Wednesday, July 1, 1987
It’s 2 AM and I can’t sleep. Alice and I were supposed to meet at a screening at 6:30 PM, but she called from her job in New Jersey and said she’d be late.
I got to the Lincoln Center area as it was swarming with police, who had evacuated and roped off most of the buildings.
But I couldn’t find the theater where I was supposed to go, and it was 90° out, and I felt kind of helpless.
At last I discovered the screening room was at the Library of Performing Arts. I went in and caught most of the film, which I think was called Maid to Order: Ally Sheedy in some typical Hollywood junk.
With Alice’s umbrella useless, we huddled under a bus shelter with a small crowd before the storm died down and we could go across Broadway and have dinner at The Saloon.
Alice told me that Jason Epstein of Random House loved her proposal for the 
Since Donna is now in Toronto, it will be a while before Alice can get the sample chapters written. Meanwhile, another book packager has cheated Alice and not paid her $10,000 for work she did.
We had a good long talk, and I came home at 10 PM.
Lately, it’s been impossible for me to become comfortable. Is this the July malaise I felt last year and the year before?
Sometimes I feel that 
I could start beating myself up. Am I getting anywhere? Am I progressing at all? 1987 is half over, and what do I have to show for it?
Being here alone – without Dad or Teresa – for the first time in nine nights, feels odd.
I’m grinding my teeth again.
Friday, July 3, 1987
10 PM. Last night it was pouring as I met Susan and her friends at Caribe, a trendy new restaurant on the corner of Perry and Greenwich Streets in the West 
Barbara Baracks came after a day of work at the Bank of New York, where she does software documentation and prepares manuals. Susan’s friend Shelly, whom she met as a fellow waitress at Bread Loaf, is a graduate student in the NYU English Ph.D. program who teaches at Brooklyn College.
Shelly’s fellow student, Nicole, brought her fiancé Jay, a comedy writer/musician/whatever. (“Jay’s problem is that he has too many talents,” Shelly said.)
As Shelly said, “We’ll be getting our Ph.D.’s in 1990, so we have demographics on our side.” That made me feel very over-the-hill even if they all assumed I was ten years younger than I really am.
Susan’s agent didn’t think much of her baby book proposal, she told me, so she sent it to someone else.
Right now Susan’s got an assignment from The Best Report; she was surprised when I told her I knew Peter, the editor who hired her, as Alice’s long-time boyfriend.
It was 9:30 PM when we all got out of the restaurant, and Barbara wanted to 
Uncharacteristically, I agreed – usually I’m not so spontaneous – and Barbara and I hopped in a cab. She told me that her musician friend, George Boziwick, is married to Stephanie Doba, who appears in Robin’s plays.
So Robin was also there, of course; I guess it must be odd for her and Barbara to see each other now that they’ve broken up. (Barbara told me they had a wedding ceremony and now she wondered if they should get a get, a Jewish divorce.)
First and First had no cover charge, and the band consisted of George on harmonica, a guy on electronic guitar and another guy on acoustic guitar. They were good, or so it seemed to me, playing old-style blues.
It was an enjoyable change for me to be out late at night in a smoky downtown club listening to music.
When I called Davie, Mom said that Dad’s plane took off an hour late on Tuesday but he still arrived home by 10 PM; now he’s got lots of appointments as well as paperwork from the orders he wrote in New York.
The mail brought mostly rejections. Among others, one syndicate wrote that they already had enough humor columnists; I doubt they even bothered to read my work.
And an editorial assistant at Viking Penguin said that three years ago, he picked 
If I can’t get my writing published, at least I have better luck with credit cards.
Saturday, July 4, 1987
2 PM. Ronna came over at about 9 PM last night after her final session with her therapist. It was too late, we decided, to go to the movies, and since we’d both had dinner, we stayed in the air-conditioned bedroom and watched TV and talked.
I was pleasantly surprised when she agreed to stay overnight.
I know that we can never get married, and I know that she has a blind date tonight, but I can’t imagine last night did either of us any harm.
Even when I have insomnia, I feel better sleeping in the same bed as Ronna.
I hate to analyze our relationship; I just know it felt good.
I’ve said this so many times, but although I’m primarily attracted to guys, I’ve also always been attracted to the soft curves of Ronna’s body. I love her soft stomach and that secret little navel . . . But I begin to sound purple here.
She’s losing weight and looks really great – and I think I probably look pretty good, too. We just seem to fit together.
It isn’t so much sexual release – I can always masturbate – but the physical intimacy I need: touching is more important than having an orgasm.
I’m glad for last night, and I hope Ronna is, too.
She left at 9:30 AM, and at 10 AM I forced myself to exercise to the same Body 
I went out only to get the paper and some Korean salad bar for lunch. It’s still very humid and about 85°, so I don’t plan to move for a while. Depending on how I feel later, I may or may not go to Shelly’s barbecue in Park Slope.
This year’s Independence Day celebration is a whisper compared to last year’s rousing Statue of Liberty centennial, and the city seems very quiet.
Still, I haven’t been very productive lately. Let’s face it: I’m a lazy person. How I’ve ever accomplished anything is a source of great amazement.
How long is it since I really worked hard? Years, probably not since the fall of ’85, when I was teaching at John Jay and Baruch and taking two classes at Teachers College.
What a slug I am. I’ve got to do something more with my life, I know, but I keep wanting to postpone that something’s beginning.
Monday, July 6, 1987
10 PM. I was up early today and left the apartment at 8:30 AM, just after the cleaning woman got here.
Downtown, I met Josh at Film/Video Arts on Broadway and East 12th Street. We decided to do the taping right there after Josh was able to secure a room.
I find it hard to believe how much equipment was involved, from the camera to the tripod to all the lights, the video monitor, the power pack and zillions of cables and other stuff.
By comparison, writing is so simple: you can do it with a pen and paper, or at its most complicated, with a computer. It took Josh over an hour to set up and then figure out how to get everything working and eliminate shadows and other technical problems.
Joyce arrived with all her photos and mementos; she had to catch a 6 PM flight 
Josh had given me a list of questions, and while I got to ask most of them, I changed the order to make the interview more coherent.
Joyce talked about Charles’s disappearance and death, the movie Missing, the political situation in Chile – and she did very well, without even breaking down. Her answers were thoughtful and I think Josh got some good material.
We taped about thirty minutes’ worth, and then Josh taped photos of Joyce and Charles in Chile, the picture of her and her in-laws from People, and the movie and book paraphernalia.
It’s heartening how a Hollywood movie seemed to crystallize Joyce’s story as well as it did; the film led to lots of publicity, and Joyce even got to speak at the UN.
Before Joyce left, she said she may be moving back to New York City. Josh’s friend Sally appears to be happy being Joyce’s father-in-law’s companion, as she genuinely likes Ed Horman, even with his dementia.
After Josh got the equipment put away, he had forty minutes of tape of Joyce and me that he’ll begin to edit on Friday.
I think Joyce and Josh would eventually like to put together a half-hour film with some grant money.
Teresa had called last night and said she wouldn’t be back today. When I returned to the apartment, I paid some bills and looked at my other mail, which included a long, very sad letter from Crad.
The final breakup with Gwen MacEwen has devastated him. Granted, Crad is melodramatic when he says that Gwen “took a knife and cut out my heart” and 
But the poor guy is suffering terribly, with thoughts of suicide.
Gwen’s constant belittling of him (of course, only a neurotic would pine away for such an imperfect relationship) has left him bereft of self-esteem, Crad says, and he has “no joy, no pleasure, no rest.”
He didn’t get the Ontario Arts Council grant for his work-in-progress about life on the street (“a story only I can tell . . . the big project I’ve been preparing for years without realizing it”) even though Gwen was one of the four grant panelists.
While others get reviewed in the Globe & Mail and “respectable” places, Crad feels he’s just an eccentric with a cult following. After fourteen years in Toronto, Crad says he has few friends and is very lonely.
Because Toronto has become so expensive (“Yuppie Hell”), he’s decided to move to Hamilton, where he can live much more cheaply, and to stop street-selling 
While I feel very bad for Crad, I do think it’s time for him to get off the street and I also think the move to Hamilton might do him some good. I felt depressed and lost when I moved to Florida in 1981, and the change certainly helped me.
Maybe for Crad, all this trouble is a blessing in disguise, though I certainly wouldn’t tell him that, in that it’s getting him to change his life. Remember my favorite line of Rilke: “for there is no place that does not see you / You must change your life.”
Josh came over at 6 PM, and after dinner at Marvin Gardens, we saw The Witches of Eastwick – not a bad movie – at the 84th Street sixplex.
After this, if he doesn’t stop his hypochondriac ways, he really needs help.
Wednesday, July 8, 1987
2 PM. Like last summer, this summer has not been especially hot, but the humidity levels have been extraordinarily high. For weeks I’ve felt a coating of 
Really, South Florida isn’t much worse than this, because there everything indoors is air-conditioned. Even at the risk of losing my chance to go to MacDowell, I’m looking forward to returning to Florida.
Yesterday I wrote Crad a long letter sympathizing with his problems but advising him to seek therapy. He’ll probably reject my suggestion and maybe get offended, but I believe he needs professional help. Anyone that miserable shouldn’t have to suffer needlessly.
Early last evening, I went to Teachers College and wrote for ninety minutes in the computer room. My column was on suntans, but it just isn’t very funny. I 
Back home, I began reading Arthur Schlesinger Jr.’s The Cycles of American History, a very good book I got in the library. Schlesinger takes theories of his father, Emerson and others to postulate alternating cycles of conservatism and innovation/liberation/reform.
He predicts the next liberal cycle will begin around 1990, when the generation inspired by JFK (who was part of the FDR-inspired generation) takes power. Schlesinger thinks a new liberal era will end around 2010, when the generation inspired by Reagan will come to power.
I still hope for a sea-change in national thinking, but I’m worried that the country may turn to some extreme right-winger. It disturbs me that Oliver North appears to be coming off as some affable, boyish, charming patriot and 
Essentially North is a thinking conservative’s Rambo, and I’m afraid the public will fall for this crap. If extreme conservatives do take (continue in?) power in 1988, it’s possible even a depression couldn’t change the national mood.
Well, that’s the worst-case scenario. It still seems more logical that Schlesinger and others are right. The country feel like it’s stagnating, and how much more greed can we take?
I read Schlesinger until 3 AM because I couldn’t sleep out in the living room.
This morning she left at 10 AM, and an hour later, I did aerobic dancing with Body Electric (I also worked out to their Tuesday 4:30 PM show, so I’m pretty sore), and then got a ton of mail from Mom.
My column on ALOHA, “acquired lack of humor attitude,” looks good in print, 
I got my Gold Card with its $5000 line of credit from American Express’s nonbank bank in Delaware.
I plan to keep my green AmEx card for MCI and other purchases and use the Gold Card checks as cash advances when they arrive. Hopefully I’ll be offered an Optima card eventually.
I was pre-approved for Torch Club, the Amoco/Diners Club joint venture, and 
This evening I’m having dinner with Stacy and tomorrow, breakfast with Pete Cherches, whose book, according to Alice, has been in B. Dalton’s window for the past two weeks.
Thursday, July 9, 1987
8 PM. Yesterday at 4 PM, after I xeroxed my ALOHA column from Saturday’s paper, I took the IRT (a nice cool train) to downtown Brooklyn.
Apparently the vast majority of my fellow Americans feel the same way. North’s testimony has done more for the Contra cause than anything preceding it.
But he’s a zealot who sees the world in black and white terms; it’s obvious why he appeals to Reagan and the public in an age of Rambo, Bernhard Goetz and “Make My Day.”
To me, it’s scary, but people think North is making the congressional committees look like monkeys dithering about details.
Although I think the Sandinistas are not Nicaragua’s liberators but its oppressors, the Contras would probably be worse.
Anyway, it’s not America’s role to decide what governments we should impose on other countries.
Having just spoken to Joyce about Charles’s death in the ’73 Chilean coup 
In the Brooklyn Business Library, I read recent issues of American Banker. It’s becoming clear that technology is changing the definition of money; as I’ve said before, I think more and more that money is information.
Back in Manhattan, I met Stacy in her building’s lobby on Bleecker Street.
She looked remarkably well, but then I’ve always found Stacy attractive – at 
I helped her move her motorcycle to a new parking space, and then we had dinner at the Noho Star, where she’s a regular.
After five years at the Transit Authority, Stacy feels it’s time to leave; she may go to a new place with her boss if he gets this job he’s applied for.
Jeanne has gotten her M.B.A. from Columbia and has started working as a 
They had a so-so vacation in the Caribbean, are planning to go to France in September, and are enjoying their summer share in an otherwise “straight” house in Amagansett.
Stacy seemed quite concerned about me and AIDS, but I told her she had nothing to worry about because I haven’t had risky sex in years.
I was glad to hear from her that Alan Cooper was also working at the Transit Authority and 
Last month Stacy’s father retired from teaching, and at his retirement party, Stacy saw some of his friends who taught at Meyer Levin Junior High School when we were students, including Dr. Karl Bernstein, who was our science teacher, and his wife, who I think taught art.
I haven’t thought about them in years, but they were nice. Some mornings they’d see me and Steve Handelman at the bus stop at Ralph Avenue and Avenue T as 
Over dinner, Stacy and I gossiped and chatted about this and that.
Though she’s gay, Stacy lives a pretty typical New York City Yuppie lifestyle, and she found it hard to believe that I don’t own a stereo, color TV, VCR, answering machine, microwave or computer.
After saying goodbye, I walked over to the West Village to get the subway home.
I didn’t sleep well last night and today was so hot I could just as well have stayed in the air-conditioned bedroom, but I had to get up this morning to meet Pete.
So I was back in the West Village at Bagel And…, where Pete gave me a copy of his new Red Dust book, a collection of light prose and performance pieces.
Pete continues to move in new directions: he has his first jazz performance 
Back home later, I got another rejection, from Kathleen Anderson at W.W. Norton.
It’s clear to me that nobody, from every New York trade publisher to Zephyr Press, is interested in a book of my uncollected stories, so I might as well give up. If I were really excellent at short fiction, someone would have picked up my manuscript by now.
Sometimes I think my whole publishing career – such as it is – was a fluke anyway. Lou Strick at Taplinger probably published my book only as a sop to Wesley; Kevin Urick really didn’t know what he was doing at White Ewe Press; 
Yes, my books got some good reviews, but so does every book.
Even if fiction is not my forte, I remain convinced that I’m a good writer, and I expect to continue to write. I even worked on some column ideas today when I returned from my visit with Pete.
I spoke with Justin, whose writing habits seem like mine; it reassured me that Justin, too, does not write for weeks at a time but then accomplishes a great deal in one or two concentrated sittings. He’s off to Long Island with Larry for the weekend and involved in some new possible theater projects.
I got a letter from Tom, who seems okay back in New Orleans. His little niece is 
The fall seems a long way away to me.[tc-mark]