Someone With a Pen: Richard Grayson’s Diary

Tuesday, March 14, 2000

3:30 PM. I haven’t yet prepared for tomorrow’s class, nor have I done an extra half-hour of exercise although I guess I can work out tomorrow afternoon. God knows where the time goes and how I manage to squander it.

Last evening’s class lasted two and a half hours with a short break and it went as well as could be expected.

My students are, of course, mostly conservatives who view the tort system as filled with plaintiffs who are exaggerating their injuries in collusion with abusive lawyers and doctors or as people who deserve little sympathy and who should try to take care of themselves.

Well, I’m exaggerating, but it’s hard for them to get out of the anecdotal talk-radio stories about the $9 million judgement for the woman who spilled McDonald’s coffee on her lap.

Maybe I tend to be just as reflexively pro-plaintiff, as I always root for the underdog even though I know there are plenty of scams in the system.

I came home after 9 PM and luckily it didn’t take me hours to fall asleep; I was up at 5 AM but able to drift off into REM dreams. In one dream I was saving children in a burning building.

They were cleaning the roofs in our building today, so I had to get out to move the car anyway, and that got me out of the house at 7 AM, when I put a smaller-than-usual load of laundry in the washer.

Then I went over to Silver Ridge Elementary School, where I voted in the Stupid Tuesday primary for Bill Bradley in the primary, some idiots for Davie town offices and against Broward’s strong-mayor, single-district and term limits proposals.

I filled up the Chrysler with gas at $1.59 a gallon, probably a higher price than I’ve ever paid before (though obviously not if I factor in inflation) – as I did later with the Mercury.

I exercised, showered and put away my laundry, and then I spent 90 minutes at Barnes & Noble with iced tea and the New York Times.

I felt a little embarrassed when Michelle, the barista, asked me what my forthcoming book is about and I told her, “Mostly interracial gay relationships.” I’m not yet totally comfortable being out to strangers – which is why being the author of a “gay” book is going to be an interesting experience.

I had a baked potato at Wendy’s, where I overheard a kid say, “He looks like he takes it up the ass,” presumably talking about someone he and his friends know.

Even though the remark was definitely not about me – the kids clearly hadn’t registered my presence, or if they did, I was just some old guy reading a newspaper – it still made me feel uneasy. It’s like being an African-American and hearing whites making racist remarks in your presence.

On the other hand, it’s probably good to realize what’s out there among the unwashed masses. But I’ve never been under the delusion that this planet is overrun by nice people or even that they are the majority.

At the office, all my email messages – and there were a lot of them – were either mass mailings, junk, newsletters or other impersonal stuff. I suppose I should try blocking some addresses to avoid so much clutter.

Anyway, I started to feel queasy, so I came home to lie down until the nausea subsided. Eventually I got hungry and had my regular lunch.

On the Census form I got in today’s mail, I checked the boxes White and Black both and also the box for Hispanic/Latino (I wrote in “Argentinian”) and invented a male “unmarried partner,” a 27-year-old Asian (Vietnamese). Am I nuts or what?

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Friday, March 17, 2000

7 PM. I’m tired tonight and a little farblondjet.

Only part of it was not getting enough sleep last night. My problem isn’t so much the kind of insomnia I had last Friday night, it’s simply that six and a half hours of sleep isn’t enough for me. Perhaps I’ll do better tonight.

I got to school very early this morning. In a repeat of what seemed to make Wednesday’s class move so well, I covered the blackboard with the 11 cases the text mentioned in the chapter on the laissez-faire constitutionalism of the 1870s to the first decade of the 20th century, cases like E. C. Knight and Lochner.

Larry Brandt actually turned off the light as he passed by at 7:30 AM, and when I said, “Hey!” he replied, “Sorry, Richard! But don’t you know it’s not permitted to be so diligent around here?”

I did have a good class – though I still need to go through a lot of the social and cultural stuff from the Gilded Age.

Sometimes I can be very dynamic, and I do have historical tidbits which you’d think wouldn’t fascinate students but does – like my telling them about “Ma, Ma, where’s my Pa? . . . Gone to the White House, Ha! Ha! Ha!”

The class was definitely interested in seeing Ken Starr, especially since most of them were in David McNamara’s Philosophy of Law class and they could persuade him to take them even if he didn’t want to go, citing his hatred for Starr.

Nearly all of David’s students are current or former students of mine, and I walked over with them and David to the law school building.

By the time we got to the room where Starr was to appear, there weren’t many seats left in the lecture hall, so David and I sat on the steps near the highest row of seats.

Finally Professor Tim O’Brien, who had been ABC News’ Supreme Court reporter for years, appeared and introduced his “good friend” Ken Starr, whose talk – following a series of visits to classes with constitutional law-related subjects – was about his experiences as solicitor general.

Then Starr took questions, all of which were respectful, including mine: I asked his opinion of Morrison v. Olsen, the decision upholding the independent counsel law and whether his experience as independent counsel had affected it.

He said what I expected: No, he had always agreed with Scalia’s dissent that the law was an unconstitutional trampling on separation of powers.

Although I always hated Starr and over the past couple of years have become enraged by him – enough so that the FBI came to investigate to see if I were a threat to Starr’s life – it’s hard to be impolite to someone in public.

Besides, Starr is personable, and in justifying his conduct and performance, he sounds so reasonable, very much the detached scholar.

Only occasionally did Starr slip and let flashes of his right-wing stridency appear – though they would flicker out suddenly, probably undetected by most, as he realized he had to suppress them (sort of like Dr. Strangelove with his mechanical arm making the “Sieg Heil” salute).

When David and I went to the faculty lounge for lunch, Starr chose to sit right next to me, as I somehow knew he would. O’Brien, Starr and the law professors at the table discussed issues like the initiative process in California and Florida, the ruling this week striking down Jeb Bush’s voucher plan, and similar stuff. Everyone was clearly trying not to let their political passions show.

Both David and I took part in the conversation, and the truth is that I love the intellectual nature of discussions about constitutional law and politics with people who are really smart and knowledgeable.

Sometimes I forget how smart and well-read I am, and I guess it makes me feel good that the Nova law professors and someone like Ken Starr probably thought I was intelligent.

In his talk to the faculty after the meal, Starr took as his starting point Morrison v. Olsen, leading me to think I’d ask the right question downstairs.

I did notice that Starr referred to actors in what he said his family called “the late unpleasantness” as “Linda Tripp” and “Webb Hubble” but called Lewinsky simply “Monica.”

And he made it sound as if he had absolutely no choice in his actions as special prosecutor, regretting only that he didn’t know how to deal with “the 24-hour news cycle.”

He presented himself as the high-minded legal scholar completely misunderstood by venal enemies – exactly the kind of “vast conspiracy” talk he ridiculed.

So his personal charm had worn off by the time that David and I walked back to the Parker Building at 1:30 PM.

I’m obviously a celebrity-struck person, but David was much more so, telling everyone we came across, “We just had lunch with Ken Starr.”

Back at his office, David said he thought that Todd Nixon, one of the finalists for the permanent Legal Studies position, “sounded dumb” when the two of them had a private talk, and David wasn’t at all impressed with him.

Later in the day, Jim Dolan emailed that Nixon’s dossier and those of the two candidates coming for interviews were by Santa’s desk. When I checked them out, I was surprised at the mediocre grades in undergraduate and law school they all got – though of course their grad school grades were A’s and B’s.

I tied up a few loose ends in my office before I went home, had a bite to eat, and picked up my license tag and registration.

I called Aunt Sydelle, who said she gasped when they removed her eye bandage after the cataract surgery: “I couldn’t believe my eyes how clearly I could see everything.” (Pun obviously not intended.)

But today she was upset after she “broke a tooth” on a bagel she had for lunch. To me, though, it sounded as if a crown had come loose, as she didn’t notice it until she passed a mirror.

Sydelle had thought the hard piece in her mouth was an olive pit, so she spit it out and promptly threw the garbage bag with the napkin in it down the apartment chute.

Her eye surgeon said she can’t have any dental work done now, so she was upset – but mostly because of her appearance, because she had no pain at all.

I told her that Mom hasn’t had some of her teeth in years – but then Mom is a recluse. Well, I’m glad the cataract surgery worked the way it was supposed to for Sydelle.

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Monday, March 20, 2000

Noon. It began raining in the apartment as it had during the fall hurricanes, and yesterday I had to put a towel down by the screen door near my bed.

My car – the Mercury – also had some rain inside. The Chrysler is sitting with a flat tire, and I guess I’m lucky in that it happened in front of the house rather than on the road.

But I don’t feel up to calling AAA today since today’s my horribly long day. Tomorrow I’ll be off and can deal with the flat tire. We know I don’t handle these things well, but there’s no sense in making myself more harried than usual.

Yesterday afternoon and evening, I did my reading for school and I graded the papers, many of which were so awful that I could barely contain my disgust.

Students just resort to talk-show clichés about “greedy lawyers” and “too many lawsuits” without discussing the subtleties of the issues discussed in Accidental Justice: The Dilemmas of Tort Law, which of course was assigned reading.

I don’t mind if students criticize the greed of attorneys, but they have got to argue their position with support and examples; the one or two students that did that got A’s on their papers.

It’s easy to understand why most Nova Legal Studies majors don’t get accepted into law schools: They simply don’t know how to deal with complexity, ambiguity or sophisticated ideas, and their LSAT scores probably reflect that.

Still, my annoyance with their work made me feel relief that I’m leaving Nova. Of course, grading papers has always been the worst part of college teaching.

Later in the day, as the gloomy weather wore on, I began to worry about my financial situation. The truth is that I don’t know how I’ m going to survive in Tallahassee.

As it is, earning my Nova salary, I can just about pay my bills. I’m going to have to take out more and more cash advances. (Last night I dreamed that one of my credit lines was canceled.)

It would be a shame if I have to declare bankruptcy next spring just as my 1991 filing is wiped off my credit reports after ten years.

This time of my life is sort of like 1991, when I was about to enter law school and move to Gainesville: I didn’t know how I could survive, yet somehow I managed even though I had rough times.

As an FAMU grad student in Tallahassee, my student loan payments will be suspended and my rent should be lower, so that alone will take about $650 off my monthly expenses. And maybe something unexpected will turn up there.

If I can get through the first year of journalism school – or even the first semester – perhaps I can take a full-time job and finish the degree by going part-time. Hopefully I can get some financial aid despite my relatively high income last year.

This morning I got to Nova at 7:10 AM and I spent the hour before class and the 90 minutes afterward catching up with my work and also on the hunt for email and street addresses. I found Susan and Spencer’s new address in San Jose.

I’ll try to write more later today.

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Tuesday, March 21, 2000

7 PM. It’s definitely spring now, and it’s beginning to get hot here.

Last evening’s class was a bit of a hodgepodge, a stretch – but the articles I assigned, the videos I showed and the discussions we had all seemed to come together in the end.

But then the organizing principle of my life as well as my stories has always been the deceptive non sequitur as I try to make seemingly non-related facts, feelings and anecdotes pull together to make sense and make a point.

After letting my students go at 8:30 PM, I spent another hour in my office on the computer, emailing and web surfing. I should call that guy Greg in Miami, but I don’t really have time.

When I got home last night, I was too tired for anything more than oatmeal and the last half of Ally McBeal. I did sleep fairly well, though.

I discovered that someone on eBay is currently auctioning off a copy of I Brake for Delmore Schwartz. He said that reading me is like watching a clown on a high wire.

It’s both embarrassing and funny that nobody has even offered 99¢ as the opening bid. I do have an eBay account, so maybe I should make a bid myself.

This afternoon I read Malcolm Gladwell’s New Yorker article, “Six Degrees of Lois Weisberg,” about what Gladwell’s new book The Tipping Point calls “connectors,” people who know everyone and make the world work.

Naturally I looked up Lois Weisberg’s address on Lexus, and not only did she go on my mailing list but I’m snail-mailing a copy of With Hitler in New York to her. Maybe she can talk me up in Chicago.

I’m nearing 2100 names in my address book, and I’ve also begun thinking what kind of mailing or different mailings for The Silicon Valley Diet will work best, from the subject line to whether to write it from me or from “someone” at Red Hen Press.

At 8 AM, I put up a load of laundry and then exercised while the clothes were in the dryer. I phoned the AAA to fix the Chrysler’s flat tire.

While I was waiting, I managed to take off the old license plate and put on the new one. Now I know an idiot could do that, but I’m terrible at anything having to do with even simple tools like pliers and screwdrivers. (The pliers worked.)

The guy who changed my tire was a chatterbox. He said he didn’t know anything about cars until a year ago when he began to work for AAA.

It’s not hard work, he said, but the hours are long. Still, he makes over $60,000 a year – though he’s continuing to live with his parents to save money.

When I gave him a $3 tip, I told him I would have given him more money, but as a college professor, I make $25,000 less than he does.

I went to Starbucks and had some berry iced tea while I read the news section of the Times for an hour.

After buying some groceries at Winn-Dixie and dropping everything into the freezer and fridge, I headed for the Davie library to check email.

Sat Darshan has been really sick with that bad upper respiratory infection that’s going around. Kiran Kaur had a strep infection, and they keep reinfecting one another, so Sat Darshan is even more tired than usual.

President Clinton, who’s visiting South Asia, was supposed to stop at Gurujot’s school in northern India, but he canceled at the last minute. “Oh well,” Sat Darshan wrote. “maybe someday she can meet a president who isn’t a slime bucket.”

Teresa has been frantically preparing for tomorrow’s trip to London. She went to Roosevelt Field to get some pounds and francs.

She told me that she thought my email about meeting Ken Starr was so good that she passed it on to her sister and niece. Heidi is on spring break from Binghamton this week, a week after Jade’s spring break from Purchase ended.

Mark Savage said he went on a horrendous blind date this weekend: “The first thing this woman did was light up a cigarette. After looking at her and listening to her for an hour, I felt like asking her for a match so I could set myself on fire.”

I’m going to call Arizona to see when Marc’s flight is. I hope I can make him feel somewhat comfortable while he’s here. Most of the time, I know, I am a terrible host, so I hope I can do better for my brother.