Someone With a Pen: Richard Grayson’s Diary

Friday, October 6, 2000

6 PM. Last evening David Bodney brought two guests to our Arizona Media Law class: licensed investigator Rich Robertson, who was a Republic reporter who became an investigative journalist for the local CBS and NBC affiliates before – surprise, surprise – he discovered how bad local TV “news” was, and Tony Morrison, the general counsel of Paxson Communications, who was in from West Palm Beach to do depositions and who obviously got roped into coming to our class with David.

Our scheduled topic was the (limited) reporter’s privilege, but we discussed a lot of different topics relating to media law, broadcast journalism, privacy versus the public’s right to know.

It was a fairly stimulating couple of hours, the kind of thing I applied to the M.M.C. program for.

Home by 9 PM, I turned on PBS’s rerun of the already-broadcast vice presidential debates, and within an hour I dozed off to Cheney and Lieberman’s mannerly platitudes.

I slept well, but upon awakening at 4 AM, I could not get back to sleep despite lying perfectly still. My mind couldn’t lie still, so at 5:30 AM, I gave up and had something to eat and went online.

The New York Times never arrived today, and it wasn’t available in Borders or in the racks at ASU because of a “production problem,” so I read as much of the paper as I could on the Web late this afternoon.

I had two English 105 students come to see me before and after my classes, and they were a study in contrasts: Ryan, the pretentious academic-in-utero, brandishing his paper on Kantian discourse and Jeffersonian thought, who couldn’t understand why I told him to tone down his excessive use of Latinate verbs (peruse, perambulate, sequester) – and Bill, a sweet, hunky kid writing about Sarah Michelle Gellar, the Buffy star who he has a huge crush on and who is a Pisces just like him.

My classes themselves – well, I got through them as much as I could (not “as much as one could,” as I told Ryan) when the subject is MLA and APA citation.

At one of my asides in the Advanced class, the kid next to me at the table, Jeff (I like his email handle, IH8GOD, and he’s got piercings, a wispy goatee and a face bright with acne) exclaimed, “Were you born cynical or did it take you a long time to get that way?”

I told him the answer to his question was the same as the punchline to the “How do you get to Carnegie Hall?” joke: it was “Practice, son, practice.”

At Borders, instead of the Times, I picked up the Chronicle of Higher Ed and again wrote down jobs I found there – but what a pain to apply for them.

What if I actually got a job teaching full-time at a community college like Santa Fe in Gainesville or Palm Beach? I’d hate it. But maybe I need a year of stability and a steady paycheck. Pride goeth before bankruptcy.

The unemployment rate today unexpectedly fell to 3.9%, but it must be ten times higher for holders of graduate degrees in the humanities.

Mom called. Not only does she have a bad cold, but so do Dad and Jonathan – while Marc’s recent cold is better.

Although I’ve got huge checks from Amazon.com and the Maricopa Community Colleges awaiting me there, I’m not going to visit Apache Junction this weekend because I’m such a hypochondriac.

Not that I can’t catch a cold from my sniffling students – but any excuse to put off a visit to my family is one I’ll take up without hesitation. I don’t know if I can stand them asking me one more time if I’m sorry I moved here.

Believe it or not, I’m thinking of rushing over to Changing Hands Bookstore for a 7 PM poetry reading by Beckian Fritz Goldberg, the director of ASU’s MFA program. And this after reading the AWP Journal and its glossy ads for MFA programs at every university in the nation on each page!

I guess a lot of young people must absolutely ache to be creative writers – the schmucks.

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Saturday, October 7, 2000

11 PM. Because the past few months have been so difficult, when I do have unexpected happiness, as I have today, the feeling seems so much sweeter than it ever did before.

Right now I feel like endorphins are kicking in throughout my body. It’s weird, but it doesn’t take much to make me happy. Of course, it doesn’t take much to depress me, either, so I suppose it evens out.

Last night, when I went over to Changing Hands Bookstore to see Beckian Fritz Goldberg, Matt was there, sitting in the first row (his wheelchair was off to the side) with two of his friends from Goldberg’s class, so I sat behind them.

Matt seemed bubbly, though I suspect he’s often that way. He told me he’s been writing lots of poems, every day, and he seems caught up in the heady excitement of the MFA program. It made feel churlish to be so old and cynical.

Just before I sat down, I wandered the aisles of the bookstore and felt bitter about not being appreciated, about my books never being in stores, about nobody knowing my name.

I can’t say I thought Beckian Fritz Goldberg was a great poet, though she’s certainly competent. She’s a little younger than I am, and it shocks me to realize how old that really is.

Along with Matt and his friends, I clapped enthusiastically after every poem and I bought her book. When she autographed it, we chatted a little. I told her I was a faculty associate at ASU and that I wrote fiction.

But I’m no good at sucking up to people. Goldberg seems a decent sort, and I felt slightly guilty about trying to ingratiate myself with her. Maybe I’ll go see her at ASU, but she comes in on Tuesdays and Thursdays, when I’m not around.

Since Matt and his friends – one is a chubby gay Asian guy I’ve seen around school – said they weren’t going to read at the open reading portion of the night, I left for home.

Last night I slept pretty well and had a pleasant dream in which I got off a plane at LaGuardia and then drove around Queens.

Up at 6 AM, I was reading the Times (yesterday’s paper came bundled with today’s) when I got a call from, of all people, Helmut in Germany.

He asked me for my street address because he wants to send me a package. I figured he was drunk and painstakingly spelled out my address even though I doubt he will follow through.

Helmut said he recently turned 47 – “You’re a young man,” I responded – and he told me he recently came across some writings I’d sent him years ago. Weird.

Hearing from Helmut made me want to call Sat Darshan, but I knew that in addition to taking care of Kiran today, she was also babysitting for the child of out-of-town wedding guests who are relatives of one of her co-workers.

Because I’d had such a good day writing at the Ahwatukee Barnes & Noble last Saturday, I returned there today even though I felt grumpy.

On my way to the men’s room, I glanced at the magazine rack and saw a new issue of the gay teen magazine Joey. They had asked me for a review copy of The Silicon Valley Diet, but I wasn’t surprised not to see a review on a page about books.

However, when I turned the page, there was a big photo of my book’s cover and a really nice review with excerpts like these:

‘Seinfeldian stories’ (i.e., funny, clever, tightly written and neurotic while simultaneously about nothing in particular) . . .

[The title story] works because the main character, like the best of Grayson’s characters, balances his neurotic self-awareness with a genuine sense of empathy and a healthy serving of humor.

Grayson offers up several ‘that’s-exactly-how-I-feel’ moments, bringing humor, reality and touching sadness to the small, occasionally obscure, moments that fill their days.

The review, by James Sledge, was entirely favorable, and I was so excited I couldn’t help telling the woman at the café who already had my iced tea ready just after she noticed me walk into the store.

Sitting down and reading today’s paper, I felt really good about myself. Just as I was about to totally give up on my writing “career,” something always happens to keep me going for at least a little while, the way it did last weekend when I could write that article for the Republic – even if it doesn’t see print, I still was able to write it – and see my letter in the Times.

The Joey review gives me a much-needed boost of confidence. Some people do like the book. If only more people could know about it. . .

Well, I remember Dr. Bob Wouk telling me, after I mentioned how Grandpa Nat always gave me a $10 bill when I saw him, “We should take love when it’s offered.”

The good review isn’t love, of course, but I’ve learned to appreciate every bit of praise. Or attention – like the entry in the Dictionary of Literary Biography, even if I had a hand in it myself.

I had a baked potato at the Wendy’s across Ray Road in Ahwatukee, and then I went back to Mesa after xeroxing the review at Office Max.

Today wasn’t hot, and it drizzled; puffy clouds filled the sky. I sent belated emails to Justin, Suellen, Kevin and other friends, and I researched material on Mesa to get three story ideas for my “beat” in my Newswriting class.

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Monday, October 9, 2000

7 PM. I’m a bit dizzy right now. For the past few days I’ve had some dizziness and congestion as the weather changed.

Hopefully I will not have to deal with the kind of vertigo I suffered with for years, but given the stresses of my life, I would not be shocked to have that problem again.

Though I slept well, this morning I was overcome by a sense of dread and didn’t feel like getting out of bed. An NPR story on how baby boomers aren’t saving for retirement somehow led me to begin thinking of suicide as the only option I have in order to deal with getting old.

When I begin to catastrophize, there’s no stopping me. But somehow I managed to snap out of my funk, and at 10 AM, I took myself to Scottsdale, where I found a Barnes & Noble in a huge power center off the Shea Boulevard exit of Loop 101. I read part of the paper there and came home at noon.

Chuck Kelly from the Republic emailed and later called. He was sorting things out on his first day back from vacation, but he loved my article although it’s too long, and he said the whole package of bio note, photo and story was great.

He did have some questions about words in “Diet” and they may edit it a bit. I don’t care what they edit as long as I get published and get $500 and get recognized from the article.

It probably won’t run until November, as I had assumed, so they don’t need to get back to me 4 weeks. Well, now I have something to look forward to.

Of course, it’s not going to change my life, but people will notice it, and it will give me the same play that Ron Carlson, Jewell Parker Rhodes and the other ASU creative writing faculty got when they contributed “State Lines” columns to the paper. At least I won’t feel so much like a schmucky adjunct.

Of course, the news cheered me up, and so did the sparkling weather. Today’s high was only 83°, and Sat Darshan described it as a “this is what I moved to Arizona for” day.

Her Saturday babysitting, by the way, didn’t work out: the child cried inconsolably for an hour, so she called the parents to come get her.

I graded the remaining MCC papers very lightly and very generously. Most of the students managed to do a credible revision.

Today I got lots of email. Kevin sent photos of himself on a roller coaster and he said nice things about the Joey review. So I guess he’s not drowning in depression.

Josh sent a photo of himself and his son, presumably taken recently in Germany. They look alike, though Sat Darshan was shocked at old Josh had gotten.

Alice was glad to see a review and said her one prestige client’s book got a great review in The New Yorker, though of course “it won’t sell.” She’s still having a bad time about Andreas’s death, and she suffers from insomnia, “which I fear is permanent.”

Mark Savage said he was in a store last week when this guy came up to him and said he was Bob Miller. Mark wouldn’t have recognized Bob, and when Bob mentioned Estelle, Mark couldn’t remember her.

It shocks me how poor a memory some of my contemporaries have. I told Mark about Bob’s nearly toppling Noach Dear in a City Council primary a few years ago.

Tom sent me a cheesy letter Brad had emailed him in which he told Tom he was using his name and Debra’s in an explanation of a poem he wrote about Walser. Why explain?

Brad’s book of poems is being published by John Travis at Portals Press, “who is apparently not publishing a third Encyclopedia Mouse novel.” Tom just wrote Brad back a sentence or two wishing him luck.

Poor Tom: I know he feels betrayed by the people at NOCCA, to which he devoted so many years of excellent work. Tom needs to leave New Orleans ASAP.

Rick Peabody says I may be right when I said that his diaries of baby-care could be the book he’ll become famous for: “The agent who dumped me is interested in it.”

What a weird world this is.

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Tuesday, October 10, 2000

7 PM. I don’t know if I’m suffering from a clinical depression or not, but on days like today, it sure feels like it. Everything seems so difficult; everything seems to go wrong; life has lost its flavor.

I had good news on Saturday when I saw the Joey review and good news yesterday when I heard from the Republic’s Chuck Kelly, but I feel that those pieces of news were like drugs which masked my symptoms for a little while come and that my natural state is being depressed.

I’m in trouble and I don’t know how to go about getting myself out of it. As I wrote Sat Darshan, Phoenix isn’t really the problem, But the longer I stay here and feel this way, the more I associate Phoenix with the bad feelings.

I don’t even want to write about stuff that happened today, not because anything terrible happened, but because I don’t want to deal with the stupid events.

I find myself becoming a cranky and unlikable person. Visiting my parents after I taught at MCC today, I found I couldn’t connect with them anymore than I could connect with my students.

I woke up just after 3 AM and never got back to sleep. I didn’t seem to be anxious, yet I wanted more sleep, felt frustrated I couldn’t get it, and finally just became grouchy.

It poured this morning, a regular Florida rain storm, and it was so cool – in the 60°s – that I had to wear a jacket.

The streets are flooded, and I got a little flood in the kitchen which has given my apartment a nasty, damp, mildewy smell. Yes, apparently that’s possible even in Arizona.

For someone who longed for a cloudy day, the darkness and rain should have been a tonic – but I just felt depressed. And that suggests to me it’s probably never been about the weather but about me.

Because my parents had colds, I didn’t kiss them or want to get too close. Dad, in fact, left to “take” a haircut soon after I arrived because he said he didn’t want to spread his cold germs to me. And Mom soon went into the bedroom to watch TV.

I know they are also depressed, as are my brothers, who were at work. Why can’t we help lift one another out of it? I guess it’s because we don’t know how.

The scary part of why today is so upsetting is that nothing really bad happened: I didn’t have car trouble, an accident, loss of money, an illness, bad news. But I just felt depressed, as if I had some low-grade fever.

Coming home by 10:30 AM, I lay down till I forced myself to deal with the mail I got at my parents’ house.

Later I took myself out to the movies, seeing Cameron Crowe’s sweet memoir of his teenage years as a rock journalist in Almost Famous at the little Harkins Fiesta on Alma School and Southern.

It cost $3.75 and was a treat because it connected me with my past, even though in 1973 I was 21 and graduating college and not a 15-year-old on the road with a rock band.

I miss my old (young) self. I miss the sweetness I once had. Tears are welling up as I write this. I don’t like who I’ve become.

I’ve never been able to grow up – that’s my trouble. I had so wanted to feel that by the time of my 50th birthday that I dealt with aging and would be able to move on to the next level.

But now my birthday is less than eight months away and I’m totally lost. Totally. And what sucks is that I’m basically healthy and have all my needs taken care of, yet I still can’t be happy. If I knew I could get past this period of my life, I would feel so much better. . .