Someone With a Pen: Richard Grayson’s Diary

Wednesday, January 21, 1998

9 PM. Early this morning I got an e-mail titled “Survival” from Tom about his hearing:

Survived. 3 hours. Child being removed from program. Mother can now do her worst. My performance not at top form in the first act, but I saved my best for the final act and had tears in the Area Super’s eyes (and mine, too, it goes without saying). Union and my brother there. Bless you for your help. You and Tim and Stu my main support during this ordeal. I know it’s not over, but I think the worst of it is.

If Tom has survived, I doubt President Clinton will – not the revelation that came out today that indicates he may have pressured a White House intern he had an affair with to lie about her relationship with him in her deposition in the Paula Jones sexual harassment suit.

After 3½ years and $34 million, it looks as if the special prosecutor, Ken Starr, finally came up with some credible criminal charges against the President – suborning perjury, obstructing justice – even if Starr used underhanded methods, and the woman who taped conversations with the girl, Monica, had a political motive.

The Clinton-haters will finally get their wish. Republicans are already talking impeachment. I assume Clinton would resign before that. I never was much of a Clinton fan, and I think the guy succeeded as much because of his faults as his virtues, but who wants the country to go through another mess?

Nobody really cares about the affair except the usual Clinton-haters, but this sounds real. At 5 PM, I heard Clinton on NPR and saw him an hour later on PBS, and I just have the feeling it’s all over even though this could drag on for months.

I don’t like Gore very much, but at least he doesn’t have Clinton’s character flaws, and as President, he might be able to win in 2000. He should pick a woman (Dianne Feinstein is the obvious choice) or an African-American (Colin Powell, even if he is a Republican) to nominate as Vice President.

If the end of the Clinton administration is coming, I hope it comes quickly. Remember 1974? After Nixon resigned, it seemed as if the economy collapsed into recession all at once, but it had only been that nobody was paying attention. The same things could happen now although everyone seems to be upbeat about Asia this week.

Anyway, I saw the story on AOL this morning but didn’t realize its significance until tonight. I’m sort of bummed out. I don’t know why. Perhaps I identify with Clinton and fear that my best times are behind me, too.

Teresa wrote that she spent last weekend at a spa, a former bungalow colony near Liberty, with Pam, and they had a ball. They both lost three pounds, and Teresa’s “added some macrobiotic elements” to her diet.

She’s got a big weekend coming up, and then no catering business for the next month. She and Paul finished fixing up the building on the lumber yard site that they rented to the organic birdseed distributor.

Camille and Teresa are going to visit Teresa’s “cousin” in London in early March after Camille returns from her Ecuador trip. And she learned that Cat is coming back from Tucson to live on Long Island again, though not much more than that.

While I was on AOL, I also wrote to Patrick, who said Vicki’s a finalist for the FAU fiction writer job; I hope she gets it.

This afternoon I went to the Galleria and bought Mom the expensive Alexandra de Markoff Countess Isserlyn makeup (96½) she uses. I charged it to my Neiman-Marcus card, and Mom gave me a check for $47.50, which I’ll deposit when my unemployment check comes later this week.

Gianni wasn’t in The Gap, and tonight I learned that he went home “sick” at 1:45 PM. He needed to have his hair redone after he’d washed it and undid the twisting.

Gianni has now decided to go ahead and do all he can to get his modeling career started. He’s realistic enough to understand that he doesn’t have the South Beach look and that if he is to get work, he’ll probably have to go to New York or Europe.

I don’t know anything about the world of fashion modeling, and so I don’t have the ability to gauge how likely Gianni is to succeed. But I agree that he has nothing to lose. Still, by his own admission, he seems to have made a lot of impulsive decisions that turned out badly.

I didn’t know the details about the car until after he got back from Maryland, and I don’t understand how he could have made a bad situation worse.

Is his being with me just another example of Gianni’s poor judgment? I’d hate to think so.

We spoke on the phone twice tonight, and I guess I’m a little worried for him. As I said, I don’t know what career path fashion models follow, but I’m sure more people dream about being one than actually succeed at making even a modest living.

Still, the same could be said for writers, and I know that Gianni is ambitious and fairly thorough. He hasn’t discussed modeling with Alejandro, and of course his career decisions will definitely affect their relationship.

Me? Six weeks from tonight I’ll be in California, uncertain when I’ll return to Florida.

Hey, I can hardly believe that myself. I guess I don’t know where I’m going exactly, either – but I, too, am pursuing my dream.

Tonight I filled out for myself the same FAFSA financial aid form that filled out for Jade last May when Paul and Teresa asked me to help with it. I guess I do expect to get into one of the three J-schools I applied to: probably Arizona State. But even that’s not certain.

Well, whatever happens, I’ve got to trust that everything is working out according to some plan the universe has for me.

Remember, this time last year, I was afraid 1997 would be a disaster once I left Gainesville, but the best part of the year happened after April: those happy days at Ragdale, on Long Island, and in Williamsburg; my Times op-ed piece and more publications; making a go of it as an adjunct in South Florida; meeting Gianni; and even getting through Dad’s heart attack.

If I have flaws in my character, the way Bill Clinton does, they’ll bring me down too, but that will be part of a learning and growing experience. I know I can’t say, as Josh and Crad have at times, that my life is over – not until I’m on my deathbed.

I’ll hang onto life tenaciously, if only to find out what twists and turns the plot will take. . . I feel Gianni is like me in that regard. But I have the great advantage of twice his life experience.

---

Sunday, January 25, 1998

4:30 PM. At 10 PM last night, Gianni said, “this evening hasn’t turned out as I planned.” It got off to an inauspicious start when I drove Gianni to Sawgrass Mills, thinking we’d go to the Rainforest Cafe.

Weeks ago he had told me that he hates malls, but I didn’t realize how sulky he was going to get. And when we finally found the restaurant and discovered we had a half-hour wait, of course I could do nothing right.

We ended up going to eat at Kanton Kanton, but he was silent during most of dinner, as he’d been in the car.

Although I was frustrated, I tried gamely to be pleasant and chat, only ending up as a boring monologist. When we got home, it felt only worse.

He sat in a chair smoking, his body language telling me that he wished he was somewhere else, and I felt uncomfortable in my own apartment. I didn’t know what to do to make him warm up.

Finally he began to tell me that he’d talked to a lot of friends in trouble that day, and that was what was on his mind.

He’d also spoken to Jack and another guy he’d once seen, and he told me how he hated to hear about men that his ex-boyfriends were was seeing.

Gianni said his experiences with Alejandro and me had made him see he never wants to get involved with a bisexual man.

Even though I denied being bi, the fact that I’ve been with women, Gianni said, “makes me physically sick” – although he added the Seinfeldian “not that there’s anything wrong with it.”

Gianni has this huge gap between what he believes and how he behaves. For example, he stressed how important fidelity is to him, both on his part and that of Alejandro. But he’s ultra-suspicious and jealous, and with good reason, based on his own behavior with me.

I told him maybe it would be better if he didn’t stay the night and unless something changed, we should just be totally platonic friends.

Then I put on a video and asked him to watch it with me – clearly something he had no interest in. He said that my ability to move so effortlessly from a relationship that included intimacy to a non-physical one bothered him enormously.

Writing this now, I see that Gianni is a crazy-maker. He’s probably coming over again tonight because we did end up having a nice night together, but I’m getting relieved that Alejandro is coming home in a few days.

Look, I’m not jealous; it never bothered me in the least that Sean was sleeping with Doug and other guys, and unlike Gianni, I certainly have no problem being with the current partners or spouses of ex-lovers.

To me, it’s all a rational calculus, and when a relationship starts to give you more pain and confusion than pleasure and joy, it’s time to modify it or end it.

Anyway, Gianni eventually warmed up and started getting affectionate, explaining that he hadn’t given me any new information that night.

We ended up having probably our hottest sexual experience, partly, I believe, a result of the tension and even anger between us. We got just rough enough with each other to make things interesting, I guess. Is that sick? Not that we were more than jokingly hostile.

We went to bed after I took up the sheets from the couch and we had a good night although, as usual, I felt squished at the end of the bed as Gianni sprawled his 6”2’ body in the middle of the mattress.

We slept really late for us – 8:30 AM or so – and he said he wanted to go home and “be” – and I was glad because I needed the time to myself too, to read the Sunday Times and to do laundry.

While Gianni and I are close, I’m beginning to think that this whole relationship is going to end in a mess. He’s far too – to use his own term – “high maintenance” from me. Not that I’m uncomplicated, but I need to deal with someone who’s not so moody, self-contradictory and brooding.

I do like it when we kid each other, him calling me on how loudly I speak and the way I say “What?” (Sean did that, too) and my imitating him: “To be quite honest…”

It is great to share not just sex but that emotional intimacy. On the other hand, if Gianni and I had remained just platonic friends, he’d probably try harder – and so would I – to avoid the kind of difficulties we had for most of last evening.

Lowering barriers seems to also mean dropping the facade of smiling and being pleasant when you’re not feeling pleasant.

This morning I stopped off at Mom’s, watching This Week with Sam and Cokie on ABC, where the saturnine commentators are already saying Clinton may resign as early as this week.

The “all-Monica, all the time” feeding frenzy of the media is reaching ludicrous and distasteful levels. Unlike Mom and Gianni, I wish Clinton would just disappear already.

---

Monday, January 26, 1998

11 AM. I had a wonderful evening with Gianni last night although we had a ferocious argument.

But it was an argument about ideas and religion, involving the doctrine of original sin and transubstantiation (which he’d never heard of) and my charge that he was a cafeteria Catholic, taking what he liked from the religion and ignoring the rest of it.

Gianni knows that I have much more “book learning” than he does, but he counters that faith, not intellectual experience, is more germane.

I love the fact that he won’t let me win arguments and that we keep learning stuff about each other. It wasn’t until last night that I fully understood that Gianni accepts Jesus as his savior and believes in a literal heaven and hell and in sin.

Nor did he realize, Gianni said, how “how scientific and logical” I was, that “knowledge is your God.”

By then it was late, and our discussion segued into lovemaking on the couch. It wasn’t quite as passionate as the night before, but it was fine in every sense. I’ve become accustomed to his body lying next to mine.

Nevertheless, once he fell asleep, try as I did, I couldn’t rouse him to come into the bedroom with me. So I ended up sleeping by myself, which probably led me to have a more restful night.

Gianni got under the covers next to me only at 6 AM, and he left soon thereafter, to avoid rush-hour traffic.

Last evening he arrived at 6 PM, and soon afterwards  came the pizza delivery that I’d ordered on his instructions; Gianni paid for it.

We ate together, and although I took off all the sausage and most of the cheese, it was fun to eat real pizza again.

He needed to call Alejandro in Uruguay after dinner, so I went into the bedroom, closed the door and put on a jazz show on the radio so I wouldn’t hear their conversation.

I was as happy as a bivalve, reading a New York Times Magazine article on the post-politics era where all of us (or at least the ones who count) are shareholding investors rather than citizens.

I’m convinced that the only thing that will stir us enough to stop hating government, worshipping the markets, and ignoring the growing economic inequality is a huge stock market collapse followed by a depression or very serious recession.

Yesterday I paid 99¢ a gallon for gas for the first time since 1986, and that’s not a good thing.

I don’t think that Clinton will survive the scandal, but I’m beginning to feel the media overkill is so sleazy (the New York Post headline screamed: “Hundreds of Lovers!”) that we’re in a rush to judgment, a kind of hysterical frenzy like McCarthyism and the puffed-up patriotism of the Gulf War.

It also seems like the idea of an independent counsel and the legal doctrines surrounding sexual harassment need to be looked at seriously because they have led to this kind of criminalization of sexual activity.

After he called Alejandro, Gianni requested fifteen minutes to get stuff off his chest. Earlier, he’d accidentally come across Alejandro ‘s divorce agreement, or a modification of it, and he thought it was suspicious that Alejandro’s ex-wife was paying him alimony.

Gianni took me up on my offer to search Lexis property records for Alejandro and his ex-wife – the same records, of course, that led to his accusing me of violating his privacy when I discovered his parents’ names.

He was upset about discrepancies on what he learned from the legal documents and Alejandro’s stories, and he even snooped further, calling AOL to get Alejandro’s password and discovering emails Alejandro sent a gay guy in Fort Lauderdale (his member profile provided that info) while Gianni was in Maryland.

Alejandro had called at 8 PM Saturday and 8 AM Sunday, and getting Gianni’s machine, asked, “Where did you sleep last night?”

Gianni was most upset that Alejandro is not supportive – indeed, he’s quite negative about – Gianni’s desire to go to Europe to break into modeling.

“He says that his traveling abroad is for our relationship, but my going away is for me alone,” Gianni fumed.

When I suggested that Gianni seemed to be looking for things to make Alejandro look bad – the transfer of property from Alejandro and his ex-wife to her alone was a very common divorce strategy of tax avoidance, I told him – Gianni admitted that he and Alejandro need to talk seriously when Alejandro comes home.

Although I cautioned Gianni not to overwhelm Alejandro with everything just after he gets off the plane, Gianni is not one for taking things slowly.

---

Friday, January 30, 1998

9 PM. This is going to be a quiet weekend. For one thing, I have to rest the injury that I aggravated by walking so much during the week. Last weekend my groin hurt, and when I mentioned it to Gianni, he just joked about my being a hypochondriac.

But I kept trying to walk, and that really long walk on Tuesday mad it much worse, to the point where it hurts when I put pressure on my left foot when I walk.

I talked to Dad and researched it on the computer: it’s a common adductor (inner thigh) sprain or a “groin pull.” Between that and my recurring right shoulder problem and my teeth, which often hurt, I feel that my body is fast deteriorating.

Last night Gianni returned my phone call and asked me to meet him at Borders at 11 AM today. He was fifteen minutes late, but I was busy reading the San Jose Mercury News to get a feel for Silicon Valley. It was chilly outside on the patio, so we sat in the sun for a couple of hours.

Gianni surprised me last night by saying he was going to New York on Saturday, and I still don’t understand why he’s going. (“Photos,” he said.) He said he had an interview at a South Beach salon yesterday and has another interview on Wednesday.

The salon, Paula’s, is upscale but unpretentious, and if hired, he’d be the assistant to the owner, Paula, who does only coloring. (That’s very rare, Gianni said.)

He decided that the season in Europe doesn’t begin until June, and he’s really not ready to go there without enough money.

His parents agreed to give him $3,000, but if he gets this job, he’ll get rid of the car (actually, he needs to do that in any case) and move to South Beach, where he can walk to work, network, and get into the scene there.

Last night he went to a party and met some people in the fashion/modeling world. I remarked that I would have thought that’s where he would have headed when he first arrived in South Florida last summer.

Gianni said he really doesn’t want to live with anyone, and he’d made mistakes, first by moving in with Kelly (as best friends, they eventually needed more space from one another), then with Rob in Pompano, and then with Alejandro.

Anyway, he said he wrote down everything he plans to do, with alternate possibilities, as he was just about to go to The Gap to quit his job since there was no point in driving all that way for a job that wasn’t paying much and led nowhere.

We spent the last half-our in one of our debates about abortion and criminal law. Gianni seems very judgmental to me, but I guess that’s partly because of his youth and he’ll mellow and have more compassion for others with problems not of their own making after he has some of his own setbacks.

It did seem as though he were a little cooler today. I’m embarrassed to say that at first I thought maybe the trip to New York was just an excuse to get away from Alejandro and that my second thought was that New York was an excuse not to see me – but he could have just told me he wanted to take a break, right?

Why does love – or whatever it is I feel for Gianni – make me think like that? If he didn’t want to see me today, he certainly didn’t have to. And despite his interview on Wednesday, he still wants to drive me to the airport, though I’d be happy to take a cab.

I guess Gianni would be crazy not to pull back from the intensity we’ve shared in this month since I’m about to desert him. And it’s not as if I’m not making plans for the future that don’t include him.

Last night, at the Nova library, I got on the Web and printed out maps of the area surrounding Villa Montalvo and Libby and Grant’s in Woodland Hills.

I also found the names of the other resident artists who’ll be at Villa Montalvo in March, all of whom who will have been there since January or February: two visual artists, Elizabeth Ingraham and Michael Gallagher; the composer Joelle Wallach, and the playwright Paige Evans.

Today I got a change of address form at the post office and threw out some more junk I’ll probably never wear.

“You’ll probably grow a lot from your trip,” Gianni said, but right at the moment I feel I don’t know what I’m doing. Will this long trip out west be like one of those impulsive decisions Gianni made that turned out to be a mistake?

After all, I haven’t yet thought all this through, and the money cushion I’ll be relying on is basically $6,000 or so in the bank and another $10,000 in unsecured credit card lines.

Still, how can I not do this? It’s not as if I hadn’t planned this for months. It will be scary but also exhilarating – and Gianni’s right: if I do get through it, I’m bound to experience growth.