Someone With a Pen: Richard Grayson’s Diary

Monday, February 21, 2000

9 PM. It may have been Presidents Day, but as usual, I had my regular work day – and I made it a long one.

Luckily, I slept well last night, so I was refreshed by the time I got up at 6:30 AM. After exercising, I reviewed the first half of the Family Law chapter and then drove off to school.

Today I got a lot of non-junk email. Steve Kowit finally got back to me with a very long one-paragraph letter. He wonders why I became a lawyer and asks if teaching legal studies is “renumerative” [sic].

In response to my comment about his being prolific, Steve said that I saw a couple of articles in the San Diego Union-Tribune and Los Angeles Times that gave me a misleading impression; working on a long prose project, he hasn’t published much lately.

Steve concluded by sending me regards from his wife Mary.

Replying to my email, Patrick said that he spoken to Alan Merickel at Tallahassee Community College – they were the first community college to use computers in all their courses – but that Alan played down his BCC experiences “as if he’d forgotten them,” though he did wonder whatever happened to Greg.

“Speaking of drinking,” Patrick said, Jim McK – who used to teach at BCC-Central and also was an alcoholic – apparently married a lawyer and was last working as an adjunct at Barry.

Pat invited me to “watch [him] have lunch” one day soon.

Josh sent a photo of himself holding David. With his short graying blond hair and wire-rimmed glasses, Josh looks very paternal; it was a nice picture.

Teresa kept querying me about the APA citation system, so this afternoon I spoke to her and Pam about the two papers Pam had to write.

While I was on the phone with her, Teresa found a term paper for sale on a website and bought a copy for Pam, who is clueless about how to write a research paper.

Without Teresa’s help – financial and educational – I don’t think Pam could get through her bullshit courses in the master’s program at Lehman College.

One paper the students have to write is on “racism and education” and she needs to use her own experiences and philosophy but also several sources, including one electronic source.

As the resident academic, I’m called on for advice, and I did give an easy explanation of the APA citation format. Along the way we chatted a bit.

Pam told me she would like to leave Norton, but she can’t afford it on a teacher’s salary – and she’s so busy with lesson plans and going to grad school two nights a week that she has little free time except on a holiday weekend like this one.

According to Teresa, Cat finished the courses necessary for her to get her B.A., but New England College won’t send it until May. Cat plans to go to grad school for education at Queens College, and Teresa and Paul are hoping she’ll eventually leave her husband when she becomes financially independent because he treats her like a 1950s housewife.

As Teresa said, although we email each other all the time, it’s nice to hear the other person’s voice once in a while.

Online, I keep targeting the media elite and media mavens to try to find out where I can send them stuff about my book. I guess by summer I’ll find out whether my strategy of getting email addresses actually works in helping me publicize it.

After lunch, I enjoyed my class discussion on the Family Law chapter with cases like Wisconsin v. Yoder and Moore v. East Cleveland.

I was shocked when Althea, that little girl who’s such a grade-grubber, revealed that she’s only 15 years old. She left school after eighth grade because she was bored, and California law allowed her to go to college. When she moved to Florida, she couldn’t legally enroll in a public college, but Nova let her in on the basis of her CSU transcripts and SAT scores.

Our Liberal Arts Division counselor told me the students really love my classes and mentioned that some told her they want to take everything I’m teaching before I leave. Then how come last term’s evaluations were subpar?

After helping out a few students with their legal memos, I left campus at 3:30 PM.

At home, I spent a couple of hours making the first attempt at tomorrow night’s open book exam. Writing 25 multiple choice or true/false questions proved incredibly tedious, and I still have another 25 to go.

Still, while they’re taking the test tomorrow night, I should be able to prepare for Wednesday’s day class and mark at least a few papers on The Crucible.

I got a note from Alice saying her all-female Friday night party went well, though six or seven scaredy-cats cancelled due to the snowstorm.

Her brother is coming up to New York on business this week, so Alice hopes she’ll get the scoop on the state of his marriage then.

Tom wrote from Salisbury that he’s doing the best he can, but I get the impression he feels mostly disdain for his students – “99.9% middle class white” – none of whom had read the assigned Waiting for Godot.

Tom will be thrilled to never teach again although he’s worried about money. Annette is coming up next weekend after attending some kind of New Orleans job fair.

At a colleague’s house, Tom had dinner with Richard Ford and his wife, who were quite friendly and asked Tom to visit when he gets back home.

“I guess I should have gotten friendly with Ford years ago when he visited NOCCA,” Tom wrote, but he despises Ford’s writing so much that it’s hard for him to get past that.

For me, there’s no correlation between being a good writer and a pleasant companion. Indeed, I suspect that bad writers – like bad artists of all kinds – can make excellent friends.

Of course, that’s because I’d like to think I am a bad writer who is an excellent friend.

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Thursday, February 24, 2000

7 PM. Although I knew I really should have gone to bed early last evening, I decided I had to go to Judy Cofer’s reading at BCC-South, mostly because I wanted to see Patrick. I sat with him in the back of the library’s Media Room before a packed house. Lots of ESL classes were there.

Hearing Judy read a story about 1968 made me feel a lot better. Although I could relate to it, so could every baby boomer because it had every cliché imaginable about 1960s culture. And Judy’s first-person prose sounded every bit as awkward as my stories in The Silicon Valley Diet and just as stylistically inept.

And if anything, her dialogue was even worse than mine. I liked some of her poems better than her prose, but I was waiting for something new. Judy’s been able to coast on being a Latina in Georgia, but it’s like she doesn’t realize that these days even rural Georgia towns are populated by lots of Hispanics.

And when Judy tried to explain what it’s like to be thought of as “foreign,” I whispered to Patrick: “Doesn’t she realize that half the audience is made up of immigrants?”

“More than half,” Patrick whispered back.

I mean, Get over it, chica, and do something new.

It’s like gay writers constantly trotting out their old tired coming-out stories. At least I hope The Silicon Valley Diet hasn’t done that. Except in a couple of places, I treat being gay (or bi) as a given – as the way the better 1990s gay fiction does.

Of course, when I read my own book two weeks ago, I was struck by how “baby boomer” and “Jewish” it seemed when I expected it to be “gayer.”

But I guess it’s me, and I don’t apologize for being myself. The one criticism I will not get is that I’ve attempted to imitate someone else.

I know Judy must have felt different being Puerto Rican, but today’s many Hispanic students are mostly from other countries, without the advantage of automatic U.S. citizenship.

It was great to see Betty last night. Clearly, she was so proud of Judy, one of the many successful younger women Betty has mentored over the years.

Too tired to go to a late dinner with Judy, Barbara, Vicky, Elisa and Betty at La Carreta, I just went up to Judy at the end and chatted for a couple of minutes. Probably I bored her despite making sure that I did not talk about myself.

I also said hi to Lenny – who told Patrick and me that Kirt is in prison in Tampa for possession of cocaine – but mostly I spoke with Patrick. He’s a finalist for the endowed chair at BCC that will mean $5000 extra a year for three years and $2500 for the department.

I had purposely parked next to Patrick’s truck (the ELVIS front license plate was a dead giveaway), and we chatted outside for twenty minutes more as we watched a red fox scamper by.

It was 10:30 PM when I got home, and I got to sleep late, but I woke up before 5 AM and only drifted off again for another 15 minutes. Tonight I’ll need to get to bed early.

In order to give a student an early final, I had to be at school at 10 AM (tomorrow I have to be in again at that hour to give the test to Javier, who has a baseball game at noon.

Unable to do any work, I instead trolled for email addresses and answered my own email.

Kevin said that Oliver! went very well. But he has to put acting aside for a while to keep afloat financially – Kevin needs more money than he can get by temping – so he’s got an interview for an executive assistant position at Warner.

He closed his email by saying that the heavy rains Los Angeles has been getting make him remember what living in Florida was like.

Mark Savage wrote that he’s about to become a grandfather for the second time; he’s awaiting the call from Israel.

Until Mark told me, I didn’t realize that New York City public schools have “Presidents Week” off. No wonder Pam was spending so much time at Teresa’s.

Teresa wrote: “The house is such a mess with all the renovations that I’ve retreated to your room, the only quiet, sane space.”

Josh replied to my brief note kvelling over the photo and asking if he enjoyed “the diaper brigade.”

“Actually,” Josh wrote, “the photo was taken in Germany. Gabrielle won’t come here to live and we’re constantly at each other’s throats.”

As I said to Sat Darshan, what was shocking to me was how Josh had aged in that photo. Perhaps his little son is better off with his mother in welfare-state Germany.

I don’t see Josh as being anyone’s ideal father. If he and Gabrielle fight all the time, it might be worse if she and the baby lived in New York.

At home, I did laundry and had lunch. My phone, which wasn’t working this morning, got fixed by Southern Bell from the outside, saving me an inside wiring repair.

At the office from 2 PM till 4 PM, I managed to get my “RedHenP” address book past a thousand names.

Household Visa raised my credit limit from $5000 to $6000, but the APR is 24%, and I just paid $1000 off with an FCNB credit card check to lower my interest costs. At least I know I’ve got a lot of credit available.

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Sunday, February 27, 2000

4:30 PM. I’ve been lying down for the past hour and managed to fall into that alpha stage, which if it isn’t sleep, approximates the benefits of a refreshing nap. Usually, of course, I don’t get into that kind of deep relaxation without being violently sleep-deprived.

Today I was up at 6:30 AM, only about 5½ hours after drifting off. At Barnes & Noble this morning I graded the legal memos and the rest of the Intro to Law finals rather carelessly.

By the time the term ends, I rarely feel like grading papers anymore, and the reluctance I have to judge others makes the task of giving final grades distasteful and unpleasant.

I still have the introductory class’s papers on The Crucible to go over, and I can’t bear to look at them today. But in that class, I’ve given three tests, six quizzes and a number of other assignments, so by now I’ve got a decent idea of each student’s grades.

Nobody’s going to do worse than a B- in either class, and I’m limiting the A grades to between five and seven of the 25 students. (I’m more generous giving grades of A-.)

Although I’m constantly trolling put the names of people who might be interested in my book, I’m basically sick of the whole project. Additional names probably aren’t going to be worth the time I’ll spend searching them out unless they have a good chance of getting me a review or a sale.

Reading gay publications like The Express, TWN and the Lambda Report, I’m starting to feel alienated from the narrow view of life as seen almost exclusively through the prism of sexual orientation.

When I read about the White Party or what sounds like a horrendous novel about a gay porn star’s obsession with young Hasidic yeshiva boys, I’m just amazed that people take stuff like that seriously.

Deep down, of course, I know that my book isn’t really a “gay” book; it’s a Richard Grayson book, like my other books were. On the other hand, I don’t know who will like The Silicon Valley Diet. Not that my other books ever had much of an audience, of course.

When I expressed my relief the other night at BCC that Judy’s stories seemed as awkward and ungraceful as my own, Patrick accused me of getting myself in a negative mindset so I can prepare to move from fiction to journalism. But that’s not it.

Anyway, I’m cranky today, and the best thing is just to lie in bed. I realized that this coming week off won’t really revitalize me because I’ve got to do the grading for this term and the prep work for the next. That’s the trouble with eight-week semesters.

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Monday, February 28, 2000

7 PM. Yesterday’s lassitude lasted till about 6:30 PM, when I drove to the Borders near Sawgrass Mills, ordered caffeine-free orange herb tea and tackled The Crucible papers, most of which were quite good.

I also bought a copy of Publishers Weekly, which reminded me that I’d meant to send them a copy of my page proofs.

So I went home, got the copy I’d made, and deciding not to make another copy, I bound it at Kinko’s for $3 and bought a mailing envelope.

And this morning I created a cover sheet from Red Hen Press with all the information they ask for as well as a book description and some of my past review blurbs, including one from PW.

Even as I mailed the package off at the Davie post office, I doubted that my actions will get the book reviewed. Still, Publishers Weekly did review all my other books, though those were in hardcover.

The one thing I’m sure of is that if I hadn’t spent the $10 and a couple of hours on this, there definitely wouldn’t be a review, as no Red Hen Press book ever got a Forecast in PW.

So there’s no harm done, because Kate probably doesn’t send out galleys – and if they do review the book in PW, Kate will probably be annoyed rather than pleased. Don’t ask me why, but small press publishers are perverse.

I also went back to trolling for email and property addresses as I read today’s paper, and I got a bunch of names from the Lambda Book Report. Plus I got a series of mailings from FIU’s MFA program with the names of lots of local writers in the “cc” header. If people are stupid enough not to use Blind Carbon Copy, then I’m going to use those names for my address book.

Of course, instead of doing this for the past four months, I should have been spending more time concentrating more on my teaching job that pays the bills.

But, you know, I’m going to get paid the same amount from Nova whether I do a lot of extra work or not – and so I’m not going to do all the extra work that Les Lindley suggested.

I’ll just teach out of the text and do the best I can next term  in Constitutional History II, and I’ll do whatever I please in the evening class, in which I have essentially free rein.

I got my final grades in, and the lowest grade I gave was B-. (I gave a lot of them.) If my students can make a good case for changing the grades, I’m happy to do so.

Up at 6:45 AM today, I went to Supercuts after exercising. Somehow I managed to get a good haircut. The stylist didn’t want to take much off the top, and I told her to use a #2 razor on the sides, so I’ve got longer-than-usual hair but very closely-cut sides, a kind of boyish look.

(I always indulge my vanity by trying to let a new stylist know how old I am. And now, when asked what my age is, I say, “Next year I’ll be 50.”)

After a shower, I put on a t-shirt and cargo pants and went to Nova, stopping to feed the cat on my way to the office. I spent at least 90 minutes of my 2½ hours there reading articles on Lexis, getting addresses, and reading email.

Gianni is coming to the U.S. for three weeks, beginning March 6, and he wanted to know if we could get together. I said he could come down and stay with me, but I doubt he will, and that’s okay because as much as I would like to see Gianni again, I don’t know how I could fit his visit in.

I wrote to Steve Kowit, Alice, Tom, Jaime, Teresa and a couple of other people.

Justin sent me a mass announcement about his three one-act plays being produced in Los Angeles. Lately Justin only sends me mass emails. He’s another person that doesn’t use Bcc:.

After lunch, I went to the public library for more emailing. Tom wrote that he has a bad cold, “but unfortunately it didn’t keep me out of the classroom.” Annette is coming to Maryland for a couple of weeks, and then he’ll return with her to New Orleans during spring break.

She had a first interview with a firm in Fort Worth for a programming job that pays about $50K – which would make a lot of sense financially, given Tom’s impending retirement.

He rattled off four or five new acceptances by magazines; I don’t know how Tom does it. Or why. One reason I spend so much time on the book rather than writing new stories or concentrating on my teaching is that if I do beat the odds and get some career mileage of Diet, it will be more than I get from any new story acceptances or from Nova Southeastern University.

After teaching God-knows-how-many classes and publishing over 200 stories since 1975, I know that more of the same will not advance me.

I think my move to journalism comes at a good time. According to a Times Media Business article today, reporters and editors are leaving major papers for dot-com startups. So there may actually be online jobs for journalists.

I spoke briefly to Ronna, who was on the move, as usual, getting ready to put Amelia down for a nap and to pick up Chelsea. The kids are fine, and Ronna says that Amelia has become more talkative, even on the phone: “After the pediatrician told me to stop finishing Amelia’s words, she began talking in phrases and even sentences.”

Matthew has interviews coming up for the job of Chief of Medicine at Lenox Hill in New Haven (where he’d also teach at Yale) and at Long Island North Shore. Ronna doesn’t really know Long Island and is somewhat negative towards it, but I told her I really love it.

Her mother’s okay and will be coming up to stay with them in May. Maybe I can visit them in Jenkintown again this summer.