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 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.
For his last job, on Fox’s Sliders, he got paid $300 in his first SAG role as a Kromagg concentration camp prisoner of humans; his hairy forearms had been shaved halfway up and they gave him a prosthetic face that took six hours in makeup to put on.
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 
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.
At the Java Cafe on the corner of Beverly Boulevard and Poinsettia Place, I had a salad, drank pear juice and read the Los Angeles Times as I listened to that song that Gianni had his born-again epiphany with when he was strung out on Special K and finally called his grandma to tell her he needed to go to Shepard Pratt.
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 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 
I sat in the bleachers with Grant and the other parents. There were lots of Jewish ones around my age, including Orthodox Jews and Soviet Jews; there were also Mexican and Korean parents, though I suspect some of the Mexican women were maids or nannies.
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 
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.
Following the game, there was a lot of celebration and juvenile good sportsmanship, and then Wyatt got a Taco Bell takeout for dinner and he and I watched another half-hour of The Rocketeer video. After his shower, he read to me from Johnny Lion’s Rubber Boots and I read the Sunday comics to him.
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.
Thursday, April 23, 1998
11 PM. I’ve just come home after dropping Kevin off. We hugged, and he gave me a script to read before we said goodbye. I’d asked him to go out for coffee with me, 
At his place, Kevin showed me some very impressive columns he wrote in the early 1990s for the Lakeland Ledger while he was a Polk Community College student.
Kevin rarely goes anywhere in a car, so he got a kick of my driving us around, or so he said. We ended up at a Starbucks on Beverly Boulevard, where we sat outside despite the relatively cool weather; I had camomile tea and he had a latte. Tomorrow he’s going to the welfare office to apply for food stamps.
Last night I slept soundly despite my aching back. I didn’t shower or shampoo in the main house today although I did wash myself with soap and water here in the sink of the guest house bathroom.
After taking the kids to school, Libby and I chatted, and then I drove to Glendale, hoping to catch Dad’s Aunt Rae and Uncle Peter at home. I had their address but never got their phone number from Aunt Sydelle.
While at a Ralph’s nearby, I called the Florida Unemployment information line and heard that my benefit year began last week and that my weekly benefit amount is $275, and I have $7,222 in benefits. That’s really great.
I drove all over the place as usual, getting off I-405 at Wilshire and driving to downtown Beverly Hills, where I had a baked potato and Diet Coke at the corner Brighton Coffee Shop. Then I drove around Beverly Hills, Westwood, West L.A., and finally stopped again for iced tea at a Starbucks on Venice Boulevard.
Back here at 2 PM, I went with Libby to pick up the kids and we drove to Thousand Oaks, just west of here in Ventura County, to the Chumash Interpretive Center, a little museum and park dedicated to the indigenous people of this part of California.
The Chumash who ran the center were very helpful. By 1900, of a people who once controlled the area from San Luis Obispo to Malibu, there were only a hundred of them left.
One man played his Indian music on several wooden flutes, and the beautiful lullaby sounds made me think of a life less hectic than those of the Californians I’ve seen driving on freeways while talking on cell phones.
We are rushed, wired, sleep-deprived and wealthy, but – here comes banal observation #47 for today – are we any better off than the Chumash, who had an elaborate trading system using their plank canoes going between various coastal and inland 
I hate to patronize or romanticize Native Americans, but their extermination at the hands of Europeans readily makes both those processes second-nature and almost impossible to avoid.
We got home at 5 PM and had burritos for dinner. I read to Wyatt and he to me, and he played piano and Lindsay played flute for me.
This morning I called Mom and she said she’ll send the San Jose Mercury News a photo of Grandma Sylvia to accompany my article that the paper’s printing on Mother’s Day about her.
Friday, April 24, 1998
Midnight. Today was even more filled with life than yesterday. I feel as if I could write a novel about today.
Last night I didn’t sleep enough, and since I only just got home, driving Grant’s van from Encino because he’d had too much to drink, I’m sure I’ll get even less sleep tonight – especially since I had a Diet Pepsi at the last bar we stopped at.
It could have been worse, right? And it’s only money. In the long run, will this affect my life? No. So is it worth worrying over? No.
Of course, I’m still nervous, very nervous, about my journey on Monday, from getting up on time to eat breakfast to getting to LAX and changing planes and getting off in Billings and getting to the bus station and eating and getting to Sheridan and being picked up there.
Travel is filled with stuff I can’t control, so I should just expect chaos and be prepared to endure it. Once I get to Ucross, I’ll have my own bed and room, and I’ll feel safe. Feel the fear and do it anyway.
This morning I didn’t have much time to myself, but I did exercise and buy the New York Times even if I couldn’t read it, and I listened to NPR during the one hour, between 4 PM and 5 PM, that I was alone and could lie down.
We drove to Ventura, getting stuck in traffic on 101. Lindsay was trying to write an essay she hadn’t a clue how to do, and Libby kept feeding her ideas and sentences and Lindsay couldn’t focus on them. (The assigned essay topic was on what consciousness, courtesy and common sense mean, so Lindsay’s problem was understandable.)
Wyatt kept piping up with demands. Neither of the kids has much impulse control: we pass an amusement park and they want to go in; we pass a fountain and they want to stop; etc. I guess that’s how kids are and that I’m just not used to being around kids.
The Ventura County Museum was kind of interesting though the Chumash Indian stuff didn’t seem as good to me as the material on the Spanish and Mexican settlement, the oil industry, the collection of agricultural implements, and the maps of California.
I stayed ahead with Wyatt or walked by myself. He became wild at the museum as we were leaving and kept jumping on me, and I didn’t realize it, but as I pushed him away the third or fourth time, he fell backwards to the floor and started crying and then hiding from me behind Libby.
I felt annoyed but very guilty, and he was very upset, but after I said I didn’t mean to push him, he mellowed out almost immediately.
After we got ice cream, we drove three blocks to the beach. It was sunny and about 70°. The kids worked off their energy by playing on playground equipment and in the ocean. I walked along the park and looked out at the Channel Islands before joining Libby on a blanket.
When I took off my shirt and lay down, I remembered why I used to like the beach; it really calmed me down.
While I still will never regret not having children, I do know I’m not some kind of monster for not wanting them.
Libby was going to drop Lindsay off at the gym in Agoura, but Lindsay had left her gym bag home, so we had to drive back to Woodland Hills first.
I’m too tired to write about tonight with Grant now.
Saturday, April 25, 1998
7 AM. I slept okay, but only for six hours, waking up an hour ago. I was unable to get into the main house, so I had breakfast here in the guest house by getting hot water at a 7-Eleven and eating oatmeal with my own plastic bowl and a plastic fork just now; that’s how I adapt.
Grant and I left at 6 PM and went to pick up Oya, this willowy, fragile and ditzy – but not in a stereotypical way, I’d learn – former model with high cheekbones who was house-sitting for a screenwriter and producer in the hills of Encino.
Listening to Oya and Grant talk about restaurants as we went “over the hill” on the freeway and trying to make reservations on the car phone, I felt I was experiencing quintessential L.A. life. The two of them met at their mutual trainer, who uses some weird system of pulleys and ropes to get their bodies into alignment.
We ended up at an Italian place, La Luna, in Hancock Park, and I guess we were the strangest combination of people – in 
They think they’re big foodies and wine experts, but I know enough to know that they’re less sophisticated than they think they are and that true foodies would think they were only a little behind me on the bumpkin scale.
I wasn’t sure if I was there to serve as a safe third person for what could have looked weird: a married man with a beautiful woman not his wife or business associate. My brother Marc would have enjoyed the company, but so did I, and as Grant said, I have no trouble talking with anyone.
Oya’s trying to get a singing career together, and Grant is, of course, still writing and recording his stuff and having the same problems all indies have in all the Big 
Sally, whom we went to see at the performance space Genghis Cohen on Fairfax Avenue, near Melrose, is a wealthy young woman who just moved here from New York who performs all her own stuff.
After hanging out at the bar and chatting with people, we sat at a table and heard Sally’s songs, awkward patter and overly loud keyboarding (thanks to an inept sound guy). She’s very MOR (middle of the road) pop/rock, though her songs are “hooky” and catchy enough to seem like they could be hits from mainstream movie soundtracks.
We went to the bar at Chevy’s – Grant must have spent $60 on me alone last night and over $100 on Oya – and somehow we really clicked in that late evening, drunk sort of way.
I didn’t realize before that Grant was serious when he told me what a drunk he had once been; even now, he drinks pretty good. Anyway, we sort of bonded after hanging out so much tonight.
Grant seemed surprised that not only could I find my way back home via Ventura Boulevard without a problem but that I could also make it most of the way to drop off Oya through the winding streets of Encino after driving that complicated route with him just once.
But I have a good memory and I can handle a minivan. So I guess I shouldn’t be so upset about the rental car’s dents and scratches.
There’s just so much life going on, and I’ve recorded only a tiny fraction of what I’ve felt, experienced and thought about in the last four days.
Monday, April 27, 1998
9 PM. I’m at Ucross in Wyoming, having made it without a single moment of anxiety.
Of course, rather than take a bus after my two plane flights, I decided to rent a car in Billings and drive here – but even a 150-mile drive didn’t scare me. And I did it all without resorting to a Triavil.
Up at 4:30 AM, I was out of the house in Woodland Hills an hour later – after I had breakfast, dressed, and took the photo of Wyatt and Lindsay that Libby left for me.
I arrived at the Budget car return at LAX before 6:30 AM, and the guy didn’t notice the scratches and dings. So I was early for my 7:30 AM flight to Salt Lake City.
The trip was uneventful, and I barely had time to buy TCBY and a tossed salad at 
One of my suitcases lost a roller enroute, but I called Enterprise and their van picked me up and took me to their location downtown.
Except for noticing the craggy scenery, I didn’t stay in Billings long enough to get an impression of the city. After getting the car, I got on I-90 and drove southeast.
Montana has no speed limit, so I drove anywhere from 70 to 90 mph most of the way to Wyoming. It was a clear day, cool for me but mild for this time of year here, and the road was pretty empty.
At Sheridan, I got off the highway, and at the supermarket I bought a broccoli, cauliflower and carrot mix that I ate as I drove on US 14 East.
I overshot Ucross by ten miles, but the people in the town of Claremont’s one general store showed me how to find the Ucross Foundation on my way back. Bonnie and Sharon, the executive director, were closing the office at 4:30 PM when I arrived.
Although Sharon had to go pick up another new resident at the Sheridan bus station, but she drove me to the School House, where there are four bedrooms, the big kitchen and dining room, and she showed me around.
There are two bathrooms up here, but I have to go through the hall to get to them, so that’s annoying – but I’ll adjust.
Dinner was good, but I’ll need to discipline myself or I’ll get fat here. The other residents seem nice, and I like Sharon a lot.
Tuesday, April 28, 1998
9 PM. I knew it would be hard to adjust to Ucross, and it has been, but I need to give myself time.
After all, I’ve had a lot to adjust to in the past week: I’ve gone from the familiar comforts of Villa Montalvo to the frenzy of friendly Los Angeles to this weird Wyoming landscape, remote and totally unlike any other I’ve ever been in. Plus I 
This morning when I began to unpack my suitcases and the boxes I’d sent from California, I realized how compulsive I am. I have at least twice as much of everything I thought I’d need, from nail clippers to batteries to drugs for diarrhea and dizziness.
As much as I assumed that I’d whittled myself down to the essentials, I’m overburdened with stuff. Okay, much of it was merely purchased prematurely. But did I really expect to need 35 packets of oatmeal and grits? I’ve got more contact lens fluid than I could possibly use in six weeks.
What happens is, I go into Walmart or Target and buy stuff I forgot I bought before. I’m like a rich man who grew up in poverty and who still thinks he’s going to starve to death.
Without Diet Pepsi and iced tea, I’m having caffeine withdrawal, and I miss frozen yogurt, my huge lunch plate of veggies, my sweet potato, etc. Basically my body is saying, “Hey, what’s happening?”
Remember, though, when I began Nutri/System in the fall of 1989, on the first day I had get a brownie at the Broward Mall as if I were a junkie in need of a fix.
She also reported that Marc’s departure for Arizona hit her and Dad very hard because it was so unexpected, although she’d told me last Thursday that Marc was leaving yesterday. Dad cried all day after Marc left because he wasn’t prepared, Mom said.
Has my father ever been prepared for change? He didn’t want to know Marc was leaving, just as he never wanted to know about any coming changes in his life.
One reason I’m here, one reason I’m going from place to place, is to avoid becoming like my obsessive-compulsive mother and my father who deals with change through denial.
If I’ve written little about Ucross in this diary entry, it’s not because I haven’t experienced this place. I even wrote 3½ pages of a new story and rode a bicycle (on US 14-16) for the first time in years, and this evening I enjoyed the company and 
The group is older than I thought it would be, although probably no one here is more than 55. Still, I’ve got people to have intelligent conversations with, the kind of people who listen to NPR (which is, as I should have known, available through Wyoming Public Radio and Yellowstone Public Radio) and read newspapers and know who Robert Musil is.
Any problems I’m having here are the result of my own inflexibility, compulsiveness, and warped thinking. Still, I can’t be too hard on myself. It’s a kind of culture shock being here.
My mind and my body need time to adjust, and as long as I don’t fight it, I will get so used to Ucross that I won’t want to return to the outside world. I’ll take it – here comes the cliché – one day at a time.
Although I felt myself moving fast when I closed my eyes last night – a result of the two jet flights and the long drive from Billings – the sensation of dizziness ultimately abated and I was able to sleep fairly well. The bed is comfortable, and the portable heater helped.
Hey, I did a lot today. I exercised for an hour after breakfast, and then look at all the unpacking and sorting I had to do.
Sharon had the orientation meeting with the four new residents at 10 AM, and I met everyone at the offices, which are – along with the Big Red Barn and the Kocur Writer’s Retreat – separated from the School House, the Depot and Buck’s Cabin over here by a large field owned by someone else on which there’s no trespassing.
Wednesday, April 29, 1998
I had breakfast in the School House kitchen before 7 AM and then put away most of the dishes that were in the dishwasher since I was the first one up. Then I got into bed for another hour, listening to NPR’s Morning Edition before I exercised for about thirty minutes.
After showering and dressing, I drove back along US 14 into Sheridan, stopping first at Walmart, where I bought a 24-can case of generic caffeine-free diet cola and some plastic cups and utensils, fat-free pudding and St. John’s wort.
It was sunny and warm enough to be comfortable outside in a short-sleeve shirt. The weather here has been fantastic and not what I expected after reading about the blizzard they had last week.
I drove up Coffeen Avenue into downtown Sheridan and stopped at the library to poke around. They didn’t have Internet access but their computer card catalog showed my books in two or three Wyoming public libraries.
I got a couple of things at Safeway and then went to Wendy’s, where I had a salad bar and baked potato and read the Billings Gazette, which had a surprising number of personals from gay men.
One paper had a front page photo of a black high school track star from Cheyenne, and Sheridan’s biggest breakfast eatery is called The Bagel Bakery. I also found a brochure from a Sheridan human rights coalition “dedicated to fighting bigotry, anti-semitism, racism and homophobia.”
Back here at 1 PM, I chatted with Liz Young, whose studio and bedroom are downstairs. Liz is a visual artist from downtown L.A. who’s in a wheelchair and has a nose ring and lots of tattoos. Her work is about the body, she told me.
The others who were here when I arrived are Rick Kroninger, a San Antonio artist and photographer who’s leaving tomorrow; Ruane Miller, a painter and printmaker on sabbatical from teaching at the College of New Jersey; and Nancy Lord, a writer whose short story collections were published by Coffee House Press.
A front-page story about school paddling gave me the idea of updating my capital-punishment-for-schoolchildren column to Wyoming. After I finished and printed it out, I figured I’d send the column to Charles Lewandowski, the liberal opinion editor and columnist of the Star-Tribune.
After I put it in the mailbox across from the Ucross office – my first attempt to go there ended when my bicycle got a flat tire just as I began paddling on US14-16; after that, I walked – I worked till 4:30 PM on a story suggested by my relationship with Thien.
I read the script Kevin gave me, and I’m sorry to say that it’s pretty bad. Kevin still has the same tin ear that I noticed when I read the play he sent me a couple of years ago. The guy writes only marginally better than my FAU creative writing students.
Unless Kevin’s work improves drastically, I can’t see him being a successful writer in Hollywood, though perhaps I’m underestimating how simplistic the material produced for TV and films usually are.
After chatting with Rick, Liz and Agymah in the School House living room till 7:30 PM, I came back to my studio and made a slight dent in my reading of last week’s newspapers, the ones I took along in my luggage.
If Wyoming manages to make me less obsessive and compulsive, I’ll always treasure my time in this state.
Thursday, April 30, 1998
1
The satellite takes the network shows from local stations on the East Coast and West Coast, and we expected Seinfeld to be on at 8 PM as it is in Mountain Time, but it was on at 7 PM from the Boston NBC station and won’t come on till 10 PM (now) from the West Coast affiliate.
I’m tired and couldn’t stay up that late after watching ER (East) and Friends (West).
Liz is going to Big Timber, Montana, for the weekend to visit her sister, and she said I should call her on Monday from Billings so that on her way back, she could meet me at the Enterprise car rental place and I can drive back to Ucross with her instead of taking the bus to Sheridan.
I walked around, but when I wanted to hang out somewhere and read the papers, I went to the McDonald’s near the interstates (I-25 and I-90) and sat with my Diet Coke. An elderly couple, spotting my car’s Montana plates – like theirs – said, “Billings?”
“Yup,” I said, and they said, “Hi, neighbor!”
Also at the McDonald’s, a young blond woman led her three little kids in saying grace before they ate, and the athletic coaches of some semipro football teams – one white coach, one black – were discussing their league’s business.
They have Sinclair stations here, with the green dinosaur logo that I remember from my childhood back East. I helped an old man by pumping his gas for him, and at the IGA market I bought baby carrots to munch on as I drove home.
I
For lunch, I ate my sandwich with some weird kind of meat (roast beef? ham?) but I asked Gillian to please just make me cheese sandwiches every day. That’s what I eat at home, although I eat low-fat bread and fat-free cheese. One thing I’ve learned here is that most people have dietary preferences that aren’t any odder than mine.
I bicycled to the Ucross mailbox and back again; for me, it’s been so long since I rode a bike, and I’m a little nervous riding on the highway’s shoulder without a helmet, though US 14-16 doesn’t get much traffic: basically people going between Gillette and either Sheridan or Buffalo (and even then, most people probably take the Interstate).
Mom called when we sat down to dinner this evening and said that Marc is in Mesa and has already found an apartment.
Alice mailed me a $50 check. I’d sent her the same amount for the printing of my book manuscript, and when she couldn’t do it, she returned the money.
Dinner tonight was delicious: I had chicken enchilada, rice and beans, lettuce and fresh pineapple. It’s possible I may not gain weight her because I actually eat more calories normally. I eat lots of fruit and vegetables and low-fat or fat-free snacks, though.
Just tonight I began to feel as if I’m coming down with a cold, which would be no surprise since my body has been assaulted with all these changes. I’m still adjusting, and I hope once I no longer have the car, I can deal with the isolation here.
Anyway, I feel tired now, though I haven’t always been able to sleep right away at night. My brain seems numb now.