A Writer’s Diary Entries From Late May, 2002
Tuesday, May 21, 2001
9 PM. I’m totally exhausted, though that’s usually indicative that I won’t sleep well. How is it that I’m exhausted and it’s only Tuesday? I couldn’t bring myself to finish even the Property flashcards for tomorrow.
This morning at 9 AM, I scored only a 26 out of 50 on the Contracts sample exam. Jeff said that the average is 23, so I’m not doing that well.
Contracts was my worst subject in law school; I never quite understood it. I don’t think that Property tomorrow will be much better.
If I’m too tired or sick to go in at 8 AM to do the questions, I’ll do them at home and then go to the lecture that starts at 11 AM.
This morning, maybe a third of the people showed up to take the sample exam. When Jeff, the lecturer, went over the answers, I realized how dumb some of my responses were.
Even though the bar exam is two months away, I feel under tremendous pressure. If I’m already nervous, how will I be feeling in late July? I haven’t even begun to study for the Florida essays and multiple–choice questions.
Of course, I’m getting the bar exam experience, complete with horror stories, like Jeff warning us not to sit near the bathroom because of the smell of vomit coming from it or a guy running through the Javits Center after he lost it during the New York bar exam, supposedly going crazy and yelling, “I’m a covenant running with the land!” until the NYPD came to take him away.
God, I’m 51 years old. Why do I have to go through this? Will it make me a better ARP director?
I guess it will, but right now I think about my life a year ago, when I felt that I was finally recovering from my nervous breakdown. I was leaving my studio apartment in Mesa and planning to spend time in Los Angeles and at Ragdale and at Teresa’s in New York.
I felt I deserved to relax after suffering so much anxiety. It’s true that I’m not as bad as I was during the fall of 2000 and the winter of 2001. Of course I’ve somatized my anxiety a lot more this time.
The sciatica let up during the night but throbbed during the day. At 5:30 PM I went to the chiropractor and got another adjustment; Dr. Davis said it’s good I’m getting an MRI.
This morning I was thinking that if it showed that I had a tumor, I’d almost be relieved. If I had cancer, I wouldn’t have to worry about the bar exam or my job or bankruptcy.
When I went to work at NSU Law today, I faced students who didn’t do well on their spring final grades. I had messages to call Manny, who at least got two job offers today, and Lisa, who was dismissed when she wasn’t on the roster of her summer course last evening. She cried, but of course there’s nothing I can do.
John Todd came to see me, and he just squeaked through with a 1.5 GPA. He showed me the results of tests – Stanford Binet, WAIS, etc. – when he was at the University of Alabama ten years ago. I told John he needs to be tested for a learning disability so he can receive extra time on his fall exams. He told me he had only a 97 IQ, which makes me wonder if online AAMPLE is a good predictor of law school success.
Shannon got only a C+ in LSV, and he freaked out because Webstar showed his GPA as 1.74. But I found out from Kathy Cerminara that it had been updated last midnight, when the grades from his last class came in. So we figured out that Shannon actually has a 1.82 GPA – which is still too close for comfort.
As tough as it is for me to see students flunk out or do badly in law school, I do like the counseling part of my job.
After eating a burrito, an apple and a sweet potato for dinner, I tried to study, but I went out for a haircut instead and then took a shower and watched That ’70s Show.
Thursday, May 23, 2002
9 PM. “Fear of the unknown is the worst enemy of human beings.”
I wrote that in all capital letters, taking down the words of Kenny, our obnoxious but brilliant PMBR lecturer.
He’s right, of course, no matter how obnoxious he was. Fear of the unknown has been my own worst enemy. But once I’ve experienced something, I’ve learned from it.
Tomorrow night I will know what it’s like to have an MRI. I need to find out what the course of my sciatica will be. That dull throbbing ache is still with me after ten weeks. If I’ve got a herniated disc, spinal stenosis, arthritis, or a tumor, I want to know.
Hey, if it’s a tumor, I’ll worry a lot less about the fucking bar exam. My palms are sweating now, so I guess I’m anxious. Last night I didn’t sleep a lot, but I had good dreams – one took place in Rockaway – and I felt better this morning.
I went into the office at 8 AM to turn on the computer and check my email. I started doing the 50 Criminal Law questions when I got to my seat at the Best Western. The instructor, Kenny, came in late.
I was dismayed – okay, scared – that I got only 22 right, worse than I did in Property or Contracts after I read all of the questions in the first workbook and did them all at home. So on my way out, I asked him what the average number of correct answers was because Jeff had told us that every day.
Kenny got argumentative and tried to lecture me on the difference between law school and the bar exam. He said, “I’m not going to debate you.” I said I didn’t want to debate, of course, and he said, “Good.”
He started talking about academic freedom, and I guess I cut him off and he grew exasperated. “Twenty, sir,” he said superciliously.
“That’s all I asked you about,” I said.
The exchange stayed with me as I sat in Barnes & Noble’s cafe with my iced tea and my purchased copy of the New York Times. He didn’t have to be so rude to me. I was just scared and wanted reassurance.
But then I thought, It’s his problem. I’m 51 (almost) and know what people are like. This guy is just obnoxious. That’s what Navleen told me before our noon session. But he is a good teacher. He put down law professors who teach theory and tried to make us feel bad in a way.
It’s like Erica said during the break: he’d ridiculed someone for thinking they had gone to FSU and made law review and would be working for Holland & Knight, “and I felt he had read my resume and was attacking me personally. But then I see his strategy is like a drill sergeant’s: he needs to tear you down before he can build you up.”
Plus, he’s from Brooklyn and says “he doesn’t” just like my family members do. But in nearly four hours – he kept us till 3:50 PM – he taught us a lot of Crim Law, at least enough of what we need to know to pass the MBE.
And he’s right that in Florida we should be concentrating on doing multiple choice because the essays are only a quarter of our grade and “you can bullshit.” If we do well enough on the MBE, we can fail all the essays and still pass overall.
He made fun of people who feel the need to get a high score. I know we just need the equivalent of a D, not an A, to get a scaled 133 on the MBE.
Kenny heads PMBR’s New York office and has been doing this for 18 years, and he consults with Hofstra and Touro. Maybe Nova should hire him to consult for us.
I guess I can’t come in at fall orientation and tell the incoming first–year students that law school is all bullshit compared to taking and passing the bar exam, which is what 99% of them really want to hear.
Of course I can’t do it: I’m in the 1% of law students who never wanted to be an attorney; I just wanted—cliché coming up, but I’m exhausted—to quench my thirst for knowledge. Well, as I started off saying, everything is a learning experience, and I’ve learned a lot in the four days of PMBR sessions.
That’s what Dr. Koncsol was talking about when he said that taking the bar exam is not a no-win situation, as I had said, but a no-lose situation because even if I fail, I will have learned a lot.
Look how much I’ve already learned since I started this week and how much I’ve learned since I began working at Nova Law.
I spent maybe 40 minutes at school, talking to Eleanor, Mike Richmond, Angela Gilmore and others, and xeroxing the mortgage portion of the Property hornbook.
Both Jeff and Kenny recommended it, so I made copies for myself and for Tracy’s husband, who’s just graduated.
At 5 PM, I got a massage from Katie, who used hot towels and massaged me from neck to feet. Every massage therapist has a different style.
After dinner – a Boca Burger and a yam – I read the rest of today’s Times.
Then I went out to the West Regional Library, where I looked up MRIs and wandered around and took home Zang Yimou’s The Story of Qiu Ju because I have the big poster of it.
I love Gong Li, who’s the most beautiful actress in the world. I watched most of it, but I’ll save the rest.
Everything will turn out okay.
Friday, May 24, 2002
9 PM. I thought I would feel better tonight after getting through the MRI, but my sciatica is only getting worse. I’ve been taking more Klonopin so I can sleep. The pain in my ankle has traveled to my calf, and I’m getting pins and needles again. This has been a long and stressful day.
After I returned from getting the MRI, Jane Cross asked me if sciatica can be caused by stress. If that’s what it is, I guess I’ll find out soon.
I left the PMBR lecture at 3:10 PM, missing going over the last ten Torts questions.
After doing a lot of paperwork at the MRI clinic, I was led to a bathroom and told to take off my shoes, shirt, and pants and put on one of these hospital gowns that barely cover a person.
Ruby, the technician, explained to me that I’d hear loud sounds from the MRI, like a freight train or jackhammer, and she gave me earplugs. I was told not to move.
It was weird to be in that machine for 45 minutes. I could write a Nicholson Baker-type novel about everything that went through my head as I tried very hard to keep still while feeling very nervous.
I kept trying to ward off panic by thinking about my junior high school teachers or my grandparents’ siblings’ names or that day last June when I went off to the beach in Malibu with Libby and Wyatt, a scene that I often call up to calm myself. And then I feel those panic attack feelings and worry about a dizzy spell or nausea.
But Ruby said I did okay although I was breathing heavily. My palms were sweaty as they are now. My sciatica didn’t hurt while I was in the MRI tube, nor did my stomach hurt. My GERD did act up, however, after I had dinner tonight.
I got a notice that Humana won’t give me more Prevacid unless I get a note from the doctor, so tonight, as I went to fill up the car’s gas tank and shop for groceries at Publix, I brought in Dr. Listopad’s prescription to Eckerd, and I’ll put the expensive drug on my JCPenney card.
I did sleep fine last night, but it took Ambien and then Klonopin when I woke up at 2:30 AM.
This morning I went into the office at 8 AM.
Jane came by my office and said that she, Debra, and Kathy want to take me out to lunch on my birthday. I told them I’d be happy to go after my doctor’s appointment at 10:45 AM that day. I guess I’ll know by then the cause of my sciatica if it shows up on the MRI.
When I was in the MRI tube, the bar exam seemed like something I shouldn’t be worried about, but I know that during the next two months I’m going to have moments of pure terror, although I think that in the end it will be okay.
It’s fear of the unknown, as Kenny said yesterday at the PMBR lecture. At 9 AM, I began the 50 Torts questions, and I got only 19 right, so I keep doing worse and worse. But it doesn’t bother me so much because once I learn the rules, I can remember them and I will do okay.
I went back to the office at 10:30 AM. I mean, I still have a job. Next week I have an appointment with Gloria Schwartz, who’s been academically dismissed. She wants me to write something about her test anxiety as part of a petition.
I know a petition is useless, but I’ve got to feel for what she must be going through. I’m not the only person in this world who has problems. Thelma is helping me make up a business card and name tag, which I should have had months ago.
I sat in the back of today’s PMBR lecture so I could leave the room unobtrusively. Kenny tends to ramble. As Jane said when I talked to her at 5 PM while she waited for someone from her car dealership to pick her up, Kenny is full of himself, and PMBR is good at blowing their own horn.
Still, I believe they have a good grasp of the MBE, even if Jane claims they employ scare tactics. It still is early, actually. I’m thinking of also taking the PMBR three-day session later; they may move it to end the conflict with Barb Bree’s sample exam.
As Kenny said, sitting for the bar is like being a first-year law student all over again. Except I enjoyed my first year because it was intellectually challenging and I liked the camaraderie among my fellow students.
Getting out of the MRI clinic at 4:40 PM, I returned to work, and I’m glad I got a chance to talk to Jane. Patty told her about my birthday.
At home at 5:30 PM, I ate, probably too quickly. Anyway, I’m filled with drugs: Tylenol, Klonopin, Triavil, Prevacid, Celebrex, and Skelaxin. Even if I don’t sleep at all tonight, I won’t take Ambien.
I’ll get through tomorrow whether I sleep or not, and at 5 PM I get to talk to Dr. Koncsol, and on Sunday I can take the day off.
I got a long letter from Vincent. He’s unhappy with his life in Memphis and is thinking about breaking up with Bill and moving to another city.
He moved to Memphis because of his family and his relationship with Bill. (By his “family,” Vincent probably means his grandmother, who’s now dead, and he is starting to feel that his relationship is dying.)
But his eight years with Bill in Memphis have been the only stable thing in his life, and he’s scared as he contemplates Los Angeles, which is lonely and very hard without a car.
Vincent recently got a mohawk, and he doesn’t like the way people in Memphis outside his own area look at him now.
He wonders if he should finish the novel before he leaves town and his relationship with Bill. He always made fun of writers who said they were blocked, believing it to be laziness, but now he really can’t finish the story on the brothel.
It always cheers me to hear from Vincent even though his life is in turmoil.
This evening I watched the end of The Story of Qiu Ju, which would be a great film to show undergraduate legal studies students.
Sometimes, when I think I’ll be able to stay at NSU for a long time, I imagine myself adjuncting for Ben or taking up a graduate program of study using my tuition benefits. Now I just need to get through the night.
Mom called. Her vision is blurry, and Dad’s getting her in to see his eye doctor.
Saturday, May 25, 2002
9:30 PM. I slept okay, but not for too long. Up at 5 AM, I exercised to a Body Electric video, though I avoided the leg routines.
Then, after breakfast, I did the 50 Con Law questions and got 39 right. Adding up all my right answers to the 300 questions, they came to the equivalent of a 115 on the 200-question MBE.
If the scaled score adds a dozen points to the raw score, that would mean I need about ten more correct answers to pass.
The MBE is a test where you can miss 80 out of 200 questions and still pass, as Kenny pointed out in today’s lecture. So passing the MBE is certainly doable for me.
I’m more worried about the Florida part of the exam, but if I can score really well on the MBE, then I can do worse on the Florida portion and still pass.
Having done the questions at home, I didn’t need to go to the hotel this morning.
After sitting in the jacuzzi for about ten minutes, I took a shower, put on my University of New Mexico t-shirt, shorts, and sneakers, and went to Barnes & Noble to read the Times and drink diluted iced tea.
(After realizing I’d forgotten to take Prevacid, I took a 15 mg capsule before I had lunch at 11 AM.)
Class began at noon, and today was easy for me; I’ve just got to nail down the trickier concepts, and I can rack up lots of correct Con Law questions.
I think I can do the same thing with Evidence if I practice enough, and eventually I’ll do okay on Criminal Law and Torts.
As for Contracts and Property, I’ll do my best, but I’ll just guess on convoluted questions with long fact patterns and get back to them later if I have time.
I spoke to the woman who’s an M.D., and she said I shouldn’t have back surgery for sciatica unless it is completely disabling.
It’s probably hereditary, she said, and as Dr. Koncsol pointed out, it may have gotten worse from all the sitting I did this week and maybe even because of the rainy weather.
I arrived at the Psych Team offices at 4 PM, and because Dr. K’s 4 PM appointment was canceled, he took me in early, and we had an extra-long session.
I talked to him about the bar exam, sciatica, GERD, Vincent, James (who I figured had given up on me, but he called while I was out tonight), my family, my drug situation (I learned that Ambien is a benzo, albeit an atypical one; Dr. K is not happy that I take that and Klonopin because they’re addictive, so I’ll try to go without either tonight and see if I can get any sleep), my job, my reading at the Stonewall library, etc.
It was a great way to review my life, and I felt very good when our session was over.
Dr. K says that in Paleolithic times we anxious, hypervigilant people lived longer than the complacent, dull-witted people.
When I said that I worried about the anxiety taking a toll on my health – like on my heart – he said that the body adapts.
That got me thinking about my high school years and the times when I had anxiety attacks once, twice, or more in one day. I still wasn’t less healthy than my peers, and I haven’t aged badly.
I drove up Pine Island Road to Coral Springs, to the Barnes & Noble there, where I had some of their hot, caffeine-free rooibos tea, which is not really tea.
I read the latest issue of Poets & Writers. It had an interview with John Yau, who’s managed to live as a writer since we both graduated from the MFA program in Brooklyn together.
(We’re the same age, but John looks older, or at least I’m imagining that he does.)
I couldn’t get the Sunday New York Times that early on Saturday, the way I used to, but I’ll get it in the morning.
When I returned The Story of Qiu Ju to the library, I borrowed two new videos, and at home, I began watching Boys Don’t Cry.
Hilary Swank is so cute as Brandon Teena, the transgender guy. I’m crazy about androgynous people; to me, they just have this sweetness about them.
Aunt Sydelle called. She was upset that her sugar was so high that she now has to take diabetes medicine for the first time. It also bothered her that she couldn’t drive to the beauty parlor today.
It seems as if Sydelle is driving less and less, although she said the new medicine makes her “a little shaky.”
My aunt is very contrary, so talking to her can be frustrating; I understand why her children and grandchildren keep their distance.
Thursday, May 30, 2002
9 PM. Josh called last night after going to see Professor Goodman with Todd. Goodman is 94 and in the nursing home, and Josh says it seems clear he’s dying. He can’t swallow properly because of some procedure the doctors did, and he’s got fluid in his lungs.
Josh said that Goodman always appeared tall, but now he’s wasted away. He cried several times during their visit. I guess I’ll end up that way if I live to be 94 as a solitary gay man.
Professor Goodman, if he recovers, will go to live with his niece – though he says that her daughter is the only one who cares for him. I won’t even have a niece or nephew.
On the other hand, in mid-afternoon I went to a funeral home in Pembroke Pines for the wake of Dick Alimante, Santa’s husband.
Maria called me this morning and left a message saying she had some sad news.
When I got back to the office at 1 PM, I called Maria back, and she said that Santa’s husband died suddenly and unexpectedly, although he had been in the hospital with kidney problems for two weeks.
Santa never talked about him being sick, though I remember he once had sciatica. Maria said the funeral mass is at St. David’s tomorrow and that she was going over to the funeral parlor for this afternoon’s viewing.
Apparently when Ben visited Santa at her home, she was a real mess. When I got to the wake, I hugged her but didn’t know what to say except, “I’m sorry.” (I was so uncomfortable that I almost said, “Thank you.” It’s so awful.
Dick’s body was laid out in the coffin, his hands folded, looking alive the way most embalmed bodies do. I didn’t know anyone else there – most were elderly people – and I didn’t stay long, just long enough to pay my respects and think.
Dick was born in October 1947, so he was only about four years older than I. Why am I worrying about bankruptcy in the bar exam when I could be dead in four years or four months or four days?
This morning at 10:21 AM (the time the second tower collapsed), with a silent ceremony featuring an empty stretcher draped with an American flag, New York City ended the recovery work at the World Trade Center/Ground Zero.
Life is short, too short to worry about silly stuff – and in the long run, most of what I get anxious about is silly stuff. I just am not reminded of it enough.
Last night Josh said Gabrielle called him and said she can only stay one week in New York City in June, not two weeks as they planned. And of course, there’s nothing Josh can do about it because he has no rights where their son is concerned.
“In a lifetime of mistakes,” Josh said, “this was the worst mistake I ever made.”
I protested that at least Josh has a child, and he said it was all a mess, and I replied, “Yeah, but he’s cute.”
“I think your worst mistake was putting all your money into texts and pissing it away,” I went on, “but you weren’t the only one who did that.”
I mean, who didn’t lose money in the stock market? I told Josh if I had any money to invest, I would have also put it into tech stocks during that crazy boom.
It’s just like now everyone thinks that real estate can only go up. It’s a popular delusion, but I think that eventually housing prices will come down, although there does seem to be a shortage of new homes.
Maybe I’m wrong.
I found myself worrying about my financial state. I’m no better off than I was six months ago when I was about to move back to Florida. I spent thousands of dollars, and I’m no closer to paying off my debts, even though my paycheck every two weeks is for $1,411.81.
I slept well last night and went to the first session of BarBri this morning. The Best Western opened up the space we were in for PMBR to two ballrooms with about six or eight TV sets. It’s kind of overwhelming.
I was one of the few guys there not in jeans; I had on a white shirt and black pants, so all I needed was my black tie to go over to the wake later, though that was a coincidence.
The guys sitting near me were young enough to be wearing baseball caps and talking about shooting baskets later.
I saw a few familiar faces, like Erica, but the crowd was enormous. After some initial business, we watched the introductory tape and the one introducing the Multistate.
Tomorrow we do Criminal Law, and so tonight I’ll read the Conviser Mini Review outline on the subject; I’m not going to read the detailed outlines. I did 40 Contracts PMBR questions at work and at home, so I’ve got about 45 to go.
I interviewed Brent for the job as my research assistant, but he seemed like he would annoy me; he’s a Jewish Canadian guy who talks too much and seems socially inept.
I told him I would have to wait until Pat Jason came back in a week. Actually, I really don’t know what I would have an assistant do, other than clean up my files. My office is too small to have anyone work there with me.
Sat Darshan wrote that driving her 2002 Cavalier is a dream: “Like a rental car,” she said. Never before has she owned a new American car.
Rick Peabody sent me something, oddly enough, about a contract dispute that involved Lisa B. Falour, the American publisher of the famous old Lower East Side zine Bikini Girl. The shady British publisher who had the rights to her book I Was for Sale assigned them to another publishing house.
Rick said his family is “nesting again” in Arlington; he and Margaret are expecting their second daughter in just a few weeks.
After spending the day in Fort Lauderdale with her father and her family, Diane called me at 6 PM.
She said the Woodstock house still needs a lot of work, including the floors, but it’s lovely there and she doesn’t mind the two-hour drive from the city. I’d love to see it one day.
Maybe her next visit to Florida will be longer, and she’ll have time for a visit.
Yesterday I got a paper cut from opening the birthday card from Aunt Sydelle. Today I reopened the wound by opening a nice birthday card from Mom and Dad (and China).
The cards were filled with heartfelt messages and warm wishes, making the minor inconvenience of the paper cut worth it.
I can’t help but appreciate the thoughtfulness of my family, especially during this busy time.