Someone With a Pen: Richard Grayson’s Diary

Saturday, February 21, 1998

2 PM. Late yesterday I got a call that I was one of three finalists for the Herald’s Black History Month essay contest. As with the New York Times taking my letter on the ripeness doctrine and the line item veto, this doesn’t surprise me; I’d thought about it ahead of time.

On Wednesday evening I have to read the essay aloud at an elementary school. The Herald will publish only the winners in the three kids’ categories and the adult one, and I know that I won’t win.

As a white person, I shouldn’t win. I’m a little concerned with the reaction will be that I’m even a finalist and whether people will be hostile or kind of shocked that I’m a white man. I guess it will make for an interesting experience to write about.

I’ve done a fair amount of getting ready to move so far today: I’ve thrown out a lot, and I’ve taken several boxes over to my parents’ garage. It still seems endless, but if forced to, I could get out in 24 hours.

I e-mailed Gianni a birthday card – I’d used different colors and a giant font – soon after I got up at 5 AM, and at 9 AM he called to thank me.

He was about to go to work, but he sounded exhausted: “We worked the Todd Oldham benefit at Liquid [a club] last night, and it was exciting, but I got home very late.”

After Gianni said he would phone tomorrow, I wished him a happy birthday. I think being at Stella is just what he needs: to work on his career and to have access to all the glamour of South Beach’s beauty and fashion industries.

Knowing people there will help him get modeling jobs more than any agency that he comes to without connections, and he’ll meet and live in the kind of world he wants to.

After a couple of months, he’ll be a South Beach regular, and after a year, an institution.

Certainly that world is very different from my world, but it is Gianni’s world and he’ll be happy there. I feel relieved that I can go away without excessively worrying about him. We’ve known each other about three months now, and I know the guy pretty well.

This morning I drove up to Boca to see if the paper had run my column, but at the public library, I discovered it hadn’t, not yet anyway. Oh well, I’ll try again before I leave.

Sat Darshan e-mailed that she’s unable to meet me during my change of planes at Sky Harbor Airport. That’s just as well, since I won’t have much time there and probably would be terrible company, given my anxiety about my stay at Villa Montalvo.

Tomorrow Marc is coming over with Jonathan’s van and we’ll move out my full-size bed from the bedroom and swap it for the old, lumpy queen-size bed from his room in our parents’ house.

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Monday, February 23, 1998

4 PM. Forgive me if this sounds melodramatic – something Gianni accused me of – or confused, but I’m very upset. My stomach hurts the way it does only from stress.

When I turned on my computer in mid-afternoon and Windows wouldn’t go on, DOS kept asking me for a command.com line and nothing helped.

Frantic, I rushed the machine, like a sick child with a fever, to the emergency room: in this case, the paraplegic guy who runs Software & More. He said I need to reinstall Windows 95, which I’d removed without uninstalling it.

The hard disk drive didn’t crash; my programs are still in there, but I need to reinstall Win 95. The trouble is I never had a copy and I have only 8M of memory.

I came home, still upset, and called Gianni because he was due in an hour.

“You’re going to hate me,” he began, and I knew what was coming: he was too busy to come over today as he’d said he would.

(When I called him at 9 AM, he said he’d call back at 10 AM, and when he didn’t, I called him again at 10:30 AM, when we were going to arrange getting together.)

Despite his opening remark, he became offended because I was brusque, and so I just hung up. Later I called and left a message on his voicemail, saying I’d felt used and rejected.

He phoned me back and we talked, but it really didn’t solve anything, and right now I don’t plan to take him up on his offer to call him if I want to try to get together one night this week.

I don’t feel like seeing him again – or I do, badly, but only if he could be different than I how he’ll actually be. Crazy, huh?

Now he’s angry with me for hanging up on him. He said he called back only because I’m going away and that he knew I was upset about my computer trouble.

Frankly, I feel so messed up that I don’t know what I’m feeling, and I’m at a disadvantage because Gianni feels less than I do – whatever he says.

Of course, if he did use me, I let myself be used. The phrase “If you don’t want to be a doormat, don’t lay down in front of the fucking door” rings in my head from some old memory.

Gianni seemed surprised when I told him that I was upset that he’d called twice over the weekend just to ask me questions and never said anything like, “How’s it going?” or told me about his new job or his life.

All the time Alejandro was away and he needed companionship I provided it – not to mention the sex. And I listened to him go on and on about the problems in his life every time we got together. Rarely did I get a chance to talk about my own feelings.

Perhaps I’m wrong, but I can’t help thinking that now that Gianni has Alejandro and a job, he feels he can discard me. True, I’m the one who’s going away, and on some level he may feel that’s a kind of rejection.

Anyway, I don’t think either of us is a bad person or set out to use the other one; probably this is the relationship coming to a natural end. We helped each other through a weird time in both our lives, and now it’s over.

I’m still stressed out by the moving and the computer – whose problems I can’t deal with now. Tomorrow I’ll take it to CompUSA.

*

Midnight. I’m lying in the bed in the living room, thinking far too much about my relationship with Gianni, wishing that it never happened, going through all sorts of confused feelings, not knowing if everything I believed was a total lie, if anything about our friendship was genuine, if he’s insensitive or cruel or dense, or if I’m way too oversensitive, neurotic and self-destructive.

At this point I just wish it would stop hurting. I’ve had too many imaginary conversations with him. My back started aching, and I figured it was the bed last night, so I’m back in this little bed in the living room.

Early in the evening, I decided to go to the poetry reading at Broward Community College-South. Igor also came, and Peter Meinke remembered me, and Barbara hugged me, and I saw old acquaintances like Magi Schwartz, Lenny DellaRocca, Gary Kay, and Dave Shaw and his wife Roberta.

That felt good, and it was wonderful to sit and listen to Peter’s poetry when I could get my mind to stop going back to Gianni.

Although it was invited to a pub with Barbara, Peter, Magi, Alyssa and a few others, I decided to come home at 9 PM and watch the second night of the miniseries The Wedding, based on Dorothy West’s novel about the black bourgeoisie on Martha’s Vineyard. I cried during the movie, and that felt good.

Hey, I hurt. Did I set myself up for this? Undoubtedly I saw what I wanted to see about Gianni, and I’m more angry with myself than him for believing in my illusions.

Just as I sent the Valentine I got for him to Kevin, I’m sending his birthday card (“I was going to give you all my love for your birthday . . . But you already have that”) to Mom and his present (the Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway tape) to Marc.

Perhaps Gianni is right to be mystified as to what changed. But I feel the way I feel. It will take time and distance to sort it all out.

A week from now I’ll be six hours away from being on an airplane to California. I just wish it would hurry up and get here.

I’ve got a lot to do during the next week, and I need to focus on that. I just want to stop thinking about Gianni.

There’s no way I’ll call him unless my feelings change radically – and given how volatile I am now, they might – but I hope I don’t speak with him, and I certainly don’t want to see him.

I feel as if whenever he needed me, I was there for him, listening endlessly to his talk about problems and plans and modeling and salons and Alejandro and Gianni Gianni Gianni.

Still, I can’t blame him for anything: I went into this as someone who knows or should know better. What does it say about a guy who moves in with a new partner and then sleeps with someone else that very week?

Like all fools in love, I believed he wanted to be with me because I was special. Let’s face it: if Gianni had been the person I wished he were, he never would have slept with me in the first place.

Loneliness made me vulnerable, and the physical and emotional intimacy I got seemed very real and comforting. Maybe part of it even was real. I just want to stop thinking about it because it’s not getting me anywhere.

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Wednesday, February 25, 1998

10 PM. My funk started to lift about this time last night when the phone rang. It was Kevin in L.A. He wanted to tell me that he quit his job at Warner Bros. Records that morning, giving only three days’ notice.

We’d talked about this a lot, and I guess I advised him to do this because I knew how crazy his office was making him. He said his feelings about work were proven right when his boss didn’t try to get him to change his mind.

Kevin’s scared, of course, but he’s still with the temp agency, and he’ll call them tomorrow and hopes he can get a new position soon.

He wanted to tell me, Kevin said, “because you’ve been there for me the whole time.” I’m sure it will work out for Kevin, and I’m looking forward to seeing him in L.A.

After a decent night’s sleep, I was out of the house and over at the Davie Shopping Center by 9 AM. I sent my printer and box of books and papers to Villa Montalvo via UPS at Mailboxes Etc. A few doors down, I got a short haircut in SuperCuts, and then I bought some milk, bananas and sweet potatoes at Publix.

I felt so good when I got home that I did what I said I wouldn’t do: I called Gianni and left a message that I’d be free any night but tonight. If he calls, fine. If he doesn’t, the end of our friendship is his doing.

How could I call him after being so upset on Monday that I was nearly crazy? Well, I think all that upset may have finally gotten him out of my system and that I’ve accepted that he doesn’t feel strongly about me.

Anyway, I’ve got more to do than fret about Gianni. It’s not as if I wanted us to settle down together: we’re not a good long-term couple, and I knew that right away.

After exercising, I showered and had lunch and did laundry. At Mom’s, I put my 1997 diary away in the box holding all my other diaries; it’s in Marc’s room, and I wonder how safe it is.

What would I do if I lost all those diaries, nearly twenty years’ worth? I’d be devastated, but writing them was the important thing. The other day Peter Meinke said he writes for four hours at the same time every day – but this diary is the only writing I’ve consistently done every day.

While I was at my parents’, I also put away some books and papers and I took away a batch of Miami Heralds from their recycling bin. Reading them at home, I discovered my name (and age) in Monday’s paper, about the Black History Month Essay Contest sponsored by the Herald and NBC6.

After I took a half-hour walk and had dinner, I dressed in a suit and tie and went to Walker Elementary in the heart of Fort Lauderdale’s historic Sistrunk Boulevard black neighborhood.

The crowd in the auditorium was mixed racially, and the “oratorical contestants” were mostly non-black (white or Hispanic or Asian, that is).

Because I couldn’t find my essay at home and couldn’t retrieve it from of the computer, I had to get my original from Aline Dodd, the Herald reporter who was running the show.

Larry Olmstead, the paper’s managing editor, an African-American man, made some introductory remarks.

Then they presented “achiever” awards to some senior citizens, kids, and two adorable 7-and 9-year-old Cuban-American brothers who took the essay topic (“What black person in history you would like to have dinner with?”) literally and invited the family of a black friend to their house for dinner. Then the little kids, ages 6-9, read their essays, followed by four 10-year-olds in the 10-12 category.

After two original pieces of choreography by the Walker Elementary Dancers, all girls, there was an intermission for refreshments, during which I met the other white adult finalist, a 61-year-old gabby guy from the Lower East Side who’s retired, disabled and living in senior citizen housing.

When we started again, the 13-17 year-olds and then the adults read the essays, including me with “Dinner with W.E.B. Du Bois.” I knew that the black male lawyer for the sheriff’s department would win for his essay about Sidney Poitier, and the single mother and paralegal who sat next to me would place second for “Dinner with Douglass.”

I was thrilled to get third prize – actually, my plaque says “Outstanding Achievement” – and be a part of it, especially since white or Hispanic students got the children’s category first prizes.

On the way out, I got a Citibank gym bag with a Citibank t-shirt, sports bottle and other Citi-tchotchkes. I’ll watch the 11 PM news on NBC6 to see their story on the event.

Home by 9:40 PM, I caught most of an episode of Ellen in which a character dreams that gay people are the norm and heterosexuals are a minority “lifestyle.”

This sounds corny, but I’m really glad I’m living in a time when diversity isn’t just a cliché but something we experience daily.

Now if that doesn’t show how jejune I am, nothing will.

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Thursday, February 26, 1998

10 PM. I woke up at 7 AM, and after breakfast and I went out and got the Herald, which mentioned my name only in a little box (“Richard Grayson, 46, of Davie”) as tied for third place in the 18-and-up category of the Black History Month Essay Contest.

Still, I called my parents to tell them to look for it; they hadn’t known anything about it.

Later, after I exercised, showered and dressed, I took my suit to the cleaners and sat for ninety minutes in Taco Bell, drinking Diet Pepsi and reading the main section of the New York Times.

I won’t have a mail subscription at Villa Montalvo because the minimum is 13 weeks, but maybe I can get it in Wyoming. Anyway, let’s see if I can shake my Times addiction, though I’m sure I’ll read the paper whenever I can.

I went to the cybercafé near here on University Drive to access AOL, but of my seven messages, most were junk, advertisements or forwards of funny Web stuff from Camille.

The only e-mail worth responding to wasn’t from a friend but from Ross, the San Jose grad student whose ad I answered.

I replied that I didn’t care that he had a boyfriend because I wasn’t interested in a sexual relationship, just a friendship. So much for my being worried about losing e-mail access for three days – though I did write to Tom.

At 3:30 PM, I got my new progressive lenses at Burdines. They are less hard to see out of than I thought, but it’s still going to be difficult to adjust to. I’m not wearing them now, as they hurt my eyes and made me a bit dizzy. But I do think that eventually I’ll be able to get used to them.

Still, I really haven’t solved the problem of my contact lenses and the discomfort of wearing reading glasses with them. Right now it’s still easier for me to do close work without any lenses or glasses, as I am now.

Gianni got here about an hour after he left Stella. He said he’s committed to staying in the job for at least a year. Gianni likes the salon although it’s hard for him to be paying his dues all over again.

There are five colorists, but only two of them work on the floor, and it bothers him to be assisting a guy only a year older than he is, with less training – though Gianni admits the guy’s a natural artist.

Next weekend he’s going to New York for a class and a visit to the Stella salon there. After a year, he hopes to be working back and forth; in the Manhattan salon, they have more customers than the colorists there can handle, so he wouldn’t need to worry about clientele.

Gianni does feel much healthier and more productive now that he’s working: “I’ll never let myself get back to the place I was before I got the job at Stella.”

And now that Alejandro’s put him on the apartment lease, he’s also more secure at home.

In telling me about an old friend whom Gianni learned yesterday had died of an overdose, he said, “There’s a lot you don’t know about me.” Between 14 and 17, he said, he was a cocaine addict and escort service prostitute who was totally estranged from his family.

He never thought he’d live to 18, and he nearly killed himself several times: in car accidents caused by DUI and by OD’ing on Special K (“I remember people talking about what they were going to do with my body if I died”).

It all ended one morning following an after-hours party when he was cutting a line of coke. He’d avoided looking in the mirror before, but suddenly he saw himself just as the radio was playing this song by a gospel-inspired disco group. While he’d heard it before, this was the first time he listened to the lyrics, and that’s when Jesus came into his life.

Gianni realized that he was ruining his life. “I wanted only to use men,” he said, “and if you let me alone in your apartment, I’d steal your cash, credit cards, jewelry, and anything I could get my hands on. I did all this not in some crummy way but traveled in wealthy circles. But we used to say there’s no difference if you do it on a park bench or Park Avenue.”

Right then, he phoned his grandmother, who got him into Sheppard Pratt, the mental hospital where he stayed for four months, first in the ward for multiple addictions, where he detoxed (“That was hard”) and then in the anorexia ward, where his actions were constantly watched.

In the anorexia ward, they got up at 6 AM and showered under supervision; they had to eat everything on their plates at each meal, even the condiments, for if they left out a mayonnaise packet, they’d be forced to eat it by itself afterward.

If they didn’t finish their meals, they’d be locked up with the food for an hour’s quiet time. They couldn’t go to the bathroom at all for ninety minutes after meals. If they didn’t eat solid food, they were forced to drink Metrecal, and they couldn’t exercise away their weight. Eventually, in August 1992, at age 18, Gianni was released.

He said he’d always had many problems. At 14, he thought it was unattractive and needed to prove himself, and that’s how he got started as an escort-prostitute.

I’m glad he told me this in such detail because it explains why he has such vehement views about teenage sexual activity and why he’s a born-again Christian (though he doesn’t call himself one, he did have an epiphany involving Jesus) or why he’s repelled by abortions since his friends used them as birth control.

Anyway, we talked for about ninety minutes, and he let me vent some of my feelings about going away and my own insecurities. At the end, we hugged and I kissed him on the lips, though it was more friendly than sexual. I’m so glad I called him.

As I explained to Gianni, on Monday I had been crazed and my thinking was disordered: I totally overdramatized everything. I’m glad Gianni never heard all the terrible things I thought about him on Monday.

We didn’t talk about our relationship, and I’ll need to think about it a lot. But we were there for each other at a time in our lives that was transitional and confused. I feel surprisingly calm now.

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Friday, February 27, 1998

7 PM. This week the weather has been so sunny and warm that it’s going to make it that much harder to leave South Florida for rainy, chilly Northern California, where the temperatures seem to be ranging from 40° to 60°. I’m taking my “winter” jacket with a hood, the one I wore in New Orleans.

Today I “took off” and played tourist, driving to South Beach this morning. This may have been my first trip there in the seven months I’ve been back in South Florida, which is ironic, given that I’d originally come here intending to be down there a lot and maybe even live there. Instead, I ended up sticking with familiar Davie and adjunct work.

Because of heavy traffic, I got off I-95 at 79th Street and went across to Miami Beach and down Indian Creek Road and finally Collins Avenue.

It was such a pleasure to be back in Miami Beach, where I feel at home among the elderly and religious Jews, the gym-rat young gay guys, the Hispanic merchants, the Euro-tourists and the Gen X types.

Why, when I could have done this so many times in the past two and a half months since teaching ended, did I wait until just a few days before I’m about to leave Florida? I regret the inertia that kept me tethered so close to home.

On the other hand, so much of my life since mid-December has involved Gianni, and although he’s a part of South Beach, he would always meet me here in Davie or in Fort Lauderdale.

I parked right across from Stella, which indeed is a beautiful salon in the colorful 404 Washington Avenue building – one I’ve always liked since it was put up.

I walked up Washington Avenue past the chic boutiques and ugly old neighborhood dives, the trendy restaurants and clubs like Madonna and Warsaw, past the Wolfsonian and the 11th Street Diner, up to Lincoln Road, which I roamed from one end to another.

I stopped at Books & Books and then for iced tea at Joffrey’s, where I read the papers and eavesdropped as the manager interviewed a potential worker, a guy who’d worked at Java Joe’s in Santa Fe, where he’d followed friends from San Francisco who’d joined AmeriCorps.

Standing outside the Miami City Ballet’s storefront, I watched a large ballet class go through their moves as I stayed out of the way of nearby fashion photographers shooting well-dressed models. Elderly characters from the old South Beach made way for tanned, muscular rollerbladers.

If I ever come back to this area, next time I’ll spend a lot more time on South Beach. It was a sunny, warm day, and I got perspired during the hours I walked around.

When I returned to my parking meter, it occurred to me that if Gianni stepped out of the salon, he might see my car and think I was spying on him. I did think a lot about Gianni today and what he told me about his adolescence.

It’s a miracle he emerged HIV-negative and with relatively good health – and he knows that. I don’t know how our friendship will evolve in the future, but he meant a lot to me.

Back at home, I had lunch while watching All My Children. Then I headed up the Turnpike to Boca, where in the library I found my front-page Local Opinion column on the state of Florida’s children, which ran in yesterday’s Boca Raton News. It made me happy to see myself in print again.

Returning to Davie, I walked over to Winn-Dixie and Eckerd Drugs to buy some things – like Emetrol and Weight Watchers peanuts – for my trip, as well as sweet potatoes and bananas for the weekend.

I took out money from the NationsBank ATM and spent an hour in the Nova library, managing to sign into Lexis/Nexis via Telnet and get my saved clippings of articles.

At 5 PM, I headed back to the apartment for dinner and All Things Considered and the New York Times and all the free weeklies I picked up in South Beach. I really do live the life of Reilly.