A Writer’s Diary Entries From Late December, 1999
Wednesday, December 22, 1999
5 PM. I’m in Jonathan’s room while he’s working.
I may go into Phoenix in a little while. Sat Darshan said I should come over one evening, but of course I dread the rush hour traffic even if most of it is going east, not west, into the city.
Last evening I went to Albertsons in Gilbert, in the same center as Starbucks, but I was feeling weird and decided to abandon plans to attend a movie.
I didn’t sleep well last night; it took hours until I could fall asleep although towards morning I had a wonderful erotic dream in which I was kissing this young, half-naked guy.
This morning I left here at 9 AM and headed for Borders, where, as I did yesterday, I read the New York Times as I sipped their bitterly strong iced tea.
On Monday, the Vermont Superior Court ruled that under the state constitution, gay and lesbian couples were entitled to the same benefits as married heterosexuals. They left to the Vermont legislature whether to create domestic partnerships or true “same-sex marriage.”
Vermont will undoubtedly opt for the former choice, but they’ll be marriages in all but name. It’s incredible – especially after Hawaii fizzled out when voters passed an anti-gay marriage constitutional amendment rendering the Baehr case moot.
Just ten years ago, a state supreme court issuing this kind of decision would have been unthinkable. But today’s world moves at Internet speed.
Time named Amazon.com’s Jeff Bezos Person of the Year in recognition of the rise of e-commerce and Internet stocks (the NASDAQ is up an unbelievable 80% this year).
At the bookstore I again gathered some names – from the magazines Men’s Health, QSF (a gay San Francisco mag I’d never seen before), and Walking – which I looked up on Yahoo’s People Search and Lexis’ Asset library later.
Perhaps this is all for naught, that nothing will happen with The Silicon Valley Diet. After all, I Survived Caracas Traffic came out four years ago and aside from the Times Book Review, it got brief reviews in Kirkus, Publishers Weekly, American Book Review and that mention in Sally Eckhoff’s Newsday review of another book – and that was it. The book probably sold less than 100 copies.
The Silicon Valley Diet won’t get into the New York Times although I think it will probably get some ink. But at this point, who knows what will happen? I haven’t heard from Kate Gale or anyone else at Red Hen Press in months.
Dad was very dizzy again today, and he made an appointment with his doctor’s nurse practitioner for tomorrow. Of everyone, he’s the unhappiest here.
Mom doesn’t leave the house, Jonathan likes the access to the mountains, and Marc goes to work all the time, but when Dad and I went to Apache Trail to find a blood pressure machine, he told me he feels as uncomfortable as I do among the elderly Midwestern hicks.
The parking lots are filled with license plates from Minnesota mostly, but also from Iowa, the Dakotas, Idaho, Michigan, Alberta, etc.
No wonder Dad is stressed out. I don’t think it’s good for his health to be here, just as Grandpa Nat’s retirement to Florida led to his health catastrophe in 1977. So, unless Dad goes out to work, I expect he’ll die soon.
I suspect his positional vertigo is a result of his lingering cold and a sinus infection, though it could be his blood pressure or any number of things. Of course, he’s afraid he’s going to have a stroke.
Anyway, Dad said, Apache Junction may eventually become more cosmopolitan, “but I won’t live to see it.”
My only email was from Alice, who said 1999 was a great year for her but terrible for her brother, Andreas and other friends.
Sat Darshan told me that she got a phone call from Libby the other day. Libby put Wyatt on the phone, and Sat Darshan was amazed because he was a baby when she last saw him.
Thursday, December 23, 1999
9 PM. I drove into Phoenix last evening, but when I called Sat Darshan from the ABCO supermarket near her house, she said I needed to phone later because she was waiting for a return call from the doctor. She gave me Gurudaya’s cell phone number, but I must have copied it down wrong.
Anyway, it sounded like Kiran Kaur was very ill – at least I assumed that – so I drove around Central Phoenix for 45 minutes, stopping at a shopping center on Camelback.
When I called again, no one answered so I drove into downtown Tempe and parked in the city lot off Mill Avenue. (The street signs now say Millennium Avenue in preparation for next week’s special street party).
I walked up and down the street, passing skateboarders and neo-hippies, and I spent time at the excellent Changing Hands Bookstore.
At Starbucks, I had hot Zen tea and read the Poetry Flash I picked up at Changing Hands, using it to circle email addresses of California writers and organizations for my mailing list.
After walking some more, I drove off on Rio Salado Parkway, which looks beautiful compared to last year. There are so many pretty or interesting places in the Valley, but my family lives in this ugly backwater.
I’ve always much preferred even the grittier parts of cities to the horribly bland suburban places areas. But at least some suburbs – like West Broward or Long Island or the San Fernando Valley – are pretty. Apache Junction is mostly disgusting.
I got home at 9:30 PM, after picking up some items at Safeway and filling my tank at the cheapo Diamond Shamrock gas station. On average, I’ve put over 100 miles per day on the rental car.
Sat Darshan called this morning to say that she and Nirankar had spent three hours at the ER at St. Joseph’s last night.
Just before she picked up Kiran yesterday, the 4-year-old boy whose mom watches the kids tried to hug her and pick her up, but he fell on top of her. Kiran’s arm was swollen and bruised, and when the doctor didn’t return her phone call, she took the baby to the hospital.
Because Kiran, a ward of the state, has insurance, they were seen fairly promptly – “after only an hour” – and when an exam and x-rays were done, they found she had a relatively clean fracture, so they needed to put the arm in a cast. Nirankar, Sat Darshan and a nurse could barely hold Kiran down although she’d been given Demerol.
I remember my cousin Michael getting a cast on his broken leg as a kid, and how Dad, I and a nurse had to hold him down as he screamed – so getting a cast for a broken limb must be terribly painful.
I went over there at 1 PM today (there was an accident in the I-10 tunnel so everyone on the freeway had to exit at 7th Street with me) and by then Kiran seemed okay.
Sat Darshan, of course, stayed home from work. She had to put one of Trevor’s shirts on Kiran because none of her own would fit over the cast.
But Kiran played with me and seemed in relatively good spirits, though she was on liquid Tylenol.
“At least this will force her to stop crawling and walk,” Sat Darshan offered hopefully – even though the weight of the cast unbalances Kiran.
Ravinder is “out of town,” Sat Darshan explained – which is what I figured – and Gurudaya is in North Carolina, so Sat Darshan is lucky she had “Auntie Nira” last night.
Nirankar came over while I was there and we all had a pleasant talk; I like playing with Kiran and her toys.
I went to ABCO to buy a gallon of milk while Nirankar went to the hospital to pick up the x-rays they need for Tuesday’s doctor’s appointment. If everything is okay, the cast will need to stay on for just three weeks.
It took me an hour to return home even though I left at 3:15 PM, trying to beat Phoenix’s early rush hour.
This morning I went to Starbucks for iced tea and to read half the New York Times. This evening I read the other half of the paper at the Apache Junction library, where I stayed till it closed at 8 PM.
This afternoon I spent about 90 minutes online, mostly adding names to my address books.
Rahel Jaffrey, one of the students who plagiarized, emailed me, wanting to make an appointment to discuss her grade. I gave her a date in January, but let her know that I had proof she plagiarized and that I should have given her an F as a final grade if I followed Nova policy.
Teresa wrote to say that she’s got 18-20 people coming for both Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, plus she’s catering seven holiday parties leading to the Millennium night party in Port Washington.
Teresa said that the wealthy couple throwing the party have a new respect for Teresa and Paul now that they’ve found out about the lumber yard sale.
Teresa still has no idea what to do with the money – the only mutual fund she knows is Fidelity – and the three “money managers” they’ve consulted said to wait until the new year to do anything.
Teresa said she was always secretly relieved that she never had to worry about investment choices other than real estate, and now “This is my job, and it’s overwhelming.”
Also on email, I got another letter from Alice and a Christmas card from Vish.
I haven’t even looked at either of my Legal Studies texts for next semester the way I had planned to do, so I’ll have to spend a lot more time on preparation next semester.
But somehow I’ll manage; at least I didn’t take that BPM writing class. It’s good that I got away from Florida because otherwise I’d just be going into the office every day to use the computer. I definitely needed to break up my routine.
Whatever problems I have with my family, it’s better to be here rather than back in Florida for these two weeks.
After a physical exam, the nurse practitioner told Dad that his dizziness was caused by an ear infection from his cold. She prescribed meclizine (Bonine, what I take) and nasal spray.
Mom just came home and we’ve been talking. She said that Jonathan works late, and on his days off he either goes out by himself or stays in his room. We talked for so long that it’s now 10:40 PM.
Friday, December 24, 1999
4 PM, Christmas Eve. I’ve just come back after seeing Man on the Moon, the biopic of Andy Kaufman starring Jim Carrey.
I found myself at times the only one in the audience convulsed by laughter, as when an elderly actress in Kaufman’s Carnegie Hall show appears to die of exertion.
Perhaps I just have a crueler sense of humor than most people, or else I “get” Kaufman’s humor because it was in many ways hostile. I love the way he confused the audience.
I tried to do something like that in fiction in the 1970s, breaking the narrative – the equivalent of the fourth wall – to undermine my own stories. I miss playing with reality like that.
I started to think of how I could do it again, and imagined myself giving a reading for the new book in a gay bookstore where I’d pretend to become visibly uncomfortable as I read a story and finally feel the need to interrupt, say I had to admit I didn’t believe in my story anymore because I’d recently found God and had to renounce homosexuality.
If someone in the audience argued with me, I would ask that person to finish reading the story aloud while I looked on, upset and disapproving until the end where I’d go up and kiss him on the lips. I guess I like fucking with people’s minds.
Fiction is, like much of show business, an art of illusion as much as it is anything else. I could be an amazing performer if only I had the courage to begin.
Well, like “Me and Bobby McGee” says, if I’ve got “nothing left to lose,” maybe I can find the freedom to do some kind of performance art.
(Hey, I just remembered the time I faked an epileptic seizure to get paid for some adjunct work at Kingsborough. What a performance that was! I need to think big like that.)
This morning, after I finished reading today’s paper at Borders, I looked at the new issue of Poets & Writers and read articles about Miami writers – mostly the FIU crowd and the Carl Hiaasen crew and the Cuban-Americans.
Most of these writers, of course, were around back in the years between 1981 and 1983 when I had my name in the newspapers and magazines all the time.
I still think Eating at Arby’s is a pretty good book, though I suppose no one at FIU today has ever heard of it.
But as Tony Clifton, Andy Kaufman’s alter ego, sang at the end of the film after Kaufman’s death, “I will survive” – even if, unlike Dilsey in The Sound and the Fury, I do not endure.
I’m also not like Tom McHale, who killed himself back then, not long after his final novel was published and went nowhere. I’m not going to commit suicide. I already expect The Silicon Valley Diet will go nowhere – though it won’t be for my lack of trying to promote it.
Last night at the Apache Junction library, I copied down the names of major newspapers’ book editors and today I got their property addresses off Lexis. And I added more email addresses, now over 700, to my mailing list.
I also wrote to email notes to Alice and Teresa, and I sent online Christmas cards to Vish, Jaime (who kindly wrote me back), Patrick, Mark Savage and Carolyn. And I bought a Happy New Millennium card, mailing it out to Libby and Grant.
In the late afternoon I had iced tea at Starbucks and a baked potato at Wendy’s. It was 69° on Christmas Eve, warmer than today back home in Fort Lauderdale.
Well, this area – Phoenix; Apache Junction, even – is now also my home, just the way New York and nearly every place I’ve spent a lot of time in is.
If, as the doctor says at the end of Wendy Wasserstein’s The Heidi Chronicles, “Our friends are our family,” then my head is my home.
And to all a good night.
Saturday, December 25, 1999
9:30 PM. The house is quiet except for the mumble of TVs and the rabbit scurrying around in its cage not far from my air mattress on the living room floor.
I’ve just come in from another night at the megaplex, where I saw the terrific The Talented Mr. Ripley. It was a much bigger crowd tonight, and it was good to be out among people.
I shouldn’t feel anger when I see the stunted, constrained lives of my family. Instead, I should just feel sad for them, especially for Jonathan, because he has no friends and no life – and he won’t even go out among people by himself.
I’ve never been afraid of taking myself to the movies or to a restaurant. There’s being alone in your house and then there’s being alone among people.
Besides, I spent the afternoon with Sat Darshan, helping her to take Kiran to the nursing home to see her father on his birthday. I played with Kiran, held her hand while she walked, helped Milton comb his hair and wheeled his wheelchair.
I guess I could deal better with my parents if they, too, were out of it the way Sat Darshan’s father is out of it or the way Grandpa Nat was out of it in the nursing home. I’d have more patience then.
Last night, after I finished my diary entry, I checked to see if I had any messages on my answering machine, and I had two.
One was from the Cameron Cove office, saying they had a package for me. It’s probably nothing, but I wasn’t expecting a package. I doubt it could be my books from Red Hen Press because they would have sent me the galleys or the cover design first. I can’t imagine who else would send me a package.
The second voice mail message was from Mike Abrams at FAMU. The faculty voted to admit me to the journalism program – they just have to do the final paperwork.
So it looks as if I will be moving to Tallahassee after all. Tallahassee’s as good a place as any to call home – now that I chanced on that phrase from last night, “my head is my home.”
I emailed Mike Abrams thanks this morning. I’m happy at least that I know where I’ll be moving to. It will be an adjustment, but not too hard, and it will be another adventure and a new phase of my life.
I stayed up late and so I didn’t wake up until 7:30 AM. With nothing open on Christmas but the 24-hour Walgreens stores (all of which were very crowded), I picked up a bottle of iced tea and took the paper out with me and read it in the car in the Apache Junction public library parking lot.
After lunch, I drove into Phoenix. Unable to shift position as she sleeps because the arm cast gets in her way, Kiran Kaur was up most of the night, and so was Sat Darshan.
Kiran was at Nirankar’s across the street when I arrived, and she was munching on cheese slices and feeding them to the two dogs.
Trevor stuck his head out to say hi to me, but he was busy playing Nintendo with Jerry, the widower of Nirankar’s mother – who I guess is Trevor’s and Kiran’s step-great-grandfather.
I was glad to be able to help Sat Darshan because it’s hard to deal with taking a baby anywhere and even harder to deal with a baby with her arm in a cast.
When we arrived at the Kivel nursing home, Sat Darshan’s father was in bed and not dressed.
He’s much less lucid than he was last year and barely says a word. But he smiles a great deal, the kind of smile that indicates that he’s not quite aware of what’s going on.
While he had no idea he was 83 years old, he remembered that he was born on 106th Street in Manhattan and could recall addresses in New York City where he had lived.
After we got back to Sat Darshan’s house, I stayed till 3:30 PM and then drove back to Apache Junction. The house directly across the street whose car has Jersey plates put up an official New Jersey Transit sign on their garage.
Checking email, I saw that Mark Savage wrote that he’s enjoying his vacation “from the brats” and that it’s very cold in Brooklyn. Actually, Florida has also been chilly.
Vish wrote that he’d like to talk to me when I get back to the East Coast in January.
Freezing as I got into the car tonight at the Harkins 25 Theater at Superstition Springs, I somehow flashed on a Saturday night in February 1972 when Sat Darshan and I shivered as we got back into my car after seeing Trojan Women at the old Sheepshead Theater.
That was almost 28 years ago, and today I’m still friends with Sat Darshan.
I remember that weekend clearly: Sat Darshan (she was Avis then) had just broken up with Scott and that Friday night I had a terrible date at Kings Plaza with that girl who was wearing a cheongsam and makeup that was trying to make her look Chinese for a sorority party. At the theater – playing Sunday, Bloody Sunday – I spotted Sat Darshan with Shelli and Jerry, and I called out to him to “Take care of Avis” because I didn’t want to say it to Shelli after she’d left me for Jerry.
The next night Sat Darshan and I went to the movies in Sheepshead Bay, and on Sunday I took Stacy to see a Kris Kristofferson concert at Philharmonic Hall. I remember burning my tongue on hot tea at the café at Lincoln Center and that I was going the wrong way when I turned south onto Amsterdam Avenue as we exited the Lincoln Center parking lot.
When I dropped Stacy off back in East Flatbush, I said, “Can I kiss you?” and she told me girls don’t like to be asked, guys should just kiss them.
That was the weekend I really felt I got over my breakup with Shelli after four or five months because I went on three “dates” three days in a row. So many years have passed that I now remember with fondness even the pain I experienced back then.
I guess I’ve been lucky because I’ve always been able to use “bad” experiences for something.
The stars out tonight – especially Orion, the big guy in the winter sky – remind me of dates I had with Ronna in the winters 1972-73 and 1973-74 when she would show me the cold-weather constellations as we walked outside very late at night so I could drive her home.
Thursday, December 30, 1999
2:30 PM. Twenty-four hours have passed since I last wrote in this diary, and I’m back in my bed in Florida feeling very tired, perhaps even sick, and definitely overwhelmed.
The sick feeling I had yesterday grew worse as the afternoon went on, and I told my parents and Jonathan that I was considering canceling my flight.
But I realized it would be hard to get out again, and so once I bought a thermometer and my temperature registered as 98.6° – the only thing about me that’s normal – I got ready to go.
Before that I had some emotional scenes with Mom. She cried and I held her and told her I didn’t hate her.
She’s very unhappy a lot of the time – “Nothing turned out the way I thought it would” – and I see why she dotes on her possessions and her furniture to make up for what’s missing in her life.
She showed me how the movers ruined her beloved mirror and how glaziers tell her it can’t be fixed, and all the problems she had dealing with MCI Worldcom and charges made from a phone at Sprint HQ in Cincinnati on her account. Poor Mom.
Dad got a call yesterday about working for the Census Bureau, and he’s going in for a test at City Hall on Monday.
Jonathan checked out a genealogy “college” in Scottsdale and discovered it was just a woman giving courses. I hope Jonathan ends up at a public college, not at some rip-off place. He needs to do something constructive.
Leaving Apache Junction at 4:10 PM, I got to National Car Rental before 5 PM So I was checked in and at the gate for my 6:40 PM flight to Fort Lauderdale ninety minutes early.
I phoned Sat Darshan, who said that she was very busy with the baby and couldn’t really talk although she said that Gurudaya had just returned home from her father’s in North Carolina.
Before we boarded the plane, I had orange juice at Starbucks and a fruit bar and raisins. Except for a small anxiety attack, I was okay on the dull four-hour plane ride home.
The airliner was packed and the movie – I’ll Be Home For Christmas – was a dud, but I endured it.
We got in on time at 12:45 AM but my luggage was one of the last pieces out and the cab didn’t get me home for another hour. It was about 50°, chilly for South Florida.
My apartment smelled nice, fresh like a motel room, As soon as I could, I fell into bed. It took me a while to get to sleep, but I wasn’t dizzy. But jet lag has made me feel icky and out of it all day.
My mail was held at the post office, so I picked it up this morning, and I still haven’t dealt with it totally.
Besides the bills, there were cards from Wade, Crad, Thien (“I don’t know when I see you again”) and a rejection from Villa Montalvo (“I’m really bummed” Kathryn wrote apologetically – I sent her an email saying it didn’t matter, that I’ll be moving to Tallahassee then) and one for the NEA fellowship (they picked only 35 winners!).
The rejection from Villa Montalvo hurts, as I wanted to get to California this year. But Libby sent me photos of Lindsay doing gymnastics and Wyatt playing soccer, so I can visit them in Los Angeles for a week or so and might do some readings at the L.A. bookstores that Red Hen Press/Valentine Publishing Group uses.
At Publix, I bought groceries: just the basics, but it was still eight or nine bags and cost me $60.
I exercised, just glanced at the Times, spoke to Mom and went to the office, where Maria gave me today’s pay stub and the one from two weeks ago. The school will be closed tomorrow, so I took home my texts and sample syllabi and teachers guides to work on over the weekend.
I saw Lester, and also Charles, and I told both of them I’m moving to Tallahassee. I want everyone to know I’m leaving Nova at the end of this term so they know I harbor no illusions about staying on.
I answered, if only briefly, all the letters in my email inbox, writing to Jeff Baron, Alice, Teresa, Vish, Jaime, Lynn. I also sent a letter to George Myers congratulating him on an incisive and rather depressing Columbus Dispatch article on book publishing in the 1990s.
I ate lunch when I came home and now feel like collapsing.