A Writer’s Diary Entries From Late October, 2002
Thursday, October 24, 2002
8:30 PM. Today was a long day, and I’m tired. Last night I slept okay, although I took Klonopin at around 3 AM.
This morning I didn’t go get iced tea; instead, after I exercised – but not too much because my leg still hurt – and had my cereal, I sat reading the paper in the living room.
It was about 9 AM when I got to work. More students registered late for the TEA program; we’re up to about 103 people, but Steve reported that we don’t have even five faculty members who committed to the program yet.
Brian Blackwelder agreed, Mark Padin is interested, and with Jane and Steve, that’s only four professors – so we’ve dropped plans for two professors in each room.
But you know, I can’t get upset if faculty aren’t going to volunteer. Sure, Mike Masinter has his wedding anniversary and Kathy is going out of town, but I would think others might have been interested.
Pat told me to give Thelma the food order for bagels and juice and muffins and coffee and tea for registration so that we can notify Aramark.
I had a bunch of appointments with Mike Richmond’s students today, starting with Doug Douglas, whom I know well, at noon.
I also saw Jermaine Jepson, who went to CCNY and lived on 99th and Riverside; Tyler Pluck, a nice white boy from Macon, Georgia; and Kimberly Siegfred, who was an hour late.
Each of them is in various stages of cluelessness about law school, and all of them are at risk for ending up on academic probation.
I did what I could to clue them in about law school exams and studying habits. Some of them have caught on in the last week or so.
Using some of the same suggestions, I tried to help, and I’ll see some of them again.
They’re all hard workers – but then, every first-semester law student seems to work pretty hard, but working smart is more important.
I talked to some of the teaching assistants, and Steve Bell said he and Paris would do Professor Donoho’s Con Law ARP next term.
Even though I waited 50 minutes for him, Carlos never showed up for our 5 PM appointment.
Today I felt a little claustrophobic because I was in my little office with my door closed so much. Usually I try to keep the office door open and walk around a lot.
This evening I spoke to Aunt Sydelle briefly and heard more about her doctor visits: this time, it was the podiatrist.
At this point I’ve stopped complaining to her about my job.
I still had time to read the Web today and laugh with Richard Corbyns and chat with Cindy and Kathy.
I guess I do feel pretty comfortable with my job, and it would be hard, after all these months, to adjust to something new.
As Teresa said, I’ve never disputed that everyone at NSU Law is really nice to me. I guess I can make this work.
I haven’t heard from Mark Bernstein since my last letter. Perhaps my previous email had upset him a lot because I made him feel like a freak for not being up on popular culture – but the last email was very kind, I think, and understanding.
Mark will always be an enigma to me; I’ll never understand why he got married and why his marriage has lasted. Wasn’t it unfair of him to marry his wife?
(Dawson’s Creek recently introduced a gay pop culture professor character who is closeted and married, the way Mark is.)
They caught the snipers who’ve been terrorizing suburban D.C. and Richmond for the last three weeks, shooting people filling up their gas tanks or mowing the lawn or waiting for a bus.
On the Times online, I read tomorrow’s obituary of the lyricist Adolph Green of Comden & Green. I used to see him a lot on the Upper West Side and thought he was a neat and dapper old man. I often ran into him at the Chemical Bank at 81st and Broadway.
There was a story today about the Provincetown home of the novelist Michael Cunningham, whose Pulitzer Prize-winning The Hours was a retelling of Mrs. Dalloway.
Cunningham, who’s gay, 49, and quite handsome – “handsome” is never my type – is the new head of the fiction writing MFA program at Brooklyn College.
By this point, I know the MFA program has had a lot more successful alumni than me in the last 25 years. That’s probably why Brooklyn College has never shown any interest in me.
Saturday, October 26, 2002
10 PM. Hours ago I turned all the clocks back an hour early, and I’m trying not to go to bed that early tonight. Dr. Koncsol said it sounds as if I get plenty of sleep.
“Do Jewish people…?” I started to ask, and he laughed, thinking my question would be “Do Jewish people need more sleep than other people?”
But it was going to be “Do Jewish people complain about their sleep more?” – something I read in a review of Jackie Mason’s new show.
I guess today was a pretty good day, a day of odds and ends.
I’ve got to stop writing about how I slept. Dr. K said that what I probably do have is that even when I’m asleep, I think I’m awake. I know that is true.
I was up for a while during the night trying to remember the name of the exit on the Superstition Freeway that neither Dad nor I could remember the other night.
I know it began with an E, and I said to myself that I’d have to do a Nexis search of the Arizona Republic because it was driving me crazy.
So at the Davie Library this morning, I was just about to enter search terms when it came to me: Ellsworth Road.
Dr. K explained that I was overloaded, and as I knew I was about to find the answer, the logjam broke and the name came to me.
Also this morning, I went to the Walmart on Flamingo and Griffin to get a bunch of stuff with my Walmart credit card.
Then I drove down to Pines Boulevard to the Barnes & Noble there, and I – guess what? how did you know? – drank iced tea (more of that sour cherry-flavored green tea) and read the New York Times.
I stopped off at the Wendy’s at University and Taft for a baked potato before having the rest of my lunch at home and going to my 1 PM shrink appointment.
Dr. K says I am wrong when I say my anxiety hasn’t improved. “You’ve waxed and waned, as is natural,” he said.
I will always have anxiety but I’ve got to make sure the waves are in less of a range, and that will eventually happen. but not to be anxious for me is it kin to being dead.
I don’t really think I’m suicidal, and Dr. K says I’m not really depressed.
After I told him about Legislators in Love and my other publicity hijinks, Dr. K said I didn’t do things like that anymore because I was older and maybe I had less need to be exhibitionist – although he wasn’t saying that was a bad thing.
At one point when I said that I didn’t think I could comprehend something, Dr. K said, “I think you could comprehend it better than anyone who’s ever sat on that couch.”
I do know that I’m smarter than most people – the meeting at the Stonewall Library brought that home to me – but I guess the last two years I’ve lost a lot of confidence in myself.
Dr. K said what I really need to be doing is writing: “I can understand why you put it aside in starting the new job, but you should be writing, because being a writer is what you are.”
He told me I needed to be in contact with other writers, and I remember that last year meeting Vincent in Arkansas really sparked my creativity. I guess that’s why writers’ colonies help.
Rick Peabody wrote today, asking for my address so he can mail me the new issue of Gargoyle.
I really do need to write fiction again. Well, I have ideas for story titles – The Klonopin Club, Victory Boulevard, Superstition Freeway – but so far I don’t know how to proceed much further than that.
I think I jumped the shark with my experimental stories a while ago, and maybe I’ve also done that with the gay Silicon Valley Diet stories as well. But Dr. K is right; I need to start writing again.
I got my Contemporary Authors countersigned contract today. I have less than two months to write that autobiographical essay.
Dr. K also advised me to sign a 12-month lease and to forget about taking the MPRE and continuing my application to the Florida Bar.
It may sound like I blindly follow Dr. K, but I know I’m making up my own mind.
After therapy, I had a craving for chocolate frozen yogurt.
I stopped eating chocolate last spring when GERD struck, but this afternoon I went to TCBY in The Fountains, and that nonfat Dutch chocolate frozen yogurt tasted so good.
There is something about chocolate.
I shopped at Whole Foods and then Walgreens, put gas in the car, did toe lifts and chest flies, and made out a bunch of checks for $5 each and sent them to some of my department store and oil company credit cards so I can keep the accounts going.
On NPR, I listened to On the Media, All Things Considered, and the start of A Prairie Home Companion, which was a sweet tribute to Senator Wellstone; a lot of people in Minnesota and the rest of the country are grieving.
After I had dinner I went to the office. After reading articles in the Sunday New York Times, I came home and watched a great episode of Six Feet Under.
Yeah, this may be as good as it gets.
Monday, October 28, 2002
9:30 PM. I’ve just returned home after one of the most stressful days I’ve had at this job – or maybe any job – and I don’t expect it to become any easier for the rest of the week. Still, I’ve got to try to handle it.
Recognizing that I haven’t gotten any support from Steve or other faculty members for the TEA program, I emailed the ARP Committee with an update this morning.
My purpose was to make sure that Joe lights a fire under these people, and later he sent out an email saying that if we don’t have a structured, well-organized program, it would be better to cancel it.
I wish that two weeks ago at the ARP Committee meeting, I had brought up all my logistical and pedagogical objections to the program, but Steve insisted on doing it his way, Joe agreed with him, and everyone else fell into line.
“He’s a pain in the ass,” Thelma said of Steve, who also came up with the idea of the orientation program and then disappeared.
Steve also came up with the idea of the Halloween party and then didn’t do a thing to help.
Pat knows this, and I hope Joe also knows this. But if TEA is a fiasco – and the students will obviously recognize this – I’m going to be blamed for a program I didn’t want to do and believed was ill-conceived from the beginning.
I know that in the past when I’ve faced similar work situations where I was given a ton of responsibilities but no direction from anyone, I eventually exploded, and the whole experience turned into a disaster.
An example of that was the Publishing and Literature conference at Brooklyn College in the late 1970s; that explosion led to my rupture with Jonathan Baumbach.
Another example is when I was put on a panel on something I knew nothing about by the Trust for Historic Preservation people while I was working for CGR. That was another embarrassing episode.
But now I am trying to deal with this with more aplomb and calm than I did in the past.
Pat suggested that despite my fears of treading on faculty prerogatives, I should propose a schedule for the TEA program.
After I’d sent it out, Steve had the nerve to call without reading anything I’d written and give me his suggestions – and tell me that, yes, he would be in attendance.
Of course, I’d taken that as a given since the whole thing was his idea in the first place.
Although I hate to impose on Jane, she said she’d meet with me tomorrow afternoon and we’ll try to salvage this.
I’ll try not to complain. If I lose my job over this – and I probably won’t – it will be for the best.
On Saturday, Dr. K talked about my catastrophizing and how distorted that kind of thinking about past disasters and future calamities is.
So I’m going to try to retain my perspective. I pray that this is where my being older helps.
I’ve survived a lot over the years, and I can survive a TEA fiasco or losing my current job or going through personal bankruptcy a second time.
I guess it’s much too early to be proud of myself for taking a longer view.
If I had failed the bar exam, I’d still be alive and kicking now, and I’d still find pleasure in music and movies and books and TV and newspapers and other people and animals and good weather.
I resent my own weekly workshops being devalued by Steve, but they both went well today.
There were eight to ten people at each session, and although a couple of students walked out in the middle of the day session, I’m not going to take it personally.
I think I did a better job in the evening because I was doing the workshop a second time and knew what had worked and what hadn’t beforehand.
Also, the evening students just seem more apprehensive and tentative about their own studying and reviewing habits.
On Sunday night I watched an episode of The Sopranos on the videotape Dad had sent.
Then I watched The Forsyte Saga on PBS, an episode paralleling the idyllic “Indian Summer of a Forsyte,” with Old Jolyon being charmed by Irene at Robin Hill and at the London opera at the end of his life.
This new BBC version seems to have taken more liberties with Galsworthy’s text than the original TV series. At first, I resented it – but now I think it works.
Up at 5 AM, I went to Starbucks and had two venti iced teas as I read the Times before going to work.
I had woken up with anxiety about TEA, but now, at the end of the day, I’m calming down.
Let’s see how I handle “pressure.”
Tuesday, October 29, 2002
8 PM. In the three and a half hours that I’ve been home, I’ve tried to put the job out of my mind, but it’s difficult.
Steve Friedland called me early this morning. It turned out he was angry with me – like the whole thing wasn’t his idea in the first place!
Steve is a psycho. He’s a gifted teacher, but one with a problem.
He was annoyed that he had to give up Lamaze class and that no one took seriously his suggestion of doing the tea program on Monday at 3 PM.
(I didn’t mention that’s when I do my workshop.)
Steve told me I need to take charge of this, so I told Pat and Joe that I would create the schedule and dictate terms, though Joe said it must be a “uniform” experience because it bothered him that the registration was not.
Despite being a law school dean, Joe doesn’t seem to realize that professors are not fungible, and so he treats them like tool-and-die machines producing identical widgets.
Give me a break.
But Steve was right about one thing when he said I should do stuff “below the radar.”
Steve also said he is so disgusted that he won’t propose another program. It turns out he felt annoyed even about orientation!
Well, I’ll do the best I can. Today, I met with Pat several times, and she has been incredibly helpful with the logistics.
We’ve got four staff members coming that day to help out. I also met with Jane, who will be helping as well, though it would probably be better for her if she didn’t because she doesn’t seem to have a life apart from work.
Jane seemed astonished that I was taking vacations for both Thanksgiving and Christmas. Hey, this job is not my life.
At noon I went to the Career Cafe on Stress Management that Lisette and I co-sponsored. The woman from Florida Assistance for Lawyers spoke first, and then Erin from Health and Wellness did a progressive relaxation exercise with all of us.
Although I didn’t learn anything I hadn’t already known, maybe it helped the students – though I suspect people like my teaching assistants Scott and Mark F came for the pizza.
This morning I woke up too early, but I was at the Starbucks on Nob Hill Road before the heavy traffic from the elementary school across the street.
Both Teresa and Sat Darshan responded to my last emails.
Teresa and Paul are going to St. Maarten next week with her sister and brother-in-law although they would rather be enjoying their new house on Chester Street.
Teresa said Thanksgiving on Mattituck will be informal. Pam is coming for Friday, so I guess that means I probably won’t get into the city on this trip.
Well, that’s all right. I’ll get to Manhattan and Brooklyn sometime next year. After all, last year I got to be in New York in April, July, and November.
Sat Darshan wrote that I’m probably “not the right material” for the job I have. She said her latest hassle is that her tenant is moving out.
The woman has been really close with Nirankar, and she wants Sat Darshan to show the apartment only if Nirankar is also there – something Sat Darshan refused: “I don’t need her to escort me onto my own property.”
Anyway, on Monday night the tenant “called to apologize and said the reason why she had wanted Nirankar there is because she’s freaked out by Ravinder (who is barely ever in Phoenix anyway) and how people say he has hit on all the women in the community sexually, blah blah blah.”
Sat Darshan was appalled. The woman did admit that nothing had happened with her when she was with Ravinder, and she said she hoped that he and Sat Darshan would “work it out.”
I think her tenant was being mean to repeat gossip that was probably spread by Nirankar in the first place, as Ravinder said.
Nirankar may have wanted to break up Sat Darshan’s marriage for a long time.
“As to anything she said about Ravinder being true,” Sat Darshan wrote, “I have to say that after being married to Anthony (who by the way is now going by Anthony again), I know how a wandering husband operates, and I just don’t get those vibes from Ravinder.”
Sat Darshan said she is going to do a “bad” meditation about Nirankar.
It’s evening now so I’m pretty relaxed. I watched the two HBO comedies from the videotape and I’m going to read a little now.
Wednesday, October 30, 2002
9 PM. I just put away the laundry. Once again, the dryers were not working, as I discovered an hour ago when, after 55 minutes, my clothes were still wet and cold.
Luckily the dryers in another building functioned. Although I got hit in the face with the spray from the sprinklers, I did get to see four neat frogs on the volleyball court.
Those Muscovy ducklings are getting about as big as their mother, but they’re still a little yellow and they travel as a family.
This morning I felt really burned out about work. Sabha said I looked “melancholy.”
I briefly thought of suicide, but if the day wore on, I felt as if I were getting things under control.
Thelma introduced me to her husband, JC, a cop who looks older than I expected.
I met with Mark Padin, and I’m sure he’ll do fine with the TEA program. I’ll try to meet with Brian Blackwelder over the next two days, and hopefully everything will work out.
Mark told me that he privately wrote to Joe to tell him that it’s better to have four dedicated professors than to have people who could do harm to the students.
Mark misses the relatively carefree life of academic support, “where people come to your sessions because they want to be there,” and of course he’s got all those papers to grade for LSV.
I get that: if I had to teach that class, I’d be an unholy mess. I’m anxious enough as it is.
At 12:30 PM, we had the winner of the “Who Will Kiss the Pig?” contest.
Various professors and staff members had volunteered for charity for Joe DiMaggio Children’s Hospital, and people put money in piggy banks with their names on them.
Mark Rohr won – or lost – to Johnny Burris after Johnny wrote out a check, but the pig Mark had to kiss was not some disgusting, filthy sow but the really cute Vietnamese potbellied variety.
We had a farewell party in the faculty lounge for Roy and his wife and Diane, all of whom are leaving the law library.
Lisa Smith-Butler is one of four finalists for the position of director of the law library at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville. Lisa told me all the other finalists are currently library directors, so I guess Rosalie didn’t make the cut.
I told Lisa how nice Fayetteville and the Ozarks are.
Speaking of Arkansas, Crescent Dragonwagon’s Passionate Vegetarian is out, and there was a beautiful article today in Newsday about the book. The article also covered Crescent’s life with Ned in Eureka Springs.
Rick Peabody wrote that he’s put Gargoyle issues online at his Atticus Books website, and I found a whole version of my interview from 1981. I put up a link to it from my own website.
Rick said he’d love for me to contribute something to the next issue. I actually wrote for half an hour today, though I’m sure nothing will come of it. But who knows?
I don’t quite know what I want to write about, so I started with me and Sat Darshan, and I’ll take it from there – if I do take it from there.
Dr. K said, “That’s what you are: a writer.”
I wrote a long letter to Vincent this afternoon. It’s been over two months since I heard from him, and I miss him; yesterday at lunch time, I played the mixtape he made for me.
So I guess I do have more going on in my life than just work.
Mark said that Jane is a workaholic, “but have you noticed she gets sick a lot? Everyone needs a break.”
This evening I watched the episode of Boston Public that I taped while I was at school doing my workshop on Monday evening.
This morning I went to the Coffee Roastery, but their iced tea (after brewing it, they just stick it in ice) really kind of sucks, so I probably should go more to the cafe at the NSU Library.