Someone With a Pen: Richard Grayson’s Diary

Saturday, November 1, 1997

8 PM. I slept deeply last night from 8:30 PM to 6:30 PM, mostly because sinuses were really clogged. I exercised at 7 AM and left the apartment an hour later for the Nova campus.

When my Business, Government and Society students were slow in showing up, I decided to start off by showing The Politics of Trees, the Bill Moyers PBS show from his Listening to America series.

After that, I lectured on the two chapters on the environment and pollution control. It was a good class, and I was out by noon.

When I visited the house, Dad was on the couch, lying down and watching TV the way he always does. He asked if I could pick up his paycheck at the store in Coral Springs on my way back from Boca Raton on Monday, but I decided I’d do it today.

So after lunch at my apartment, I drove up to the Coral Square Mall and got the check from the manager, Norman, who’s the first person ever to tell me that I “look just like” my father.

It was almost a pleasure to drive up and even to walk around the mall. With all my teaching and Dad’s heart attack and angioplasty and everything, I’ve had so little time to relax and do “normal” things lately.

Dad was both surprised and grateful when I returned with his check. He said he feels a little tired, but this morning he took his first shower since he had the heart attack. Mom was finally able to find the medication he was prescribed, and Dad, so far, doesn’t seem to be in danger of overdoing things.

Marc begins a job as an $8-an-hour exterminator on Monday. At the hospital the other night, Dad told me about Marc’s job, which he got from a friend of Lew.

Speaking of jobs, Richard Kostelanetz sent me a draft of his Year-End Report, most of which dealt with his not getting the arts “super-chair” at Florida Atlantic University. He still thinks I’m in Gainesville. I guess it’s ironic that I’m the one teaching at FAU, albeit as an adjunct.

Kosti seems to have no idea how he comes off, so I’m not surprised he misjudged his chances to get the endowed chair. But I relish his descriptions of FAU as a backwater third-tier university. It really isn’t a very good school at all, especially for someone who’s just been at the University of Florida.

FAU isn’t even at the level of the University of Central Florida or Florida International University, much less UF, Florida State, or the University of South Florida; it takes students with lower GPAs and test scores.

The English Department seems moldy, even for an English Department. As far as I can tell, the people in the Liberal Arts Department at Nova are so much more contemporary, and that’s not saying much.

Poor Kostelanetz: I’m actually surprised he was one of five finalists for such a prestigious chair, though he probably would be an inspired choice if only he could control his solipsism, naïveté and egoism.

I got the North Central Florida Human Rights Council Guardian, which highlighted the hearings on a sexual orientation anti-discrimination law before a committee of the Gainesville City Commission that consisted of Bruce Delaney and Pegeen Hanrahan. There will be more hearings and probably a vote in the winter.

After I left my parents’ house, I dropped off the videos and the Skip Gates audiobook at the Davie library and went to Publix on Orange and University for some major grocery shopping.

Home at 3:30 PM, I read the newspaper and went on AOL. Annette answered for Tom and told me that Lolis Eric Elie at least mentioned The Newcomer’s Guide to the Afterlife in his Times-Picayune column yesterday – I saw it on Nexis – before Tom’s reading tomorrow at Barnes & Noble. That’s something, even if Lolis never actually read the little book.

I also returned e-mail from Elihu and a couple of other people. I thought that tonight I’d have lots of time to catch up on things I’ve been meaning to do, but right now I already feel sleepy. Well, I’ll lie down for a bit.

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Tuesday, November 4, 1997

Noon. After voting this morning, I went over to see my parents, and while I was sitting at the table with them, Dad started to complain about the same wavy lines in his peripheral vision that he’d had when he felt sick in the store.

Naturally, we were all thinking that it could be a stroke, and I said they should call the cardiologist, who told Dad to come in at 1:30 PM.

Dad began getting panicky: the blood drained from his face, he was in a cold sweat and started shivering and moaning about how he wished he would have died and how terrible it was to get old.

He expressed the fear that he’d have to go to the hospital again, a prospect which terrified him.

All those feelings seem quite natural to me, but as his eye problem cleared up, other stuff he said was telling: how he can’t stop worrying about how he can survive financially and the fact that he’s never gone to an eye doctor in his life. (Mom said she hasn’t gone in years.)

Jonathan has to work this afternoon, but Marc is home, having found after one day that being an exterminator is not for him. Of course, China can’t be left alone in the house, so either Marc or Mom will have to take Dad to the doctor while the other stays in Davie.

As I have stuff to do this afternoon, I left the house after I was sure Dad was in no immediate danger.

When Mom started to complain about my leaving, I would have loved to have the nerve to say to her, “Tell me, where were you the four years your mother was in a nursing home on Long Island? You didn’t visit her once, nor did you come up to New York every time one of your parents were hospitalized. If I’m an uncaring child, I’ve had a role model in my mother.”

But of course I just left without responding.

*

Midnight. Dad’s eye problem turned out to be the start of a cataract, which the cardiologist said Dad would have to take care of eventually, but not immediately. He said strokes don’t begin with that kind of symptom.

Otherwise, Dad is recovering nicely. Dr. Warner said Dad could begin driving (and so he drove home from the doctor’s office in Tamarac) and that he should start walking 20 minutes every day and add on an extra five minutes every week.

When I visited them after my evening class at Nova ended, both Mom and Dad were both calm and relaxed. But I now understand there’s a lot involved in the recovery from a heart attack: depression is common, as is fear of another attack.

I spent the afternoon a bit more anxious than I would have liked until Marc called at 3 PM, after Dad had phoned him from Tamarac. But I did prepare for class, read most of the paper, got out the first part of my University of Maryland application, sent away for the transcripts from Brooklyn College, and did two loads of laundry.

Good news arrived via e-mail from Pete Cherches: Smithsonian wants to publish his dissertation although they’ve asked him to expand on several chapters.

I feel happy for Pete, who’s worked hard and deserves something good to come out of all his efforts. I e-mailed back, asking him not to forget us little people.

My evening class at Nova went fine: I lectured on warrants in argumentative writing and let my mind wander a bit to a variety of subjects I think the students found interesting.

At my parents’, I dropped off some résumés for Marc that I made up at school with the computer and photocopy machine, and I picked up my mail, which included a sweet, cheery postcard from Carolyn in Rome, filled with praise for my New York Times piece “from a Jersey girl.”

(Why do Jerseyites say they’re from Jersey, Carolyn wondered, when people from New York never say they’re from York?)

I also got the issue of Onionhead featuring “Willie 95” in an incredibly tiny typeface. (When I went to Office Depot to xerox the six pages of text, I enlarged the copies by 135% to make them more legible.)

Still, it’s the first story in print in six months if you count the Blue Moon Review’s “Spaghetti Language,” which appeared in May on the Web.

This guy Steven replied to my two-week-old AOL ad, and while I’m absolutely positive nothing will come of it, he did sound intelligent.

Steven said that he could tell from my reply to him that I was a good person, “not like most of the trash on AOL.” He’s right about that.

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Friday, November 7, 1997

10 PM. I woke up early today, as usual, but since I did half an hour of abdominal exercises yesterday evening, I didn’t rush to get out of bed and work out.

I didn’t even put in my lenses this morning and instead dressed in my glasses. I wore my expensive green plaid Tommy Hilfiger shirt, which I got three years ago, over Levis and I felt I looked fine.

Before class, I chatted with Scott Stoddart, asking him about HEAL, the Nova student group whose position is that HIV doesn’t cause AIDS and it’s all a big scam by doctors and insurers. Scott said he’s been active in the AIDS community for years and he’s seen the film this group shows, which is the work of one crackpot physician.

In Language 1500, we went over Ellison’s “Battle Royal,” and while it went okay, it’s impossible to get people to discuss race honestly. The lone black girl in the class never talks, and I wasn’t going to put her on the spot today.

At FAU later in the morning, I saw Dr. Murtagh as I went into the English Department office to check my mailbox, and I invited him to observe my class. He couldn’t make it today but will come on Monday.

Years ago I would have tried to avoid being observed, but I welcome it now. What’s the worst that can happen? The class will be terrible and he’ll think I’m a lousy teacher. Big deal.

But if it’s good, he’ll get to see me doing good work for him and maybe give me a chance for the full-time job opening, which I probably don’t want.

I did have a good session with my Creative Writing students today; they’re getting sharper and sharper as critics. Shayna wanted to tell me why she’s missed so many classes (her brother’s wedding was one excuse) and said it won’t happen in the future.

I’ve never heard so many excuses as I have this term, and I seem to have more fuck-ups than usual, like the ones who can’t meet deadlines for papers. I got only six or seven papers from the Nova class today, but that means less work for me this weekend.

Back home from Boca at 12:30 PM, I spent the afternoon reading the paper, going online, exercising, and watching All My Children.

Later, at the Davie library, I dropped off the video from last night and the Thurber book, and at the post office, I mailed out a new submission to Another Chicago Magazine, which yesterday rejected “Anything But Sympathy,” but nicely; they felt it was too long.

Tom reported that only fifteen people showed at his Sunday reading at Barnes & Noble. He knew five of them, and the others were looking for spiritual enlightenment.

Tom invited me to NOCCA to do an afternoon workshop and a morning session as a guest on February 6 for $100 and plane fare. It will be good to see Tom again and to meet Annette and visit New Orleans for the first time in three years.

I left the apartment at 6:20 PM, just missing a call from Ronna, who said she’ll be in and out this weekend. Nobody was home when I got to my parents’, but soon after I arrived, Mom and Dad pulled up with China and their Italian dinner.

I went in ahead to get my mail, and when I saw a big envelope from the Ucross Foundation in Wyoming, I knew I’d gotten a residency. “Congratulations!” the letter began.

I haven’t really looked at all the material yet, but my dates are for six weeks between April 27 and June 5.

So that takes care of May; now I need to figure out what to do between Villa Montalvo, which ends on March 28, and April 27, when I go to Ucross. I guess I’d like to stay out West that month and do something.

Although Wyoming looks so beautiful, I’m a bit scared about going there. I’m not used to the wide-open spaces far from any decent-sized city. And I’ll have to give up my New York Times and AOL addictions and all the other rituals and routines I fill up my life with.

In a couple of my stays at colonies in 1984 (Millay) and 1987 (MacDowell), I wasn’t very productive, and now I’m scared I won’t accomplish much at Villa Montalvo and Ucross, either.

What I need to do is go there with a plan, not some vague hope of figuring out what to write about when I get there. Anyway, I’m really excited. This means I’ll give up the apartment at the end of February, lease or no lease.

I showed my parents in their world atlas where Ucross was: far away from any city with jetliner service. (All of us need to use the magnifying glass to look at a map these days.)

Dad seemed to blink, as if he was completely unaware of any plan Mom has for them to move to Arizona after she mentioned that they had to give up the house. It reminded of the way people with Alzheimer’s look when they’re uncomprehending.

Dad can’t even seem to believe that Jonathan will be moving to Flagstaff in a few months. But later, when I spoke to Jonathan as he ate dinner after he returned from work (Dad had already left the table), I was convinced that he is serious about leaving Florida.

Mom said that Flagstaff is too cold for her and Dad, but if she’s going to move somewhere, she’d at least like to be in Phoenix, within a few hours’ drive of Jonathan. I don’t know if Marc will end up staying with my parents or not.

Mom isn’t moving so fast. The way she said it to me is, “Right now, I can’t deal with any changes.”

She had a different look than Dad’s incomprehension and befuddlement: that of a deer frozen in headlights. However, she shows less denial than Dad about the financial necessity to move. (It occurs to me that denial is an anagram of Daniel.)

While Dad is recovering from his heart attack, I don’t want to push them, but it’s frustrating to see them avoid reality as they have for the past few months (the past fifty years?).

I went to Walmart and then to Publix. Coming home at 9:30 PM, I had a bowl of Frosted Cheerios.

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Monday, November 10, 1997

4 PM. I’ve had a headache all day, and it doesn’t seem to be responding to the Tylenol. Although I tried to ignore it for as long as possible, the intermittent sticking pain in the back of my neck grew so insistent as I drove home from Boca that I took Tylenol the first thing when I got it into the house.

I’ve also tried sinus medicine although this feels different from my usual sinus headache. I hope it doesn’t make teaching difficult tonight.

I don’t think it’s anything serious, but a minute ago I had the hypochondriacal notion that it’s a brain tumor that will cause me to have a seizure while I’m dying. Oops, I meant driving. More likely, it’s just the result of stress, sinuses and a lack of sleep.

Steven called last night in the middle of The Simpsons and again half an hour later; both times I let the phone ring and he hung up when the machine came on.

He called again when I got into bed at 9 PM and I stayed on the line with him for an hour. I’m not experienced in knowing how to reject someone, and it seems the less interested I act, the more interested Steven gets.

Human nature is so perverse. I tend to say outrageous things to him because I don’t care what he thinks of me, yet that only has seemed to make me more attractive to him – at least so far.

I don’t know how to discourage him, and I guess I’m flattered by the attention the way I was in August with Michael – who stopped calling soon after I took the initiative with him by pressing him to see me.

This morning my Nova class went fine, and afterwards I headed straight for FAU, where I graded four of the dozen papers I got at 8 AM.

Dan Murtaugh observed my creative writing class workshop a Holocaust poem, “The Cry of Jacob Stein,” by Kristina. Although it wasn’t the best class we’ve had, it wasn’t the worst, either. Perhaps Murtaugh thought our discussion was formless; I guess I’ll find out when I read his evaluation.

Maybe he can actually tell me what I should be doing better – if I can refrain from being defensive at his criticism.

At home, I read half of today’s Times and did laundry.

Ronna phoned at 2 PM and we chatted for 20 minutes. She’s very busy these days, having begun to work at home two days a week while she’s taking care of the baby, Chelsea, and her mother, who was in physical and occupational therapy as we were speaking.

Matthew is as busy as ever with his administrative work at the hospital – the job of selecting new residents begins now – but at least he’s no longer on call, as he was in September and October.

Ronna said that Jordan is now practicing law at a firm in Philadelphia near his new downtown home. We marveled that we are now older than our parents were when we were in college.