A Writer’s Diary Entries From Late September, 2002
Saturday, September 21, 2002
8:30 PM. It’s evening, so I’m relaxed – even after drinking iced tea at the Hollywood Barnes & Noble while making my first stab at reading the Sunday New York Times.
But this morning I woke up with anxiety, which resurfaced again in the late afternoon as I lay down.
I didn’t exercise today, but that’s okay because my kneecaps and buttocks still hurt.
As I told Dr. Koncsol later, I’d hoped that my anxiety would dissipate already. Still, the feeling is mostly just uncomfortable rather than desperate. I’m sure I’ll feel the anxiety again tomorrow morning and then again sometime in the afternoon.
This morning I went out at 8:30 AM and read the paper, or started to, at Starbucks. From there I went to the library to pick up Sissyphobia by Tim Bergling and to check email.
Then I went to the massage place, and since Anya wasn’t busy, she could take me right away and said she’d get me out in time for my 11 AM session with Dr. K.
We talked about her education courses, and naturally she wasn’t surprised that I passed the bar exam.
Dr. K said he’ll try to get more appointments out of the HMO, and we tentatively scheduled one for three weeks from today.
I told him about the bar exam results and my current, lessened anxieties at work. He said I need to make order out of chaos at work and keep my files in good order.
He also said I need to clean the apartment better than I currently do, and that taking these steps will reduce my anxiety.
Maybe. Mom, of course, cleans to stave off anxiety, and it does seem to work for her.
Dr. K thought I wouldn’t like the job at the undergraduate school because I’d be in charge of real employees rather than teaching assistance, and he doesn’t see me as someone who’d be happy supervising full-time employees. I have to agree.
As far as meeting someone for a long-term relationship goes, Dr. K says I need a guy very similar to myself. It’s true that if I could meet my clone, I’d be very happy.
Vincent and I may be very different, but we’re both writers with similar sensibilities, and the fact that I can still stay in touch with Sean and Gianni must signal something that we had in common.
I believe I just have to fill my life with various activities and divert myself so I don’t feel lonely or anxious much of the time.
I wish I actually knew how to meet a guy. I can’t remember the last time anyone looked at me as if he thought I was cute. Maybe that’s because, at 51, I’m definitely not cute anymore. But inside, I feel cute.
Of course, since I’m not attracted to guys who are old outside but feel cute inside – doesn’t everyone? – I can’t expect guys to be attracted to me.
After lunch, I drove to the Pompano Beach Convention Center to attend a comic book convention I’d read about in New Times.
The crowd was what you’d expect: mostly kids and weird-looking guys similar to The Simpsons’ Comic Book Guy, straight guys who look like they’ve never had a girlfriend. There were also some teens in (Insane Clown Posse?) white-and-black face paint with Joker-green hair or mohawks.
I didn’t care much for the DVDs of anime films or the car models or toys.
I looked through boxes of comics, but most of those I owned back when they cost ten or twelve cents were displayed behind the tables. God, how I wish Mom had not thrown out all those DC and Marvel Comics from the Silver Age that I collected from around 1959 or 1960 until maybe 1966 or 1967. I kept them so beautifully, too.
I did get reminded of some lesser titles like Doom Patrol and Rip Hunter, Time Master and Challengers of the Unknown – they lived on borrowed time – but I didn’t buy anything. Why pay $30 for an issue I had bought for a dime?
I came home to lie down before eating dinner. Then I went out to get the Sunday Times.
We’re moving headlong toward war with Iraq this winter, but the GOP is going to kill the Democrats in the election, as economic issues, corporate responsibility, prescription drugs, etc., all go on the back burner.
At least in 1964, LBJ made up some crap to justify the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution; GWB isn’t doing even that.
Online, I signed the Not In Our Name petition, which had a full-page ad in Thursday’s paper.
There’s a TV program coming out on FX called American Candidate, a reality show that will feature ordinary people who want to run for president in 2004.
I would be so great on something like that. But has my time passed? After all, I ran in 1984, twenty years ago. Aren’t I the Fritz Mondale of funny candidates?
Still, I’ll see what I can find out about trying out for the show.
Monday, September 23, 2002
9:30 PM. I literally just got home three minutes ago. I’m so glad I live so close to work.
Only three people in the evening class stayed for my workshop on note-taking, and they made the session longer with some questions and also the usual gripes about their professors.
I also had only eight or nine students come to my 3 PM workshop. Hey, I’ll just do these things for whoever wants to come. This morning I printed out a number of handouts, so I felt prepared.
Last evening I finished Andrew Furman’s book on contemporary Jewish-American authors. Although I haven’t read most of the writers he champions, after reading his descriptions of their work, I would like to.
I wrote him a letter and sent him three of my books. Of course, I’m hoping that he will think my work is worthy of his critical eye, but I know I don’t have the sophistication of Allegra Goodman, Melvin Jules Bukiet, or the other writers that Furman admires.
My work is Jewish, I think, but it comes out of a different world, maybe one more like the world of S.J. Perelman or Nathanael West.
Furman doesn’t write of Norman Mailer as a Jewish writer the way he does of Bellow, Roth, and Malamud (the Faulkner, Fitzgerald, and Hemingway trio of that generation of Jewish writers).
My relationship to Judaism is more like Mailer’s – or it’s like that of Bruce Jay Friedman, Baumbach, Spielberg, Sukenick, Federman, and Steve Katz. So I don’t expect Furman to take up my cause with any academic criticism.
Later that evening, I took 0.25 mg Klonopin, so I slept well.
I was even able to get back to sleep for an hour – and dream about taking Ronna’s kids to the movies – when I awakened at 4 AM.
This morning I lingered at Starbucks and then went to the post office to mail the books and letters to Professor Furman, so I didn’t get in until 9:30 AM.
Today I was fairly busy with administrative stuff and with preparing for the workshops.
My 3 PM workshop conflicts with the monthly faculty meetings, and I got to this one only as it was close to the end – but I don’t think much of importance was discussed today.
Traci said she mostly remembers something about a faculty Halloween party.
I did speak to Bill Adams and to Ellyn Bogdanoff; he doesn’t want her to review or explain substantive law, so she’s actually been doing exactly what he’s told her to do.
I sat in on Matt McKim and Ellen Fine’s ARP session at noon, and they did well, although Ellen probably needs to speak louder.
When I gave her that suggestion, I said it was exactly what Professor Malley at LIU told me the first time my teaching was observed, and then I complimented her on one of her answers to a student’s question.
Hopefully, I have some people skills.
What I need to do is organize my office better. I came home from 4:30 to 6:30 PM, changed temporarily into a t-shirt and shorts, finished the Times, listened to All Things Considered on NPR, had a couscous-and-veggie wrap, fruit and soy milk, and walked for about 25 minutes.
Today I had no anxiety because I was occupied doing things.
Right now I feel tired, but I don’t know if that means I’ll be able to sleep well tonight. I’ll take Ambien if I can’t.
Tom wrote from Berlin that Germany “barely survived the election,” but Schröder kept a tiny majority in the Bundestag.
Wednesday, September 25, 2002
10 PM. I just took an Ambien because it’s late and I had a long day.
I just spent the last half hour on the phone with this guy, Billy, who was the last person I met on Yahoo.
He sounds totally unsuited for me, and I was flabbergasted after we talked that he seemed really interested in meeting me. I mean, I know how bizarre I can sound, and since I wasn’t all that interested in him, I played up my eccentricities.
Today was tough because I had an emotional experience at work.
This first-year student, Joe, was very agitated when I returned to school after lunch.
He said his Contracts TA, Diana, had insulted him as he was trying to get a handout, and he ran out of the room so upset that he left his computer there.
He broke down sobbing in front of me, and he was so overwrought that his sobbing fed on itself. He must have used about a dozen tissues.
I felt so bad. He’s a nice kid and he’s gone to all of my sessions. I probably remembered that because he’s quite good-looking.
The poor guy is young, just out of Florida Southern College in Lakeland, and I gathered that he has kind of a learning disability because it takes him a lot longer to get through things than it does other people.
I did the best I could. He wanted me to fire Diana even though he admitted that she was a very good TA.
I think that basically she was too sharp with him, embarrassing him and hurting his feelings.
Joe is very much on edge, and he’s having trouble keeping up with the reading.
When I met with Diana, she said he was being annoying, “and it wasn’t the first time.”
Diana is an older woman, a former sales rep for Speedo and other fashion companies, and I think she can probably be abrupt and maybe even sarcastic.
But Joe is extremely sensitive. Most guys would not cry so much over an incident like that. As Diana told me, he could have laughed it off or just thought, “You bitch.”
She emailed him a note, which she blind-carbon-copied to me, and I exchanged some emails with Joe afterward.
While I don’t know how this will play out, I didn’t want to involve Pat after she was out when Diana and I went to see her. Thelma said that Pat is about to go on another vacation.
Hopefully, it will all blow over. At least Joe went back into the room and sat through Adams’s Criminal Law class.
Joe lives in the dorm and told me he lies awake worrying at night – including worrying about his brother, who’s having a hard time adjusting to being an undergraduate at the University of South Florida.
This morning I went to the graduate education school at University Park Plaza – the shopping center where my dentist’s office is – to attend a “best practices” forum on online learning.
Kathy Cerminara presented on the online Master’s in Health Law program. Kathy was good, and I also liked the first presenter, Trudy Abramson, a computer education professor.
But the last few presenters were long and boring, and since I was starving, I left slightly early and went home for lunch.
Later in the afternoon, I felt the need to talk with some people about Joe getting so upset. I hope nothing gets back to him. I made an effort to be more discreet than usual by talking only to people I trust, like Michael Richmond and Cindy.
I certainly don’t want to lose Joe’s trust, which is important to me. Obviously, the students in his section will talk about what happened, but in a couple of days everyone will forget it – hopefully.
It’s so hard being a first-year law student. As someone who suffers from anxiety, I’m sensitive to their anxiety.
Sat Darshan said I probably did fine and that she would like to write a situation comedy called Everybody Loves Richie.
I got a call from a law professor at the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville asking me about Rosalie Sanderson, who did apply for the job of library director there. Of course, I spoke of Rosalie in glowing terms.
Andy Furman wrote to thank me for the praise and the books; he said he’ll read them, though probably not until the semester is over. I was pleased that he even did that much.
This evening I went to Barnes & Noble to read the Times and try to unwind, but I probably shouldn’t have had iced tea.
On my way to the bookstore, I spotted a mother Muscovy duck with about a dozen ducklings in the grass.
They were eating, and I watched them for a while. I find adult Muscovy ducks ugly, but their babies are adorable.
When I left Barnes & Noble and got in the car, WLRN was playing their ten-minute news segment in Haitian Creole, a language so melodic that I love to listen to it even though I can’t understand most of what I’m hearing.
Monday, September 30, 2002
9 PM. Last evening I started feeling pretty ill, and I had chills. When I took my temperature, it was 100.2°, so I wrapped myself in blankets and went to bed early.
I didn’t sleep much at all again, but in the morning I did feel less nasal congestion. However, I still didn’t feel well enough to go to work, so after lying awake for four hours until 8:30 AM, I called in sick.
An hour later, I called Thelma, and she said that Tabi had sent an email canceling my workshops today. I guess I’d be there now if I hadn’t called in sick.
I intend to go to work tomorrow. Today I felt queasy but not really nauseated.
It’s a weird kind of feeling, like the one at the pit of your stomach when you’re swinging too high. I guess it’s just a virus, and it will gradually go away.
I felt funny calling in sick. It reminded me of the first time I was a college freshman that I missed classes because of a sore throat and cold. I was afraid I was setting a precedent and would start to cut classes regularly.
As a kid, I often used illness as a way of getting out of things. But I should know that at 51, I’m not going to regress to 17.
Despite staying home sick, I went out to the Starbucks on Nob Hill Road this morning around 10 AM.
The Times published a letter by Mark Savage in response to John Mortimer’s op-ed piece supporting British fox hunting.
The paper also had an article on the closing of Ratner’s Dairy Restaurant. On the changing Lower East Side, their hip Lansky Lounge will take over the whole space – but it’s the end of vegetable cutlets, kasha varnishkes, and kugel at the old location.
Another article was about the Flatiron Building, and I read the obituary of the 94-year-old writer Charles Henri Ford, who seemed to know everyone.
I remember meeting him at a John Jay College reception in honor of, I think, a project by Richard Kostelanetz.
Josh was with me, and Charles Henri Ford sort of made a pass at him, but that was almost thirty years ago.
At noon today, despite my illness, I went to the Davie library so I could use their computer to write an email congratulating Mark on his Times letter.
Tonight I heard his reply on Yahoo By Phone. Mark said he was thrilled, but his fellow teachers thought fox hunting was a strange subject to write about.
This afternoon I couldn’t get my NSU email, but later I checked my voicemail, and I returned a call from Debra.
She told me she has a Lawyering Skills and Values student, Micah, who has gotten D’s and F’s on his assignments and seems to be in denial.
Micah’s father and brother are lawyers, and he’s just got to graduate in order to enjoy their firm.
I reminded Debra of the guy last term who was in the same position and who got kicked out.
Anyway, Debra wants me to sit in on an intervention, and I said that would be fine.
I watched two videos I got at the library.
In the afternoon, I saw Mrs. Dalloway, which I remember was playing at the movie theater in downtown Los Gatos in March or April 1998. The film was a surprisingly good rendition of Woolf’s novel, which I remember fondly.
Tonight I watched Tim Robbins’s political satire Bob Roberts, a mockumentary about a fascist folk singer Senate candidate.
The film took place during the run-up to the first Gulf War, so it seemed to strike a special chord today.
At least in 1990, the invasion of Kuwait by Iraq was a violation of international law.
This time, we don’t have that kind of flagrant action, just the notion that Saddam supports terrorism, although no links can be made between Baghdad and Al-Qaeda, and he’s supposedly on the verge, as he was in 1990, of acquiring “weapons of mass destruction.”
And let’s not forget that we are constantly told that Saddam “bombed his own people with chemical weapons.”
Calling the Kurds Saddam’s “own people” is like calling the Indian tribes we slaughtered “America’s own people” or German Jews “the Nazis’ own people.”
I got a lot of mail today. Tom’s two new booklets from Obscure Press arrived. Each is a short collection of a few chapters of the final books in Tom’s Encyclopedia Mouse Quartet.
There’s some lovely stuff there, but it’s hard to see how it all adds up. I would send it to Josh, but Josh would just say it was pretentious nonsense.
It seemed to me that Josh doesn’t really consider me to be a writer; otherwise, we’d have discussed Bukiet (whom he knows and dislikes from KGB) and other Jewish-American writers differently.
Well, that’s okay – I certainly prefer to have Josh as a friend rather than to have him acknowledge me as a writer.
My periods of limited literary “success” definitely drove a wedge between Josh and me.
I keep getting cash advance checks at teaser rates, so I’ve been using them.
I also switched long distance back to AT&T now that they’ve given me a $70 rebate check and MCI is no longer giving me Delta frequent flyer miles.
I think I’m going to take an Ambien tonight because I don’t think I can bear another night of insomnia.
I do still worry about so much – mostly that I am never going to get “caught up,” that life is just one damn thing after another.
Usually, over the past 25 years, I’ve always had temporary jobs that would end at the semester or academic year. Graduate school and law school were finite terms. Even my contract at the Center for Governmental Responsibility was renewed annually or for the next six months.
I lived in the academic years of 1997-1998, 1998-1999, and 1999-2000 always expecting that I’d go to journalism school the following year.
Of course, last year in Arizona, I knew I wanted to get out of journalism school.
Now this job as ARP Director stretches out before me indefinitely, and I’m not sure how to handle it.
My full-time gigs at Broward Community College were always temporary, so I could always tell myself that I was really a writer or on my way to someplace else.
Am I too old for temporary? Being permanent means real accountability in a way I’ve never had to deal with before. I don’t know if I’m up to it.