Someone With a Pen: Richard Grayson’s Diary

Wednesday, May 23, 2001

9 PM. I feel a sense of the ending. Wasn’t there a book by Frank Kermode with that title? Why do I have all this stuff rattling around my 50-year-old brain?

Last night I slept well and dreamed about reading a review of my book in the New York Times Book Review.

Today I wrote a review of The Silicon Valley Diet and sent it off, under the name of Wilson Kim in Los Angeles, to an Israeli gay website called pridepage.com.

I also got a peek at the cover of the Authors Guild Backinprint.com edition of Lincoln’s Doctor’s Dog in Adobe Acrobat. It was awesome, and the only correction the book cover needed was a comma inserted.

So eventually I’ll have two of my old books out in print-on-demand paperbacks. I need to do something with them, right? Maybe I could sell them on the street, à la Crad Kilodney?

Marc has decided not to take the job in Denver. He was offered a store managership, but he found Denver too cold (four inches of snow fell on Sunday) and too expensive (much more so than Phoenix), and he didn’t want to start as the store manager all over again.

Now that Marc has decided to stay in Phoenix, my parents and Jonathan obviously won’t be moving back to Florida, which is kind of a disappointment to me.

But I’m glad Marc went to Colorado and had the chance to take the job there. He’s got to do what he’s got to do. Mom told me not to worry, that they’ll make room for me in the fall, assuming I don’t get any of the jobs I applied for.

I decided to apply for the St. Thomas Aquinas job in Rockland County today, and I must be addled because I also applied for a job in the frigid north woods of Maine at the Maine School for Science and Mathematics, a state boarding school for gifted high school kids. Well, my application probably won’t be considered.

Ucross turned me down for a fall residency, which is just as well. I guess I feel a sense of an ending, but I don’t know what the beginning is like. I’m still on the waiting lists at Djerassi and MacDowell.

Every day that I don’t get a letter from Nassau Community College, I feel relieved – but I expect the rejection will come eventually. My level of disappointment will be high, but I’ll handle it. Que será, será.

I spent the last couple of hours watching WB’s season finales of Dawson’s Creek and Felicity, where people graduate high school or college and say their goodbyes – or not – and move on.

Mom said that Jonathan is going to try to take next Tuesday off so we can move me out of this apartment for good.

This place reminds me of my studio apartment in Rockaway on Beach 118th Street in that I had a lot of unhappy times here. But not all of it was awful, and I learned a lot.

Can one keep growing in middle age, or am I a perpetual adolescent like the TV characters in shows I just watched, who actually are adolescents (even if the actors portraying them are not)?

I ask myself a lot of questions for a guy from Brooklyn.

Will I be back in Brooklyn this summer, after my weekend in Los Angeles and my two weeks in Chicago? I don’t know, but I don’t want to spend much time in Phoenix this summer.

Teresa said they buried her grandmother today,  somewhere near her aunt and uncle’s house in Floral Park. That’s close to Beth David Cemetery in Elmont, where my Sarrett grandparents and Cohen and Ginsberg great-grandparents (and Mark Savage’s mother) are buried.

When I called Florida, I was relieved to hear that my first unemployment check was issued today and will be mailed tomorrow.

Tom wrote that it looks as if he will have to marry Annette if he’s going to be able to live in Germany without renewing his visa every six months. So they’ll go to the consulate in Frankfurt – “or to Scotland, which treats weddings the way Nevada does.” Tom seems content. His new Encyclopedia Mouse book is coming along, and the press has upped the print run of his books.

Sat Darshan called, and we talked about the U.S. Senate going Democratic tomorrow when Vermont Senator Jim Jeffords leaves the GOP. Since the 1994 election, the Republicans have controlled both houses of Congress, and maybe a Democratic Senate can block some of Bush’s agenda and right-wing judges.

Coming up is Memorial Day weekend. Last year, that was my last weekend in Florida, when I was excited to see a review of my book in the Sunday Sun-Sentinel.

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Saturday, May 26, 2001

3 PM. This has been the most stressful day I’ve had in a long time, and it showed up somatically, both in my expected insomnia last night and in wrenching my back today in the usual spot. It’s something I also did just before leaving the house in Locust Valley for my job interview at Nassau Community College

Last night I undid whatever good I did in lowering the dosage of Klonopin I took in the evening when, unable to sleep, I took an Ambien at 11 PM and an Ativan at 3 AM.

At 6 AM, I left the house for Mesa and my apartment, where, as usual, I did things all wrong. After laundry, I applied for two jobs, and then moved stuff haphazardly and hurriedly into the car.

That’s how I hurt my back – not by lifting anything heavy, but by putting that upright Pullman carrier (ironically, something I bought to avoid back problems) into the back seat.

However I moved, when I did it, I felt the usual twinge in my back that tells me that something is wrong, I’ve strained a muscle and can’t undo it, and that starting in a couple of hours, I’ll be facing the usual pain: the pain I’m feeling now.

Despite that, I kept moving stuff out of the apartment. Yoga stretches helped me temporarily, before the pain of a strained muscle made itself truly known.

At least tonight I’ll be sleeping on a hard surface on the floor. I’ll take an Ambien early and maybe go back to .5 mg. Klonopin since it acts as a muscle relaxant.

When I got back to Apache Junction at 10 AM, Mom was – as I figured she’d be – amazed and appalled at all the stuff I had. “Where am I going to put all that?” she cried.

Eventually we figured that I’ll rent some air-cooled place at a local storage facility. The $35 a month or whatever is worth it. It’s mostly for my bed and the table and some other stuff.

But it’s a hard adjustment to go from my own space in Mesa. Worse, there’s still a lot of junk there. I haven’t yet brought over any of my appliances or the box of stuff – CVs, letters of recommendation, transcripts, etc. – I need to apply for jobs.

I should have thrown out a lot more before coming here.

There’s a bag of older shirts, pants, shorts and underwear I’d like to keep that I left in the car trunk. But the clothes are kind of ratty and I can give them up if it will keep Mom from freaking out again.

Anyway, Mom was already angry with Jonathan for taking off on his bike before cleaning up the “mess” from the rabbits, and she was angry with Dad for the usual things, so seeing all my personal possessions just exacerbated the tension.

I know I’ve been a real burden on my family ever since I arrived in Phoenix around this time last year.

Still, Susan says I have good coping skills, and I know I can adjust to not having my stuff where it usually is.

It’s a hardship, but I’m very grateful to have a roof over my head. If I can just have a little privacy (I’m writing this in Jonathan’s room while he and Mom are out shopping) and a few of the comforts I’m used to, I’ll survive.

My back will eventually get better, and I’ll manage to get into a better sleep pattern, too. I also may have overdone caffeine lately with too much diet cola and iced tea.

As bad as my apartment at Quail Creek was, I was still master of my domain there and I didn’t have to answer to anyone or clean up. I’m leaving the place looking like kind of a pigsty, but I don’t care.

Having heard nothing about a settlement from the company, I’m angry because I not only endured the mugging due to their negligence about keeping the lights on at night, I also kept having all those annoying floods in my apartment.

Quail Creek was not a nice place to live. Even my last apartment in Gainesville, which was kind of a dump, was not anywhere as bad – or I wouldn’t have stayed there for three years.

For now I’m not going to apply for any new jobs. I ditched the Naugatuck Valley Community College job application because they insisted that their form’s little boxes had to be filled in with typing rather than handwritten words.

Marc had said he might want to stay over at my place tonight, but he hasn’t mentioned it today on those brief occasions when he exits his room.

I guess I should take some aspirin for the pain and inflammation in my back, but since I normally put so many meds into me, I’m hesitant to introduce more.

Once I’m out of the apartment and my stuff is safely stored somewhere, things will be better. I figure that I’ve got just one or two more days of stress this week.

But I doubt that the ordeal of the past year since I left Florida has made me any stronger or more resilient.

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Wednesday, May 30, 2001

4 PM. I need to write this before Jonathan comes home from work in an hour. He and Dad put my table in the warehouse yesterday without me because Jonathan wanted to go to Fry’s with Dad to rent a movie afterwards.

They selected Best in Show, which I’d seen at the Mesa AMC on Stapley one dreary Saturday last fall during the time I felt terribly depressed. It’s still a funny mockumentary, and I enjoyed seeing it again.

Afterwards, I went out to Fry’s myself to buy some groceries I like and to get a blank videotape so that I could record Body Electric, which I exercise to when it comes on KAET/8 at 6:30 AM.

Along with my mid-back pain, my lower back and buttocks now ache even though I tried not to do anything too strenuous. I did push-ups when the program called for chest flyes and didn’t use weights for the deltoid exercise.

Last night I took three-eighths of a milligram of Klonopin and again slept very well. In fact, this morning I felt very relaxed and called Sat Darshan and said I’d treat her to lunch at NYPD. (She’s been complaining about not having any money lately.)

Stopping at my apartment in Mesa to retrieve the still-delivered New York Times, I got to Phoenix really early.

I had plenty of time to check out Susan’s office on North 7th Street and Palmaire, just north of Glendale Road, so I’d know where to go for my appointment.

When I embarrassedly confessed to Susan that I’d done this, she said she understood that it’s my way of coping with strange places. And it really does prove effective.

With plenty of time before I had to meet Sat Darshan, I went to get some iced tea at the Borders in the Biltmore Fashion Plaza on 24th Street and Camelback.

The last time I was there was last September or October, when I met the Korean guy that I liked. I think that was before I got really sick. I guess that’s how I refer to it now: “getting sick.”

Last night, when Dad asked me when I had seen Best in Show, I said, “Last fall, when I wasn’t feeling well.” He laughed derisively and said, “That’s something my sister would say.”

The Borders café didn’t have any blue Equal packets for my blackberry-sage iced tea, so I tried the new yellow-packeted sweetener, Splenda, which I didn’t like as much.

After reading the Times business section, op-ed page and some of the international news and obituaries, I drove to Sat Darshan’s office on Indian School.

She was waiting for me in the reception area and walked me back to her office, where I spotted a $2-off coupon for NYPD on her desk. Since I figured we’d spend more than $10, I was able to use it.

Gurujot came home from school in India, but Sat Darshan expects that she’ll take a job with Khalsa Security in Española, where she’ll be going for the solstice celebration.

They’re going to be having a party for graduates of their school, and Sat Darshan thinks Yogi Bhajan will offer her a job with his security company or else at the food company that makes Yogi Tea and other products.

Gurujot worked there last summer in Los Angeles, where 3HO’s ashram is in an old Jewish neighborhood of Beverly Hills.

Gurudaya told Sat Darshan that Nirankar and Trevor are leaving the house on Friday morning and driving to Kentucky. Gurudaya herself will be moving to her new apartment on Monday. Ravinder returned from New York last night, so for now they’ve got a full house.

Ravinder’s sister and brother-in-law, Tandeep’s parents, got a visa to visit Tandeep in Montreal. But they couldn’t get a second visa for the U.S., so Ravinder will go up to Canada to see them.

Towards the end of our lunch at NYPD, Sat Darshan and I chatted about my turning 50 next week. We continued our conversation after going back to Sat Darshan’s office, where she had to stay up front while Rachel, the receptionist, went out for her own lunch.

NAI Horizon is a very laid-back office, and working there gives Sat Darshan the flexibility she needs to deal with Kiran, so she accepts a lower salary than she could otherwise get.

Anyway, from there, I drove to Susan’s office, a building that contained the offices of a lot of psychologists.

Some of them must be child psychologists because in the outer office, after finishing the Times, I found Dr. Seuss’s Green Eggs and Ham and glanced at a copy of Highlights for Children, an updated staple of my childhood from forty years ago.

(Goofus now uses his cell phone to call his friends at inappropriately early hours while Gallant waits until his friends’ parents are sure to be awake.)

Waiting for my appointment, I began to feel a little anxious, but I did some breathing exercises and took a Triavil, and once I got in to talk with Susan, I felt a lot better.

I told her about my increased anxiety level due to moving and my usual problem adjusting to being in my parents’ home, where I’ve lost the ability to go about my familiar routines.

But I think forcing myself into new situations is what keeps me from being as obsessive-compulsive as Mom is.

Susan told me that yesterday she attended a seminar on anxiety disorders, and the expert and principal speak said that one out of five people will have an anxiety disorder sometime in their lifetime.

The speaker also told the practitioners to remind their patients that withdrawal symptoms of benzodiazepines, SSRIs, and other drugs can mimic anxiety, so that people often think their anxiety is returning when it’s not.

He said that if a patient can get through three days of their anti-anxiety medications at a lower dosage, they will generally be okay. I’m going to try going back to .25 mg. of Klonopin tonight and see what happens.

The speaker also said that learning relaxation techniques is the single most important thing anxiety patients can do to get better.

As Susan said, I’ve learned some new relaxation techniques over the past six or seven months, and I’ve also been using some of the ones I already knew about.

Leaving Susan’s office, I told her that I’d see her again in Tempe a week from Tuesday. That’s presumably our last session except for what Susan called “tune-ups.”

While checking my voicemail at Borders this morning, I discovered that Libby had called my number in Mesa. So the first thing I did when I got home was to call Woodland Hills.

Grant answered the phone. Sounding very sick, he said he had a really bad cold and was staying home.

I told him I expected to be there on Monday before Libby took off to pick up the kids at school at 2 PM. He said that otherwise I should just go through the back, which he’ll leave open.

Soon after Grant and I hung up, Josh phoned, wanting some advice on how to respond to a note from the German consulate telling him they will draft up papers for Josh to sign acknowledging his son’s paternity.

But they want the papers to include language committing Josh to child support “to be decided later by the court in Kiel.”

Josh is happy to pay the minimum amount per month, which comes to less than $200, but he doesn’t want to be forced to pay an amount that would bankrupt him.

We batted it around a while, and I suggested he ask for two separate documents, one that would entitle him to a birth certificate acknowledging Josh as the child’s father, and another that has him guaranteeing to make minimum child support payments under the laws of Germany or Schleswig-Holstein.

(Josh was surprised I figured out the state after he told me that Kiel was in the north, near Denmark.)

Because of the German kids sired by American GIs in World War II, the United States and Germany have a long-standing agreement that allows German courts to enforce child support in the U.S.

But unlike in this stupid country, Germany doesn’t put deadbeat parents in jail. The woman at the consulate told Josh that his fear that he could be imprisoned if he entered Germany was laughable.

I got an email from Cheri at Dairy Hollow asking me to confirm that I’d gotten “the official letter” of acceptance, so I replied that I had not. I also sent her the photo of myself they had lost and said I would soon send a bio note.

More and more, it looks as if I will end up in Eureka Springs this September. I don’t expect to get a job anywhere and will probably not want to attend ASU, so I’d rather be at a writer’s colony in Arkansas than stay here in Arizona.

I think my money will hold out through the fall.