Someone With a Pen: Richard Grayson’s Diary

Saturday, February 9, 2002

7 PM. A feeling of sadness has pervaded my day; I don’t recall when I’ve spent a day with so many tears in my eyes. But I’m not depressed, and it’s a luxurious kind of sadness, like when I would cry reading the “Portraits of Grief” mini-obituaries in the Times.

I have a very mild cold. Either the constant sucking on zinc lozenges helps, or else I’m just having allergies.

Last evening I went to the Stonewall Library, and as soon as I walked in, I was greeted with, “Hi, Richard,” by a guy, Ron, whose name I couldn’t remember.

The crowd was a little younger than the one for Dr. Graves, for whom the “Evening With” series has now been named. I ended up sitting next to a sweet-looking boy in his twenties, who bought the book My Son Divine by the speaker, Frances Milstead.

Fred brought her into the room, and to me, it looked like she’d already decided to adopt him.

Frances is a very sweet lady, and this was her first public appearance. You could tell that she really didn’t know what to say about her son “Glenny,” but audience questions prompted her to tell some wonderful stories.

She always accepted that her son was different and said she couldn’t understand parents that reject their gay kids. But she didn’t speak to her son for years because of a dispute related to his wrecking her car.

Then she discovered that he was Divine, and one night as he was going to appear at the Copa here in Fort Lauderdale, she sent a note backstage: “Call your mother.”

After he phoned her the next day, they remained close, although she’s seen only a couple of his movies.

As we all know, he died of a heart attack just as he was about to go mainstream with an appearance on Fox’s Married with Children.

I remember how, on my 30th birthday, when my parents were in New York for Cousin Jeff’s bar mitzvah, I had them take me to the Avenue U Theater to see Divine in John Waters’s Polyester with those Odorama cards.

Years before that, I went with Vito and one of his friends to see Divine in the off-off-Broadway play Women Behind Bars.

I enjoyed the evening and left the library around 8 PM, coming home to read the papers.

Today was a cool, drizzly day. I got up at 4:30 AM and felt anxiety – not terrible anxiety but enough. I tried to calm myself by listening to tapes, including the music on the mixtape Vincent made for me.

I finally opened the envelope from the Florida Bar Examiners and looked inside. It’s a pretty scary application form, but eventually I’ll deal with it.

I didn’t exercise this morning because I wanted to get to Supercuts when it opened at 9 AM. I still had to wait half an hour, but I got what appears to be a decent haircut.

Then I went to Barnes & Noble, where I got my favorite blackberry-sage iced tea. I don’t know why I get such chills when I drink the refill. Is it anxiety or what? I read the paper and skimmed a few magazines while sitting in the café.

Then I stopped at the photography studio where I had the photo taken for Lincoln’s Doctor’s Dog. I guess that was about twenty years ago.

The new owner, José, took passport-style photos that I’ll need for my bar exam application. Eschewing vanity, I wore my glasses – and boy, I look every bit the 50-year-old man.

Last night I thought about seeing Jason yesterday at the public library and that guy who sat next to me at the Stonewall Library. I’m still attracted to young guys who exude sweetness. But I’m sure that to them, I’m obviously a troll.

After getting a baked potato at Wendy’s, I came home and ate the rest of my lunch.

Then I walked over to the medical school, to the Common Ground Film Festival, sponsored by Nova’s Conflict Resolution Program. The organizer, a professor, recognized me from when I was an undergraduate composition instructor, but I don’t remember him at all.

I sat through three films about the Israeli/Palestinian conflict – or rather, ways of solving it.

Forbidden Marriage in the Holy Land dealt with marriages between Jews and Arabs (mostly Christians, but also Muslims) as well as other kinds of Israeli intermarriage (black Muslim/white Muslim; secular Ashkenazi/Orthodox Sephardi).

The Seeds of Peace program, where Israeli and Palestinian teenagers spend the summer at a Maine camp, gave these teens video cameras to record life back in their West Bank settlements and refugee camps, Gaza slums, and big cities in the documentary Peace of Mind: Coexistence Through the Eyes of Palestinian and Israeli Teens.

The last film, Rain 1949, was about two groups of people connected to the same hill and olive groves in a former Arab village, now a kibbutz.

While all the movies showed that individuals can cross boundaries and make connections with The Other, they were all very sad because the conflict now, during the Second Intifada, seems to be spiraling out of control.

The stupidity of people never ceases to amaze me. In the discussion afterwards, people spoke about both groups’ connection with the landscape of home.

Well, we can all understand that. Sometimes I feel my life would have been so much better if my family had stayed on East 56th Street in Brooklyn.

That was home for me, the house I was most attached to; it was wrenching in 1979 when my parents moved here. And then, twenty years later, they moved to Arizona, which in some ways proved even more wrenching for me.

Vincent says, “It’s always about homelessness,” and he knows quite a bit about that. But now he’s got a home with Bill.

How can I even recall all the places I’ve lived since my 16th birthday the way the bar exam application requires? I feel everything has been so temporary.

Where am I going to go after I leave this apartment? I’ll never be able to afford my own home. My parents’ home isn’t my home anymore, and there’s no way I’d ever move back to Arizona.

No, I’d like to stay in South Florida. But what if I leave my job and can’t afford this place? I guess I could try to get a room in someone’s house. For now, I’m secure, but it’s scary.

Yesterday Amazon.com Advantage ordered another copy of Eating at Arby’s, and I told them I couldn’t send it and that there were no more copies left.

I also wrote to iUniverse about the Backinprint.com version of I Survived Caracas Traffic, and that was good because they mislaid the file. I sent them a new one.

It’s now 9:45 PM, and I’ve been on the phone with Wil for the last two hours.

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Tuesday, February 12, 2002

7 PM. I just put away the laundry I did when I came home less than two hours ago.

My back is still painful, but I avoided exercising today, and I think it’s starting to heal. It hurt during the night, yet I was still able to sleep.

Yesterday afternoon I spent two hours filling out the Bar application. I did it in ink and in a rather slipshod fashion. I’m going to have trouble with my debts and my bankruptcy and my many periods of unemployment as well as some other stuff, but you know what? I don’t give a fuck.

Yes, it raises all sorts of issues because the Bar Examiners are going to be judging me and my life, but ultimately, I don’t care. I don’t want to practice law, and nobody at NSU said I had to be admitted to the Florida Bar, just that I had to take (and presumably pass) the Florida Bar Exam.

I know I’ve got this job through the end of the year if I want it, and if they can me, I’ll make my way somehow even if I’ve got to drastically downsize my lifestyle, rent a room in someone’s house, and scrape together a living doing adjunct work.

I’m glad to be in South Florida, and I’m not going to allow myself to have another nervous breakdown.

At 4 PM yesterday, I went to Mercy Moore’s writing workshop, which reminded me of why I like her so much. (Years ago, when I was in the English Department at Broward Community College, Mercy wrongly predicted that I would be her boss one day.)

The workshop turned into a gripe session about the students’ Lawyering Skills and Values classes. I’ve heard bad things about most of the teachers, but I think it’s the structure of the course, combined with the students’ poor writing skills, which causes problems. A more focused Legal Research and Writing class, like the one I took first semester at UF Law, probably would be easier.

Still, I’ve heard negative things about a lot of the NSU Law professors, including ones I admire. I’m starting to realize I’m not as inferior to the law professors as I originally thought.

Mercy kept saying that she was “a teacher and not a professor,” and I feel the same way about myself.

I left the workshop at 5 PM in order to meet Mark Waters, who seems like he’ll do fine as Blackwelder’s ARP TA in Property.

He’s a 40-year-old married guy with a real estate license whose wife is expecting their first baby next week, and he booked Property with Gilmore. I gave him whatever information and materials I could find.

Then I came home, had dinner, read a bit, did my bills, and returned to my office at 6:30 PM.

Luckily, Fernando, who was coming to see me, could show up early because his class was let out early, so I was able to leave school around 8:15 PM.

Fernando is a Brazilian lawyer who’s also admitted to the bar in Spain; he lives in Coral Gables and works in Boca at Siemens.

He’s having trouble with Karp’s LSV course because of his ESL problems and his more flowery language and his legalese.

But all the stuff Fernando does for work has to have constructions like “hereinafter” and “said document”: exactly the kind of verbiage that makes “plain English” Legal Writing professors cringe.

Fernando’s GPA is 2.187, so he was on my list of students just above probation. However, given the facts of his situation, I think he’s doing quite well.

After watching TV at home, I fell asleep, and this morning I didn’t really feel anxious. Today has been a good day. I had time to read the New York Times online and to email friends.

Teresa and Diane will be coming two weeks from Thursday and staying till the following Monday. For part of the time, Diane will stay at her brother’s, and Teresa will stay here, but Diane needs to stay here over the weekend when other relatives will be at her brother’s house for his 60th birthday bash.

Teresa is having terrible seller’s remorse about the house; she feels the new house is just too open and not private. She also liked having a deck instead of all that grass, though Paul said he doesn’t mind the yard work.

“Young Will,” their attorney, will take their deposition in the case against their stockbrokers, who’ve so far offered only $17,000 to settle the case, but they haven’t had to shell out much for lawyers yet.

I wrote to Patrick, who was having his MRI to see about the artery blockage today.

Rick Peabody wrote that a year from now, in time for Valentine’s Day, Anthology Press of Los Angeles will be publishing the Sex and Chocolate book (with my story from the Silicon Valley Diet). It means little to me, but it’s a nice break for Rick, who’s had a dry spell recently.

Mark Bernstein wonders whether Erica should go on for a Ph.D. after getting her MFA from Iowa. My impression is that Erica is better off keeping her job in publishing.

I told Mark that there just aren’t the kind of secure jobs that he could get as an academic in the 1970s. Mark thinks that as a female, Erica will be okay, but I don’t believe he’s right.

I met with Serri Miller, the ILSA editor and a Web maven, who redid the ARP webpages the way I suggested.

Mostly she made the changes that I had emailed her about on Monday, but we also made some new changes as we worked side by side while she dropped HTML code into her laptop.

When I saw the Nova calendar on the Web, I realized that the date I’d scheduled for my exam-writing workshop, March 29, is a holiday: Good Friday.

So I went to Jessica and made arrangements for the last three Fridays of the semester for exam writing workshops.

I don’t know exactly what I’ll do, and I’ll probably draw a small crowd on Fridays at 3 PM, but I need to get started to gain confidence in doing this as well as to help the students with their finals.

Next fall I’d like to do a regular weekly skills workshop the way Jane Fishman did.

At 4 PM, I met with Joanne Scribner. I don’t think she’s going to make it, not with a 1.2 GPA and all the burdens she’s taken on.

A Puerto Rican who grew up in East New York, Joanne loved her four years at the University of Central Florida and moved here to attend law school.

But since then, Joanne’s had a series of devastating family illnesses and deaths, and now she’s taking care of two little girls, 4 and 7, as well as a dying mother-in-law; clearly, she has been the rock of her family and community.

Joanne finds Nova very unlike her undergraduate experience. She says she hates the atmosphere of law school and finds her fellow law students shallow, backstabbing, and nasty.

People in her section were instant messaging each other in class last term, making fun of people being called on “until Professor Cross got the other professors together and put a stop to it.”

She said there’s been no one she could talk to about her grades. While Joanne got an F in Torts (I went over the exam with her), her study partner booked the class.

Joanne said that I was the only one she could unwind with, and of course that made me feel good. I told her to feel free to stop by my office to talk anytime.

This morning, after speaking with Pat, I told Bernadette that the probation letters should have a deadline of March 8 since spring break is the week after next. Bernadette emailed, “I like working with you.”

People are stopping by my office just to take from my bowls of mini-Snickers and mini-Milky Way bars.

I feel good about work today.

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Monday, February 18, 2002

7 PM. If it’s Monday, my back must have gone out. For the second Monday in a row, I hurt my back before leaving for work. But it’s not in the backside, as it was last week; it’s my lower back, and while it didn’t feel that bad all day while I was in a chair, it really hurts now as I lie down and change position.

This time I injured it not while exercising, but in the shower, and I don’t recall what move I made that wrenched it out. Bummer. It just makes everything more difficult, especially when things are so stressful at work.

I’ve had tons of people – okay, I’m exaggerating – calling, emailing, and coming in to make appointments to see me, and the rush is not yet over.

People were finding out because registration for summer school began today, and the letter from the dean didn’t make clear that failure to see me would affect fall, not summer, registration.

Anyway, I’ve seen or made appointments with only half of the 47 students on probation, so this is not going to let up soon. I didn’t get bored at work today, but it was stressful because I had almost no down time.

I guess I saw around eight people today, and by afternoon, they were coming in one after another, half an hour at a time. At this point, I can’t lavish the time on these students the way I did the ones who saw me earlier.

These meetings have also taken away from the time I have to oversee the ARP teaching assistants. I guess I have the same time management problems these law students have – though I imagine the problems of most Americans who are neither unemployed nor retired boil down to time management.

At least I was so busy today I didn’t have time to feel anxiety. But this kind of pressure is bad for me, too. I’m sure my back going out is related to the stress I’m feeling, and then the back pain just causes more stress.

All the time I wasn’t working between May and December last year, I didn’t have back problems – though I sometimes had them last winter at ASU, and my back went out just before my interview at Nassau Community College last April.

I didn’t have time today to phone Alice, but I did email her. She wrote back that her wrist isn’t healing the way the doctor would like, but he’s ruled out a second surgery and said she’ll still have “full use” of her hand – although Alice is worried about what that means.

Her brother is staying with her for eight days, longer than she’d like, but he’s apparently willing to do anything to get away from his wife except, apparently, divorce her.

Teresa said the three days of deposition were grueling, but her lawyer, “Young Will” (she always refers to him that way, as if he were a character in The Forsyte Saga), acquitted himself well against the platoon from Smith Barney’s legal staff, who’ve offered a paltry $7,000 in settlement.

A federal trial has been set for April.

Meanwhile, Teresa is already packing for the new house; she’s looking at a moving date around the Ides of March. She offered to send me any household items I might need, like kettles or linens.

I didn’t sleep well last night, and I know my back will keep me up tonight: I get stiff and go into spasms when I try to change positions. I’ll use the ice pack, take aspirin, and hope that after tomorrow (I won’t exercise), it will begin to improve.

Today was cool but sunny and dry. The students I saw today are a blur, as they and their problems start to blend into one another. There are a few with GPAs of 1.967 who can probably make it, though Pat said that George appears to be having a nervous breakdown, and Sydney said she had one last week.

I guess it’s good that winter break is next week, although one student has already made an appointment for next Monday; after that, I’m not going to want to see students until they return to school the following week.

I don’t think there’s much hope for the lawyer from Haiti with such a severe ESL problem that her GPA is like 1.33. Then there’s the woman who works for American Express whose GPA is similar but says she got all C+s and only one F.

Another student, an FIU journalism grad who’s been an English adjunct at Miami-Dade and Barry University, got a D+ in LSV. And there’s a guy who got one B, two C+s, and one F: probably an anomaly, but who can be sure?

I also saw a black woman who kept using malapropisms who told me that she’s wanted to be a lawyer since she was a little girl. She had a clear plan to get her B.A., then her M.P.A., but now she’s “butting up against the reality wall of law school.”

And there’s the Turkish girl from Boca who said she partied hard, assuming she could do fine if she just studied two days before exams the way she did as an undergrad. Sigh.

Well, I can’t try to be like Holden Caulfield’s catcher and save them all. Nor can I let them drag me over the cliff.

I need to decompress now.

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Tuesday, February 19, 2002

7 PM. I feel bleary-eyed and punch-drunk after seeing eight or nine students today. Once again, I need to unwind.

Last evening it took an Ambien to get me to sleep and a Klonopin in the middle of the night to put me back to sleep. Tonight I’ll try to rely just on Tylenol and exhaustion.

After the last three meetings with students, which ended a little more than an hour ago, I couldn’t stay at school to write up notes on them; I just felt I had to leave.

Usually I don’t feel that claustrophobic in my little office because I keep the door open, but of course all the students on probation wanted privacy.

Each one of them has a different story, but all the stories are starting to bleed into one another, and the day has become a blur of dashed expectations, shock, dismay, and stress; I’m talking about the students, I think.

This afternoon I saw the kid with the lowest GPA in the first-year class, a 1.09. Does he know it’s hopeless? Not really.

His father and uncle are big attorneys in West Palm Beach, so his name is already out there on a S_____ and S_____ law firm sign. (God knows why I feel I have to observe confidentiality in my diary like this is a nineteenth-century novel.)

His whole life, this kid has always been told he’s going to be a lawyer. He just graduated FAU and is living with his girlfriend, who will be at the law school next year, he says, and do a lot better than he did.

Well, I have the same repeated suggestions for every student, more or less, depending on what I remember. It amazes me how many of them won’t go to their teachers to look at their exams.

Of course, as a law student, I never looked at a single one of my exams: not at the three C+ grades I got, nor at any other exam.

But of course, in my first semester I got three B’s and two A’s, and those two A’s got me the book awards in Criminal Law and Jurisprudence. The next term, I didn’t do as well, with two grades of C+, two of B+, and one A in Torts – but it wasn’t that much worse.

It seems remarkable that I can still remember my first-year grades.

I had some walk-ins today, and others called or emailed or came in to make appointments for later in the week. Tomorrow morning I have four appointments in a row; I’m keeping them to half an hour when I can.

I’ve discovered that some of the probation letters have gone out to the homes of parents out of state, like the couple from Maryland who opened their daughter’s letter on the day of their 25th wedding anniversary.

I may be over the worst of it in terms of the number of students I’ll be seeing in a single day. But perhaps not.

I did have a break: I went to lunch at 1 PM, and when I came back, I didn’t have anyone coming in for a couple of hours, so I could email and do fun stuff online when I wasn’t dealing with ARP teaching assistants or making appointments.

My back is still pretty achy.

Josh emailed that he’s having his skin cancer surgery tomorrow.

Teresa seems to have only a very superficial idea of what my job is, but I guess I couldn’t expect her to understand.