Saturday, April 11, 1998
10 PM. The music at the second wedding of the day is really loud; they’re into Spanish songs now after playing stuff like “New York, New York,” “Unforgettable,” “YMCA,” and “That’s Amore.”
No, it’s not Spanish music; they’re playing “Love Shack” now.
Actually, this gives me the idea for a story: using sections with titles of bad (but catchy) ’70s songs like “Billy, Don’t Be a Hero,” “You Light Up My Life” and “Feelings.” Nice idea for a story about a relationship.
Talking with Kerry yesterday got me to thinking. We were saying how literary magazines, particularly the second-tier ones I have luck with, prefer shorter short stories, and all my recent work has been long.
In the 1970s, my stories were usually between five and ten pages long. Why not go back to that length, if that’s what “the market” wants? If I could write five or ten stories of that length at Ucross, I’d have lots of pieces to send out. I know that age and the ease of generating prose with a word processor have made me ramble. Well, it’s something to think about.
Back in my apartment, I suffered through another cold night, the worst so far, with no heat. Normal San Jose daily highs should be close to 70°, and we’ve been averaging 60°. I didn’t rest well, all bundled up and under every blanket I could find.
But probably thanks to the weddings today, the heat is now on, and I’m lying here in a t-shirt and boxers and feel comfortable.
It was raining hard when I left the villa at 9 AM to get warm in my car. At Barnes & Noble at The Pruneyard, I had hot tea and read the papers and looked at some books about San Francisco. There’s so much of the city I haven’t seen that I feel a bit cheated.
Still, someday I’ll come back. I do know Silicon Valley well by now, however, although this afternoon I got lost trying to find the Santa Clara Fairgrounds on the east side of San Jose. (There was snow at the top of the highest mountain east of the Valley.)
Even in a McDonald’s where all the help and most of the customers were Vietnamese, I felt odd as I sat and sipped my soda. Thien hasn’t called in a week, but I’ll call his pager before I leave.
Mom called to say that I’d gotten the official letter of acceptance from the Maryland dean of graduate studies. I told her to make this the last batch of mail she sends me here at Montalvo.
I got back here at 4:30 PM, just as the bride and groom had been pronounced husband and wife. Luckily for the day’s second wedding, the sun had come out and they were able to hold the ceremony outside in the courtyard. Right now the wedding reception seems to be ending.
Tuesday, April 14, 1998
8 PM. I’ve just returned to the villa, but it was still light enough so that I could open and close the locks to the front gate without my flashlight.
It’s six weeks since I arrived in San Jose, and I feel so at home here, so accustomed to seeing mountains in the distance, so used to my favorite haunts. It will be very difficult to leave.
Last night I slept okay but had bad dreams in which Jon Mills (who sometimes metamorphized into Dad) made me go to a hostile Caribbean island, where the natives stole all my possessions, cursed me, and threatened to kill me.
I went to the Unemployment office on Bascom Avenue in Campbell at 9 AM after stopping to get the Times, Chronicle and Merc at the vending machines on Santa Cruz Avenue in downtown Los Gatos.
Their front-page stories about the Bank of America/NationsBank merger gave me an idea: the story of my checking account (okay, I fictionalized it) from Fort Lauderdale’s Landmark Bank to Citizens & Southern (C&S) Bank to NCNB to NationsBank and now to Bank of America. I “wrote” the story in my head at odd moments over the next few hours.
I had no mail on AOL except those to my fake screen identity, an 18-year-old who posts to the XY message boards. “Evan” gets notes from other young gay guys who for some reason think he’s hot, and no, I am not cruel enough to respond in kind and lead them on.
Back home, I composed the op-ed piece about fast-changing bank names in about 25 minutes; I printed out the 550-word article and faxed it to the Chronicle’s Open Forum editor.
He disappointed me by not calling this afternoon, so tomorrow I’ll try other places; it’s timely, so I feel rushed to get it in print while I can. Notice how I get so much more excited by an op-ed column than I do by a short story.
Anyway, I did feel less frenzied about Maryland today; I’ll call the journalism school tomorrow, I guess.
I got the copy of the Herald with my essay on W.E.B. Du Bois. It ran without a headline and without a photo. I xeroxed 20 copies this evening and will send some to Mom, who called while I was out and left a message that I have to pay Carolina First Bank $399 by May 6.
What she meant, of course, was that I could pay my whole balance of $300.99 by May 6 or make a minimum payment of 99¢. Bless her heart, Mom gets really mixed up sometimes.
The other mail I got was a check from Kevin Urick for the copy of I Survived Caracas Traffic I sent him. I’ll have to write 
Just now Paul Fericano called, and we had an hour-long conversation. He apologized for not getting us all together, but Kathy was in Boston last week and then they got really busy. I said I understood.
Hey, it looks like I’m not going to get to see Matt or other people I wanted to, so I’m just grateful I saw Paul twice already, and Don Skiles, and Kerry, and Sue while I was living here.
I understand how the time goes by before we know it. Six weeks ago, my time here seemed to stretch into the future, but the weeks have flown by rapidly. When I get apprehensive about Wyoming, I have to remember that time goes faster at my advanced age.
Thursday, April 16, 1998
9 PM. This evening Kathryn joined Melissa and me for dinner outside our apartments in the grand hall overlooking the Spanish Courtyard. This was my last potluck dinner.
I wish I were good at writing descriptions of stuff like how these elderly black guys (and a couple of younger ones on guitars) made the theater audience clap and sing with their songs. God, it must be wonderful to have their musical talent – and their faith.
From living in the South, I know something about the excitement of African-American revival meetings and Pentecostal services, and I like getting carried away 
Back at my apartment, I watched one of the last Seinfeld episodes: quite a change in style and tone.
Last night I slept well although I was surprisingly horny. Hey, I’m lucky at almost 47 to have all these great erections when I sleep.
This morning I called Maryland’s journalism dean, but he wasn’t in, and this afternoon I left him a voicemail message. But when I got my mail from the office, I saw in the official acceptance from UMCP’s Graduate School that I need to write them a letter accepting their offer of admittance before I can register.
So I did that and sent it off, along with other mail and two packages I mailed to Ucross. Now that the tax filing deadline is over, the post office was empty.
This morning I bought some magazines – XY (yes, it embarrasses me a little at the cash register), Lingua Franca and A. Magazine (for Asian-Americans) – to read while I’m at Ucross and I read today’s papers over iced tea at Peets.
At the public library I read my email.
Sat Darshan is giving up her job as Webmaster at her firm and is moving into a position as “Data Queen.” She said I should tell Marc to call her when he gets to Phoenix because he might want to rent one of the ashram’s properties. But they 
She and Ravinder know a young woman who is pregnant who would let them adopt the baby, but Sat Darshan said the birth father is a lunatic. The woman is a niece of her friend Niranjan across the street. The baby is due in September.
Anyway, Sat Darshan’s daughters will be coming home from school in India in mid-May. “Can you believe Gurudaya is 18?” she asked me.
Josh is very upset over Bob Tramonte’s death. Bob owned Cousin Arthur’s, that children’s bookstore on Montague Street, and Josh said he was really good with kids.
Josh forwarded me an email from Matty Paris, who wrote that Bob “exiled himself from his beloved Brooklyn because of hassles with police tow trucks, Third World neighbors mugging his kids, and other problems,” and he lived in Amherst the past few years.
“Born two months prematurely and never in good health,” Matty wrote, “Bob suffered from diabetes, had a heart attack, a triple bypass, and all sorts of medical problems that contributed to his death at 52, the age to which William Shakespeare lived.”
Speaking of dead writers: Using a little money that he collected from Saul Bellow and others – but mostly using his own – Josh wrote a check to the cemetery in Jersey where his parents are buried for perpetual care of Delmore Schwartz’s grave.
Although I plan to be cremated and think graves are a waste of money and space, I think this gesture shows the saintly side of Josh. “It’s a mitzvah and you’re a tzaddik,” I wrote him.
Alice said that the disk with my stories wouldn’t print out because of the formatting, so I told her not to send it out. But she still wants to continue to try to 
This afternoon it finally became sunny and seasonably mild. It’s nice to see girls in tank tops and guys in t-shirts and shorts. It’s hard to be leaving the Bay Area just as spring is really here.
Matt and Glori and I will meet for lunch at El Toro, a burrito joint in the Mission District at 1 PM on Saturday.
Sunday, April 19, 1998
4 PM. It’s a heartbreakingly beautiful afternoon. Right now sunbathers are spread out on the great lawn, families are strolling the villa grounds under a cloudless sky, and birds are singing, as they have been since 5 AM.
I’m overtired but nearly ecstatic after a beautiful weekend that will make it all that much harder to leave here. My time at Villa Montalvo has been a privilege, and the past seven weeks here have been some of the happiest times of my life.
It was the 92nd anniversary of the 1906 earthquake that nearly destroyed San Francisco, and I listened to elderly survivors tell their stories on the radio as I drove the now-familiar I-280.
I knew exactly how to get to the Mission District, and when I parked at a meter at the corner of Mission and 17th Avenue, I immediately smelled urine, familiar from New York’s skeevier streets.
The Mission is now trendy, with clubs and cool spots, but it’s also still a Hispanic slum with beggars, homeless people and street crime. I walked a block to Valencia and saw Matt at El Toro; Glori was right behind me. It was great to see them again.
Glori and Matt, like Kerry, are recent MFAs learning how hard it is to maintain the literary life after graduation. Matt writes early in the morning before his job as a paralegal downtown, but he’s trying to get adjunct comp jobs – without success, since San Francisco is a pretty hard place to break in. He hasn’t been sending out his work.
Glori works as a secretary at the University of San Francisco and she has more time than Matt to write. She recently got an acceptance from Black Warrior Review.
Matt’s going to a colony in upstate New York this summer and hopes to write a lot there. Both he and Glori love San Francisco but bemoaned the high cost of living and the terrible parking situation. Glori moved here because her boyfriend is in a film program at San Francisco State, and they live in a small place in the Western Addition.
After surrendering our taqueria seats, we took a walk, and I got to observe the Mission and some of its nicer architecture.
On the edge of Noe Valley and the Castro, we went to a park on a hill with a great 
My beans-and-rice burrito upset my stomach a little, but I tried to ignore it. Eventually we walked back to my meter after the quarters I’d fed it for a second hour had expired.
After hugging Matt and kissing Glori goodbye, I drove around for a while. Although I didn’t experience enough of San Francisco during this trip, at least I got to the city half a dozen times, and before I left yesterday, I drove along Haight Street past Ashbury (where there’s a famous Ben & Jerry’s on the corner).
I do believe that we’re at the cusp of a new era – if not the dawning of the Age of Aquarius (from the song which I was to hear loudly at midnight in the dark, strobe-lit dance floor of a gay-friendly restaurant in downtown San Jose), then some kind of sea-change.
If the economy crashes due to our current massive inequalities of wealth and income, there’ll be some kind of populist revolt, leading to changes no one today can foresee.
I had a lot to think about as I rode through Golden Gate Park and the Sunset District and other San Francisco neighborhoods.
Instead of coming right home when I left the city via I-280 at 5:30 PM, I drove to the Walmart in Milpitas, where I bought various things I’ll need in Los Angeles and Wyoming, including a pair of gloves for what might be wintry weather in the Rockies.
After I’d eaten, Thien called; he’d gotten my chapbook, and although I was tired, I agreed to meet him at the Jack in the Box on Camden Avenue off Highway 17 at 9 PM.
I felt a mess in dirty jeans (from sitting on the grass in the park), sneakers, and glasses instead of my contacts, so when we talked for an hour and Thien suggested we go to Hamburger Mary’s, a gay-friendly club and restaurant downtown, I was a little hesitant.
As we were driving there, Thien said, “You wear glasses, you no look very good. . . Me, I look very good.”
And that’s how Thien Ngoc Nguyen learned the idiom “looking good.”
He directed me as I drove to downtown San Jose and found parking. Hamburger Mary’s isn’t really a gay bar (“mostly on Wednesday”) but most people there were gay guys.
Still, Thien and I came there to talk to one another, not to pick up other people. He 
Thien told me he knew he was gay from early on because he liked girl things like dolls and he acted like a girl.
Then he showed me how he learned masculine mannerisms and demonstrated how he normally held a glass (very daintily) and how he learned to pick it up fast and “drink it sloppy like men.” He says he can imitate butch gestures and mannerisms the same way he can put on a South Vietnamese accent so well that people think he’s from Saigon.
Thien told me that his two-year-old nephew gets put in the day care center in the semiconductor factory where his sister works. Nearly all the other workers there are Mexican, and Thien said the kid talks to him “in Mexican,” telling him Spanish 
I love hearing these examples of our cultural mix, and I love Thien’s stories and his generalizations: “Vietnamese people, they do this. . .” he says again and again. I would have loved to have learn more about his culture.
Thien says he doesn’t know anyone like me, someone who could have money and new cars and clothes and jewelry but who instead prefers not to work hard. Still, he does seem to understand I have something I do, writing, that I love.
By 12:30 AM, I was getting very tired. When we left Hamburger Mary’s and I dropped Thien off by his car near where he lives with his family, not only did we shake hands goodbye, but I kissed him on the cheek before he could pull away.
Back at the villa after 1 AM, all by myself – Melissa went home for the weekend to escape the weddings – I was too excited to sleep more than a couple of hours.
After I exercised, showered and dressed this morning, I went out to get the Sunday New York Times, which I began reading outside Le Boulanger in El Paseo de Saratoga.
It was – and is – a glorious California day. “Spring is finally here,” said a parent at the awards ceremony and reading by the winners of the annual Young Writers Contest in the Oval Garden this afternoon.
For high school kids, the work was good: better than my FAU creative writing students, maybe better than Tom’s NOCCA students. I didn’t like everything, but most of it was fresh; these kids’ inner artists haven’t yet been shamed or intellectualized away. (Okay, that’s from reading The Artist’s Way.)
At the reception afterwards, I tried to give the winners encouragement from a “real” writer – though if they’re “real” themselves, they don’t need it.
Yesterday Matt said he once asked his teacher, Amy Hempel, if he “had what it takes to be a writer.” Aargh, I said, he’d asked the wrong question and the wrong person.
But then, even at 21, I could never imagine myself asking any writer that question.
Monday, April 20, 1998
Last evening I had long, pleasant phone conversations with Paul Fericano and Mike Fleming. I hadn’t realized that Mike and Kerry were not full-time faculty at USF but just permanent part-timers. But as Matt said, jobs like theirs are hard to get in the Bay Area.
Today the Carnegie Foundation released a report saying undergraduate education at research universities shortchanges students, who get taught by TA’s and acquire no coherent body of knowledge when they graduate.
Mike wants to take off a year to write, and he hopes to go somewhere else, preferably a colony, but so far, he’s got only rejections this year.
At 7 PM, after being away all weekend, Melissa returned and came over here for a visit. She left just a little while ago, and we had a nice talk. Melissa is sweet. I left a copy of The Greatest Short Story That Absolutely Ever Was in her mailbox in her mailbox along with an extra ticket for Friday’s Paco Peña concert.
Well, now Melissa has the villa to herself at night until Joelle gets back here. (I left 
Looking at the checklist Kathryn gave me, the same one I signed when I got here, I see that though I cleaned enough so that I won’t look like a pig, I don’t have time to all the stuff and they can keep my $100 deposit for cleaning fees.
I did laundry today, but I won’t have time to wash my bedsheets and bath towel tomorrow, nor can I defrost the refrigerator and vacuum. The $100 deposit is spent money to me, so I won’t miss it.
Last night I didn’t sleep as well as I thought I would, and at 6 AM, I felt icky. I went out to get the paper and a few items, and then I brought my printer and a box of clothes to Mail Boxes Etc. to be shipped to Ucross.
Libby called and said they’re taking me out to dinner one night when I’ll be with 
I called Mom and spoke to Marc, who’s leaving for Arizona next week. I gave him Sat Darshan’s address and phone numbers and I wished him luck on his move.
As usual, I packed early and won’t have all that much to do to prepare in the morning. Next Monday, I’ll be leaving Los Angeles on a 7:30 AM flight, but tomorrow I don’t have to be at San Jose airport till 10:15 AM – enough time for me to settle with the rental car people and get my Southwest cattle-boarding pass.
I hope I sleep better tonight, but if I don’t, I’ll handle it and get to L.A. anyway.
Tuesday, April 21, 1998
9 PM. I’m tired, disoriented and headachy – but also kind of happy.
I’m finding my way around the little guest cottage at Libby and Grant’s, which is tiny and dominated by Grant’s recording studio equipment in the middle of it.
Ever since Lindsay and Wyatt got home from school they’ve been wearing me out playing with them, so I feel sleepy – probably sleepier than they do.
The family has all these activities planned for me, like Wyatt’s baseball game tomorrow, and going to a museum with Lindsay on Thursday, so I probably won’t have much free time here.
Hey, this will probably be more of a change for me than Villa Montalvo was – because there I had my usual routines with my regular diet, reading the papers, listening to NPR, etc. Here, I’m not on my own so I’ll have to be more flexible.
I got up at 6 AM and was out of the villa at 8:30 AM, loading up my car with my suitcases. I left only after I’d mailed off my registration at the University of Maryland; I got through to Dean Callahan and sent my fall schedule request to the department secretary, Diane White.
After a quick drive, I was at the airport at 10:10 AM. I didn’t have much difficulty turning in my rental car or getting my luggage checked in. I had an hour to wait before I boarded, so I read and ate my cheese sandwich and sweet potato.
The flight to Burbank on Southwest was empty and pleasant, yet just before we landed I started to feel like I was going to vomit. It was basically a little panic attack reminding me of the ones I suffered from daily thirty years ago. But after about fifteen minutes, I got past it.
It had been warm in San Jose so I didn’t wear a jacket, but when I walked down the plane’s back stairs in Burbank, I was unprepared for the heat. It was 90° although the dryness made it feel less uncomfortable than 90° back East.
I got totally lost trying to find the Ventura Freeway, but once I got on US 101 North, I knew I’d be fine. From the exit at Woodlake Avenue in Woodland Hills, it was a short straight ride.
I parked on the street and as I approached the house, I could see Libby in front of the kitchen window by the sink. She looked completely unchanged from the last time I saw her seven years ago.
I tapped on the kitchen window, and when she opened the front door, we hugged. After giving me a quick tour around the house, we talked for a little while, but she said she had to go pick up the kids at school.
The games were pretty violent, but I thought it was cool that he preferred to play the female karate fighter character who beats her opponent senseless.
We also looked at other games, and after Lindsay did her homework, Libby went off to her four hours of work at the snack shack at the baseball field. So I was in charge until Grant came home.
The kids had me playing basketball, tetherball, handball, and finally volleyball with an imaginary player on Lindsay’s side against me and Wyatt. Although Lindsay invited me to go on the trampoline, I demurred and instead just watched her do backflips.
I got a call from Amy Trayer of the San Jose Mercury News, who’d spoken to Kathryn and gotten my phone number here. As 
And as I also knew they would, they asked me for my grandmother’s photo. I called my parents, and hopefully they’ll send one to the paper. The kids were already impressed that I’m a writer, so I guess this phone call impressed them even more.
Wyatt got increasingly obnoxious, as 7-year-old boys do, squirting me and Lindsay with water from a water rifle and knocking down leaves and oranges with his samurai sword.
Just in time, Grant came home. He looked thinner to me (Libby, Lindsay and Wyatt are all slim) but older. Grant works in Van Nuys, near where Kevin lives.
I phoned Kevin, who’s been calling his agency every half hour to get extra work – work as an extra, that is – and I told him that tomorrow morning I’ll call him and maybe come over.
Grant and the kids and I had the dinner that Libby had already prepared: eggplant parmesan (which she used to make years ago in Brooklyn), broccoli and pasta.
I let Wyatt read me a few pages of his I Can Read book about Johnny Lion and I read him the very wacky Dumb Bunnies’ Easter.
After Libby came home, she helped me make up the couch here in the guest house. I don’t know if I’ll sleep, but I sure am tired now. There’s been a lot to take in today.
Forgetting I didn’t come from Florida, Kevin asked if I were jet-lagged. But despite there being no time difference, I actually feel a bit like my biorhythms are off.
It’s so much brighter here in Los Angeles than it is in the Bay Area, though I have to say that the parts of the San Fernando Valley I drove through to get from Burbank to Woodland Hills are not as pretty as Silicon Valley.
Wednesday, April 22, 1998
10 PM. I wish I had more time to spend in Los Angeles. Still, I’m grateful for the time I do have here and will try to keep making every moment count.
Last night I slept okay though my back hurts today; still, I’m taking care of it and I just did half an hour of light exercise while watching Seinfeld. Up at 3 AM, I listened to NPR’s Morning Edition on KPCC but fell asleep again from 5 AM to 6:30 AM.
An hour later, I came into the house and listened to Wyatt playing the Gilligan’s Island theme on the piano; the tune was recognizable in spots.
It was pretty hectic getting the kids ready for school: they need this, they can’t find that, they forgot about this, and they dawdle.
Today I learned a lot more about the lives of suburban parents of young kids, but I also did some grown-up stuff on my own. At 10 AM I went to see Kevin in funky Panorama City.
He lives in this seedy neighborhood in a house filled with antiques; outside are numerous antique cars from various eras that his roommate, the house’s owner, rents to movie and TV productions.
Kevin looks pretty much like his photos; I’m not attracted to him, which is a relief. The house was a mess, but Helen, an elderly black woman, had come in to clean up.
Kevin has to call his service every half-hour to listen to a recording of needs for extras – or as they’re now called, background artists.
We talk regularly, so even though we never saw each other before, it didn’t feel like I was with someone I didn’t know, and the time we spent together went quickly.
At 1:30 PM Kevin called his service and there was a job for a detective role, and the guy called up Kev’s photo on the computer and said to be at the studio in North Hollywood in half an hour.
If I hadn’t been there to drive Kevin, he couldn’t have taken the job, and of course I’m pleased I could help. He had been pretty discouraged because he hadn’t worked in two weeks, so I probably brought him luck.
Although I knew we were going out of the way, I followed Kevin’s directions to the studio; I had come to his house from here with the streets, mostly Victory Boulevard and Sherman Way, and I know the basic layout of the Valley from maps and my 
Anyway, I got him to Occidental Studios and wished him luck; at least we finally got to meet.
I decided to drive to West Hollywood, where I’d never been before, so I drove through immigrant (Mexican, Korean, Thai, Salvadoran) neighborhoods on Melrose to the antique stores and cafes further west.
At @Café, I went on AOL for half an hour and answered an email from Elihu, who, having gone through busy season at his accounting firm, has vowed not to stay on the job beyond this year’s bonus, no matter what. He mentioned going back to school. Quoting Rilke’s “Archaic Torso of Apollo,” I told him to just get the hell out of there now and change his life.
Walking through the young, hip crowd, I felt energized. Then I drove along Melrose some more, getting cruised by a hunky guy as I stopped for a red light at the really gay section.
I returned to Woodland Hills by taking the Hollywood Freeway past Universal Studios and the Santa Monica Mountains to the Ventura Freeway. Near here, on Victory Boulevard, I found a Bookstar where I could get the New York Times, a Starbucks 
I really like the Valley and feel comfortable in Encino, Sherman Oaks and this area. One day I’d like to live here for a year or so, but first I want to experience D.C.
I went to Ralph’s– you know I love supermarkets – where an old Jewish man told me I should get eggs because they were on sale.
Back here, I played catch with Wyatt before his game, and after a while, I went with Libby as she chauffeured the kids places. We dropped Lindsay at the church for bells practice, and then Libby left me at the house so I could go with Grant to the ballfield to watch Wyatt in the Pinto League game while she went to take Lindsay to gymnastics in Agoura.
The rules of Pinto baseball for little kids were made to ensure that 6-to-8-year-olds learn the sport. An adult pitcher stands at the mound while a kid stands next to him, playing the position. The fielding is so bad that once the hit ball gets to the infield, a defensive player calls time and everyone freezes.
Even so, the games are high scoring and run to six innings or 6:30 PM, whichever comes first. Our team won, 19-18, when Wyatt hit a grounder that got him tagged at first but allowed the winning run to score.
On her way out to pick up Lindsay at gymnastics, Libby told me that tomorrow and Friday we’re going to Ventura County to help Lindsay with her report on the Chumash.