Someone With a Pen: Richard Grayson’s Diary

Sunday, July 2, 2000

7 PM. I’ve been fighting off a depression, but it’s tough to do so.

Right now I don’t feel like going to Arkansas. Maybe it would be wimping out, but it’s also possible I need more stability and that after all this turmoil in my life, the best thing I can do is return to Phoenix, find an apartment, and lay the groundwork for my new life.

I know that I can be just as depressed in Phoenix by the searing desert heat and the propinquity of my family’s problems, but returning to Ariona would provide me with certainty about where I’ll be for the foreseeable future.

Last night I didn’t sleep well. Like last year, my foot and dental problems are wearing me down and making me feel as if I’m falling apart.

Either from depression or lingering jet lag, this morning I slept until 8 AM, which is late for me. After exercising only perfunctorily, I went outside and read the Times, which I admit was somewhat enjoyable.

When I did laundry, I repeated last year’s mistake of leaving a pen in my shorts pocket. Now I’ll have to replace Jade’s bed sheets and pillowcases and Teresa’s towels, which are indelibly stained.

My own clothes were dark except for my easily replaceable white athletic socks and a pair of shorts already on their way out.

Still, this made me feel incompetent.

I left a message on Josh’s voicemail, begging off from a visit today. There was no way I had the energy for a railroad trip to Manhattan.

I’m tired of everyone expecting me to visit them – especially Josh, who never leaves his neighborhood, not even to come up to Penn Station.

Alice is different because I know she goes to New Jersey every day to see Andreas in what might be his last days, so I wouldn’t expect her to come to Long Island.

I did have a visitor today, however: Vish took the train from Jamaica and was here for two and a half hours. He really wanted to see me.

I knew I wouldn’t have the slightest attraction to him, and I didn’t, but it was good to have company between 1:30 PM and 4 PM.

I picked him up at the station and we went to the Wendy’s on Glen Street, trying to avoid the Glen Cove traffic caused by the tall ships in Hempstead Harbor.

Vish must think I’m a total neurotic the way I kept telling him how messed up I feel my life is at the moment.

I did get him to tell me about his one and only gay relationship, with a Latino guy in Jackson Heights whom he met in the Hamptons and broke up with (“He’s dead to me now”) after he caught him with another guy.

Vish is likable, but he’s not my type at all and not really someone whom I’d be comfortable with as my friend.

Of course, he’s much more assimilated than Thien, but Thien is sexy and at least a little stylish.

I feel a little guilty that I couldn’t like Vish more, but I hope he found me less attractive in person than in my photo. (He said he thought I’d have curly hair.)

After I saw Vish off among the ostentatiously wealthy Locust Valley LIRR passengers on the Glen Street LIRR platform, I drove around for a bit and came home to go on the Net via Teresa’s AOL and write long, kvetchy letters to Sat Darshan and Tom.

Jen went back to Phoenix from St. Louis for a week, so I missed her again. She’s looking for a roommate, and if I knew her better and I could relate to her, I’d consider applying.

On Lexis, I got a nice – if only moderately nice – surprise. The Silicon Valley Diet is listed in today’s Chicago Tribune book section under “New in Paperback” with this description:

“A short story collection uses computer jargon to access the concerns of young people.”

Huh? But I’ll grasp any straw I can, hoping it might be a straw in the wind. Naturally, there was no mention in the San Jose or West Palm Beach papers, so I’ll have to be satisfied with this little notice.

What fresh hell awaits me next?

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Monday, July 3, 2000

9:30 PM. No fresh hell today; instead, it was the best day I’ve had since I got to New York.

I went into Manhattan on the 8:26 AM train after exercising early, having a quick breakfast and hopping in the shower.

I hesitated going because of my ingrown toenail, my inner thigh ache and all my other I’m-falling-apart problems, but I’m glad I did despite not getting enough sleep last night.

In the last few days, I’ve gotten a lot of New York City from osmosis, through talking to others, listening to WNYC radio and watching local TV (this is still the only city where I’m certain of the broadcast stations’ network affiliations), but I needed a good dose of Manhattan.

The ride on the Oyster Bay line is more pleasant now that the trains are all the new double-deckers, and I was in Penn Station by 9:40 AM.

After getting Alice’s machine, I phoned Josh, and he said to come over at 10:30 AM. So I walked around the Herald Square area for a bit before taking the IRT to 14th Street and the bus from Seventh to Third Avenue and then walking the five blocks to Josh’s.

Though his hair has gotten grey, Josh still looks okay. His new apartment, two doors down from the old one, is a one-bedroom that has far more space, and he’s got a nice sofa bed couch in his living room.

Before we left, Josh spoke to his mother, their “talk” mostly a monologue, as she is now nearly catatonic. But as Josh said, she has an incredible survival instinct.

We went, of course, to Veselka and sat outside as we almost always do. Josh had raspberry pancakes and coffee, and I ordered a garden veggie burger and carrot juice.

I talked about Phoenix and my life – such as it is – and finally Josh told me about his son (though he never used the kid’s name), his trip to Germany in February, and how Gabrielle is a compulsive liar who will not even send him photos of their child.

Gabrielle’s mother and wealthy stepfather let Josh stay at their house outside Kiel, and while they were polite to him, with the war that’s broken out between Josh and Gabrielle, of course they’re on their daughter’s side.

The stepfather has returned to the former East Germany to reclaim his estate, and they are among the richest people in town, having already promised to get the baby a pony when he turns three.

So Josh is not worried about the kid being provided for. Of course, the German government already has generous benefits for German children.

Josh said he would love to have custody if he could, but to him, any legal action is futile. He’s not listed as the father anywhere, although he’s sure David is his kid.

Later, it struck me that I met Gabrielle exactly two years ago.

I liked her until I found out about her first pregnancy a few weeks later. Then I felt that she deliberately stopped using contraception without telling Josh. When she had a miscarriage, I thought Josh had dodged a bullet – but then the same thing happened again.

After escaping Josh’s chatty and slightly drunk neighbor (I can see why Kathryn Funk is friends with this woman) and getting back to his apartment, Josh showed me photos of his German trip.

He is happier at the Department of Corrections than he was at the DOT, and he visits his mother every Tuesday and Thursday night as well as on Saturdays.

It was good to see Josh again. He had been at KGB the night before and said that he thinks that Denis is having marital problems, although I don’t know how he would know that.

Josh also said that among our other MFA classmates, Simon is still living in Marin County, and Todd and his wife are giving their son money toward a studio apartment on Avenue U and Est 16th Street that he rents for $700 a month.

After saying goodbye, I took the M1 bus and rode it up Park Avenue South/Park Avenue until 42nd Street.

At Grand Central Station, I took Times Square shuttle and the IRT to 72nd and Broadway and walked up to the Barnes & Noble on 82nd, passing familiar Upper West Side landmarks like Citarella Fish, the Beacon Theater, H&H Bagels and Zabar’s.

The last time I lived in that neighborhood was in 1990, but for years I felt it was my home and I still love it. But then I love New York City altogether.

At Barnes & Noble, I found three copies of I Brake for Delmore Schwartz and the copy of I Survived Caracas Traffic that I put there years ago – unless it’s a new one, which I strongly doubt.

At the café, I paid extra for a “large” iced tea – which is “regular” size outside of Manhattan. I was annoyed that I had to use saccharin because they didn’t have Equal.

Getting the downtown local at 79th Street, I managed to make the 2:16 PM train on the LIRR. It was so crowded with people who worked a shortened day that I stood till Jamaica and got off at the next stop, Mineola, to change for the Oyster Bay line.

Around 3:40 PM, I arrived in Locust Valley, where I’d left Jade’s car at the station. Back at the house, I saw that my package of books had come, and so had some bills that Mom sent.

I returned my phone messages, agreeing to meet Alice at 1 PM Friday for lunch. She’s spending all her free time with Andreas and has to catch up on her business while she’s back in New York.

I left a message with Justin, busy in rehearsal, asking him to reserve tickets for Thursday’s performance of the play series Lotto Fever is in.

Online, I had a nice note from Tom, commiserating with my physical and literary kvetching, and telling me that for his sanity, he’s decided to give up teaching and the “corrupt” literary/publishing world. No doubt Tom will be healthier for it.

Tom described a recent conversation with John Biguenet, who sounds so stupid that it’s no wonder he can get his story collection published by a New York City trade house.

Jen, who’s back in Phoenix this week, asked if I’d be interested in being her roommate in a Scottsdale house. But although we get along online great, I haven’t met Jen yet and don’t know if I could live with her.

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Wednesday, July 5, 2000

11:30 PM. I’m really tired, but maybe if I write quickly, my brain won’t be mush.

I’m in Mark Savage’s spare bedroom in his co-op on Avenue H, just a block off Coney Island Avenue.

While Mark was calling a friend a little while ago, I walked to a South Asian minimart and bought some fat-free milk (Mark is a vegan) and grapefruit juice for breakfast tomorrow, passing young people of different ethnicities talking on Midwood’s street corners – including two Orthodox guys with payeses in long black gabardine suits, one of whom seemed to be African-American. I saw a lot of Pakistani men and women, whose halal butchers and stores and restaurants dominate this stretch of Coney Island Avenue.

I am glad to live in the Sun Belt, but I badly miss the rhythms of New York City street life. One summer I will have to come back to Brooklyn and live here again.

Teresa was about to drive me to the 9:37 AM train this morning when she asked me why I just don’t take Jane’s car.

I said that if she was okay with it, I would drive to Brooklyn, and following Teresa’s suggestion, I took Glen Cove Road all the way down to the Meadowbrook Parkway into the Southern State into the Belt.

Getting off at the Flatbush Avenue North exit, I passed Kings Plaza and drove around my old neighborhood, passing my block on East 56th Street three or four times.

Next to our old house, the Wagners’ door was open, but I didn’t stop. The corner home that had belonged to Irv Cohen is for sale, the Hershes still have their dental practice across Fillmore Avenue, and Deutsch Pharmacy is still open on the corner of Avenue N.

Much of the neighborhood is as familiar to me as it was on the bike rides I took forty years ago on my way to buy 12¢ comic books at the candy stores on Avenue N and Avenue T.

I got to Mark’s neighborhood at 11 AM, but on Wednesday, alternate parking starts at 11:30 AM, so I couldn’t find a space that would be legal for very long. So I went up to Mark’s building early.

Not expecting me then, Mark had just come back from running. After he showered, we moved Jade’s car into his space and he drove us to the diner on Coney Island Avenue and Avenue W.

After lunch, we went to the Brooklyn Museum, and oddly, ran into Mark’s parents and another couple at an exhibit of William Merritt Chase’s pastels and oils of Brooklyn scenes.

Mark’s mother didn’t remember me, but once she found out my parents now live in Apache Junction and that I was moving to Phoenix, she wanted my phone number to invite us to their home in Sun City West. I liked meeting Mark’s parents.

Mark and I next went to the exhibit of Maxwell Parrish’s work – which hasn’t yet grown on me – and saw the historic Schenck House from Flatlands.

Before leaving, we stopped at the museum shop, where I found a great book with photos of the Church Avenue trolley, which I used to go on before it stopped running in 1956, and other old Brooklyn scenes.

Mark took me up to the school where he teaches, on the corner of Vanderbilt and Sterling Place.

The custodian was friendly and let us in, so Mark got to show me his classroom, 6-107, with his materials and books, five Macs and 24 discs. (Next September, Mark will need more computers and discs for a larger class.)

Amid the new technology, the same old script alphabet above the blackboard. Although the room had a brand new air conditioner, there was still the typical old-fashioned New York City public school “wardrobe” we had in the 1950s. I had completely forgotten about them.

We stopped at the Barnes & Noble for iced tea and iced coffee, chatting constantly, until we got back here.

After getting Chinese takeout for dinner, we took a walk past all the ethnic (Pakistani, Jewish, Russian, Bukharan) stores down on Coney Island Avenue and Avenue J.

Yeshiva of Flatbush’s driving school, where I took classes in 1967 or 1968, and Billy Sherman’s family’s funeral parlor are still around, and so is the Kent Theater, which Vito used to live across Avenue H from.

Anyway, I’ve got so many memories that I am flooded with them.

This past year Mark had the class from hell, but he seems to have a good life. Even though he wants to get married again, he has a family: his parents are well, and he’s got fine frum sons and two little grandchildren.

We watched Survivor on CBS, and I failed to see what all the fuss is about, and then West Wing on NBC.

Mark let me sign on his computer so I could check my email. With Hitler in New York is ready to be ordered from iUniverse.com, and I had notes from Sat Darshan and Patrick.

I’ll go back to Long Island tomorrow before rush hour. While I don’t expect to sleep much tonight, the bed is comfortable and I don’t smell the cat urine that Mark is worried about. His two cats are cute and the gray one, Samantha, is very affectionate.

My eating was all screwed up today, but it’s good for me to get out of my routine. Mark eats healthier food than I do, actually – and as a vegan, he understands my odd habits.

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Thursday, July 6, 2000

7 PM. While I was in Brooklyn, I definitely decided that I am not going to Arkansas. This weekend I’ll have to figure out how to break the news to Dairy Hollow and what lie to use.

I also need to change my return flight to Phoenix. I’ll try to get it as close to July 20, the day I was scheduled to leave here, as I can, but I want the same direct one-stop flight on Delta.

Sat Darshan wonders if living with my parents would be more stressful than going to Eureka Springs, but I may try out Select Suites for a week to see if I like it.

Patrick wrote that his blood pressure was so dangerously high that his cardiologist quadrupled his BP medicine and wants him to undergo an echocardiogram to see if there’s a blockage.

Last night I fell asleep at midnight and I woke up around 6:30 AM, listened to NPR, read yesterday’s paper and had my grapefruit juice, oatmeal, grits and milk while Mark slept till 8:30 AM.

His apartment is roomy and homey, but I guess I share my parents’ preferences for new houses over old ones. I can’t get used to some of the antiquated features in unrenovated prewar New York City buildings.

We went out at 10 AM. Today was cool to me although actually it was just right, in the 70°s. Mark asked where I wanted to go and I said Sheepshead Bay, Manhattan Beach and Brighton Beach.

Finding parking on the Belt Parkway service road, we walked through the parking lot of a new assisted living center – New York is now crawling with them – to Emmons Avenue.

After strolling past Lundy’s, Pips Comedy Club and the El Greco Diner, we crossed to the bay side of the street. It was glorious to inhale the briny, brackish air I grew up with living near Mill Basin.

Many memories popped up as we walked over the Ocean Avenue footbridge and passed the stately homes of Manhattan Beach into the beach area itself. Mark said the beach was smaller than he remembered it.

I could recall the first time I ever went to the beach with my friends from junior high and how adult I felt to be lying on a blanket with Eugene and Arnie and to meet other friends from school by the ocean.

When we returned to Emmons Avenue, Mark and I checked out the fishing boats, one of which was just leaving for a half-day trip.

We had lunch at a Thai restaurant across the street, and then Mark drove me around Brighton Beach, which has still got a lot of Russian stores but is more working-class than Mark’s Midwood neighborhood with its Orthodox Jews, Russians and Pakistanis.

In the past couple of days, I saw a great deal of the Brooklyn I love, and it was great to be able to touch base with Mark.

Exactly thirty years ago we were hanging out in the Ol’ Spigot office on the second floor of LaGuardia hall during the 1970 summer sessions. Mark was my first friend at Brooklyn College, and it’s great to still be friends when he’s 51 and I’m 49 instead of us being 21 and 19.

Friendships, of course, are the most important thing in my life. Mark and I still have similar interests and tastes, and we know each other’s family and life history.

Traffic in Midwood was terrible, especially as I got to the Junction, but once I was on the Belt Parkway at 2 PM, the traffic eased up, and within an hour, I found myself on Northern Boulevard in Manhasset, filling up the tank of Jade’s car at an Amoco station.

After stopping at the Wendy’s on Glen Cove Road, I bought some groceries at Farmer’s Bazaar. At home in Locust Valley, I exercised to a Body Electric tape and dealt with my mail.

Paul was here when I arrived, but Teresa is still in Manhattan with Stephanie. They saw everything Stephanie wanted to see, Teresa said, when she called from 85th and Broadway, our old stomping grounds.

I was so distracted during our phone call that I momentarily lost the deposit-by-mail envelope into which I placed the $550 Florida unemployment check.

Luckily, I mentally retraced my steps, and to my horror, realized I had dropped it in the trash compactor with old credit card statements. I made sure to walk to a mailbox and mail it to Bank of America right away.

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Friday, July 7, 2000

9 PM. Last night at 10 PM, Teresa called again and woke me up. She said the next train to Locust Valley didn’t leave Penn Station till 11:30 PM and wondered if I could pick her up at Port Washington instead.

But since I was already in bed and would have to wake Paul up to get him to move his car in order to get Jade’s car out of the driveway, she said never mind. She and Stephanie ended up taking a cab back from the Syosset station.

This morning I told her I was going to try to change my flight back to Phoenix to July 20, the day I was scheduled to fly to Arkansas, and she didn’t seem to be surprised.

On the phone, I applied for a new benefit year with Florida Unemployment, and the woman I spoke to said I’d receive a determination in the mail and should call in on July 18 for my waiting week. Next Tuesday, I have to call in for these one and a half weeks.

Using the phone definitely beats standing in line at the Unemployment office in Hempstead and then having to transfer my mailing address when I got to Arizona. Now everything will automatically go to my parents’ address.

Alice had told me to come at 1 PM, so after taking the 10:37 AM train into the city, I spent time wandering around Herald Square and taking the Broadway bus to East 17th Street, where I had iced tea and finished yesterday’s Times at Barnes & Noble.

Alice looked really good with longer hair; she hasn’t had time to cut it because of Andreas, but it makes her look youthful. She said my haircut resembled Bart Simpson’s. (“That was a compliment,” she added.)

We had lunch outside at the café in Union Square Park. First she told me how much she liked the Silicon Valley Diet and how much I seemed to know about food and dieting. Coming from Alice, that was a high compliment.

She related how Wesley acted like an asshole in the Screenwriting for Dummies fiasco, apparently not understanding he was going to get glory, not money. (Even Alice’s client, the ghostwriter, would have gotten only a $25,000 advance.)

Most of Alice’s clients don’t make all that much, with advances usually under or in the low six figures – but she’s doing all right for a one-person literary agency, though she’s annoyed that she hasn’t sold the book in the last couple of months.

Alice expects that E-books will be only an adjunct to print books, sort of like audiobooks. She likes their portability, the reduced weight, the dictionary features and not needing outside lighting. But she said she will always prefer books on dead trees.

Alice is obviously a mess because of Andreas, but I did tell her how much I admire her devotion and duty to him. She spends Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday and Sunday in Paramus, an 80-minute commute each way.

Seeing Andreas dying has been so traumatic that Alice went back into therapy although she’s thinking of quitting because they keep going over the same ground and she doesn’t see dream work as useful.

She actually feels guilty about not doing enough for Andreas because “I can never repay what I owe to him.”

One thing that the experience has reinforced for her is the importance of friends. Andreas never had many friends; his best friend was his brother and Andreas’s girlfriend lived in Germany. Otherwise, Alice was basically his only other friend.

Andreas would be unrecognizable to me, Alice said, but at least the methadone he takes three times a day keeps him from being in pain. But he hallucinates about squirrels in the room and will sometimes talk to Alice in Armenian.

Alice said despite what her own friends – “who have really come through for me” – have said about her achieving wisdom or feeling good about what she’s done in the end, “I see nothing worthwhile in any of this; it’s all horrible.”

Andreas has become the opposite of himself, very dependent on her and his aides, and he’s inordinately grateful for any human contact.

Two months ago, the doctors told Alice that Andreas would live another two to four months, so he probably won’t survive past September. It sounds as if Alice will be relieved when he passes away.

It’s a blessing that once Alice paid off her mortgage, she quit doing the Richard Simmons Newsletter because she could never handle a monthly deadline now.

Alice said that she doesn’t really like her niece and nephew. Her brother used to fear that his wife might take the kids back to Australia, but now he’s not that concerned if she does. They’re still in the same house, but rarely speak to each other.

When Alice asked how it felt to be back in New York, I said that by now it feels as if I’d never left.

I told her I hoped she would come to Phoenix in the winter. in any case, we’ll have lunch again a week from Monday.

I took the 3:27 PM train back to Locust Valley. Teresa and Stephanie had gone to Fire Island, and Paul will take Phoebe and Ollie there tomorrow. (He has to board Hattie, as she’s uncontrollable.)

I saw Hitler on the iUniverse website; I can order 20 or more copies at a 20% discount, but I may order fewer.

Kevin emailed that he’s been with a better boss at Warner Bros. Records this week, but he’s still “dealing with his demons and sitting alone in my dark apartment.” The Braggart Soldier opens on Saturday, and the director has been giving him a very bad time.

Josh sent photos of David that Gabrielle emailed him last week. When I volunteered that the boy looks a lot like Josh, he replied that he hopes the kid looks and talks like him just to freak Gabrielle out.

It’s sad that he, like her, is using the child to hurt the other parent. As Alice and I agreed today, we are very grateful not to have had kids.