A Writer’s Diary Entries From Late July, 1999
Tuesday, July 20, 1999
8:30 PM. Last evening I hurried out to catch the 7:45 PM showing of the teen gross-out movie American Pie at the Fountains. It was entertaining, but more than that, I was able to get my mind off the stresses of the day and able to relax so that when I returned home at 9:30 PM, I could fall asleep quickly.
As the lawyer said yesterday, selling a home brings up a lot of personal issues and emotions. That, of course, is true for Mom and for Jonathan, who barely have lives outside the home. But for me as well,yesterday’s closing must have brought up a lot.
I felt so angry with my mother all day. Mostly it’s for being what I consider crazy. While I can be amused at the same kind of behavior on the part of Paul’s mother or Aunt Sydelle, neither of them are my mother, and I never needed to be dependent upon them.
I guess that yesterday and the day before just brought out that my parents are now somewhat dependent upon me, and I’m rebelling against that. My parents’ level of competence sometimes seems so low that it frightens me; on the other hand, I have to concede that they managed to sell the house without a broker when I thought they never would.
This morning at 7 AM I called up Unemployment and claimed benefits. Later, I called back and found that they issued a $275 check, which should get here on Friday.
As I pay off this month’s bills, my balance in checking is shrinking, and I’m going to have to take more cash advances. With my many credit cards, I’ve essentially returned to the chassis days of the late 1980s, though I’ve got many more lines of unused credit and over $10,000 in savings accounts that are at least partially securing the credit.
On the other hand, back in the 1980s, I also remember having about $32,000 in my credit union share draft account.
When I couldn’t get Patrick on the phone today, I got frustrated and began to look around for a commercial photographer. But when I decided to call him one last time, Patrick answered, saying he’d meet me at my Nova office right away.
I wore my cheap black polo shirt, and he ended up taking both black-and-white photos and color ones with his digital camera. There weren’t many poses I could do in the office, but I was grateful to Patrick and so glad just to get the photography session over with.
I was also thrilled to have a good friend to talk with for three and a half hours, both in my office and at Miami Subs. (Patrick has to watch his diet because of his diabetes, so we couldn’t go to Wendy’s.)
Patrick and I talked about many things: the current dominance of the Spanish language in South Florida (I think English will ultimately triumph); the latest films; the literature classes we’re teaching at Nova and BCC; Larry Brandt (Patrick knew him when he was an adjunct at BCC who got fired); and more.
Both Patrick’s mother and my father are going to be 73 tomorrow, and Patrick said, “I don’t know how you feel, but the idea that my mother could live another twenty years. . .”
I know exactly what he meant by those unspoken trailed-off words. But Patrick is his mother’s only child, and however difficult problems get with my parents, my brothers will probably have to deal with them more than I will.
Thursday, July 22, 1999
8 PM. I had a really bad dizzy spell in my office a little while ago. I guess I’m having sinus problems because of the extreme humidity, but it’s also been a very stressful day in a very stressful week.
At my office at 7 AM, I saw an email from Brad Gooch. He’d read my stories and said a blurb “didn’t come to mind. Hope you’re not pissed.”
If Brad knew me better, he would know that I don’t get pissed. I’m just hurt and embarrassed that I asked him in the first place. I thought I’d get over it by now.
Anyway, I started getting together a “Praise for Richard Grayson” selection of quotes from reviews of my books because I don’t really expect to get any blurbs.
It was very painful for me to plow through all the negative words in the reviews to find a few unqualified phrases of praise. That made me feel hurt again, and right now I don’t feel like dealing with any more rejection.
A number of people seem to think I’m an underachiever, afraid of failure. I read that mean article that Chauncey Mabe wrote in 1990 again, and it still hurt.
I also feel rejection in my personal life. I knew Sean wouldn’t write back. Jaime did, but as much as he intrigues me, I remember that in October 1997 when Dad had his heart attack and I had to cancel our meeting, Jaime seemed quite insensitive, and he’s probably not someone I should get involved with.
Maybe I just set myself up for rejections. I didn’t have to write Sean or Jaime; I didn’t have to put in a Yahoo personals ad. And I shouldn’t have asked Brad Gooch for a blurb.
Having spent time with Brad just makes it worse. There’s a sliding scale of embarrassment involved with my blurb-begging. Easiest to deal with is someone like Alan Gurganus, whom I’ve never had any contact with. It’s a bit harder with Michael Chabon or Lars Eighner, whom I’ve corresponded with, and worst with people like Brad, whom I’ve actually met.
Hey, maybe I shouldn’t be publishing my book after all. I am basically paying $5,000 to do it; otherwise, Kate Gale would have less than zero interest, and even now, her interest level is maybe a 3 or 4 out of 100.
Okay, I’m feeling sorry for myself.
Another disappointment I got today was when I drove to Boca and discovered that the newspaper has stopped running “Local Opinion” columns, which made me feel embarrassed that I’d sent the last piece.
But now I never have to drive all the way to Boca to pick up the newspapers with my columns in them, and that’s fine with me.
I don’t expect the New York Times will take the op-ed column I sent them, either. Maybe piling all the rejections into one day we’ll make things easier.
The nicest thing that happened today was that Patrick sent me more JPG photos. Two, taken in the office, came out okay, but there was a great whole-body shot of me that he took outdoors. I’m in my t-shirt and shorts, and I look really cute.
Maybe other people wouldn’t agree, but I would be thrilled to have a boyfriend who looked like that. Is it weird to say so?
A lot of the criticism of my fiction says I seem to enjoy myself too much. But taking pleasure in myself – whether it’s autoerotic or the joy of reading something I wrote well: Is that totally pathological? Isn’t that what Brad’s “Inner Boyfriend” is all about?
Look, I don’t really know if Brad is a nice guy or not, but I placed him in an awkward position. And of course he didn’t really have to write me back. I actually would have preferred his just not responding because then I could pretend it didn’t happen.
It’s like I get upset when guys I meet on first dates don’t call back and I also get upset when they email back to say they don’t want to see me again – even when I don’t want to see them again, either.
Well, rejection is hard to deal with. I wish there were a good book about the subject I could read. Anyway, I guess I’ll just have to comfort myself.
(Last year in Philadelphia, Ronna’s mother told me that Abigail was a “self-comforting” baby: that unlike most babies, when Abigal would become upset, she’d immediately put her thumb in her mouth and calm herself down.)
Today reminded me of the time I found the bad Kirkus review of With Hitler in New York in the public library at Grand Army Plaza and went straight to bed for the day.
But the next morning I told Wes and Bobs Pinkerton at Taplinger not to keep bad reviews from me. I even said, “I eat Kirkus Reviews for breakfast.”
I still have friends who care about me. “GREAT PHOTO!” Teresa wrote back after I sent her the picture I liked. Patrick has been wonderful lately, and so have Kevin and Sat Darshan.
And as crazy as my family is, they have always been supportive of me. Last night I spoke to Aunt Sydelle for an hour, and surprisingly, she made me feel better.
Tonight at Nova, I saw a scared feral cat that was so thin that he looked as if he were starving. I tried to give him some food, but he ran away.
Like Mom and Jonathan, I feel bad for the cats they call Mommy and Baby, who will probably be confused and lost when my family leaves the house. Who will feed them? At least if the cats would let people get near them, Mom could take them with her to Arizona.
Gee, everything seems sad tonight.
Friday, July 23, 1999
9 PM. Today I finished compiling the list of quotes from reviews in the file “Praise for Richard Grayson.”
Gish Jen sent me a handwritten note telling me she hadn’t written in a year and can’t take the time to blurb me. I feel fine about that because I don’t know her.
But I think that if the quotations from reviews of my books were good enough for White Ewe Press, Zephyr Press and Avisson Press, they should be good enough for Red Hen Press.
Of all my books, only I Brake for Delmore Schwartz was published correctly, with a good format, cover, publicity, etc. That was mostly thanks to Ed Hogan, may he rest in peace.
I don’t expect much from Red Hen. As Patrick pointed out, their covers are boxy, as if they come from a template.
I spent time in my office writing down a basic syllabus for my course in Political and Civil Rights. I divided the text chapters and the cases into eight sections, one for each of the eight weeks of the term.
Obviously, I’ll have to cut out a lot of the material or risk overwhelming my students. But at least they should read most of the cases; the ones they don’t read, I can talk about in class. I know a lot of these cases like the back of my hand.
I still have to decide how much like a law school class I want to run this course as. When I get scared about this undertaking, I tell myself that it’s only an eight-week course, and that I (or someone else) could be doing this as an adjunct and not working half as hard as I expect to.
When I first went to the office today at 7 AM, I crossed emails with Teresa online, so was nice to “talk” with her in real time. She told me she was taking the 11 AM ferry to Fire Island and I should call her there. But when I phoned in mid-afternoon, Teresa was out and I got Pam, who told me she’s enjoying her education classes, learning a lot and working hard.
Back home at 9 AM, I did my usual workout and then used the 40-minute instructional workout tape to Billy Blanks’s Tae Bo videos that I bought the other day. While I like the idea of kickboxing as exercise, I didn’t want to go to a health club for classes.
It will take me a while to learn all the movements – punching and kicking – with proper form, but there’s a 30-minute regular workout tape I can use. I need some aerobic activity in addition to strength training and stretching.
After I showered and dressed, I called Marshall at Cameron Cove, and he gave me my new phone number.
When the mail came, I got my unemployment check, which I deposited, and my University of Florida law school transcript, which I brought into Maria in case Santa doesn’t get a copy soon.
At work, I was able to create a mass email letting everyone know my new mailing address and phone number by using the Bcc (blind carbon copy) function.
Wednesday, July 28, 1999
10 PM. Last evening’s Gay and Lesbian Book Group at Barnes & Noble was an interesting experience. The moderator was Randy Brooks, who’s chair of the Gay and Lesbian Book Fund of the Broward County Public Library Foundation.
He seemed amazed that about ten lesbians (mostly over 50), a gray-bearded guy and I showed up for the meeting since nobody had appeared at the previous three scheduled sessions of the Book Group.
As he began talking, it was immediately clear to me that Randy knows nothing about literature. When he called Updike a gay writer, my objection was probably too derisive.
But as usual, whatever intelligence or knowledge I do have seems to impress people, and after I talked about my fellowship and my books, people looked to me to take the lead – although I tried hard not to dominate the conversation.
The books that Randy had selected were wildly inappropriate for a female-dominated group, and the level of discourse in the discourse was shockingly low.
Basically, the people in the group had scant knowledge about gay literature and gay culture. I tried not to looked shocked as they resorted to the most banal cliches about the gay, lesbian and bisexual experience.
It even surprised me that Randy, a veteran gay activist, was so insecure. Who wanted to hear about his problems with his Southern Baptist parents or that he’s afraid to live outside the gay ghetto in Fort Lauderdale?
A photographer was taking pictures for a Coral Springs community newspaper, and since all of the women were terrified about being caught on camera – the other guy left early – my picture will probably be the one to get into the paper, so I made sure that Camera Guy spelled my name right.
Whenever I think that I’m insecure about being gay and have so much internalized homophobia, I see that I’m years ahead of other people. Of course I don’t have to be afraid of losing my job.
I also don’t want to be like Randy, who to me is basically a “professional homosexual,” akin to those “professional Irishmen” disdained by the Irish-Americans I knew in New York when I was growing up.
Randy went on and on talking to me after everyone else had left. I think I heard him to confess to never having a single romantic relationship in the past 22 years.
Anyway, I told Randy to give my regards to Jean Trebbi. I also gave him my name and phone number because they’ve been looking for someone to lead a workshop for gay writers. I might as well network, though I feel guilty about exploiting being gay, and I shudder at the prospect of reading trite, amateurish coming-out stories.
Even though I had only one cup of iced tea at the bookstore, I had a bad case of insomnia and didn’t drop off to sleep until after 2 AM.
But lying in bed, I liked how I felt about myself. For whatever reason, I’ve been able to go from that fucked-up 18-year-old boy thirty years ago to someone with a fairly well-defined sense of self.
As I get older, I also get more confidence in my intellectual abilities as I see how stupid most other people have become. Were people actually smarter in the 1960s and 1970s?
I had a nice surprise when I checked the email this morning: a message from Sean. He doesn’t hate me after all; he’s just no longer at his old workplace.
Now Sean’s working for a software firm that’s the state’s fifth-fastest growing company. From my own research, it sounds like he’s involved with secure extranets, open networks and E-commerce.
Anyway, Sean said that I was “still pretty” but he would have never recognized me after all these years.
While he’s glad to be working, at this new firm Sean can no longer spend so much time trying to win radio contests or take extended vacations – though he and Doug are going to Europe for a week in August and then to New Orleans for Divine Decadence on Labor Day weekend.
Anyway, I’m glad to be back in touch with Sean.
I also was surprised that Jaime wrote me back, so I sent him another note which will probably either give him a better picture of who I am or assure him that I’m crazy.
Roger Buckwalter called to say he’s going to put my letter about bra burning in the Jupiter Courier, so at least the column I wrote for the Boca Raton News will be published somewhere.
The National Bank of North America sent me a Visa card with a $1000 credit limit.
I also found some more reviews from which I could get six more quotes for “Praise for Richard Grayson.”
So a lot of good stuff happened today.
This evening at the Fox Sunrise, I saw Three Seasons, an affecting film set in Vietnam by Tony Bui, a young Vietnamese-American. The movie made me think of Thien because the scenes of the Vietnamese countryside were as beautiful as he always claimed they were when he talked about his country.
On the other hand, the poor neighborhoods of Saigon looked like typical Third World urban squalor – Thien never had much to say about the time he spent there working in his uncle’s bicycle store – and the fancy hotels in Vietnam were just like fancy hotels everywhere.
I do miss Thien. When I get into my new apartment, I should give him a call.