Someone With a Pen: Richard Grayson’s Diary

Thursday, August 1, 2002

9 PM. Yesterday I began and ended my diary entry – the final one of 33 years of diary-keeping (today starts my 34th year; in four months it will be a third of a century) – with the words, “It’s over.”

Tonight, at 7:15 PM, when I returned to my apartment, I found a note on the counter. I had ripped out a piece of the steno pad pages I keep my food diary on and written, “It’s over!”

It will take a while to sink in.

Last night I slept pretty well, and oddly enough, I think I awoke with a teeny bit of anxiety, more than I felt on the two days of the bar exam. 

It was like, what do I do today if I’m not going back for another day of the bar exam? 

I did find something pleasant to do, of course. 

When I left the hotel room at 8 AM, I got the free St. Pete Times (a great paper) and Tampa Tribune (a mediocre one) and an iced tea from the coffee bar downstairs and headed out to the Franklin Street Mall and a table outside. 

I spent hours sitting and reading newspapers (I later got the New York Times at an Indian newsstand) and drinking iced tea and walking around the downtown area. 

News trucks from WFLA and WTSP were outside City Hall, obviously waiting for Mayor Dick Greco, who just got back from a mysterious trip to Havana with other civic leaders. 

Tampa’s Cuban community is older and less fanatically anti-Castro than Miami’s, and I guess Tampa wants to reap the benefits of changes in the country. 

The mood on Cuba is changing; Congressman Jeff Flake, a conservative Mormon Republican from my old Mesa stomping grounds, sponsored a bill trying to end the embargo – but the Bush Brothers still pandered to the Miami Cubans. 

I ended up reading six newspapers today. I had such a long wait at the airport that I got the New York Post, USA Today, and the Wall Street Journal. It was like being reintroduced to the world. 

According to the revised GDP figures, the 2001 economic downturn was milder and shallower than people thought, so 9/11 probably ended the recession, not started it. 

And while economists all say a double dip recession isn’t likely, I’m not so sure. The stock market has rebounded from its lows, but the mood of the people is nervous. 

I expect, as I always have, that 2002 will be a good year for liberals and Democrats, and I think that the trends are pulling the country to the left. 

Of course, I predicted this for the last twenty years, and I’ve always been wrong. But I still believe that something like the 1960s and the New Deal and the Progressive Era is coming.

If Bush gets us into Iraq, I think it will go badly. The whole Western world – not to mention the Arabs and Muslims – are against us on Iraq, and things are so bad between Israel and the Palestinians that I don’t know how an invasion of Iraq will do anything but make things worse. 

From the papers, I see that liberals are starting to use voter initiatives in Florida, California, Arizona, and other states to get progressive reforms that state legislators won’t consider.

Anyway, I enjoyed walking around downtown Tampa. 

But it’s dead in the mornings, coming alive only when office workers come out for lunch. 

Pat said that her husband has owned Franklin Street property for decades and keeps saying it will be the next Lincoln Road, but I don’t see it happening. 

Still, I enjoyed being back in the role of flâneur.

I even thought about stories I’d like to write, but mostly they’re just titles like “Superstition Freeway” and “The Klonopin Club” and “Vampires of Northwest Arkansas.” 

When I got back to my room at 1 PM, there were messages from Dad and Delta Airlines saying that my flight had been delayed 45 minutes in its LAX departure – but of course I still had to check out at 2 PM. 

Hyatt takes part in Delta’s SkyMiles program, so I got some frequent flyer miles. (I only wish I’d known that in Seattle.) 

Anyway, I got a cab to TIA, where I spent several hours drinking more Starbucks iced tea and reading papers. 

The flight to Fort Lauderdale was very quick, and I was home soon after 7 PM. 

I did laundry and got my mail, which included my new Bank of America Alaska Airlines Visa. 

I transferred $8,000 from an Aspire Visa account with a 27% APR to the new card, which has only a 14% APR. 

Sat Darshan left a message; she wasn’t working today, as she had gone in last weekend. Something happened at Hospice of the Valley, though she doesn’t think she’ll lose her job over it. 

I called Aunt Sydelle and discovered she had a bad fall on Wednesday in the parking garage. She fell on her face again and almost broke her new caps; she said her lips are all swollen. 

Like last time, Sydelle doesn’t know how it happened. I told her I’d be over in the morning.

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Friday, August 2, 2002

7:30 PM. I feel like those soap opera characters who are only allowed a minute of peace after enduring one crisis before the writers thrust another crisis upon them. 

My crisis can be stated as the words ordering an ultrasound on a prescription pad of Elisa Ginter, D.O.: 

“U.S. Lt Testicle 608.00 – new, soft, nontender, near epididymis.”

On the first diagnosis (along with “BPH” and “urin freq” on my copy of the claims form), it says “testicular mass (scrotal).” 

A week from Monday – the first appointment I could get – I have to go to the same imaging center where I had my MRI to get an ultrasound to try to diagnose what the lump on my left testicle is.

I may have cancer. That has a way of putting all the anxieties I felt about the bar exam in perspective.

Last night I woke up with an incredibly strong erection. For some reason, I started to fondle my balls, and then I felt it: the lump. It’s a marble-sized mass on my left testicle. 

I checked again and again to make sure I wasn’t imagining it, that it was something I’d probably always had but had never noticed. But it was definitely a mass that I’d never felt before. 

Immediately I became nauseated with fear. I swigged some Emetrol and took an Ambien, and somehow I fell asleep again, but in the morning it was still there.

At 5:30 AM, I heard the familiar thump on the ground outside, which meant that I had gotten the New York Times delivered once again after my “vacation break” to study for the bar exam. 

After exercising and eating breakfast, I went out to Publix, where I found those Cedarlane couscous wraps I stopped seeing months ago. I bought up all seven that the freezer compartment had.

When I got home, I called Aunt Sydelle and told her I needed to go to the doctor and that I could go to the university’s walk-in clinic starting at either 9 AM or 1:30 PM. 

We decided that I should come over to her apartment right away and go to the clinic in the afternoon. 

Sydelle didn’t look good. Her lip was swollen, as it was the last time she fell, and her hand was all messed up as well. 

I took her to the bank to deposit her social security check (she can’t use direct deposit because the account and her check have different last names) and get some cash.

Then we went to Publix, and after we bought those groceries home, I took her to Whole Foods, where she got some supplements and salmon. 

When I got back to Davie from Aventura, I got a baked potato with Wendy’s and had my usual fat-free cheese slices on whole wheat bread and frozen vegetables for lunch. Then I went to the NSU Clinic. 

Both the resident and the supervising physician who saw me were female, but I wasn’t embarrassed about the testicular exam. 

I’d been hoping the doctor would say it was nothing, but she scared me by saying, “I don’t want to scare you, but you should have the ultrasound done as soon as possible.” 

The mass felt soft, and she said that it probably wasn’t malignant, but it also didn’t feel like a varicose vein. It could be a benign cyst or maybe the start of a hernia. 

When the doctor asked if I’d lifted anything heavy lately, I told her that I got a bit of a funny feeling yesterday when I hoisted the luggage into the cab’s trunk at Fort Lauderdale airport. She said I shouldn’t lift anything heavy for now. 

The doctor also did a prostate exam and said I have an enlarged prostate. She seemed concerned about my urinary frequency and urgency and my trouble stopping and starting. 

Apparently a PSA wasn’t done during my last blood test, so I had that done, and they took a urine sample as well; my stool sample had no blood in it. 

They will mail me a referral to a urologist; the earliest ultrasound appointment I could get was for 10:30 AM on Monday, August 12. 

Aunt Sydelle asked me to call her back after my appointment, and I did, and I also called my parents. God, I’ve caused them a lot of worry this year. 

I didn’t mean to start crying when I told Mom, but I guess my fear just overwhelmed me. Dad said he’s sure I don’t have testicular cancer because it’s a disease of young men. 

I always thought that, but when I called Fire Island, Paul said that Teresa’s uncle has been having chemotherapy for testicular cancer. 

I know Paul, though, and he may have gotten it confused with prostate cancer, which seems more likely in an old guy like Uncle Red. 

Later I spoke to Josh, who said that he knew two guys who had testicular cancer, and both had recovered completely. 

Josh was amused when I told him one doctor said to the other, “Well, his penis looks good.” 

And of course there’s Lance Armstrong. I’m sure his winning the Tour de France had something to do with my testicular self-examination, as I’d read about him in a copy of one of the papers I bought at Tampa Airport.

I drove over to the West Regional Library and read up on testicular cancer. It’s very rare and usually curable, especially if it’s caught before it spreads to the lymph nodes. 

Older men mostly get the non-deadly seminoma kind of testicular cancer. 

It’s hard to stop thinking about it, but I won’t be getting the ultrasound for ten days. 

Well, I suppose this is all happening to me for a reason. It’s been an interesting year.

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Tuesday, August 6, 2002

9 PM. I’m tired. I was up at 4:30 AM, and I guess it’s been a long day. I’m not used to working. 

I’ve often written, “This is a strange time in my life,” but this time really is strange.

Until next Monday and the ultrasound, I won’t know anything about my condition, and I probably won’t know then, either.

It could be weeks before I find out if I have cancer, a benign growth, a hernia, or whatever.

Except tonight I started thinking: this thing feels as if it’s on and attached to the left testicle, and a hernia would be coming out of another spot, unconnected, no? 

Apart from Josh calling last evening, and Aunt Sydelle calling tonight, no one else has phoned or emailed.

Kevin sent out a mass email talking about his six years in Los Angeles.

Just as he did before he left Vermont, when he jumped off a bridge, last night he dared himself to streak down Santa Monica Pier Bridge and skinny-dip in the Pacific.

“My friends and family,” Kevin wrote, “life is too short. We do things in everyday life that we get fixated on and get too comfortable with. Do something daring and feel alive!”

I don’t know that I’ve ever done anything daring in my life.

When I told Pat about my health problem,  she told me to think positive.

I sort of liked getting back to work today. I almost enjoyed everything I did: attending the meeting about orientation; advising a student (Joseph Parker, who got a D+ in Defamation from Mike Richmond this summer); putting up a couple of pages of information on the ARP bulletin board; redrafting the TA personnel forms that were lost when my old computer was stolen; and looking over the fall semester class and room schedule.

But my job is not my life, and I’m going to try to avoid anxiety about work. If I do have cancer, why should I worry about my job or my debts or the bar exam or anything else?

While I don’t believe that events have to happen for a reason, maybe this cancer scare is the wake-up call I’ve needed to halt two years of anxiety.

If I do have a malignancy, I feel that I can sort of relax about all the other parts of my life. People will be understanding if I’m preoccupied. I don’t have to do anything.

I’ve been watching the video of Life Is Beautiful, in which Roberto Benigni pretends, for his young son’s sake, that the concentration camp they’re in is a game.

Maybe being ill is part of a game.

The chiropractor, back in March, said I shouldn’t be depressed about having sciatica because it’s “not life-threatening.”

But you know, I think I may handle something life-threatening more easily than I could have dealt with sciatica.

I don’t really expect to die, but if I have cancer, it could be a great relief. I mean, life suddenly becomes very simple and uncomplicated.

Does this make any sense?

I haven’t called Neo, and it occurs to me that knowing me, I need a boyfriend who lives closer than Miami Shores and who is available on weekends.

But of course now is not the time to be looking through the online personals. Or is it? 

I’m full of clichés tonight, like Kevin’s “Life is short” or “Life is beautiful.” I was about to write something about one day at a time.

It’s a pity that a hint of my mortality can’t evoke any eloquence from me. If dying didn’t hurt, I wouldn’t mind it all that much.

But I’m not going to die just yet; I can feel it. I firmly believe that if I do have cancer, I’ll be cured. Of course I’ll go on to die of something else eventually.

There was no referral to a urologist in today’s mail; I wonder how long it could take.

Josh said I should have told the North Broward Hospital District that it was an emergency and insisted upon an appointment for an ultrasound this week. But that’s not something I would do.

I’m not very assertive. All I asked to be reimbursed for by Nova Law after spending thousands of dollars on the bar exam was my $619 Tampa hotel room bill.

I may take other people’s money easily – that extra vacation pay from the University of Florida or unemployment benefits or credit card cash advances – but I don’t concern myself with getting paid back by others.

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Friday, August 9, 2002

9 PM. I feel so emotionally drained. But the good news, as I learned in a phone call at 3:30 PM, is that my PSA level was only 0.9.

That’s very low, and believe me, I know that after spending hours reading every article I could about the PSA test and prostate cancer.

Had I been fully informed, I would not have taken the test and subjected myself to needless anxiety.

Of course, they could have called yesterday and told me my PSA was okay and that I should call, but the doctor is only a resident in her first week. That’s the problem with going to a clinic.

Yesterday when they called and said they needed to talk to me about my PSA test, I went through an emotional roller coaster and I put my parents through it as well. Dad said he didn’t sleep much better than I did last night.

On the other hand, I’ve learned what good friends I have. I got emails today from Teresa, Vincent, Alice, Sat Darshan, and Jeff Baron, and I met someone I knew as a kid, and we ended up talking for hours.

This very prominent local estate tax attorney, Norman Kaplan, is an adjunct at Nova, and he noticed my office’s photo of the 1945-46 Chicago Blackhawks.Then he saw my Brooklyn College diploma. 

He graduated BC two years before I did, but he’s my age, and we went to Hebrew school together at Flatbush Park Jewish Center.

Norman knew so many people that I did from the old neighborhood, and I remembered people I haven’t thought about in years, like my Hebrew school classmate Mitchell Geller, whose father would sometimes pick us up at the synagogue.

(Norman mentioned that Mitchell was gay, something I would have never expected because all he used to talk about was Yankees baseball.)

Norman knew Marc’s friend Alan and his sister, whom both Norman and Marc used to date. 

He also told me that he was friends with Guy Mazzeo, who lived next door to him in Fillmore Gardens. I knew Guy from the Mill Basin Peace Council, which he helped start after he came back from Vietnam.

Norman also knows Burt Eschen, who took over his father’s optometry practice, and Ralph Greenberg, who I thought was a giant. (Norman said Ralph grew to 6’7”, about 13 inches taller than me.)

It’s weird to remember all this stuff.

Norman met his wife at Brooklyn College. He was in Russell House, the house plan, and they married in 1973 and have two sons, one of whom was just bar mitzvahed.

It was so good to talk with Norman and recall Brooklyn from the late 1950s to the early 1970s. What an innocent time.

It’s funny, but after an hour I could recall exactly what Norman looked like as a 12-year-old. Although I didn’t really know him, he seemed like a nice kid, very good-natured.

In some ways, I’m still the same short guy with glasses and short hair that I was at 11 and 12.

Well, since 3:30 PM, I’ve been feeling almost euphoric and very talkative. I realized what a wonderful life I’ve had.

At Barnes & Noble later, I was thinking about the past so much that I couldn’t concentrate on the New York Times even though the paper had so many interesting stories; I’ll read it tomorrow.

I’ve known so much kindness in my life. People have been good to me: even well-known people like Michael Chabon, Wesley Strick, Tama Janowitz and Mark Alan Stamaty (the cartoonist who now works for the Times Book Review).

Plus, I have had the greatest friends.

Teresa and Paul closed on the house on Wednesday, and they will move on August 27, with the other house hopefully rented for September 1.

Teresa says that I have “a great room to stay in with a bathroom right next door”! 

She also mentioned that the new house feels a little dated because it was last renovated in the 1960s, but they’ll get rid of the wall-to-wall carpeting.

Stephanie has gone to Philly, and Teresa will go down there next week to see Deirdre. Stephanie’s early-decision school is Barnard, and after that comes Vassar and NYU.

The heat wave in New York has broken, so Fire Island is cool now.

Alice was relieved I don’t have prostate cancer; she knows from Andreas and the horrible death he suffered how bad that disease can be.

Vincent gave me his cell phone number. He was in New York for a while, and then he and Bill went to Los Angeles for his cousin’s wedding to Tom Arnold, which he described in hilarious detail. They were seated at a distant table with the rabbi who performed the ceremony and other random guests.

Vincent quit his job at the coffee shop and will use the extra time to finish his novel.

Bill and Vincent are in couples therapy and doing all right; it makes me so happy knowing they’re still together. Although I’ve had a crush on Vincent since I met him, I always hoped he and Bill would stay together.

I’m glad Vincent still has stability in his life and won’t be leaving Bill or Memphis.

In his email to me, Jeff wrote that he was in Florida last week but didn’t call me because he spent every working minute helping out his mother, who’s not in pain but is basically waiting to die.

He and Gary are buying a house in Shelter Island where they’ve rented for years, and he’s nervous about that, although I’m sure they will be fine.

Lawyers are blocking a proposal to make a movie of Visiting Mr. Green, so Jeff has a lot to think about now. It was nice of him to take the time to write to me.

Of all the people I know, Dad has been the best at helping me weather this crisis; I talked to him several times today.

Even though I still have to find out what my testicular mass is, somehow I think it will turn out to be okay even if it is cancer.

Testicular cancer seems easily curable, unlike prostate cancer. And prostate surgery can cause incontinence and impotence, while all losing a testicle will do is just make my scrotum lopsided.

I think I’m too excited to sleep.

Yesterday’s Sun-Sentinel said that because of low donations, Save Dade/No to Discrimination had to fire its full-time staff.

I wrote to Javier and sent him a $100 donation. Although I’m not really in a financial position to give money away, gay rights in Miami is a worthy cause. 

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Saturday, August 10, 2002

10 PM. Although I slept fitfully last night, today was pleasant.

After exercise and breakfast, I headed to Starbucks, where I read the paper. Then, at the Davie library, I got on a computer and checked email.

Justin wrote that while he’s enjoying working with the kids at Henry Street Settlement, he has felt a lot of pressure from a crazed new administrator.

Like all nonprofits – particularly arts-related ones – Henry Street Settlement has suffered severe budget cuts. 

Justin always works so hard because of his dedication to every job he’s had. But at least he’s got the rest of the month off. He and Larry are about to go visit his parents in Connecticut.

At Walgreens, I bought a bunch of items, including mini-Snickers and mini-Milky Way bars to have for the students when they come back.

I thought about going into the office, as students were there for laptop training today, but I’m not as dedicated to my job as Justin is to his.

At 10 AM. I had a massage from Angela. I made the appointment yesterday when I was really tense, before I got the news of my PSA score, but the massage was still good for me.

My sciatica is basically gone, and it has been for some time.

I’m still taking Prevacid, and I now can eat all the foods I gave up in April: I’ve been putting raw onions on cheese sandwiches and soy burgers, and the other day I had angel hair pasta with marinara sauce for dinner. Kimchi may be next!

Anyway, it’s always good to talk to Angela during our massage sessions, especially when, like now, I have a five-week gap between my appointments with Dr Koncsol.

Angela is registering for education courses at FAU. Today it occurred to me that now that my student loan deferment for unemployment is ending, I could get a new deferment by taking ASU courses online, the way I did in the spring of 2001.

ASU doesn’t know I’ve moved. It’s too late to do it for the fall, but I could do it for the spring 2003 term.

At 12:45 PM, I went over to the Ridge Plaza theater to see Spy Kids 2: Island of Lost Dreams. I saw Rodriguez’s first Spy Kids movie in Mesa, when I was just starting to feel better.

I had little anxiety, if any, today. Yesterday I used the shop-worn metaphor “emotional roller-coaster” to describe what I’ve been going through.

The last two years really have been one damn thing after another. I’d like some stability in my life, which is probably why I hew to routines.

I’ve been listening to the audiobook of The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, which I never managed to finish over Christmas 2000, when I borrowed it from the Mesa Public Library.

Chabon is a talented writer and it’s an excellent novel, one I’d like to teach one day, if I ever get to teach literature again.

Although I now get the New York Times delivered every day, after I got out of the movie theater, I decided to drive to the Fort Lauderdale Borders to get the Sunday paper early.

Because I’ve been at the Plantation Barnes & Noble so much, I went to the one in Hollywood this evening and read for two hours, sipping caffeine-free rooibos tea and eating the low-fat Florentine biscotti that B&N carries.

Home at 8:30 PM, I returned a call from Josh, and we bullshitted for an hour. He tried to call his son in Kiel four times today, but Gabrielle isn’t picking up her cell phone. Josh can’t call the boy during the week because of the time difference.

And even when Gabrielle does answer the phone, Josh’s conversations with his kid are brief and difficult because the boy doesn’t speak English and Josh’s German is still poor.

Okay, none of this is scintillating reportage, but at least I’ve gotten away from writing about myself all the time.

I still have the feeling I’ve got all this extra time because I don’t have to study for the bar exam anymore.

Time for bed.