Someone With a Pen: Richard Grayson’s Diary

Thursday, July 9, 1998

7:30 PM. Today I went into Manhattan by train, and I had a much better time alone, enjoying New York City, than I did when I was with friends. I don’t know what that says about me or my friends.

Basically what I did was play on the Upper West Side, trying to relive the many happy summers I spent there in the ’80s. The 10:29 AM train from Locust Valley got me into Penn Station by 11:40 AM.

Last weekend the new unlimited MetroCard went on sale, but it expires in a week or a month, so I just bought the 11-rides-for-the-price-of-10 MetroCard and got on the IRT uptown to the cramped 72nd Street station.

I had brought a yam and a cheese sandwich with me, and I bought Korean salad bar and water at the corner and walked to the foot of Riverside Park, where I ate lunch by the statue of a pensive Eleanor Roosevelt.

On West 71st, I passed the drama book store, Applause, and found Cousin Michael outside, smoking. We made tentative plans to meet in the city on Saturday, but he said he’d call me.

Then I spent a couple of hours slowly walking on the west side of Broadway from 72nd to 96th Street, passing familiar landmarks like Fairway, Citarella, Zabar’s, H&H Bagels, Williams BBQ, the still-standing Hunan 94 sign (the restaurant, whose rainbow chicken I loved, closed a decade ago), Han’s grocery, etc.

I stopped at Barnes & Noble and found a copy of I Brake for Delmore Schwartz and two copies of I Survived Caracas Traffic, probably the ones I put there last summer just to see the book in a store.

I bought one copy of each of my books, wanting to see if Caracas would bollix up their computer. But no, the UPC code scanned and my receipt listed both titles, along with a book of misheard lyrics (mondegreens) I bought as a 50th birthday present for Paul.

While I had iced tea at the B&N mezzanine café, I glanced at all the free weeklies I picked up along the walk: the Spirit, New York Press, Voice, Blade, West Side Resident and Jewish Journal.

Every store, including fast food restaurants, had signs saying “Visa Cash” and “Mondex.” I know that smart cards (value-added cash cards) are being tested on the Upper West Side, and in the Food Emporium (where I finally was able to find Weight Watchers peanuts) there was a Citibank machine (not an ATM) for adding stored value to those cards.

Unable to get an Amoco MultiCard cash advance at four banks, I finally succeeded at the Dime (the old Anchor Bank branch in the mid-90s). Another stop – for berry iced tea – was the Starbucks on 87th, but first I took a detour down West 85th Street to see my old block.

The glatt kosher Casbah Deli is still there, and I noticed a black woman and girl going in, opening the door that has a photo of the Rebbe, Schneerson, and the sign “Welcome Moshiach!” (On I-95 in Florida there’s a sign that proclaims the late Lubavitcher rabbi “King Moshiach,” the Messiah.)

In Starbucks, I read a Voice article that said that Mike Diana, the comic book artist from St. Pete who’s still the only American artist convicted of obscenity, is now living in Brooklyn and selling his stuff up here. (It’s obscene only in Florida.)

The stores near Teresa’s old apartment are more upscale than ever. The Lebanese brothers’ discount store and the cheap Arab restaurant are long gone, and the Cambridge House apartments on 86th between Riverside and West End are now Senior Quarters, the same assisted living chain for the elderly that I’ve seen in Queens and Syosset.

Our old building, 350 West 85th Street, looks much the same except that now it has metal signs saying “No Menus Please” and asking those entering the lobby to wipe their feet after they unlock the door or are buzzed in.

I didn’t see Judy or Oscar around, and the old drug rehab place, The Bridge, across the street from us is now a Montessori school.

The east side of Broadway at 86th now bears a second street sign, Isaac Bashevis Singer Boulevard, in memory of the block’s most famous resident from the past. (Alma is gone now, too.)

The Loews 84th Street, now a Sony theater, has a new electronic marquee, and the restaurant on the corner of 85th and Broadway, once Patzo, is in its fourth incarnation as the Time Café. The Thalia is still alive, showing an Indian double feature.

Moishe’s moving vans still dot the streets, and I passed two guys, one of whom said to the other, “My boyfriend’s mother is getting married to her next week.”

On the M104 bus down to the new theme-park Times Square (a second street sign under the one that says “West 42nd Street” proclaims “The New 42nd Street”), I sat in the chilly seat just behind the rear exit and listened to a skinny, homeless, demented black woman – a Billie Boggs clone – ramble insanely (though saying, “You can’t trust anyone” may mean she’s an X-Files investigator).

On the bus, I noticed that one thing Donald Trump did well was his makeover of the Gulf + Western (Paramount) Building at Columbus Circle, though the long-shuttered Coliseum still stands empty across the street.

At Times Square, out of all the theme restaurants and chain stores, I went only to the Warner Studio store, and I left there quickly after scanning the tourist crap they have for sale. There’s a full-video screen facing north and Dow Jones now runs the zipper news at One Times Square.

One of an elderly group of tourists craned her neck and actually said, “So this is Times Square? Well, I’ll be darned!” I am not making this up.

I walked down to Penn Station, passing a Millennium countdown clock telling how soon in days, hours, minutes and seconds we are to 2000, and a Mickey D’s whose sign proclaimed “We Have McVeggie Burgers.”

At Penn Station I peed in the men’s room of the refurbished LIRR station and had frozen yogurt before getting the 4:19 PM to Locust Valley. (We change at Jamaica for the old diesel workhorse that crawls to Oyster Bay.)

Igor phoned to say that Richard Kostelanetz invited us over to his place at 8 PM Saturday; he seemed surprised that I couldn’t make it.

Today’s mail brought Mom’s forwarding of the notice to report to the local Unemployment office for an eligibility review. It’s for Monday at 9:30 PM, and so I’ve decided not to go back to Florida immediately.

Teresa will give me the car tomorrow morning and I’ll try to find the nearest office of New York State Unemployment, which is on Old Country Road.

I figure the only way I can not show up in Fort Lauderdale Monday and still collect benefits is to feign ignorance because I’ve moved here and my mail is being forwarded.

All in all, today was my favorite day in New York City so far.

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Saturday, July 11, 1998

7 PM. These early July evenings on Long Island are breathtakingly beautiful. I’ve just gotten home after spending a few hours with Carolyn.

I was supposed to see Michael at 1:30 PM, but when I arrived at his grandfather’s place in Little Neck, he wasn’t outside as he’d said he would be, and when I rang the bell, nobody answered.

Back home in Locust Valley, I got the expected apology: he’d fallen asleep until after 2 PM, around when I stopped waiting for him and left. He’s just a fuck-up.

Last night Michael and I spoke on the phone for two hours, and I was fascinated by his stories, but they were all the kind of stories a fuck-up would tell: of getting kicked out of two high schools; leaving L.A. for a road trip to Portland, Seattle and Idaho after breaking up with a 17-year-old girlfriend who wanted to marry him; taking every drug from smack to acid to weed (of course) and meth; getting kicked out of Disneyland for stealing while he was hiding there overnight; and finishing with stories about his feeble attempts to be an actor and playwright.

My cousin is an intelligent guy, but he’s got no focus, and I suspect that is writing isn’t any good: sort of like Kevin’s.

I was annoyed earlier, but I’m over it because I had a good afternoon anyway. Driving back east on Northern Boulevard, I was able to access Internet Explorer on the Kinko’s computer in Great Neck.

After half an hour online, I got back in the car and stopped at the nursing home at North Shore Hospital. Teresa’s grandmother was in the day room, plopped in front of a communal TV playing Xena, Warrior Princess, which none of the old folks seemed to be watching.

I gave her some water, but she didn’t talk much; instead, she gestured with her hands in an indecipherable manner and kept counting “one, two, three” on her fingers.

Calling Carolyn from the nearby hallway phone – she’d given me the numbers at her parents’ – I got directions to their house in Plandome. It was exactly as I’d pictured: a huge rambling old house on a vast amount of land in a neighborhood reeking of old money.

Carolyn looked good in a t-shirt and shorts, and she introduced me to her father, a WASPy-looking Investment banker who seemed very friendly. So was Carolyn’s mother, whom I met at her antique store just off the posh waterfront of Port Washington during a drive through town.

Her parents seemed like the idealized upper-class suburban mom and dad.Much to everyone’s surprise I agreed to accompany the family on a visit to Carolyn’s paternal grandmother, 93, who lives in an apartment in town where she’s cared for by a middle-aged Latina woman.

But Carolyn’s grandmother was asleep and not interested in company. She looked sort of like Teresa’s grandmother, hiding her face in her hands while she slept in her chair, as if to block out the world.

After dropping off her mother back at her store, Carolyn and I walked along the waterfront at Fort Washington and then sat by her parents’ swimming pool. Their dog, Zoe, fell in love with me and licked me as I rubbed her belly and back.

Carolyn and I talked about Ragdale and people we knew there. Matthew P kept coming on to her after he misheard something Carolyn had said. They were talking with others and the topic turned to cervixes, and Matthew (a virgin despite his girlfriend) said he’d never seen one.

Carolyn replied, “I’m sure you have,” which he mistook as her saying “I’ll show you mine.” So the rest of her stay at Ragdale she had to keep her distance from his awkward advances.

Carolyn said she got close enough with Jane Hamilton to get invited to her swank Manhattan publishing party for The Short History of a Prince. And she told me about the Academy in Rome – she paid to stay there – and basically let me act impressively silly.

Although I’m more attracted to Carolyn than I have been by any woman in years, I just kissed her twice: first, when we met and then again, a little more forcefully, before I left at 5:30 PM, figuring I should let Carolyn go to dinner with her parents at the Yacht Club. But I hope to see her again before I leave New York.

I avoided the traffic going to the tall ships at Glen Cove Harbor and stopped for a baked potato and Diet Sprite at the Wendy’s on Northern Boulevard before coming home.

Cat and Neal have just arrived here at the house, so I’ll go down to help them and Jade prepare for Paul’s 50th birthday party tomorrow.

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Tuesday, July 14, 1998

9 PM. I awoke at 5 AM and couldn’t get back to sleep, but after I had breakfast, I started to drop off again while listening to NPR. I roused myself to exercise to Body Electric, and after that I was wide awake.

Teresa left early today for a series of errands, so I had the house to myself for about seven hours. I sat outside with Ollie as I read the paper.

Mom phoned and we talked for half an hour in a friendly way. I told her that because I went to the county’s main Unemployment office in Hempstead yesterday and filed an interstate claim, I don’t have to return to Florida until August.

I definitely have become aware of how I needed to make amends for not being friendlier to my parents. My anger towards them has dissipated, and when I return to Florida, I won’t be so judgmental. After all, one of the gifts my parents gave me was a low dose of judgmental behavior.

Mom’s main news was that the University of Maryland sent a letter admitting me for the summer 1999 semester: that’s just what I wanted. Now I know I’ll be in Florida for nine or ten months and I can leave next May to begin classes at College Park.

Mom said that Marc did about $300 in sales at the flea market in Prescott on Saturday, about what he’d made on all the previous Saturdays there combined.

This morning I did my laundry and put away a load of stuff from the dishwasher, and in early afternoon I exercised to a Body Electric tape so I could make up for not exercising yesterday.

But I’ll miss tomorrow’s exercise, too: I’ve got to be on the 8:15 AM train in order to meet Mark after his grad class at Brooklyn College at 10:30 AM. (In order to stay as a New York City public school teacher, he needs a master’s, so he’s going for a degree as a reading specialist.)

When I spoke to Mark, he said that the Brooklyn co-op board where he’s buying an apartment hasn’t yet scheduled an interview with him, so he’s still living in Jersey awaiting his closing.

I also got and answered email from Tom, who seems fairly grumpy, as usual, about his publishing prospects.

By regular mail I sent Tom a clip from his friend Tom McGonigle’s column in the New York Post about Robert Walser; of course it mentioned Debra and Tom.

After Teresa came home at 4 PM, I went for a walk, and later I borrowed her car so I could go to Starbucks, where Marie was working and where Jade later showed up.

My last stop tonight was Greenvale – specifically Northern Boulevard and Glen Cove Road, where I put gas in the minivan, had a baked potato and Diet Sprite at Wendy’s, and bought groceries at the giant Pathmark store in the shopping center called Wheatley Plaza.

I suppose I live a pretty aimless life, but once I get to Florida, I’ll be more productive. In addition to working, I want to achieve the goal of getting a new book of stories accepted by a small press.

I also would like to get more involved with Florida’s political or art scene, or I need to teach myself some new skill or area of knowledge.

God, that spider bite I woke up with on Saturday night is still a hard little ball on my jaw line.

Today was hot and humid, but it was bearable without the air conditioner, and by evening it had become pleasant outside.

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Wednesday, July 15, 1998

8 PM. After working out to Body Electric at 7 AM, I still had plenty of time to get the 8:20 AM train to Brooklyn.

Changing at Jamaica, I arrived at Flatbush Avenue at 9:35 AM and went from my platform to the subway, getting on the first moving train (to new lots) and transferring at Franklin Avenue for the last stop at Brooklyn College.

The Junction looked the same as last year. I had to sign in at Hillel Gate before getting a visitor’s card that allowed me to stay on campus.

The college looks pretty good. I noticed that they improved the front entrances of Ingersoll and Boylan by adding brick and new railings and doors, making the buildings’ facades more monumental.

I had time before meeting Mark, so I went into Boyland to check out the English Department bulletin boards, where I saw that retired professors like Spielberg and Schlissel will still be teaching in the fall and that Saul Galin is the head of the new BFA program in creative writing.

I got to Mark’s classroom in James Hall just as his graduate education course was letting out. After he went to the men’s room to change into shorts (his classroom is too chilly for that), we strolled around campus from the quadrangle to LaGuardia to the lily pond and the area in front of Whitehead.

It seemed like Mark has a poor memory, as I had to remind him of a lot of events and people in our past. Being with him on the Brooklyn College campus in the summer had me recollecting the summer of 1970, a couple of months after I met him.

That summer was the aftermath of the Kent State/Cambodia student strike, and we hung out in the Ol’ Spigot office, often with José, the paper’s photographer and the few other people around.

The summer before that, 1969, was my first class – Poli Sci 1 – at BC, the start of what I consider my second life after my recovery from agoraphobia. It was also the summer I began my diary-keeping.

I will begin my thirtieth year of diaries in a couple of weeks. Back in 1969 and 1970, I certainly never imagined coming back to campus nearly three decades later.

At newly-expanded Sugar Bowl with sit-down service, Mark and I found a table in the new part of the place that used to be Barron’s bookstore.

When Mark told the waitress that we used to hang out there thirty years ago, she pointed out the Sugar Bowl’s owner, and by God, the man looked only a few years older than what I’d remembered.

Ater Mark and I got into his car parked outside Midwood High School (okay, more milestones: it’s thirty years since I graduated from there) and drove to Park Slope, which Mark doesn’t seem to know well even though he works close by.

Parking at a meter on President Street – Mark put in three quarters for ninety minutes – we walked down Seventh Avenue to the new two-story Barnes & Noble. I know the neighborhood must have been up in arms about the superstore, but Mark and I loved it, and not just because its bathrooms came in handy for a couple of middle-aged men with weak bladders.

Walking around, Mark was impressed by a “Tofu on 7th Avenue” sign in what proved to be a standard Chinese restaurant, only with lots of vegetarian dishes like “vegetarian duck.” I was so hungry that I ate nearly all of my huge portion of steamed tofu, broccoli and rice.

We managed to get back to the car before the meter expired and drove to Flatbush Avenue, parking near the entrance to the Prospect Park Zoo – now the Wildlife Conservatory.

Walking down Flatbush past the Lefferts Homestead and across the street, we went to the Empire Boulevard entrance of the Botanic Garden, where we spent the next few hours strolling around and looking at plants, flowers and exhibits as we chatted.

Like me, Mark listens to NPR and reads the Times, so he’s fun to talk with. I didn’t speak very much about my travels, but instead peppered Mark with questions about his job as a sixth-grade teacher.

He had a wonderful class this year, but after February their behavior deteriorated little by little. Still, it sounds like Mark does like teaching and is good at it. He seems to be working at decent school, one that has only 12 classes and about 340 students.

Recently there were a lot of news stories about a Bronx teacher who was fired after she asked her students which of them would accept Jesus as their savior. Though her breach of the separation between church and state seems patently egregious, national Republican politicians came to her defense.

It turns out that Consuelo was the woman’s immediate supervisor as assistant principal in her Bronx junior high, and she told Mark that the woman had a terrible record as a teacher.

Even though it was a hot and humid afternoon, Mark and I walked all over the gardens – from the indoor bonsai, tropical and desert exhibits (and climates) in the Steinhardt Conservatory to the Japanese garden, rose garden, fragrance garden and just about everywhere. It was worth the $3 admission, we agreed as we left, even if we can remember the old admission fee of ten cents.

It was good to catch up with Mark and hear about his family and work and interests. He dropped me off at the LIRR terminal on his way back to New Jersey.

Taking the first train leaving the station, I had time to go out at Jamaica and get a FrozFruit (Mark’s brother Steve is the president and CEO of the company) and a bottle of grapefruit juice before catching the Oyster Bay line back to Locust Valley.

When I got back to the house at 6:15 PM, Teresa, Paul and Jade were about to begin eating their barbecued chicken dinner on the deck and told me to sit down and join them.

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Friday, July 17, 1998

9 PM. Last night I was troubled by the kind of insomnia I used to get: inability to fall asleep. Usually I can fall asleep now, but I get up right away or too early and can’t fall back asleep.

Perhaps it was the heat and humidity. Because of the expense of the electric use to Paul and Teresa, I rarely turn on the air conditioner and then only for twenty minutes at a time, just to cool things off briefly.

Anyway, last night I found a copy of Teresa’s old Cliff Notes for Greek Classics and read the detailed synopsis of The Odyssey. I also listened to WNYC-AM and fidgeted a great deal, eventually dozing off around 2 AM.

Barely awake at 6:45 AM, I forced myself to get up and exercise to Body Electric at 7 AM. I left Locust Valley on the 10:29 AM train after I’d gone shopping with Teresa and checked my bank balance (the unemployment checks cleared).

The crowded Oyster Bay train reminded me of the Toonerville Trolley, and I had to change my seat when this sweet, addled man in his sixties sat down next to me and he smelled terrible. After I changed in Jamaica, the train to Penn Station was cooler, roomier and quick.

I got on the IRT local to 59th Street and met Pete in the lobby of 1290 Avenue of the Americas, now the Equitable Building, by the old Thomas Hart Benton murals of America during the Depression that used to hang at The New School.

Pete took me over to Kabul, an Afghan restaurant at 54th and Seventh, where we met Donna upstairs. She’s redheaded now, and she and Masa have bought a car so he can get a new studio out of the city. Now Donna needs to learn how to drive.

She’s still at Stanley H. Kaplan, and in response to my question, “What are you working on?” – meant to be about her own writing – she told me about a book on how to ace the FBI exam that Kaplan is publishing.

Masa took Donna to Japan for the fourth time in April, and she said she detected no obvious signs of recession there.

Pete’s book is now on hold at Smithsonian, which is evaluating whether it should continue publishing scholarly books. The reorganization at the Institution has already killed their trade book publishing – so he’s not working yet on responding to the Smithsonian reviewer’s comments since the book may have to be shopped around elsewhere.

Pete has given up writing and expects to give up his search for an academic job after a year, as there are no jobs. (Bruce Chadwick, with a new Ph.D. in composition, can’t find one because all the schools are hiring these days are adjuncts – though Pete suggests Bruce may be the victim of age discrimination.)

After a final year of looking around for an academic position, Pete says he’ll devote the rest of his life to hedonism and continue working as a computer consultant. There’s enough Y2K problem stuff at Equitable to keep Pete working there for quite a while.

While Donna and Pete had exotic shish kabobs, I ordered a simple dish that ended up delighting me: a sort of pumpkin stew over basmati rice.

Both Donna and Pete had to get back to work in ninety minutes, and I probably talked too much about Villa Montalvo and Ucross to suit them, but it was nice to see them again – and to experience midtown Manhattan, even on such a hot, muggy afternoon.

I walked down Sixth Avenue to the Gotham Book Mart on 47th Street, amid the Hasidim of the Diamond District.

(One change in New York City I haven’t mentioned, but which is pervasive, is the replacement of NYNEX with Bell Atlantic as the local telephone company; its wave logo is everywhere from phone books to phone booths.)

In the Gotham Book Mart’s back room, I checked out all their little magazines, the way I used to two decades ago when I was publishing in them like crazy.

Then, in the Berg Collection at the main library on 42nd Street – which will never seem the same now that Lola Szladits is gone – I saw the exhibit, A Secret Location on the Lower East Side: Adventures in Writing, 1960-1980, on the “mimeo revolution” and all the New York School poets and others who put out little magazines and small press books.

It sickened me to see on exhibit, under glass, many volumes which I once owned but got rid of, by giving them away to friends, because of my many moves: books from Kenward Elmslie’s Z Press and Douglas Messerli’s Sun & Moon, and magazines like Carol Berge’s Center, Dennis Cooper’s Little Caesar, L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E (which I subscribed to for years), Maureen Owen’s Telephone, and more.

From John Ashbery and Eileen Myles to Aram Saroyan and Ted Berrigan, these were people I knew well in the 1970s, either personally or from their work and reputation.

As I walked back to Penn Station to make the last off-peak train at 3:20 PM, I thought about how vibrant and genuine that scene was and how it was vital in a way that would be hard for me to explain to writers in their twenties today.

But here I am, at 47, publishing my stories in webzines today; maybe these webzines are the equivalent of the mimeo publications of the 1960s. Although Pete and Donna and Crad Kilodney and Opal Nations and others have fallen by the wayside, I still publish stories: not many, it’s true, but I’ve persevered.

I didn’t become offended when Pete became my third New York City friend to suggest I should turn down the $5,000 Florida Arts Council grant if I don’t want to remain in the state for the next year. It must bother Pete that he’s no longer writing or publishing.

Well, I’ve given up many times and in many ways myself. It’s odd, though, that Pete’s friends tend to be writers or ex-writers or people involved in the arts while my friends tend to be people like Paul and Teresa or Libby and Grant or Sat Darshan, who never had any artistic ambitions and who live very non-arty lives.

“There are many casualties in the arts,” said a teacher of Bert Stratton, himself an ex-writer (though a current accomplished klezmer musician).

I hear Paul and Teresa talking outside, so she must have returned from the wedding rehearsal barbeque she was catering.

It’s 10:40 PM now and I need to get to bed.