Sunday, October 21, 2001
9 PM. No panic attacks today; I’ve just had generalized anxiety symptoms like flatulence and nervousness. I wish the Nova Law interview was tomorrow or Tuesday so I could get it over with.
The weather here continues to be gloomy and rainy. I did sleep well last night in Frank’s king-size bed. It was 7 AM when I finally woke up, later than I’ve slept in a long time – but I was awakened out of an anxiety dream.
I can’t find my pillbox that I kept in my backpack, and I think I must have mislaid it in the restaurant last night. It had my last Ativan as well as other medication – but of course I still have enough pills to keep me going. I just took two travels and 0.5 .mg Klonopin.
This morning I went to Borders and got the Sunday New York Times and iced tea. I’ve read most of the paper quickly and I’ll probably throw the rest away unread.
Frank’s wife and her first husband were Peruvian, and his son-in-law is a Moroccan Jew. Frank’s son Richard, who’s about 40 and lives in Broward, “is another one of you guys who don’t want to get married.”
Frank showed me photos of the “jigaboos” among his “friends” in the Mamaroneck Volunteer Fire Department; he’s quite racist and wants to be buried with a Confederate flag.
Frank brought out about a dozen books dating from the 1870s to the early years of the 20th century that he’d gotten at garage sales.
Most were law books, but there was also a volume of an 1875 encyclopedia, a Walter Scott novel, and an art book. I made a bibliography and will check them out on the Internet, as Frank has no idea how to get them appraised.
He only went to school up to the ninth grade, and I gather he had a very hard childhood. After working for the water department, he retired at 45 on permanent disability.
I left the apartment with Frank, though I drove up Federal Highway and across Hallandale Beach Boulevard to A1A by myself.
Then I went over to Hair Cuttery in Oakwood Plaza and got a trim. At 5 PM, I went over to Aunt Sydelle’s, and we all went out to dinner at Turn Bagelry (presumably it’s wordplay on Turnberry).
The restaurant is a nest of early-bird diners, many with walkers, toupees, Members Only jackets, hearing aids, two-toned big hair and leathery tans.
At 50, I was by far the youngest person sitting there. From Frank to my aunt and the residents of Aventura, I could get enough material to write a dozen stories – but I’ve been beaten to it already, I think.
Back home at Coronado, Aunt Sydelle let me talk to Scott when she called him. By now, I’ve been brought up-to-date on all the members of our extended family and their in-laws, stepchildren and cleaning women.
I’ve been playing telephone tag with Patrick, so I guess I’ll try him at Broward Community College tomorrow.
Right now it’s raining hard. Looking over to Sky Lake, I see only blackness.
Sat Darshan wrote me today from her job at Hospice of the Valley, where they’re still training her to deal with the whole process at the end of life. She’s working on Sundays now, she says, because the sick don’t stop dying on weekends.
About the interview: everyone from Dad to Vincent thinks I’m most worried – unnecessarily – about making a good impression and getting the job at Nova. But that’s not it.
New and unfamiliar experiences just make me anxious. For Christ’s sake, I’m a guy who got nervous a month ago about driving from Eureka Springs to Fayetteville for a poetry reading.
I like that Frank doesn’t seem to let anything bother him, but isn’t that just because he’s not very bright?
Monday, October 22, 2001
8 PM. I’ve just been watching TV in the living room, looking at the apartment buildings east of here and watching lightning erupt.
It looks as if my entire week here will have the same rainy weather. Today we had periodic downpours and I got pretty wet despite the umbrella I bought at Publix on Saturday.
After speaking to Patrick at BCC, I think I’ll go over to the South Campus tomorrow morning to see him, as he has to go to the cardiologist in the afternoon.
Patrick has been putting off the visit for months because he’s afraid of bad news, but as he said, the doctor caught the blockages in his arteries last year and saved his life when they did the bypass.
I’ve been so wrapped up in my own mental problems that I forget how serious other people’s health problems are. After the bypass and knowing that he’s diabetic, Patrick must have a sense of mortality.
I was just watching WAMI-TV, the local station with a street-level studio on Lincoln Road. They were interviewing Sean Sasser, the partner of The Real World’s Pedro Zamora, who died of AIDS.
It reminded me of when I saw Sean in the mid-1990s speak at a University of Florida panel discussing how close we were to the introduction of protease inhibitors. They said the new drugs would revolutionize HIV treatment – and they certainly have.
He realizes she’s an intelligent woman who would not, under any circumstances, be like his wife, who basically just did everything he told her to do.
I left the condo at 2 PM, thinking I’d try to get into Mercy Moore’s writing workshop at Nova Law. But by the time I got to Davie, it was raining buckets, and the few unoccupied parking spaces in the Nova parking lot were badly flooded.
So I just drove past my parents’ old house, now decorated with plastic pumpkins for Halloween – there seems to be a flag on every mailbox in Oak Knoll Ridge – and then I took I-595 and I-95 back to Miami-Dade.
At the Barnes & Noble on Biscayne Boulevard, I had a small (“tall”) iced tea and read Poets & Writers, which is always kind of depressing for me as I see all these writers getting awards and publications and look at the ads for all those poetry book contests and MFA programs.
I used to be in that world: Poets & Writers even covered the fellowships I won, and in 1982, it published my report on the South Florida literary scene.
Stopping at the Northeast Regional Library near the Aventura Mall, I got on a computer and sent emails to Ronna, Teresa, Sat Darshan and Gregg Shapiro, whose stories in Blithe House Quarterly and elsewhere I’ve admired.
Later, sitting at Wendy’s, I overheard New York and New Jersey accents. As I told Susan when I returned to Phoenix from my Nassau Community College interviews six months ago, it’s nice to go to a place where I can hear people talk English the same way I do.
Tuesday, October 23, 2001
7 PM. I woke up at 5 AM with my upper back all messed up; I’ve got spasms by my right shoulder blade. Obviously it’s tension about tomorrow’s job interview. It’s worked itself out a bit now, and I didn’t exercise today.
I feel nervous about the interview, of course, but I’m not shaking – not yet, anyway.
After doing laundry this morning, I went to Publix to buy some stuff. Around 10 AM, I drove to Pembroke Pines, parked at BCC-South, and saw Patrick standing outside on the second floor of his building as I approached.
We talked in his office for two hours. He told me about the 90% blockage the cardiologist found last year on his carotid artery.
He was worried that later today the cardiologist would discover a blockage on the other side. My problems pale in comparison, although Patrick didn’t make a big deal about surgery.
We talked a lot about BCC. The P’an Ku deadline is Friday, and a boy shyly brought in a poem in Spanish while I was there.
I told Patrick that I knew I had made a lot of mistakes in my career and that I guess I probably would have had a better life if I’d tried to stay at BCC the way he did.
But as Aunt Sydelle told me later in the day, “Woulda, shoulda, coulda…”
It was only when talking to Patrick did I start to become a little panicky, imagining myself unable to ever get another job and becoming homeless and poverty-stricken.
But even this year, after everything that happened to me, I’ve stilled traded the promise of security for adventure. Otherwise, I would have stayed in Arizona in May and spent the summer looking for a full-time job.
Instead, I went first to Los Angeles, then Ragdale, then New York and Philadelphia, and finally to Eureka Springs.
I know that friends and relatives are right that if this opportunity at Nova Law doesn’t happen, another one will arise – eventually.
However, soon there’ll be a financial reckoning as bankruptcy looms. But I did that over a decade ago and I got through it, and I’m sure I’ll get through a second bankruptcy, too. It will just mean living without credit cards.
Remember the summer of 1992, when I had to cancel my trip to New York because of a lack of money? I had to stay in Gainesville after summer school ended and work hard to watch my pennies.
Somehow I managed. I can do that again. Whatever happens, I can handle it.
Looking at it that way, it’s not crucial that I be so impressive tomorrow that I get the job at Nova Law.
For all I know, one of the other candidates has wowed them and I’ll just be going through the motions. What I really need is to boost my confidence, but I’ll fake confidence tomorrow.
Whatever happens to me, I don’t see myself retreating into agoraphobia again. I may be frightened, but just look at all the traveling I’ve done this year despite my so-called (by me) nervous breakdown.
Somewhere within me there has to be some kind of inner strength. Whoever I am, I don’t want to be anyone else – and if they want me at Nova Law school, wonderful; if not, I’ll go on.
Wednesday, October 24, 2001
To the second question, I have no idea, but to the first, I know I did better than I thought I could and about as well as possible.
If I don’t get the job, there’ll be nothing that I regret saying or not saying. What’s sad is that having met the people at Nova Law, I really want this job, and it will be a real disappointment if I don’t get it.
While I have a good feeling about how I did, I have no idea how experienced or dynamic or well-qualified the two other candidates are.
I could write a lot about the day, but right now I’m both too tired and too wired. It certainly was a long day since I left Frank’s at 7:20 AM.
It was nice to hear someone say, “Professor Grayson, what are you doing here?” when I first walked in the door of the law school.
It was Lubna, one of my undergraduate Legal Studies students from the year before last. She’s in her first semester now, and she knew about ARP but doesn’t have time for the groups or writing sessions.
He’s a regular guy, and as I expected, he talked about their online AAMPLE summer program, where they have students who ordinarily couldn’t get into law school take online courses over the summer, just as the original AAMPLE program did, and if they do okay, they’re admitted in the fall.
His main concern, like that of others I spoke to later, is getting the Nova bar exam passage rate up, and he sees ARP as the vehicle to do that.
I next met with Paul Joseph, the Associate Dean for Faculty. He’s Lynn Wolf’s husband, and I had met years ago when he was at Barnes & Noble with Lynn.
After we talked for about twenty minutes, I got taken on a tour of the law school by Amber, a student worker.
Then I met with Mark Padin and Steve Friedland, law professors who had definite ideas about ARP. Mark directed the academic support program at St. Thomas after being trained in academic support at UC-Hastings by one of the leaders in the field.
I went from my meeting with the faculty back to Pat Jason, whom I talked with for about an hour. She seems really nice, and I asked questions and discussed some of what I already learned that morning.
At the faculty forum, about twenty professors listened as Steve Friedland gave a great presentation on the ineffectiveness of most law school exams and how poorly assessed and evaluated they are.
After that ended at 1:30 PM, I spoke to another professor, Jane Cross, who told me that she had invented ARP as a summer program for black students a decade ago.
Then I went to the library and spent an hour with Billie Jo Kaufman and got her perspective on Nova’s being so wired that some students need ARP help just getting up to speed on the technology.
I also learned from Billie Jo and other people that Nova is no longer the freewheeling place that it once was, when it was disparaged by its own professors.
“Rock ‘n’ roll law school,” Steve called it. Yet someone else said that Nova’s got a curriculum that looks traditional but whose thrust is truly radical.
At 3:30 PM, I was free till dinner at 6 PM. Jane Cross told me to meet her and Mark Padin at Casablanca Cafe on A1A between Sunrise and Las Olas.
So I went back to North Miami Beach, told Frank how the day went and lay down for 45 minutes while he watched TV.
Not wanting to take I-95 at rush hour, I drove up Federal Highway and A1A, and I got to the restaurant early.
Because I got to watch the ocean and a double rainbow (oh, how I missed seeing them since I left Florida), I didn’t mind Jane being late and Mark being even later.
We ate outside. I really liked talking to Jane and Mark, both of whom have been gypsies, living in Los Angeles, to Bay Area, the Midwest, Long Island and other places.
As we walked to our cars, Jane told me that she, Pat and Billie Jo would let me know about the position “very soon.” And that either means that I’ll get it or I won’t.
Driving home via Las Olas, Broward Boulevard and I-95, I had a mild panic attack – I guess I saved it till everything was over, when I was thinking about everything I had done that day.
If I don’t get the job, at least I’ll know I could handle this rough interview process – made easy by how nice everyone was – and that I’ve learned a lot. I’ll have experience for next time, assuming this isn’t the last academic interview I go on.
The disappointment will be severe, as I said, but I’ll know I truly did my best and could not have been better prepared or more articulate.
Now I’m thinking that I probably will go to New York a week from Monday to see Teresa, Ronna and what’s happened to 
I had eleven Yahoo emails on the phone. Vincent and Tom were thinking of me, Alice wanted to know how I was, and Sat Darshan came to the conclusion after her first class that she can’t handle the University of Phoenix master’s program: it’s just too much work, given her responsibilities as a parent and working at Hospice of the Valley. I’m sure Sat Darshan knows best; she always can do it when Kiran’s older.
Thursday, October 25, 2001
9 PM. I felt more optimistic about my chances of getting the Nova job yesterday. Tonight I checked my email messages by phone and got a rude shock.
This morning I’d gone to Kinko’s early and emailed everyone I’d met at law school. I got back nice but noncommittal notes from most, but Pat Jason said they would like to “pursue my candidacy” by contacting references. I thought they’d already done that.
My dilemma is that if I don’t include Liz McCulloch as a reference, I won’t have anyone at CGR. But Liz has never responded to my plea for forgiveness that I wrote her two months ago, and I don’t want to risk a bad recommendation.
I’ll send Pat Jason my references, not including Liz, over the weekend – but that means it will be weeks before I hear from Nova either way and I’ve just got the feeling my chances have plummeted.
I feel kind of crushed right now.
Last night I didn’t sleep too well, and although I did doze off after getting up at 3:30 AM, it wasn’t for long and it wasn’t a good sleep.
Frank likes to say, “It’s a done deal.” Well, it’s not a done deal at Nova. I guess my family and friends will still love me.
I wrote replies to Vincent, Tom, Mark and other friends who provided emotional support this week. Nobody will think any less of me because I wasn’t hired at Nova, and as Vincent said, another opportunity will present itself.
I got through the week with little serious anxiety, and that almost definitely means that my depression and generalized anxiety disorder that blossomed a year ago has abated.
I guess I could still get the Nova job, but tonight I feel that it’s not going to happen. And maybe this is how I’m punished for an admittedly unethical action in not returning that extra vacation paycheck to CGR four years ago. So be it; my character is flawed.
All of this will be grist for my fiction, I expect. After I wrote Vincent, he wrote me back a long note. I still feel that we’re soulmates; it’s too bad he’ll be doing a reading in San Francisco when I’m in New York.
I’ve almost definitely decided that I’m going to New York now. I want to take one more trip and connect with the wounded city that is another of my homes. Maybe Phoenix is also my home now; I don’t know.
After coming back from the Kinko’s on NE 123rd Street and Biscayne Boulevard in North Miami, I found that Body Electric was on some weird cable channel at 9:30 AM, so I exercised for the first time in two days.
After working out, showering, and dressing, I went to Borders. I had my frequent drink card with me, so I got a free iced tea while I sat there and read the New York Times. I finished the newspaper at Wendy’s and bought a few items at Publix.
I no longer read the New York Times as thoroughly as I used to. As Alice wrote, she can’t bear looking at the “A Nation Challenged” section.
When I got back here, Frank was lying down in bed, tired after an appointment with Dr. Reichbach, who was Grandma’s Sylvia’s and now is Sydelle’s.
To give him privacy, I brought Sydelle a floral bouquet from Publix and spent the afternoon at her apartment. Her shingles, now a year old, still bothers her terribly, especially when she’s stressed.
She says she’s scared because she’s 80 years old and can’t pretend to be younger forever – even though she thinks Frank might have figured out that she’s older than she says.
I felt tired, so Aunt Sydelle let me lie down on her couch for a little while.
We watched Oprah, who uninvited Jonathan Franzen to her show after he stupidly dissed her selection of The Corrections for her book club. I guess Franzen felt he had to establish his “literary” chops, the fool.
On today’s show, Oprah’s “life coach” was telling people how to deal with their fears.
Here in Florida, I’ve been able to overlook Sydelle and Frank’s mishigass, and I need to have the same patience with my own parents when I get back to Arizona.
I’ve never been closer to my aunt, which is nice. I need to make connections with family and friends.
After hugging Sydelle and Frank goodbye, I came back here to The Moorings and packed as much as I could before tomorrow’s trip.
I need to leave here soon after 9 AM, since 10:45 AM is two hours before my flight and I have to return the rental car before that.
Friday, October 26, 2001
9:30 AM. I’m just about to leave for the airport.
I didn’t sleep much last night, awakening at 3 AM to listen to a long British documentary on soap operas that captured the essence of the genre I’ve always loved.
I decided to go to Kinko’s at 8 AM and send Pat Jason my list of references, including Liz. If Liz’s bad-mouths me, so be it. I’ll take my chances. The others on my list – Patrick, Mercy, Betty Taylor, Ken Nunn, Ben Mulvey, Micki Johnson, David Bodney – will all be okay.
There will also be the matter of getting a flight back from New York to Arizona if I definitely decide to go on this trip.
Teresa wrote that it’s been sad at the house because Phoebe died. She must have choked on a bone; the vet said she’d been dead for four hours when Teresa found her.
It looks as if Jade has moved out of Locust Valley, so I’ll have more space in the house if I do visit Teresa and Paul. I suppose I will. I have nothing to lose but more money charged to my credit cards.
Once I’m back in Arizona, I’ll probably be anxious again; I had the start of diaphoresis this morning, with my palms somewhat sweaty.
At Starbucks, they had only non-caffeinated passion iced tea. Usually I would like that, but right now I’m really groggy.
Well, I just have to get to the Hertz rental place now. It’s going to be a long day with long lines.
Jonathan should be at Sky Harbor to pick me up when I get in around 5:30 PM, which will seem like 8:30 PM to me. Hopefully I’ll get through the day without any panic – but I’ll handle panic if it arises.
Saturday, October 27, 2001
5:30 PM. Yesterday’s trip was stressful, and today I’ve been jet-lagged, sleep-deprived and cranky, but I’ll be okay.
After dropping off my rental car at Hertz and taking their shuttle to the Delta terminal, I was able to avoid the long line by checking my luggage curbside.
I was third in line to board the flight to Atlanta when lights and sirens went off, and a mechanical female voice declared there was an emergency and we all had to evacuate the terminal in a calm, orderly manner.
Oh God, I thought. Maybe a thousand of us went outside, where soldiers in camouflage garb with machine guns had us move away from the terminal across the road to the parking lot.
“Welcome to America,” I said as I found a place to sit along the curb next to two other wannabe passengers.
“Post-September 11,” one of them replied.
Everyone took it pretty much in stride although when they finally let us back in, they tried to get our flight and another that had already started boarding priority in going back through security. But other people in line didn’t want to let us through until cops, soldiers and airport officials intervened.
We took off very late, and I was sure I would miss my connecting flight to Phoenix in Atlanta. I rode the subway from 
It was a long, bumpy plane ride (the first flight was really bumpy as well), but I watched Legally Blonde again and listened to music and thought a lot about my book – maybe I should call it My LaGuardia Novel, the way I referred to what I told everyone I was writing back at Brooklyn College – and I thought a lot about my life.
I felt relieved when I got to the baggage claim at Sky Harbor around 5:40 PM and immediately saw Jonathan. After getting my bags, we rode the Gecko bus to the East Economy Lot.
It took nearly an hour to get home, and I was exhausted by the time we did. I lay down on my pallet as soon as I could because my eyes wouldn’t stay open.
By 9 PM, however, I couldn’t sleep, so I took an Ambien. It’s ironic that I didn’t need a single sleeping pill all the time I was in Florida. Despite the Ambien, I was awake at 2 AM and never got back to sleep. In the morning I had a terrible headache and felt crummy for most of the day.
I learned that on Thursday night, Frank had to call 911 because Aunt Sydelle got very sick.
Anyway, my diaphoresis has returned, and I felt a little jittery today.
I called Teresa and expressed my sorrow at Phoebe’s death. She died in the corner of the den and had been dead for hours when Teresa found her. With Jade, Pam and now Phoebe gone, Teresa said the house feels empty, so she is looking forward to my visit.
I’m going a week from Monday and not returning to Phoenix until Tuesday, November 20. I traded in my Delta SkyMiles for the return flight to Phoenix and for another flight back to New York next March. So I keep extending my summer and putting off reality.
I got a new $1,500 Visa from US Airways Dividend Miles from the Bank of America. Today I played with my credit card statements, paying off the bills for October. I’ll just keep the chassis going with more cash advances.
Pat Jason wrote yesterday, asking if my references know I’m on the job market and also whether I was a member of any State Bar. Maybe my not being one will kill my chances of getting the job at Nova. But if bar membership was a prerequisite for the job, Nova probably would have stated it in the job description.
Anyway, by now I’m nearly certain I won’t get the job. I think the Nova Law School job just wasn’t meant to be.
But just as the Nassau Community College job interview last April got me back to New York, this interview gave me the chance to visit South Florida this year, and I took full advantage of that.
What I expect to happen is that this winter, I’ll take some bimmie job and have time to concentrate on my writing and maybe on gay politics or community work.
In November, I’m going to freeze my ass off in New York and Philadelphia, and by the time I come back here, I’ll have stretched my almost endless summer to Thanksgiving.
I spoke to Sat Darshan, who withdrew from her program at the University of Phoenix in time to cancel her financial aid. She seems to like the low-key atmosphere at Hospice of the Valley, and her female and gay male fellow workers are nice, if not necessarily people she’d be friends with outside of work.
I went out to deposit last week’s Unemployment check and send out my unemployment deferral form to direct loans.
I also mailed Martin Hester’s reversion of rights letter to Backinprint.com with the contract agreement to the Authors Guild. Hopefully by spring, I Survived Caracas Traffic will come out in trade paperback alongside Lincoln’s Doctor’s Dog and With Hitler in New York.
Today I emailed everyone from Ronna to Vincent. (Doing a Web search, I learned that he once was president of the Memphis Gay and Lesbian Community Center, and I saw a drawing he did for a comic strip. It scares me how talented Vincent is.)
I quickly read the Times for yesterday and today. Either the forced absence of the paper in Arkansas or the post-September 11 news of Afghanistan and anthrax has caused me to be unable to read the newspaper the way I used to.
It’s not fun to be back in Arizona, which seems so ugly compared with Florida, and it’s not easy being back with my family with no room of my own.