Friday, May 13, 1977
9 PM. After dinner tonight, I felt restless and a little depressed. I know what it was: the semester is ending, and although I’m pretty sure I’ll be back at LIU in the fall, I do have four months of summer ahead of me.
It’s always an adjustment, getting used to not going to work. I wonder how I’ll survive without the rejuvenating, invigorating effects of being in front of a classroom. I’ve grown to love teaching, and I treasure the time I’ve been able to spend doing it. Still, I am feeling somewhat stale, and I think if used properly, the summer will do me good.
At 7 PM, I drove into Manhattan and parked on West 8th Street. It was still light out, and I went walking around the bookstores and the streets of the Village, something I haven’t done in a while.
I felt very left out of things. Here it is, a Friday night, and everyone is with their friends, and I’m still on the outside, an observer, a spectator.
I drove up to 23rd Street and rang Mikey’s doorbell, but no one was home.
Driving back to Brooklyn, I began thinking of all the things I’ve missed because of my hesitancy and aloofness and my damned overpowering ambition to be a writer.
I’ve worked so hard that I must be the proverbial “dull Jack.” I had hoped to change some of that this summer, but I realize now it may be too late: now I am happiest when I am working, and it seems I’m constantly working.
I have trouble enjoying things because I’m always trying to figure out how to exploit them in my fiction. There may be a good writer here, but maybe I’m a not-so-hot person. Yet I can’t – won’t – believe it’s too late to change. I can still listen to Rilke’s admonition.
Yes, people, it’s true: Richie Grayson would like a lover, his own apartment, evenings out, money, fun, excitement.
Last evening I spent several hours at the Judsons’, and being there is always a tonic. When I called Libby, Angelina answered the phone and she said they were making eggplant parmigiana and that I should come over right away.
After Thomas left – a cute boy, he’s obviously got a big crush on Libby – and the show ended, I managed to get down some food. It was delicious, but I’d had dinner before I got there and was already stuffed.
Angelina washed Libby’s hair for the first time in a week. Libby had to lie on the bathroom floor with her head over the side of the tub while Angelina soaped it down and rinsed it.
Mason called, but he was too tired and it would take too long for him to get to Brooklyn, so he decided to go out to eat with his friends on the Upper West Side and then go off to bed. I thanked Mason for his kind letter about the book and told him I’d send him a new batch of stories.
Angelina, Libby and I watched TV, and I tried to fill Angelina in on the plot of The Sun Also Rises, which she has to read for school.
Wayne and Mrs. Judson came home around 10 PM from a wake for the Russian woman down the block.
We sat around for a while and I helped Libby fill out her form applying for disability benefits. Then I left, dropping Angelina off at her house; she’s such a sweet kid, just like Libby and Wayne.
This morning I kibitzed with Abe and Beverly and Margaret, and I typed up my finals for both classes. In class today, I went over Cheever’s “Torch Song,” a terrific story.
At home, I found an acceptance: from the Washington Review of the Arts, of my “funny and very real” story about me and Shelli called “Understanding Human Sexual Inadequacy.” Pat Griffith, the fiction editor, said she wants to make a few changes.
Saturday, May 14, 1977
9 PM. It’s Saturday night and again I’m alone, but there’s a difference. Tonight I feel vital, alive, necessary. I regret nothing. I love my life and look forward to the best that is to come.
Yesterday’s acceptance was a much-needed tonic. “Understanding Human Sexual Inadequacy” is such a personal story, taken out of my diary pages of six years ago. Is it cruel to mock my earlier self? I don’t think so, because it’s done with kindness.
It’s the quintessential story about my relationship with Shelli; now I treasure the memories of her, even the horrible times (most of which I myself was responsible for), and I’m glad to know that it’s going to be down on paper.
May 18 is the publication date for the book, and it’s possible there’ll be a review of it in tonight’s Times Book Review. I’m scared. What if they say something like, “Richard Grayson has absolutely no future as a writer”?
Today a check for $25 came from the CUNY Research Foundation, reimbursement for the typesetting fees I laid out. I cashed it at the bank in Kings Plaza and went to Waldenbooks to buy Gabriel García Márquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude.
I had heard so many good things about the book, but I wasn’t prepared for the sheer brilliance I found when I opened it up tonight. I’m only on 
To describe the pleasure of discovering a book like this, I’d need a new vocabulary. Although One Hundred Years of Solitude has been around for a decade, it’s brand new to me. And the joy I’m feeling is why I want to be a writer.
Last night I spoke to Josh, who’s just about given up hope. He doesn’t have the slightest idea how he’s going to find a job. Can the situation really be that bad? Josh has borrowed a lot of money, and he spends it on entertainment, like the jazz concert he went to the night before.
Talk about pleasant dreams – to segway clumsily here: last night every one of my dreams involved pleasure. I was wrestling in one dream, enjoying a 
Dana Neugent wrote me that he’s getting thawed out, is cancerizing his skin (like me, who just loves to hear people say, “Oh, how’d you get that lovely tan?”: it’s the one thing you can do for your appearance merely by sitting still), gulping down gin and tonics, and preparing for a cross-country excursion in July.
After lunch today, I went out to Rockaway and took a walk along the boardwalk to Beach 116th Street with Grandma Ethel and Grandpa Herb.
They went on Marty’s boat last week and said it’s docked next to the yacht 
It made me feel funny to walk past Grandma Sylvia and Grandpa Nat’s old building and to know their apartment is now occupied by strangers. But another relative, Great-Grandma Bessie, is moving to Rockaway in two weeks.
Sunday, May 15, 1977
8 PM. I feel so anguished. Grandpa Nat had a heart attack last evening. Even as I write the words, I can’t really believe it. “Heart attack”: it’s something I knew was going to happen someday, yet when it finally did happen, it’s so shocking.
Grandpa Nat was fine yesterday; he was playing cards all day, and then Grandma Sylvia was sitting by the pool when he came out and said he felt sick, that he had pains in his chest; he was a yellow color.
They took him to the hospital in an ambulance and placed him in Intensive Care. The doctors say that the next 72 hours are critical. The EKG revealed that it was a coronary, but we don’t know how serious it is, and of course there’s the immediate danger of another, massive, heart attack. (I know so much of life from watching soap operas.)
It’s like I felt yesterday, creepy when I passed their old house. Normally they’d be back up North by now. If anything should happen to Grandpa Nat, if he should die – then at least I have the consolation of his visit here last month and the nice talk we had: he had never told me about his parents or his childhood before.
I pray he doesn’t die. It’s so hard on Grandma Sylvia: all their lives, it’s always been she who has been ill and Grandpa Nat who has taken care of her. God, he looked so good when I saw him last, you would have thought he was in the best of health.
As it stands now, Grandma Sylvia has no one – except her very helpful neighbors – to be with her through this crisis. At least Dad will be there tomorrow. I wish I could be there, too, but I have the damned finals to give.
They did allow Grandma Sylvia to visit him today, and they took away the oxygen and Grandpa Nat was able to talk with her a little bit.
To change the subject and keep my mind on something else, I’ll write about a surprising phone call I got yesterday. Mike called; I was flabbergasted to hear his voice.
He and Cindy were going to the Alumni Homecoming and they were wondering if I was going to be there; also, Mike said, he just wanted to chat. Lately he’s been so aloof from all of us, but I guess now he wants to make up for it.
Mike and Cindy have rented a walk-in apartment on his parents’ block, and they’re putting in a lot of work on it. Mike asked me how Mikey and Mason and Larry and Leon and Elihu and all the others are, and we reminisced about the old days in LaGuardia.
I’ve known Mike for over six years already, and I find myself still liking him. He’s working on a directory of School Psychologist programs and a paper related to that. We spoke for over an hour, and I was very glad to hear from him.
Oh, but I feel so sick now, sick with worry and fear. I just want to make myself inert.
Tuesday, May 17, 1977
8 PM. I’m feeling kinda tired. Not “kind of tired,” but “kinda tired.” There’s a distinction there, a distinction that makes me grin.
Toby Simon of Pratt sent me copies of Snakeroots #7, containing two of my stories, “Reluctance” and “The Second Person.” They’re not bad, but they were forced efforts and thus somehow lesser efforts; even Toby wrote that he thought “Roman Buildings” was much stronger.
It strikes me that my MFA-days stories were more complete, less diluted. I’ve sacrificed something to be as prolific as I have been. Well, I don’t have to worry about being prolific anymore. With today’s stories included, I have 28 pieces in print already, and they’ve been coming out faster than I have a right to expect them to.
Mom spoke to Dad tonight, and he said Grandpa Nat has been sleeping all day under Valium, so I guess there’s no change in his condition. As long as he doesn’t have another heart attack. . .
Somehow it seems that these things always lead to multiple tragedies, and I have a terrible (neurotic?) premonition about worse things yet to come. But I can’t let myself think about them.
About bodies: I definitely prefer male ones. The hot weather gives me a chance to see all those chests and shoulders and muscles.
Yet weirdly, when I was lying in the sun, I started fantasizing about Ronna’s body. I love her body – I was going to say “because I love her,” but is that still true? All I know is it’s a year since I’ve seen her and I want to see her again. Probably she doesn’t want to see me.
Halt! You still have to conduct your classes tomorrow, Herr Professor, and give and grade the final exams and term papers. Later there will be plenty of time for this hootchy-kootchy.
This afternoon, when I got back from the beach, I went to see Libby, bringing carrot cake with me. She had just washed her hair, and she was alone in the house, which was very cool.
We talked about dieting and food. If I didn’t know better, I’d think I’d developed a crush on Libby after all these years. But it wasn’t Libby; it was 
Anyway, she was combing her hair and she looked very pretty. I always feel so relaxed in the Judsons’ house, and I stayed until 6 PM.
Soon after I got home, Gary phoned from his parents’. He took a Federal exam in Jamaica today and did miserably. Then he had to rush back to Princeton to pick up Betty at work.
Alice said she and Andreas went away last weekend and that she’s having second thoughts about becoming a California screenwriter, so things must be good between her and Andreas again.
Thursday, May 19, 1977
2 PM on a cloudy, muggy day. When I got home from Janice’s last night, Mom told me that Grandpa Nat was very critical. He didn’t respond the way the doctors had hoped; his heartbeat was faint and irregular.
Dad sent for Aunt Sydelle because the doctors said it might be the end. When Mom told her, Sydelle became hysterical, of course, screaming and throwing herself on the floor.
Great-Uncle Harry went over, but as he told me, he “had to run away from her; she was banging her head against the wall” and he couldn’t take it. Harry would have flown down with Sydelle, but he said she’s so impossible that he couldn’t stand to be with her.
Grandpa Herb says he would never more to Florida because of something like this: “It’s so difficult when your whole family is a thousand miles away.”
Last night I had a hard time getting to sleep. I kept thinking of Grandpa Nat and how horrible it will be to go through the ordeal of his funeral. I’m so lucky, to be almost 26 and so unfamiliar with death.
I don’t want him to die, but after all, he is 78 or so, and he’s lived a full life. He was always such a do-er, a man of action; that’s why his retirement, as I always knew it could, brought about his heart attack.
He constantly bickered with Grandma Sylvia; Uncle Harry told me about a terrible quarrel he’d witnessed at Helen’s at which Grandpa Nat
It wasn’t good for him to be so cooped up in Florida with her; she resented his card-playing, which was his only release.
When he had his work, he was happy. I used to go to “the place” and see him cutting patterns, looking so energetic; I don’t ever recall seeing anyone get such satisfaction from his job.
God forbid, if he does die, I think he’d want us to go on with the business of our lives. Dad said last night was awful: Grandpa Nat was struggling to get out of his bed in Intensive Care, not understanding why he couldn’t get up.
Scott called yesterday from his parents’ house. On Sunday he graduated from law school, got an apartment on Eighth Avenue and West 24th Street, and will begin his bar exam training, having accepted a job with the Legal Aid Society or the Legal Defense Fund, I forget which.
He told me that in D.C. he was in contact with Phyllis and Mara, and that Sharon has “freaked out” following her annulment from Casey. “She’s having a 
Last evening Alice and I had a very nice time in Canarsie at Janice and Jay’s. She served us a delicious dinner (pasta and salad) and we had a good conversation, played word games and sat on the porch during a thunderstorm.
The four of us laughed at a lot of bad puns and gossip. I always feel really relaxed at Janice’s house, as I do at Libby’s. Janice and Jay seem to really have it together, and I couldn’t be happier for them because they are people who deserve good fortune after their hard times.