-year-old John Singleton’s film, Boyz n the Hood, an autobiographical film about growing up in South Central L.A. With the omnipresent police helicopters, I kept thinking that for some Americans, this country is a police state. Spending so much time this summer with black people in subways, buses and especially the dollar vans in Rockaway, where I’m always the only white person, has made me think more about race, especially with incidents like the Jermaine Ewell beating in Atlantic Beach (I was happy to see that he’s home from the hospital and that the Orthodox Jewish stores in Cedarhurst had taken collections for his medical care) and the firebombings of real estate offices and yesterday, a slashing in Canarsie of a black man, walking with his baby. Last night I caught most of Marlon Riggs’ Tongues Untied, which I’d seen before: a documentary about black gay men that upset all the rightwing loonies who seem to run this country.

Richard Grayson

It feels as if black men and gay men are both endangered species; look how that nut in Milwaukee managed to kill off so many gay men of color. Boyz n the Hood also made me understand John Klizmencko, my BCC-South student, a bright, goodlooking kid who got me interested in Public Enemy. I was shocked when I read he was arrested for shooting a 14-year-old kid, member of a rival gang, but the movie tonight helped me figure out why he did it. I hope black people and white people get the film’s message: we have to stop disrespecting each other and ourselves and killing each other and ourselves. Public Enemy says, “Fight the power.” Is that what I’m going to law school for? Sadly, I know I’m not going to be Thurgood Marshall. When Mikey came over at noon today, we went straight to the beach, which I know he loves since he’s a Rockaway boy and hadn’t been “home” in many years. We walked along the ocean’s edge down past Belle Harbor and all those blocks so familiar to him; a house on one corner, once owned by his mother, had been completely redone. He spotted only a few familiar faces – like Sherri, that girl we went to college with, who’s totally gray now –

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but said some of the crowds looked the same as in the old days. I asked him about law school and he said he really struggled his first year. The metaphor everyone uses is learning a new language. Mikey said he studied law seven days a week and only occasionally had time to watch TV. His big treat was to make himself a special dinner on Saturday night. Mikey he did say he had a couple of sadistic Kingsfield-manqué professors in shoes classes he’d never volunteer. “Their rationale is that judges will treat you like that,” Mikey said, “which is true, only as an attorney I’ve never been afraid to talk back to them.” I noticed Mikey looks pretty good. As for myself, I’ve put on weight this summer. My belly is flabbier than it was, and that’s discouraging, considering how hard I watch myself. But I’ve had too much time to snack, and hopefully, I’ll do better when I’m out of the house more and don’t have this much access to food. And at least I’m not more than ten pounds of my lowest weight of 135 or so. Besides, I’m 40 years old, and the fate of all mammals – flab around the middle – seems inescapable; also, it’s partly that my skin sags because it had nowhere to

Richard Grayson

go. Dressed, I look fine. And I should have covered up more today, anyway; despite sunscreen, I really burned, and that’s not at all healthy But Mikey and I stayed on the beach over three hours. He said the water was refreshing, but I avoided the ocean except for my feet as we walked the fifty blocks. Mikey seems in good shape for a guy getting a divorce. He has a big trial in September so he used this vacation week to veg out. Unemployment fell from 7% to 6.8%, but payroll jobs fell by 50,000. Bush will probably not declare an emergency and allow funding for the extended benefits passed by congress. Maybe if we were Kurds or Bangladeshis, Bush would care. I find the President more and more repulsive.

Saturday, August 3, 1991 7 PM. It’s a cloudy, humid evening, and I’ve been fighting a bad sinus headache for hours. Tonight isn’t my last night here, but tomorrow I’ll have to worry about getting out early Monday morning. This morning I exercised for an hour and then went to see Grandma Ethel. We sat out on the terrace, and I

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felt bad for this huge ugly bug stuck on its back in a pool of water caused by the air conditioner. So with a stick, I uprighted the insect, and Grandma and I watched as it struggle to get dry, crawl away, and attempt to fly – but it couldn’t get its wings going. Grandma complained about her mouth problems. Yesterday she went to the dentist, and they did give her some mouth rinse. I stayed with her a couple of hours, and when the noon call to lunch came, I hugged her goodbye, told her I loved her and would write, and she began to cry. Sad. I figured Marty might come in this afternoon – lately he’s been visiting on Saturdays – and that would make her feel the loss less. Certainly I’ve done my part for my grandmother, more than Mom or the other grandchildren. Grandma could die before I see her again, but I’d be surprised. If she does die, I doubt I’ll come back to New York for the funeral. I visited her, in Rockaway and Woodmere, while she was alive and in need of company, and that’s more important than making an appearance when she’s dead. Not attending either of my grandfathers’ funerals didn’t mean I wasn’t a loving a grandson. I got off the bus at Mott Avenue and walked to Beach Channel Drive to McDonald’s for a McLean Deluxe.

Richard Grayson

As happened so often this summer, I was the only white person around, but somehow I felt I fit in. Far Rockaway, with its black and Hispanic population, resembled the neighborhoods in Singleton’s movie, and I feel that my experiences in such a place – and also my teaching in Liberty City and Overtown, at Long Island University and John Jay and Baruch – have made me more aware of how nonwhite people live their lives. Does that sound patronizing? I can’t write black or Hispanic characters too accurately, but at least I know something about life in Arverne, if only by observing my fellow passengers on buses and the dollar vans. Dad called, and I gave him my flight number. I should be coming into Fort Lauderdale at around 11 AM on Monday. One more day and my summer is over.

Sunday, August 4, 1991 7 PM. As I look out at the Atlantic for the last time in the evening, I feel sad about leaving Rockaway. I’ve been methodical about doing everything I needed to do, and I hope that methodical manner will help me survive in Gainesville and in law school.

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This is going to be a lollapalooza of a week, but once my parents leave and I’m alone in my Gainesville apartment, I’ll start adjusting. Looking back at the last three months, I feel privileged to have been here in Rockaway. I adapted quickly, and though I missed my usual summer in Manhattan, this was an equally satisfying experience. I feel at home here, and I just pray I’ll feel just as at home in Gainesville eventually. I know it will be difficult: I’ve never set foot in Gainesville, while I’ve been spending time in Rockaway my entire life. Still, I liked Los Angeles right from the start and felt comfortable there. As I get older, new places feel less strange although seeing new places still makes a vivid impression. I bought map placements like the ones I’ve been using here, and I’ve acquired a big U.S. map and a New York City subway map and borough bus maps and maps of Los Angeles and Florida; I think I’ll put them up in my new home. I’ve been getting more in touch with the child who loved maps, with the nine-year-old boy who wanted to travel to Puerto Rico. Even in college, I wanted to go to Miami for Christmas 1969 and for the 1972 Democratic convention. My agoraphobia masked

Richard Grayson

what’s probably a more natural love of going to different places. Am I running away, the way Sat Darshan said she did when she moved to Europe after college to avoid her real problems? I don’t think so. Both New York and Fort Lauderdale feel like dead ends for now, as do my jobs teaching community college English and doing computer education training. Law school may not be an answer, but at least it will provide me with an alternative. Today I did my usual stuff and also made sure I used up all the food in the refrigerator (except for tonight’s snacks and tomorrow’s breakfast), made arrangements for a cab at 7 AM, gave Aunt Tillie the mailbox keys and Grandma Ethel’s check register (she had a cold and didn’t want me to stay and chance catching it), and did all my packing and one last load of laundry. I’m ready to go. Last night I read Henry James’ The Turn of the Screw and fell asleep at 11 PM. Today I again had that problem with semen or prostate fluid coming out after I urinated, so I figured I needed to have an ejaculation, but I think I should see a doctor about this, as well as about my problems urinating; it’s hard to start and stop, and I have to go so often.

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The sunburn on my back, chest, stomach, and ankles – parts of my body usually covered up – looks and feels bad. Right now it’s raining; maybe the humidity will break. Luckily my sinus infection seems to have cleared up. Probably the plane ride will cause my vertigo to return, but I haven’t been dizzy lately. Justin called. His phone broke up so he had to use a neighbor’s to say goodbye. I already sent him an early birthday card. Justin said he saw Fred, visiting for the day, and he’ll send me Fred’s new address in Oxford, which he likes a lot. Maybe someday I can visit Fred in England. Tomorrow afternoon I’ll be back in Fort Lauderdale. I haven’t seen Mom, my brothers or China in three months, and I have to remember to be patient with my parents for the next few days. They’ve helped a lot, but Mom is bound to make me tense with her obsessiveness. I can’t really talk to my parents the way I used to, because they don’t understand stuff in my life. Like last night, Dad couldn’t seem to understand why I got a law school scholarship or what it meant. Well, enjoy the evening, kid.