Someone With a Pen: Richard Grayson’s Diary

Saturday, October 12, 2002

9 PM. I’ve had a rough evening. I went to Borders in Fort Lauderdale to get the Sunday New York Times, which they didn’t have. On the way back, I took the scenic route along the beach, and my car died on Las Olas Boulevard in the heart of the shopping and dining district. 

I was able to get it mostly out of the lane of traffic. Cars had to go around me, but at least I wasn’t totally blocking traffic. An obliging couple let me use their cell phone so that I could call AAA. 

It took about an hour for the tow truck to arrive, and some people were nice to me, although one guy tried to borrow money in a scam, saying that his own car had broken down. 

I don’t have free towing beyond five miles, so after the AAA tow truck guy loaded my car on his flatbed, I had him take it to the Wales Garage off the old U.S. 1 near the airport. 

We just left it on the street, and I’ll have to go there on Monday.

Of course, it’s probably something very serious, as cars just don’t die as they’re driving. 

Enterprise was across the street from the garage, but they didn’t have any cars available. However, their van gave me a lift to the airport, where, for a ridiculous amount of money, I managed to rent a brand-new Ford Focus from Hertz until Wednesday.

Driving home, it occurred to me that it was almost exactly two years ago when I had that panic attack in journalism class at ASU and my car died on me as I was driving down Mill Avenue. That was like the start of my nervous breakdown. 

Today I’ve had diaphoresis like you wouldn’t believe, and now my palms are really soaked again. 

I should have stayed in this evening. At least if the car had died on me tomorrow, it would have died close to home. 

This is going to be an awful week at work, what with my workshops on Monday, my meeting with Joe, and then the ARP Committee meeting on Tuesday. At least Friday is a holiday, our midterm break. 

Last night somehow I managed to sleep deeply, but I had bad dreams. In one, I was supposed to be taking care of a plant for a friend, but when I got to see my little cactus in a pot after two weeks, it had died. 

In another dream, I was taking the bar exam, but I didn’t have paper to write my answers on and everything was on little scraps. 

I guess I should have discussed those dreams this afternoon with Dr. K at our session. He told me he was able to wrangle five more appointments from my HMO after today. 

Dr. K said I definitely should not write the self-study report for the law school, but suggested I could agree to edit it. 

I’m sure Dr. K thought it was a bad move to tell the Dean about my anxiety, but he didn’t say so. I dread facing Joe this week. 

Dr. K says that until I know what I’m going to do with my life – I told him that being ARP director wasn’t it – I have to stay with the job, that “beggars can’t be choosers,” that I have no choice. 

“Hearing that makes me feel like killing myself,” I replied. 

But Dr. K he didn’t follow up on that because I then told him about my high red blood cell count. 

Dr. K said to do nothing about it until my doctors had monitored my blood for a year. 

You know, I don’t think that Dr. K has really helped me at all, but maybe no shrink can. 

Yet I guess he did give me the best explanation I’ve gotten of why I started to have all these anxiety problems and why they won’t go away. 

I’ve always had bad anxiety, Dr. K says, but after I recovered from my adolescent panic attacks and agoraphobia, I was still young – 18 or 19 – and my system was strong enough so that I could stave off the symptoms. 

“But eventually the tread on your tires wore out,” he said. In other words, as I got older, I’ve become more fragile and less resilient. 

I do feel worn out, I guess. It was hard to cope this evening, and it won’t be the last time. But it was a lot easier when I had Dad and my brothers to count on. 

At least I still have credit cards, so I can pay for the car rental and the car repair. Sigh.

Early this morning, after spending time at the Starbucks on University Drive and Oakland Park Boulevard, I drove over to my old apartment at 5960 Northwest 16th Place in Sunrise. (The address only came to me when I found the development.) 

That was where I lived exactly twenty years ago. Now it’s an all-black neighborhood. 

That condo was where Sean and I made love and where various people – Mikey and Larry, Crad Kilodney, Miriam Sagan, and Peter Filichia – came to visit me. 

At that time I was teaching at Broward Community College and running for the Davie Town Council. Lincoln’s Doctor’s Dog, Eating at Arby’s, and I Brake for Delmore Schwartz were all published while I was living there. 

In some ways, the time I lived in Sunrise – from October 1981 to July 1983 – was the peak of my life. 

I remember that big king-sized bed and how, when Teresa visited me, we slept in it together and never got even close during the night because it was so gigantic. 

From Sunrise, I drove to the massage place, where they told me that my 10 AM appointment was canceled because Angie was sick “with the virus going around.” 

I went to Barnes & Noble instead. While reading The Advocate, I saw an article on the Miami anti-gray referendum that had a photo of Javier. Although he now looks middle-aged, he’s still handsome.

Dr. K shook my hand this afternoon when he heard about the Contemporary Authors autobiographical essay. He thinks it’s a very good sign that my career as a writer isn’t over.

After my session with Dr. K, I called Aunt Sydelle. Her echogram and carotid artery test were fine, but she wasn’t feeling too well even though she’d just returned from a trip to the beauty parlor. 

I went to the Regal for the 2:50 PM showing of The Rules of Attraction, a surprisingly literal adaptation of Bret Easton Ellis’s novel (which I liked reading). James Van Der Beek, Dawson on Dawson’s Creek, gave a fine performance.

Well, today would have been an easy day if only I stayed home tonight. But I can’t do that. I have to risk being part of the world. 

Ships in harbors are safe, but that’s not what ships are for.

---

Wednesday, October 16, 2002

10 PM. I’ve been up since 4 AM, and it’s been a very long day. My palms are currently sweating so much that I can’t write this without a towel under my hand.

I just put the two signed copies of my contract for the Contemporary Authors autobiographical essay in the mail, along with an updated profile, for which I turned to my one big box of clippings. 

I don’t even have all the articles about me or ones I’ve written here in Florida, although I know Mom has a pretty good collection in her scrapbooks in Arizona. 

Contemporary Authors sent a page about the autobiographical essay – they say the primary audience is college and high school students – and a sample essay, along with my last CA profile. 

I had to add all my jobs at Nova, at ASU, and at NSU Law; my 1998 Florida fellowship in literature; my residencies at Ragdale, Ucross, and Villa Montalvo; and the publication of The Silicon Valley Diet, along with other autobiographical/critical sources. 

Looking at these xeroxed clippings reminded me that I’ve had a pretty interesting life, though that’s basically a secret from the law school crowd.  

This morning I knocked out a first draft about the November 2 program, and Joe considerably rewrote it. I named it The Exam Advantage (TEA), and Joe liked that. 

Jane’s secretary reserved six or seven rooms in the library – the big one – for that day and time, and we’ll have them meet in the atrium at 8:30 AM and give out the materials and serve coffee and bagels. 

Last night Steve left an apology about “being too feisty” on my answering machine, and he left a similar one on Pat’s. Although I thought it was unnecessary, I appreciate Steve’s doing it. 

Mostly I just waited around today trying to find out about rooms and to see the editing changes that people wanted. 

At 2 PM, I had a meeting with Heider, a Colombian attorney, who’s having severe ESL problems in her LSV class.

Like the other foreign lawyers and adult learners of English, she’s going to have a problem with her exams. 

I stopped in at the new monthly birthday/welcome celebration at 3 PM in the faculty study, where I chatted with a few people. 

The law school is trying to stop the incessant celebrations, and I’m glad about that. As I told Ty, the new accountant, working in a female-dominated office means a lot of parties for me. 

They strung up Halloween lights and decorations all over the Student Services office. 

Leaving school, I went to pay – God – $1,677 to get the car fixed. Along with the car rental, this has cost me $2,000, half of what I paid for the damned car in the first place. 

Stuart gave me the parts in a plastic bag and said I should write to GM and tell them the system never should have had such a catastrophic failure until around 120,000 miles, and definitely not at 76,000 miles. 

Luckily, after I returned the rental car, the Hertz van let me off by the Wales Garage, so I could just drive back to NSU. 

After doing some more work in the office for an hour, I went home for dinner – just a couscous wrap and some fruit – and then returned to school for the fourth time today.

The Book Club was meeting tonight to discuss Seabiscuit and eat some food brought in from the Bangkok Cafe. 

Pat gave me some “book club questions” she had gotten off Amazon.com, but we really didn’t discuss them in full. 

Mark Padin decided not to come, so I was the only guy there with Pat, Jane Fishman, Jane Cross, Kathy, Janet, Debra, Gwen, Gail and Diane, who is leaving her job at the law school to work at the Miami-Dade Public Library in November. 

Earlier in the day, I saw Paul Joseph, who said his second angioplasty went well. The doctors did not put in a Foley catheter, which is what Paul was dreading. (I know how much it bothered Dad during his procedure.) 

Anyway, I came home at 7:30 PM and dealt with the mail: a lot of bills I’d already paid for the month and the Contemporary Authors stuff, as well as my absentee ballot for Election Day, which I filled out. I voted yes on a lot of amendments to the state constitution and the county charter. 

After watching Dawson’s Creek, I returned a call that David left from his office during the show. Already his law firm has him working evenings. 

He told me he got 145 both on the Florida portion of the bar exam (that’s higher than me) and on the MBE. 

It seems as if the first cold front of the season is pushing through. 

I’m ready to go to sleep, I think. 

You know, it turns out that we employees don’t have Friday off; only the students do. 

---

Monday, October 21, 2002

9:30 PM. This time of my life seems even more stressful than preparing for the bar exam because I have so many different things to do. 

Today was a long nightmare, and I’m sure the next five weeks will be no different. 

I just got home, and considering I left the house fourteen hours ago – yes, I came home for lunch and for a couple of hours of relaxation later – I still worked about eleven hours today. 

And tomorrow and all week I not only have the TEA stuff to do, but Billie Jo wants me to look at the StoreLaw CD Outliner, Mike Richmond has asked me to meet with fifteen students who fared poorly on his practice exam, and there is other miscellaneous stuff that has to get done – like troubleshooting with the teaching assistants. 

I’m lucky that I took an Ambien and slept for seven hours last night. 

Today I got a letter from Cameron Cove. If I renew my lease for a year, I’ll pay $775 each month, but I can get a seven-month lease for $800 a month. 

I’m thinking of taking the latter option because I’m not sure I want to stay in this job beyond this academic year. It might be worth the extra $200 to give me the escape hatch of leaving next summer. 

When I told Dr. K this is not what I want to do with my life, he said, “Well, you have to stay in your job till you figure out what you want to do with your life. Try getting a loan or a lease without a job.”

That just makes me feel like I should commit suicide. I’m not sure that suicide can’t be rational if there are really no other choices. If I don’t have any choice but to stay as ARP director at Nova Law, then why not just end it? 

Maybe I can do it in 2003, after I’ve seen my family and Teresa’s family and written my autobiographical essay for Contemporary Authors. 

Okay, I’m talking like this because it’s been a long day. 

Only three people showed up to my 3 PM workshop – Zane and two other guys – and there were just six students at tonight’s workshop. 

I spent much of the day logging in the KEY registrants. There are about 75 of them so far. A lot came in between the time I left the office yesterday and 9 AM today. 

The thing with Richmond’s students really bollixes up my schedule. I told Steve and Jane that they’ve got to recruit more faculty for November 2. 

I haven’t even put the stuff together yet. As usual, Steve comes up with an idea and then leaves it to me to execute it, which makes me both anxious and angry because I’m the one who’s going to get blamed if this doesn’t work out.

Shit shit shit. I feel that I’m under such pressure. 

Tomorrow night I have that meeting at the Stonewall Library. And on Thursday I have to come in during the evening to meet that guy who wants to be the teaching assistant for Bruce Rogow’s spring Civil Procedure class. 

I just wish I could sometimes forget about my job, which is taking over the entirety of my life. I’m simply not used to working this hard on all-consuming projects. 

But I’ve got to keep myself from succumbing to the stress and getting some kind of physical symptoms like sciatica or digestive trouble. 

This afternoon Mercy Moore and Norman Kaplan both stopped by my office to chat, and I enjoyed talking with each of them. 

So yes, I do feel part of a community at the law school, but what’s going on now with The Exam Advantage and everything else is just too much for me. 

Well, I don’t know what else to write now because I’m tired – except I’m sure that I won’t fall asleep the way I did yesterday, with only an hour between my taking Ambien and the end of The Forsyte Saga’s third episode. 

(Last week they accidentally ran the fourth episode out of order, so Philip Bosinney was making eyes at Irene after I’d seen him killed last Sunday.) 

It’s been a year now since I came to South Florida to interview for this job. If only I’d never gotten it. I would have been so much better off if I’d stayed in Arizona and adjusted to whatever life held for me there. 

Now I feel I’ve got no way out. I can’t depend on poor health to kill me off so easily. 

Teresa wrote that she understands my predisposition to anxiety because Paul and most of his family have similar problems. 

Will I sleep tonight? Maybe I’ll try Klonopin. Right now I’m not feeling anxious – just desperate.