Someone With a Pen: Richard Grayson’s Diary

Thursday, April 1, 1999

10 PM. Only tonight, when I sensed that the Nova campus seemed to have fewer students than usual, did I realize that it was already the second seder of Passover.

I had what I thought was a very good Fiction Writing class. After workshopping their writing assignments, we discussing Burroway’s chapters on characterization and the stories in her text. I also checked the students’ notebook journals.

As class let out, Lila Brinkmann’s mother came to pick her up and wouldn’t stop talking. It was wonderful to hear that I “changed [her] daughter’s life.” (Lila was in my Language 2000 class in the fall and is now taking Fiction Writing.)

But the woman also told me her whole life story, including her early widowhood, her financial struggles, her recent second marriage, and how her older daughter and son-in-law became millionaires in the fashion eyeglass frames business.

Because tomorrow is Good Friday, I don’t have to teach at 8 AM, so my weekend has already begun. Maybe I can work a little on the “Silicon Valley Diet” story. I’ve begun to get very excited about my fiction and the possibility of a Red Hen Press book of stories.

Early this morning I kept falling back into complicated dreams, finally waking up at 6:30 AM, later than usual. I walked for 40 minutes after breakfast and went to the Davie library when it opened at 9 AM.

Fiddling around, I found a webzine page, not officially up yet, that had “Mysteries of Range Management” on it. Now printed out, it doesn’t really look like much more than a typed manuscript – but it is published, and besides, it will also be in that literary magazine come fall.

As Kate Gale suggested, I’m going to send her out some stories to give her an idea of what the book will be like. (She mentioned cover art.) With the extra $2,000 I’ll be getting in salary, I don’t feel so bad about paying for the book. It will be a career investment.

After all, everything leads to something else. Kitty Oliver first thought of me teaching in her FAU Print Media program after reading the Sun-Sentinel story about my grant.

“Mysteries of Range Management” looks good, and while it may be clumsier and more naïve than other writers’ gay fiction, it’s mine, a story nobody else could have written. And a month ago the story didn’t exist.

At Barnes & Noble in Pembroke Pines, I sipped mango Ceylon iced tea and read the New York Times.

Some American soldiers were captured by the Serbs and paraded before cameras today. After a week, it seems obvious that NATO’s air strikes are a failure. It reminds me of Vietnam because the only things we can do are escalate (an exercise in futility) or get out in defeat now.

It seems Clinton’s popularity will probably decline as this drags on. Since he pays attention to polls, he may not be as stubborn as LBJ was. I just want this war to end.

Back home, I looked at my mail, munched lunch, and did the reading and grading for tonight’s class.

I haven’t heard from Teresa all week, but I know she’s busy with catering jobs due to Passover. In a month I’ll be at her house, a day after she and Paul return from Italy. I am exciting about leaving my parents’ house.

Looking ahead, I put an ad in the New York City personal section of the Yahoo classifieds, but so far I’ve gotten no responses. I’ve also been reading other guys’ ads, though I haven’t answered any.

I think about how great it was when Gianni would stay over in my apartment in downtown Davie back in late 1997 and early 1998. I wrote to Gianni today but haven’t yet gotten a reply. The said thing is that he becomes less real to me as the months pass.

Today in the mail I got a notice about the fifth anniversary reunion of my UF law school class.

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Friday, April 2, 1999

8 PM. It’s hard to claim I had the day off when otherwise I would have taught only until 9 AM. But I slept till 6 AM and instead of beginning class at 8 AM, I was on I-95 heading for South Beach.

Parking behind Lincoln Road, I went to Joffrey’s and got iced tea and sat at the same table I had four weeks ago. I guess I hoped to replicate the feelings of creativity I got that day when I worked on “Mysteries of Range Management.”

I took out the hard copy of what I had of “Silicon Valley Diet” – mostly notes and attempts to write myself into the story – and I fiddled with them for an hour, and then, frustrated at how forced it all seemed, I moved on to Starbucks for more iced tea and began reading the newspaper.

I knew I couldn’t make creativity happen, so I’m not really disappointed. This afternoon from 2 PM to 4 PM, I tinkered on the computer, again changing the beginning of the story. Maybe I’m trying to do too much here. Part of the problem is I try to put in a lot of social criticism and I have a weakness for dropping in trendy or witty phrases.

I do think I need to redesign a “frame” for the story, and it should be a plain directive of diet advice, but so specific as to be useless to anyone but the narrator (me): for example, “Start by going to the Walmart in Milpitas and buying a steno book…”

I think I need to lose the stuff about how I started with Nutri/System. Also, the narrator needs to be younger than myself. I don’t want there to be all these references dealing with the differences in age between him and the Vietnamese guy. Can I carry off having the narrator be a young high tech guy when I’m not one?

I also probably need to ditch the gay couple in Los Angeles who are the narrator’s friends and replace them with one guy, a friend, an ex-boyfriend: a fourth-generation Japanese-American, I’m thinking.

Are all these seams in the story going to show? I’ve never struggled over a story so much, and I’m tempted to just forget about it, but I want to write about San Jose and Thien. And the title would be great on a story collection.

Tonight I mailed out six or seven of the stories to Kate Gale as she suggested. We’ll see if I get any kind of reaction.

This morning it became too hot even at 10:30 AM to do much walking, so I soaked up whatever South Beach I could before returning home for lunch.

Later I went to Nova’s adjunct office, but I had no important email and just wasted time looking at personals on Yahoo for twenty minutes.

These days I’m so restless, but instead of jerking around, I should be doing what I need to, like my income taxes and grading papers. I’ve got to comment on the already-graded American Literature papers before I can mail them back to students, and I’ve got a dozen essays I must return on Monday morning.

In the eight and a half months I’ve been in Florida, I’ve generated too much paper. My night table drawer is now so full that I’ve started to stash those interoffice mail envelopes I keep papers in under my bed.

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Tuesday, April 6, 1999

8 PM. I couldn’t get to sleep right away last night, so I read until after 11 PM. I awoke at 4 AM and wanted to write more of the “diet” tips in my story, so I turned on the computer and composed until I ran out of gas after an hour.

After NPR’s morning news came on at 5 AM, I drifted in and out of deep, dream-filled sleep until I finally dragged myself awake at 8 AM.

Although I don’t feel I was very productive today, I managed to mark up and send out the last of my weekend American Lit students’ papers, and I graded the four papers from the Language 1500 class, so I’m up to date on that. I still need to read all the Fiction Writing assignments, but I have all day tomorrow and most of Thursday to do that.

Tonight I went to Nova and printed out what I’ve got of “Silicon Valley Diet.” The problem with the voice of the diet tips changing the story is that the now the narrator is too self-aware. He’s now the type who wouldn’t raise an eyebrow that the novels in a bookstore are arranged “alphabetically by personality.”

So I need to change everything, which is probably good because now the character isn’t so obviously me.

However, I still think his controlling nature, as shown in the kind of compulsive diet he follows, jibes with his wanting to turn his Vietnamese friend into an American.

Perhaps I’ll be able to distance myself more from the story now. The problem is that it’s 26 pages of narrative and notes, and so far nothing’s really happened.

But if I view this as a problem that needs to be solved, I’ll eventually figure it out. The voice of the diet tips was a discovery, and if I’m lucky, I’ll make some more while writing the story. This is how “real” fiction writers work, I guess.

At Nova, I wrote Tom’s NOCCA students a brief note of thanks and congratulations on the latest issue of Umbra. I also wrote to Dr. Stewart, the dean at the University of Maryland, to see if I can get the date of my admission to the journalism program changed again, this time to summer 2000, though I suspect that’s unlikely.

Still, if I can try to get in the journalism program for next year, it would make me feel better to know that I have someplace to go after my year as a visiting professor at Nova is over.

Ben emailed me, saying I should get letters of recommendation to him as soon as possible. I’d told the people I wrote that there was no rush, but now I’m not sure about that. So I emailed Patrick and asked him for yet another favor, and I’ll also ask Tom – just in case none of my law professors are going to come through.

I’ve always hated asking people for letters of recommendation and it seems I’m always doing it. I feel weird that I can’t ask Liz or Jon, of course. Ordinarily that might look strange since the Center for Governmental Responsibility was my last real job, but if this works out at Nova, I can make being a Visiting Professor of Legal Studies my “last job” recommendation next time.

Tonight Marc called from work – it’s three hours earlier in Arizona now – saying he was playing on the computer and learning Excel formulas. It’s been quite chilly in Phoenix, and he’s had the heat on at night; on Sunday, the high was only about 60°.

Now that it’s already so hot and humid here, that actually sounds good to me. Even at 5:30 PM, it’s become uncomfortable outside, so I’ve stopped walking while listening to All Things Considered.

This afternoon I did extra biceps exercises, as it looks to me like my upper arms are shrinking. They say muscles do lose mass at my age.

Teresa wrote that she’ll be busy catering parties again this weekend. Her weight has plateaued even though she’s keeping to a diet and going to exercise classes.

I am starting to really look forward to going to New York and Long Island.

Yesterday I answered a Yahoo ad from a guy in Long Island City and he didn’t reply. That’s probably for the best, but I would like to meet someone eventually.

Since I found Rick Peabody’s email address on the back cover of Open Joints on Bridge, we’ve been in regular contact. Last week Rick “walked away” from Atticus Books last week with not much to show for the store except memories and debt – and relief, it seems.

He didn’t get an interview at Arizona State, as he’d hoped he would, and today he asked me if I thought he’d have a chance at an academic job if he went for his Ph.D. at Johns Hopkins, Maryland or George Mason.

Despite his good publications and his extensive adjunct experience, Rick has never gotten a single interview for a full-time position. He’s at the point where he’s ready to apply to Catholic high schools as a teacher. “At a crossroads” was how he put it – “and it’s not for the first time.”

I’ve been there, and I said he shouldn’t take my word for it – not that he would – but that I agreed with Margaret, his girlfriend, that a Ph.D. wouldn’t help. The only reason to get a Ph.D., I told him, was if you wanted the intellectual experience or with just looking to avoid the world for a while. And I told Rick about Pete Cherches’s experience looking for a job in academia.

As usual, poor Rick’s emails contained a few of his patented “sigh” interjections. I hate to say “poor Rick” because there’s really nothing to pity him for, but for such an accomplished literary person, he seems so lacking in self-confidence and brio.

Well, the world wears down most of us. Maybe all of us. I’m happiest when I’ve accepted my own limitations and the realities of aging, of the marketplace for literary short stories and full-time, tenure-track college professor positions.

Looking at the war news every day for the last three weeks, you can’t help thinking that we’re ending the twentieth century with exactly the same sort of stupid brutality that made these last hundred years a horror.

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Saturday, April 10, 1999

9 PM. Last night I slept well, dreaming that Ronna and Matthew were upset because their children had become followers of Lyndon LaRouche and that I was enrolled at a school run out of the Flatbush Park Jewish Center and on a class trip I got stranded and had to wait for the Avenue R bus to take me home.

I awoke after 7 AM, but following breakfast, I lay down again. At 9 AM, I went to the Davie library to check my email – nothing, really – because I knew that the Nova server was going to be down today for Y2K maintenance.

Back in my room, I did low-impact aerobics to a Homestretch tape, and then instead of going out, I read the Times in bed. (On bed, I guess would be more accurate.)

Trying to recap the day now, I find myself at a loss to account for where the hours went. At the gas station, I got the bulldog edition of the Sunday Herald, but although I sat in the Coral Springs Barnes & Noble for a couple of hours, the Sunday New York Times never arrived. That saved me $4.24 but assured that most of tomorrow will be spent reading that paper.

At the bookstore, I worked on the hard copy of “Silicon Valley Diet,” going over the opening again and again, and editing the “diet book” parts in.

For a couple of hours this evening I sat at the computer and entered the changes, putting all the “diet book” parts in logical order. So now I have the completed “frame” for my “scenes.”

But except for a section with the narrator’s ex-boyfriend, I don’t have the slightest idea how to turn all my notes about Thien and Silicon Valley into a coherent narrative – or even a narrative-less “story.”

Perhaps I need to remove all the pages and pages of notes and put them in another file so that I can proceed with more of a blank slate.

Maybe I expect too much for this story, and I’m trying to accomplish too many goals, like making statements about the economy, immigration, homophobia, etc.

I need to just come up with a story to tell and try to ratchet down my expectations into something I can handle.

This evening I finally finished last week’s New York Times Book Review. For Monday, I have two or three papers to grade, and I need to make up then new assignment for my writing students.

So I should probably just put the story away for tomorrow, at least. However, it’s beginning to scare me that I have only twenty days left before I’ll be in New York.

Obviously I have to get my schoolwork done, but I also wanted to have my book manuscript printed out so I won’t have to pay 50¢ a page at a Kinko’s in the city.

Well, I suppose I can print out the manuscript except for the title story and leave just that for New York. After all, I told Kate Gale that I’d need till June to get the manuscript in.

The other big projects are completing the Dictionary of Literary Biography essay on my work – I’ll have to take my books with me – and spending the next few months preparing to teach Constitutional History and Civil and Political Liberties. I guess I’m going to be lugging a ton of textbooks to New York.

I also promised Mom that before I leave, I’d clean out my stuff and separate what can be thrown out from what I’ve got in the garage.

I need to go through all my xeroxes and keep copies of what I don’t have. Otherwise, a lot can go. After all, if I haven’t needed stuff since February 1998, it’s unlikely I’ll ever need it – and that goes for clothes, papers, books, and tchotchkes.

It’s only a matter of time before I need expensive dental work. Some of my teeth are hardly teeth at all but just thin membranes over silver amalgam fillings, and they’re increasingly cold-sensitive.

If I do fall asleep relatively early tonight, I’ll probably awaken at some point to fret over all these things and more.