A Writer’s Diary Entries From Mid-January, 2002
Tuesday, January 15, 2002
7 PM. Last evening I watched Boston Public and half of Ally McBeal before getting into bed. As I had the night before, I took a little Klonopin, and I managed to sleep well, getting up at 5:30 AM.
Yet I still lay in bed for an hour, then ate breakfast and went back to bed before I exercised and got myself ready to leave the house.
Today was a fairly boring day, as I didn’t have many appointments.
Tori Pelham called, and I got the feeling she would have talked to me for more than half an hour if I hadn’t gotten off at noon to go to the Lambda Legal Society meeting.
As Pat said, Tori has trouble with boundaries. There’s also a strange combination of arrogance and insecurity that propels her.
At the Lambda Legal meeting, only three students showed up: Tom; Rita, the group’s president; and Chad, whom it never occurred to me was gay –as did Angela Gilmore. Usually, Chad told me, they have more faculty members there than students, a bunch of whom do not want to identify as gay on campus.
They served pizza and discussed upcoming events like Diversity Day and the Barrister’s Ball, a formal affair I always stayed away from as a law student.
After the meeting, I went home for fifteen minutes to eat my veggies and an orange. Then I went right back to school for Billie Jo’s Tuesdays at Ten get-together in the Faculty Lounge.
Not many people showed up: Billie Jo, Joe Grohman, Fran Tetunic, Kathy Cerminara, and later Joe Harbaugh and Pat Jason. I mostly listened, trying to understand the law school’s internal politics and the unfamiliar names of programs and people.
Tomorrow is my first faculty meeting, and I’m feeling a little apprehensive about it. Hopefully, Pat will guide me through it.
Meanwhile, Patrick sent out a mass email link saying that he went to the hospital on Sunday night with chest pains, and he stayed in the ER all night and much of Monday until they got him a room.
But there was no heart damage, so he didn’t have a heart attack. I’ll have to call Patrick, who says he’s feeling “more mortal.” At least Chris came from the Gulf Coast to see his father.
I wrote to Josh, Sat Darshan, Teresa and Tom during the course of the day, and I also read parts of the paper and today’s Supreme Court decisions.
In the hallway, I ran into another of my old undergraduate students, Genevieve, who told me she changed her last name after her parents were divorced. I guess about ten of my former students are now at NSU Law as 1Ls.
I had a meeting with Christy, who got a 3.6 index after her first semester – three B+’s and an A – and who wants to be Michael Richmond’s TA for Torts next fall, along with Tanya, who’s ranked number one in the second-year class.
Christy was an anthropology major at UF, and we had a good talk about law school, learning, and ARP.
Debra Moss Curtis sent me this kid Sandy, another angry one, who says he has a problem with legal citation – but of course it must be more than that. I can see I’m getting all the problem cases the professors don’t want to deal with.
I wrote Sat Darshan that I sometimes wonder what would have happened had I not been hired at NSU Law.
I’d still be in Apache Junction, with no room of my own, probably about to start adjuncting for Mesa Community College at Red Mountain and at the Central Arizona College campus in Apache Junction. I’d have more free time but a lot less money, and I’d have to declare bankruptcy a lot sooner – although I’d probably have a lot of the money I needed to spend on the move back to Florida.
In some respects, my life would have been simpler in Arizona. But I wouldn’t know where my life was going, and I would have felt a little lost. Still, it was comforting to have my family nearby. I do miss my parents and brothers.
When I got home at 5 PM – I was so bored that I couldn’t stay at the office another minute – I changed into a t-shirt, shorts, athletic socks and sneakers, and lay down on my bed.
But then I realized I was better off getting a little air and exercise rather than just resting.
So I took a walk with the personal radio turned to All Things Considered. I walked along SW 30th Street to Pine Island Drive and back without my glasses; I guess that was a mile.
Mark Cull’s Asylum Arts story collection, One Way Drinking Trip, arrived in today’s mail. I’ll read it – or skim it – and send Mark a blurb.
I guess if I straighten out my finances, eventually I will have the money to pay Red Hen Press or another small press to do my next book. Of course, it will be a long while before I can work on it.
I’ll probably not be much of a writer this year. The reading at the Stonewall Library is going to be my one literary event, I guess. But I’ve gone away from writing before, and I’ve always gotten back to it.
Wednesday, January 16, 2002
7 PM. Sometime last spring, when I was in therapy and doing that daily record of my Worry and Anxiety levels, I told Susan that I needed to add a new variable, Stress, because stress and anxiety were not the same thing.
What I’m feeling now is stress, and although there are components of anxiety and worry to it, I don’t think it’s pathological. It’s questions like: Will I do okay at Saturday’s orientation and training session for teaching assistants? Will I be able to do my job effectively? Will I be able to cope with and pass the bar exam this summer?
Last evening I called Patrick, who told me about feeling ill on Sunday and how he was treated at the hospital. Once they ruled out a heart attack, they couldn’t keep him there, and the doctors will try to find out what happened on an outpatient basis.
He said he was planning on going to BCC today to teach because he didn’t want his classes to fall behind so early in the semester.
I told him that if he didn’t feel well when he got up this morning, he should stay home, and of course he promised me he would.
Since he turned 50, Patrick said, his health has been bad. Before that, he’d hardly ever been sick.
After getting off the phone with him, I called Alice, who had the last of her many pins taken out of her wrist that day.
Now, two months after her fall in London, all she’s got is “a bloody bandage, pain, and little holes in my wrist.”
She began six weeks of physical therapy soon. Peter has been very helpful, as have other friends and her brother, and she’s grateful when she sees other people at the clinic who have worse injuries.
But I know this is a hard time for Alice. She told me that she’s been sleeping badly, waking up very early or not being able to fall asleep, so like me, she has broken sleep. But she didn’t want to take Ambien.
I woke up at 3:30 AM and couldn’t get back to sleep. Like Alice, I didn’t get out of bed (though, unlike her, I don’t watch TV) until after 6 AM.
This morning I felt very tired, so I had iced tea and a 20-ounce Diet Coke when I got to work. I began to get panicky about Saturday’s training session.
Jane Cross, as usual, made me feel a little better when she came to drop off binders with material from the last few years, when Jane Fishman was running ARP before she became a judge. I can see I’m not as systematic an ARP Director as she was. I wish I’d had all these binders of her material back in December.
Lori came in to get the Con Law material for Friedland’s class, and tomorrow Spencer is coming in for Rogow’s Civ Pro stuff.
Everything is disorganized in the binders from last term. Of course that’s not my fault. They never should have hired a recent grad who hadn’t passed the bar exam to take over for Jane Fishman, even temporarily. But I guess they didn’t have much of a choice.
Anyway, Pat had asked me to rescue her at 11:45 AM from Tony Appel, who had cornered me earlier this morning, and Pat and I went to the luncheon upstairs, where we sat at a table with various professors.
One of the Visiting Goodwin Scholars – the theme this year is Media Intrusiveness into Private Lives: Law and Policy – Rodney Smolla (I think we used his casebook in Con Law at UF), spoke on the four privacy torts and how weak and ineffective they are, especially false light, intrusion, and publication of private facts.
His suggestions for strengthening their claims included using concepts from property law, as in the strongest privacy tort, the right of publicity. Smolla said that misappropriation of image, for example, is akin to intellectual property.
A few hours later, at 3 PM, at the regular faculty meeting, I sat between Pat and Tracy. Ordinarily, I won’t have to attend these meetings, but most of the time today was spent on Pat’s resolution to have all the students currently on academic probation see me.
I talked a bit and tried to sound professional, and I think I carried it off, although I also felt like an impostor – which seems natural.
It was odd to hear faculty members talk about “Richard” as if they had some sense of me. Well, I guess a few of them do.
They debated paternalism, the correlation between getting low grades in first-year classes and failing the bar exam, whether the letter sent to the students should be mandatory, who should write it, etc.
Listening to the discussion gave me some sense of different faculty members’ feelings towards academic support and which ones of them still have the traditional “sink or swim” mentality.
In the end, it was decided that Joe Harbaugh should send a letter to all second-semester students with a 2.0 GPA or lower telling them that they must come talk with me and that all those with a GPA below 2.2 will be encouraged to see me.
Steve Friedland gave me a ten-point checklist to go over with each student, and I’m also going to report on their problems, and I guess check their LSAT scores and whether they were in AAMPLE.
This will mean that I’m going to have to schedule maybe 40 to 70 appointments. Part of me was hoping that the resolution wouldn’t pass, especially because so far I have no program in place to ameliorate the students’ problems.
It didn’t help that today at Appalachian School of Law in Virginia, a student with bad grades who was going to be dismissed shot six people, killing the dean, the legal writing director, and another student.
Pat and I laughed about it after we left the meeting, while the faculty were still discussing the Dean Review Committee headed by Bill Adams.
I didn’t stay for the 6 PM reception for Rodney Smolla; instead, in my office, I replied to some emails and calls before coming home.
I have so little free time.
Thursday, January 17, 2002
6 PM. When I left school an hour ago, I stopped to get a baked potato and Diet Coke at Wendy’s, where I finished the main news section of the Times.
At home, I changed into shorts, a t-shirt, athletic socks and running shoes, and I got my Walkman to listen to NPR. But instead of walking, I went out to the pool, where I skimmed more of the newspaper until the light left.
Being outside in balmy weather at this time of day amid palm trees, a lake, and the greenery of a golf course made me glad that I’m again living in South Florida.
It was also a good way to take a break from the pressures of a long day at work. I need downtime, a space where I can relax and forget about NSU Law.
Although I often feel that my job has become my life, I’ll never let it take over completely. Just writing in this diary gives me a place to express myself in a way I don’t feel comfortable doing at the law school.
Last night I unwound by watching a new episode of Dawson’s Creek. In the middle of the show, I took an Ambien, and an hour later I was sound asleep.
However, after six hours of deep rest, I was up at 3:30 AM for the second night in a row, and even taking a Triavil couldn’t put me back to sleep.
Although I really felt tired, I forced myself to get up at 5:30 AM to put up a load of laundry. At 6:10 AM, I put the clothes in the dryer, and after I got them out an hour later, I put them away.
Then I went to Publix to buy bananas, cheese, and a few other items. I skipped my morning dose of Triavil and didn’t take it until I came home at 1:30 PM for lunch.
This afternoon I sat in as Mark Padin interviewed the two guys who want to do his ARP Property workshop, and I listened carefully to the questions he asked them and the comments he made.
Everything I got from Mark made me feel that I’m on the right track in this job. We talked for a while afterwards. Mark said he’s having trouble sleeping, too.
Last term he just had two sections of Lawyering Skills and Values, but now he’s got Property, and it unnerves him to manage a large lecture class and make it valuable and interesting.
Mark said it’s sometimes hard for him to keep up with the material, even though he’s finding Property surprisingly intellectually stimulating, especially when compared to what he called “the LSV straitjacket.”
There’s a lot of pressure on law school professors, especially those teaching first-year classes. I would find it daunting, too.
Mark gave me a lot of suggestions and also told me not to get overwhelmed. He said I need to let people know about the program and have to spread the word around.
“To start off,” Mark advised, “you just need to do one or two things really well.”
Right now, of course, I need to concentrate on getting the teaching assistants’ ARP groups up and running.
My big personal project, I think, will be a workshop or lecture on exam-taking sometime in late March or early April.
I need to establish credibility, so Mark said I should put up all my diplomas in the office for the students to see. I’ve been surprised that a lot of them ask me if I went to law school.
Mark also suggested I should make sure I keep some candy and a tissue box on my desk. I needed the tissues at 3 PM, when Sydney Leonard came to see me and started crying.
She told me that changed her life to go to law school after she couldn’t make a living doing what she loved – giving piano lessons – and she discovered that she absolutely hates law school.
Sydney was skipping Property to see me because she hadn’t finished her casebook reading and was afraid that Ron Brown would humiliate her the way he does with other students.
I met Ron for the first time this morning at the 8:30 AM breakfast for Rodney Smolla, who gave his Goodwin Lecture at noon. I enjoyed listening to the interesting stories he told about his cases involving privacy law.
Afterwards, when he took questions, I mentioned his suit against Paladin Press’s Hit Man: A Technical Manual for Independent Contractors and asked him a question I’ve always wondered about: In a defamation case, what if the writer phrased everything in the negative? (“Celebrity X is not a pedophile. He never molested two 10-year-old girls In Yuma, Arizona,” etc.)
He said that some state courts accept the negative, and looking to the exact wording, find no liability for defamation, while other states “pierce the veil” of the negatives and find liability for the overall impression.
I’m afraid I was showing off just slightly, wanting to impress the few professors at the table. Except for Michael Richmond, of course, not one of them knew that Smolla represented Hit Man.
Back in my office, I fretted that I still haven’t found someone to be an ARP teaching assistant for Blackwelder’s Property class.
Kevin Pass wrote me that he’s moved to Santa Monica, two blocks from the beach. That’s got to be a much nicer place than that apartment in North Hollywood.
I got a Christmas card from Susan and Evan in Brooklyn that had been forwarded twice from my Dobson Road address in Mesa.
Susan wrote that she’s been working for a local weekly newspaper chain (Courier-Life?) and covering interesting stories, many of which in the fall were about 9/11, of course.
She wrote that Evan has had bad back problems, that Tracy, their daughter, is “12 going on 18,” and that their son Jeremy is 10 and in fifth grade; they’re trying to get him in as good a junior high as his sister is in, as New York City has gone away from neighborhood schools to “school choice.”
Susan said she’s still a liberal who dislikes Giuliani despite 9/11. I’m going to send her a brief note.
Saturday, January 19, 2002
6 PM. Except for the number of people attending, today’s orientation for teaching assistants went as well as could be expected.
Only three of the TAs who had gone through the fall training session returned, but Dave, Alison and Lori were very helpful in discussing what worked for them and their positive experiences as ARP teaching assistants.
Of the new people, I knew Casey wasn’t coming, but he’s teamed with Tanya, an old pro who is a former college English teacher and first in her class; Megan emailed this morning that she fell down a flight of stairs yesterday and her car wouldn’t start today.
This was my first time in front of a classroom since last May at ASU, and although I wasn’t as organized as I would have liked to be, I did the best I could, and from what I could tell, I kept things moving over the three hours.
I bought way too many muffins at Dunkin’ Donuts, and I ended up throwing away about eight of them since I won’t eat them.
Last night, with the help of Ambien and a little Klonopin, I managed to sleep seven hours, though I was up during the night for over an hour. Still, I got past 3:30 AM, and I hope to sleep better tonight.
You know, I’m fed up with feeling anxious. I felt this way last week after I started to feel overwhelmed following my meeting with Steve Friedland. To hell with it.
Reading Golden Men: The Power of Gay Midlife and thinking about my experiences as a 50-year-old man, I know I deserve to be more confident and self-assured than I am.
There have been many times in my life when I proceeded boldly, unafraid of taking unpopular or quirky stands or revealing myself in a very intimate way in my writing.
Yes, I have a long way to go in certain areas of my life, but I needn’t wait till I’m really old to speak my mind and stop being afraid of what other people think.
In a way, the World Trade Center tragedy empowered me, as have events like the shootings at the South Campus of Broward Community College years ago. Even that Virginia law school did so this week.
These tragedies have let me know that life can be unexpectedly short, and it’s not worth it to worry and obsess over every facet of my existence.
My job as ARP director will either work out or I’ll take another job. I’ll either pass the bar exam or I won’t. The Florida Bar will either accept me for membership or they won’t. If my debts become unmanageable, I’ll declare bankruptcy, as I did once before.
I don’t want to move again, but I know I could do it. While I’m pretty sure I would prefer to stay in South Florida, I expect to be living in other places in my life.
After the workshop, I got a baked potato at Wendy’s and then went out to the Nob Hill Road Starbucks, where I had iced tea and finished reading today’s paper. I also got a couple of movies at the library.
Mark Bernstein hasn’t called, but perhaps I’ll hear from him tomorrow. Meanwhile, even though I worked today, it was a short day (and Pat said I could take three hours off during the week), and I have Monday off for Presidents’ Day, so now it feels like Friday night rather than Saturday night.
At 4 PM, I went out by the pool, intending to sit in the shade and read Golden Men. Instead, since it was warm and sunny, I took off my shirt and socks and shoes and lay in the sun in my shorts – just as I did when I first came to Davie in the winter of 1979-1980 to visit my parents at their new townhouse just across University Drive from here.
I remember how I used to lie by their pool for hours, doing nothing but relaxing.
At this point in my life, I know that sun exposure is bad, but today I put sunblock on my face, and just exposing my torso to the air and light made me feel more sexual than I have in a long time.
I do long for companionship. When I sat by the pool, I wished I weren’t alone.
I felt the same way in Starbucks when I saw two middle-aged women playing Scrabble. I thought, “That looks like fun. I wish they’d ask me to play with them.” Maybe someday I’ll get the courage to ask if I can join them.
After about 35 minutes, I got out of the sun. That little time isn’t going to give me cancer, and a little color makes me feel less like a drone. Then I read my book, finishing the section on Mind and beginning the part on Soul.
Eventually I’ll get through to the other side of my midlife adjustment. As the author says, middle age is a lot like adolescence because both are periods when our bodies change rapidly and we don’t know how to cope with that, as well as how to deal with the changes in the way others perceive us.
Remember those lines from Rilke: “For there is no place / that does not see you. You must change your life.”
Well, I have changed my life, starting a little over a month ago. Of course, I also changed my life when I moved to Arizona in the summer of 2000, and that ended in disaster.
But you know what? If I hadn’t gotten the job at NSU Law and instead had to stay in Arizona, eventually I would have felt better and turned my life around.