Someone With a Pen: Richard Grayson’s Diary

Monday, September 14, 1998

8 PM. I just graded a paper that read as if it had been written by a third-grader, so if this diary entry sounds sophomoric, it would be amazing because my sophomore students don’t write on that high a level.

Jeez, their essays are bad. Today I graded ten essays, and still have six Tuesday/Thursday class essays to go. Well, that’s enough for today.

Now I realize that not only some of my discourse in class, but also the text material, is above my students’ heads, and I fear I’m asking them to go beyond their capabilities.

Perhaps I should just relax and not worry about them, but I already thought I was a laid-back, lenient teacher who didn’t ask much of students. For the lousy pay, I’m crazy to care this much.

Last night I called Sat Darshan. Ravinder answered and said she was at a neighbor’s. I tried to talk to him, but he cut me off right away. Maybe his English isn’t that good, or perhaps he was busy.

I spoke to Marc this evening while he was home on a lunch break. He said they gave him the keys to the store today, and he’ll probably be working every other Saturday now. But the job isn’t fun, and two of the five store employees left in the last week, and it will take time to find their replacements.

Last night I slept well, and this morning I got up in the 5:30 AM darkness, listened to the radio for an hour as I drifted in and out of dreams, and had breakfast before 7 AM, when the dawn began to break.

I read the chapter in The Spiral Guide this morning, although I spent a lot of our class time trying to read critically a review of Judith Rich Harris’s controversial The Nurture Assumption: Why Children Turn Out the Way They Do with the students. Harris’s thesis is that peers influence a child’s personality and development as much as, if not more than, parents.

While her insistence that kids turn into the adults that they become because of their peers and heredity no matter how their parents raise them is provocative and contentious, I suspect she’s at least partially correct. But I think the debate is beyond what my students – most of them, anyway – can comprehend.

In Walgreens before class, I bought a Jewish New Year’s card to send to Bert and Alice Stratton and their kids in Cleveland.

On Lexis, I’d come across an obituary of Alice’s mother in Boca Raton, so I wanted to send a sympathy card. Not finding one, I settled for a tasteful Rosh Hashona card on which I wrote a condolence note.

This afternoon I alternated between reading the Times (I still haven’t finished reading today’s paper) and marking student essays. At 6 PM, I took a 40-minute walk to Pine Island Ridge. And somehow the day disappeared. God knows what I’ll do in a month when I begin teaching on Monday and Tuesday evenings.

Well, last fall I was basically a drudge who had no social life. I didn’t even go to sit in cafes to read, really – but I’m not going to be a drudge like that again. There’s no need.

I’ll probably call that guy Craig tomorrow although I’m more interested in that Chinese FIU student, Danny. But odds are I won’t end up dating anyone this fall. Last year I didn’t start seeing Gianni until the semester was about to end.

Of course, living with my parents means that if I want to have a sexual relationship, I have to go to the other person’s house.

Dad went to the optometrist today and she said there’s no way she could correct his vision to 20/20 with glasses. He needs cataract surgery.

All along, Mom has suspected the ophthalmologists are trying to avoid having the HMO cover the surgery. As scary as it is for me to be uninsured, I doubt I’d be any better off with an HMO.

Saturday, September 19, 1998

7 PM. Last evening I went to Barnes & Noble, thinking I might read from Eating at Arby’s at their open mic reading at 8:30 PM. But as Igor had warned me, it was mostly high school kids and weird adults with sentimental doggerel or pseudo-hip banalities. While I would like to perform, I have no desire to play pearls to an audience’s swine.

The caffeine from the Diet Pepsi at Taco Bell and the iced tea at Barnes & Noble caused me to have insomnia last night. If I’d had something constructive to do besides just lying in bed, I might have felt less tense.

It wasn’t until after 2 AM, or maybe 3 AM, when I finally dozed off, and although I got up at 7:30 AM, late for me, I was not fully rested and have felt sleep-deprived today.

I called the guy Craig and said I’d meet him at the North Miami Beach Barnes & Noble at whatever time he wanted; he said 1 PM was fine. I told him I’d be wearing a blue shirt and started to give him a self-description, but he cut me off, saying, “I’m sure I’ll know who you are.”

Bottom line: he never showed up. I should have realized the signals. On Thursday he didn’t want to chat, and he didn’t answer my email about the details of where the bookstore was.

Probably he was never planning to show up. It’s annoying, but remember, I felt like I was doing him a favor because I knew that a 6’3”, 230-pound hairy guy was not my type. Serves me right. Well, maybe not.

Anyway, I did manage to use the visit to reverse-shoplift copies of I Brake for Delmore Schwartz and I Survived Caracas Traffic and put them on the Fiction and Literature shelves between Ms. du Plessix Gray and Father Greeley.

Yeah, I know how stoopid it is to do that. If I ever want the books back, I’ll have to pay for them. And it’s not as if Barnes & Noble needs my charitable contribution. But when I come back, I can visit my books.

Every once in a while, I check the spot where I left Caracas Traffic in the Plantation Barnes & Noble, and after sitting there for more than a year, it ain’t going nowhere. Imagine if I come back to North Miami Beach and find one of my books gone! I’ll wonder for hours who goned them.

Speaking of gone, this Craig guy never was there in the first place. I just don’t believe he got a look at me and decided, “Nah, he’s a meeskite, I’m outta here!” I think he never had any intention of showing up.

Who can fathom what evil or psychopathology lies in the hearts and minds of men? I’m not Lamont Cranston. I’m not even former U.S. Senator Alan Cranston (D-Calif.).

I waited half an hour, called his cell phone from pay phone and was told the customer wasn’t available. There seemed no point in calling his house.

Gianni really spoiled me as far as Internet personals ads go. More typical is Craig, or that Jaime (and I guess I was no better when I repaid him with that fake come-on from AOL when I was on Long Island).

Let’s just give up trying to meet someone. My New Times ad is pathetic. I’d rather go surfing by myself.

Actually, today I didn’t Web-surf at all: no Internet, no email, and I don’t have cold sweats.

I did go to Publix and picked up some groceries and the Sunday bulldog edition of the Herald, and I’m halfway through the new issue of the American Book Review, which came in today’s mail.

Kate Gale of Red Hen Press sent me what I’d thought was a reply to my query about the book manuscript, but it was a list of her readings on the East Coast in connection with her new poetry book; she’ll be at Atticus Books, Rick and Lucinda’s store, as well as stores in Philadelphia, Princeton and New York.

The steno book where I record my daily food count ends tomorrow, so I get to start a new one for the Jewish New Year, which is also – or close to – the autumnal equinox.

So maybe we’ll fall asleep early tonight, yes? I’m talking to myself.

Today I heard Mom ask the dog five times: “Do you want fried matzo?” As if China was suddenly going to give up barking and say, “Sure, Marilyn. I’d love some.”

Sunday, September 20, 1998

9 PM. Rosh Hashona began at sundown, and although I’m living with my Jewish parents, you wouldn’t know it’s a High Holy Day. I don’t even know what Hebrew year this is. 57-something? I’ll have to look at a newspaper tomorrow.

In a way, though, I’m thrilled to have non-religious parents. In the six weeks I’ve been here, I’ve made the banal and belated revelation that I am very much like my parents. Their distaste for religion and conventionality, their vegetarianism and their skepticism, their cynical humor and their mordant take on life, and most of all, them not being judgmental – those are the things about them I like.

I spoke to Marc last night, and when I started to tell him how Mom cleans up hysterically before every prospective buyer comes to see the house, he interrupted, sighing, “Let’s not even talk about it.” But by now, I find it funny, not annoying.

I was out this afternoon when two different young couples stopped by, but in both cases, the people don’t even have their own homes for sale yet.

Marc explained to me what should have been obvious: this isn’t a starter house, and prospective buyers will be trading up from their first house – say, a two-bedroom that’s getting too small as their kids get bigger. So it’s not going to sell easily like the house in Brooklyn or the Davie town house, which attracted people who’d been renters.

When I told Marc I’d like to visit him in December, he said that if he’s still working for AirTouch, I could avoid paying for a car rental by driving him to and from work at the store, which is close to his apartment.

They’ve asked him to become manager, but he’s hesitant because he doesn’t know Microsoft Word or Excel. I told him it’s a great opportunity to learn word processing and spreadsheets and said he should get them to give him classes rather than expect him to learn the applications on his own.

Managing a store for AirTouch isn’t that great a deal because not only is the salary just a little bigger, but the hours are longer – fifty hours a week – and they’ll be pushing him to show bigger profits. So Marc’s been sending his résumé around after he’d made up copies at Kinko’s and saved it onto a disk.

Last night I slept well, dreaming of Grandpa Herb, Mikey and Mike and Mandy from Brooklyn College. I spent the morning listening to NPR’s On the Media and Weekend Edition and then exercised and went to Barnes & Noble to read the papers for a couple of hours.

Now reports say that Starr is planning to indict more of Clinton’s friends and aides and also Hillary. I became so incensed by this news that I found out Starr’s Virginia address and sent a postcard to Alice Starr, telling her that her husband is out of control and needs to be stopped, as I don’t think anyone but Starr’s wife can snap him out of his pathological, obsessive hatred of the Clintons.

Tomorrow’s the release of the videotape, and yes, I’m going to watch at least part of it – because I’m a news junkie and because I know that I’ll be “out of the loop” of normal Americans if I don’t see it.

Since I don’t watch the network newscasts, I’d never see any of it otherwise – though I guess it will be on Republican campaign commercials soon.

While Clinton did a terrible thing by lying about the relationship from January to August – his pathetic sex with Monica is less than terrible, at least to me – he doesn’t deserve to be hounded out of office, as I expect he will be. I now think he’ll have to resign.

On my email, there was a message with the subject line “No Show,” in which that Craig guy says he was in the bookstore from 1 PM till 1:30 PM and I never showed up: “My time is too valuable to waste. Don’t contact me again.” I emailed him back to say that I’d been there, but I’m not convinced that he’s telling the truth.

Only after I’d left the Nova computer lab today did it hit me that the time on his message, as I remembered it, was something like 12:45 PM yesterday. Maybe it was 12:45 AM, but it seems that he’d written it and sent it while I was waiting for him.

How could he have missed my blue shirt? Vanity makes me wonder if I just look too young to be 47, but that can’t be the reason he overlooked me; I tried to make eye contact with every guy in the store I thought might be him, but no one looked back with any recognition.

I should just stop trying to meet someone through the personals, online or not. Gianni was a fluke that won’t be repeated – although I guess I also connected with Thien in San Jose.