A Writer’s Diary Entries From Early May, 1999
Monday, May 3, 1999
10:30 PM. I’m really tired. I got home only half an hour ago. After I had my dinner – before Teresa and Paul ate – I went out and drove to Brooklyn, figuring that because I won’t have the rental car for much longer, I should see the old neighborhood.
As usual, when I got off the Belt Parkway at Flatbush Avenue, I took advantage of Toys R Us’s bathroom before I went down to our old block.
While I’d told that I thought Mom the tree in front of the house was gone, it certainly isn’t; in fact, it’s now taller than the house itself.
The garage was open, and I think Grigory, the owner, was by his car. Anyway, the house looks terrific; the white windows, door and railings give it a modern look.
After riding around the neighborhood a bit, I headed up Flatbush Avenue, noting the new stores and the disappeared old ones.
The Junction looks very ghetto, with posters for rap and R&B and Caribbean concerts and boarded-up and burned-out buildings, but the neighborhoods improve as Flatbush Avenue gets closer to Prospect Park and the Botanic Garden by Empire Boulevard. Around Grand Army Plaza, the cherry blossoms are in bloom, but it was too dark to see them.
The thing most noticeable as I drove north nearing downtown was that the Chase building sticks up even if I doesn’t match the height of the Williamsburg Savings Bank Building.
Needing to use the bathroom again, I went into Junior’s, parking five blocks away near Bridge and Willoughby Streets. It was a little scary because the area was so deserted, but I must have passed five cops and three security guards and I took purposeful, New Yorker-type strides and felt safe.
I got on the BQE and took that past Williamsburg into Queens and then the LIE to Glen Cove Road North. During the ride, traffic was at a standstill at times, but things cleared up once I got past Kissena Boulevard.
While driving around Brooklyn, I thought about this year being thirty years after 1969. At this time of year back then, I was just coming out of the worst of my agoraphobia. That summer I started college, taking Poli Sci 1. And of course, I began keeping my diary that August. This summer I want to get back in touch with my 18-year-old self. In some was I can remember exactly how I felt in 1969.
This morning I woke up at 6 AM, listened to NPR on my little portable TV and the radio Teresa later gave me (my own radio broke); then, at 7 AM, I exercised to Body Electric on Channel 25/WNYE.
Channel 21/WLIW runs the show at the same time, and I discovered how to tape it while I’m watching the other station, as they’re running the 1997 series, which I have no tapes of.
Then I got back into bed until 8 AM, when I showered and went downstairs for breakfast with Teresa, who’s back to her routine: Howard Stern, a little coffee and lots of phone calls.
We spent most of the day talking about this and that. I need new sneakers, and after I accompanied Teresa to Roosevelt Field to return items at Nordstrom, Eddie Bauer and Macy’s, she took me to Target, Marshall’s and the Sports Authority in a futile attempt to clothe my feet with a new pair.
Of course, unlike Teresa, who can’t seem to get enough of shopping even after going to dozens of stores in Italy, I hate shopping. (“You’re just like Paul,” Teresa said.)
When we got back to Locust Valley, I saw that my packages had arrived, but I haven’t opened them yet.
Today was rainy with a high of 58°, so I felt cold – but that was fine with me. The trees and flowers here aren’t in full bloom yet, and I like seeing the light green buds in the trees as I drive around the winding roads of this part of Nassau County.
I emailed Alice this morning and she called later, telling me to come over Friday for lunch.
I am fading out now, so I’ll stop writing.
Wednesday, May 5, 1999
7 PM. Ollie is lying on my bed as I write this. Teresa isn’t home yet. She went to see Barbara and Stewart Klein today, bringing them comfort food: everything from chicken soup to brownies.
(Ollie just scampered off when he heard Paul and Hattie going downstairs.)
Stewart is in the final sages of cancer, but Barbara has been magnificent, Teresa said, even preserving her sense of humor. When the doctor recently told her Stewart was dying, she said, “Duh!” to his face.
Yesterday afternoon, after I dropped Teresa off at Penn Toyota in Greenvale, I went over to the T.J. Maxx at Northern Boulevard and Glen Cove Road and bought a $14 pair of forest green triple-pleated Bugle Boy khakis I’d seen earlier. Then, across the street at Wendy’s, I had a baked potato and Diet Coke and read the paper.
I drove around for a long time, venturing into Syosset, where P.J. reported spotting me (when he called Teresa, he wondered why I was driving a red Escort with Connecticut plates) and back to Glen Cove, where I sat in Starbucks and listened to the staff tell me about their depressions.
The barista, a large black woman, had to stop working and sit down near me because she said she felt “overwhelmingly sad.”
Even though Marie no longer works there, the Glen Cove Starbucks seems to have the most angst-ridden employees this side of Seattle. They also tend to be out of everything all the time.
I drove out to Oyster Bay and bought some things at Edwards, which has the Healthy Choice chicken fajitas I rarely find anywhere else.
Then I got totally lost, taking a wrong turn on Mill Neck and going all the way to Bayville by mistake. Those winding two-lane roads get to me, and I had a real panic attack. There was nowhere to pull over and it took me forever to get back to Locust Valley as I took more wrong turns.
After eating a delicious Cedarlane couscous wrap I got at Edwards, I went out with Teresa to the Farmers Bazaar for more grocery shopping.
Back in the living room, Teresa and Paul discussed P.J.’s plan to attend NYU and how expensive the tuition is. Teresa pushes Empire State College, but they think P.J. wants the prestigious degree of NYU and doesn’t want to deal with all the black and Hispanic people at Empire State.
I’m not sure that’s true and wonder why Teresa thinks P.J. would listen to her advice since it’s clear to me they don’t like each other. Both Teresa and Paul seem to think P.J. is stupid, and I don’t know about that but feel it’s sad that they say so out loud in my presence.
Oh well, what do I know? Every family dynamic has its own logic, crazy as it may be.
Last night I began thinking that I may not stay here until late June or whenever Teresa’s parents leave Brooklyn. That’s an awfully long time for me to be a mooch.
I need to call Ronna and find out when I can come to Philadelphia. Although I really don’t want to return to Florida early, I could get myself settled in an apartment there well before the fall term begins. We’ll see.
After exercising to Body Electric this morning, I got online and wrote to Tom, Rick, Ellen, Josh, and Kate Gale. Clearly Kate didn’t get my manuscript. She again talked about doing the book nine months after I send them the money.
I asked her how much of a budget she thought the press would need and suggested I could pay her half now and half at publication. And I wasn’t above mentioning my law school classes in Contracts and Negotiation. If that angers her, I’ll know I didn’t want to deal with Red Hen Press.
I told Rick and Tom about the situation and asked for their input. Although I’d prefer to have Red Hen publish the book, I’d feel comfortable walking away. Maybe I could do better with another small press or self-publishing.
After having an early lunch at 11 AM, I drove into Brooklyn, stopping first at Cambria Heights, Queens, where I bought a disposable camera at a Rite-Aid.
My idea was to send my parents photos of our old house and other old houses in our family and neighborhood scenes from their years in Brooklyn. I thought this would be interesting for their upcoming fiftieth anniversary at the end of the month.
So I spent the next couple of hours riding around southeastern Brooklyn, taking pictures of our house on East 56th Street, the two-family where we rented on East 54th Street near Tilden Avenue, the houses of Grandma Ethel on East 43rd and Linden Boulevard, Grandma Sylvia on Snyder Avenue by the corner of East 46th, and Bubbe Ita on East 42nd Street, along with pictures of P.S. 203, Utica Avenue, Ralph Avenue, and then – after I had fruit salad and iced tea at the Floridian Diner – the empty lots in Rockaway between Beach 56th Street and Beach 56th Place, where Mom and Dad first met when their parents rented summer bungalows there.
I felt funny using a camera in mostly black neighborhoods and hesitated to take some photos because I didn’t want to look like an undercover cop or some white weirdo. (I kept an R&B station playing through my open car window, but that wouldn’t help me much if there had been a confrontation.)
The road on Flatbush Avenue leading to the Marine Parkway Bridge (where the one-way toll, a dime when I was a kid, a quarter when I was I college student, a half-dollar when I had my first apartment in Rockaway, is now $1.75) and Rockaway Beach Boulevard were so broken up that driving over them proved treacherous.
Back over the Nassau County line, I stopped at the Starbucks in Cedarhurst, where all the workers were Hispanic and all the customers but me were Orthodox Jews, and then at the Trader Joe’s in Hewlett, where I bought 99¢ packages of frozen mango chunks. It took a while to get home via Peninsula Boulevard, Sunrise Highway, the Meadowbrook Parkway and Post Road.
Ollie was delighted to see me, mostly because I feed him my table scraps the way I did in Florida with China. But unlike China, Ollie eats anything, including carrots and green beans. He likes me to rub his stomach, which is something China stopped doing.
After eating, I paid Teresa and Paul’s New York Times bill and filled out the unemployment deferment forms for my student loans, mailing them off when I brought in the film to Genovese Drugs.
My ankles have been hurting since I’ve been here and my lips are chapped and cracked by the sides; my left upper eyelid keeps going into spasms this whole week, too. But considering I’ll be 48 next month, I’m okay. I feel very conscious that I now look my age.
Today started out chilly, but the sun came out and it got up to 70°.
Friday, May 7, 1999
10 PM. I hope I’m not too tired to write tonight.
A couple of hours ago, I went out with Teresa to the Home Depot in Westbury to get a new faucet set. There’s a leak in the downstairs bathroom and the plumber came over this evening and will be doing work tomorrow and next week.
Then Teresa and I came home – Paul, no surprise, was snoring in front of the TV – and before I knew it, I felt exhausted. I haven’t read even one-third of today’s newspaper nor did I realize until this minute that I didn’t take a Triavil.
Today was the chilliest, rainiest day yet, and after getting a week of my wish to experience cool, dreary days, I’ve begun to miss the sunshine and heat of South Florida.
Kate Gale said that Red Hen Press is a small press that doesn’t commit to anything they can’t do, and if we’re unable to negotiate a contract, there will be no hard feelings.
Rick Peabody told me that a thousand copies of a 64-page book costs about $2,300 these days, so that $5,000 is in the ballpark for the kind of book I want to do.
This morning I called Florida Unemployment, which said my claim was denied because I don’t have enough earnings. I knew they calculate the prior five quarters, and I show no income, or very little, for the first three quarters of 1998. I’ll apply again in July when they count the current quarter.
Although I wasn’t counting on collecting Unemployment, it would have been a help. All I have in income from now to August or September is today’s Nova paycheck for about $1,950 and my June grant from the state for $1,250.
That means I’m going to have to depend more on credit cards, and if I publish the book, a lot more cash advances to pay off Red Hen Press. But once the fall term begins I’ll be getting a biweekly check.
I know I’ll have additional expenses – paying rent in a new apartment, possibly buying a new (used) car, having dental work – but I can certainly get through the next year without having to declare bankruptcy.
Still, I’ve been spending money too freely, and driving into Manhattan today didn’t help. I didn’t realize the parking lot would cost $25, but then I haven’t put my car in a lot for so many years that the last time I did it, it cost only $15 for two hours.
Aside from the $3.50 toll on the Queens-Midtown Tunnel, my trip didn’t cost me anything else; I took the free Williamsburg Bridge back. Even the LIRR and subway would have cost me about $13, and I would have gotten wetter and been a lot less comfortable.
When I rang her bell, Alice was in the middle of a book auction, her first. She was apologetic but ecstatic because she’d just sold a book for $60,500 to Main Line Press, the floor bidder who exercised their option to top the last other bidder, St. Martin’s, by ten percent.
It was confusing as I heard Alice’s end of the conversations with the St. Martin’s editor as Alice told her that their offer had been topped), the book’s co-authors, and the editor at Main Line Press, but eventually I realized that Alice had screwed up.
Instead of just informing the St. Martin’s editor that her bid had been topped, Alice should have let her know that the floor bidder was the only other publisher left in the auction because St. Martin’s would have gone as high as $75,000 – and Alice said she was sure that Main Line would then have bid $82,500.
So she went from pride and exhilaration to embarrassment and regret in the space of less than half an hour.
I let her talk it out, rationalizing that she’ll learn from this mistake; that her author-clients, who expected a lot less money, were happy and probably will never find out about Alice’s error; and that the book will earn far more than the advance, so that in the end the money discrepancy wouldn’t matter.
Moreover, the whole idea of the book – The Wedding Day Diet – was Alice’s in the first place: she developed the concept, found the two authors, and wanted it in trade paperback rather than the hardcover that St. Martin’s wanted to do.
Her book auction was most of what we talked about over lunch at Steak Frites, a trendy bistro on 16th Street east of Fifth Avenue – though Alice also told me that “short stories are hot.” This is because of recent big advances given to two authors, one of whom is Nathan Englander, a 29-year-old Iowa grad who comes from an ultra-Orthodox Jewish community.
(I heard Englander on the radio yesterday while I was driving through Brooklyn. He realized what an anomaly he was, and when the host told him that “in publishing now, Jewish is hot,” said he didn’t care what was “hot.”)
Before Alice realized that my current book manuscript wasn’t the same stories she sent around to publishers, she said she wanted to try again with it.
But I know that I operate in a different universe than a literary agent like Alice. I certainly wouldn’t tell her that I’m paying Red Hen Press anything because she already thinks I’m crazy just to let a publisher do my book without giving me an advance.
Of course, The Silicon Valley Diet is sort of the antithesis of what Alice does; in many ways, the sensibility in my book even ridicules that money-is-everything world.
While Alice may view me as an object of pity, she’s clueless about the world that people like Rick Peabody, Kate Gale and I operate in – so I figure we’re on about the same level.
Anyway, Alice looked good, and she’s about to pay off the mortgage on the apartment where she plans to spend the rest of her life. I must have misunderstood her intention to retire; she loves being a literary agent and plans to do it forever.
Back at her place, Alice picked up the cleaning and some packages from the concierge. One of the packages contained the fresh copies of her client’s biography of Adam Sandler, a young movie star and comedian Alice disdains – but he, too, is “hot.”
Alice’s chic and glamorous Manhattan life is something I might envy in some moments, but I don’t know that it would suit me any better than the suburban Long Island homeowner lifestyle that Teresa has.
Alice said she’s in denial about Andreas’s prostate cancer, that he just wants to enroll in more clinical trials and won’t listen to his doctor’s advice that he have chemotherapy “unless it’s the last resort.”
It’s too late for surgical removal of the prostate for Andreas, so even though he still looks okay, his prognosis sounds bad to me.
It seemed to take forever to get home via the BQE and LIE, but today I stayed on the highway and made it back to Locust Valley in ninety minutes, which isn’t bad for a Friday afternoon.
The photos I took of Brooklyn and Rockaway came back from the drugstore and looked good, though my arm in the rear-view mirror appeared in some pictures.
Tomorrow I’m planning to bring the car back to Hertz at LaGuardia and then go into the city to meet Josh and come back here via the LIRR.
Although I miss working, life is so busy these days that I’m writing really long diary entries.
Sunday, May 8, 1999
6 PM. Today is the first mostly sunny day this week.
Except for Cat’s dropping by to bring Teresa flowers for Mother’s Day – P.J. sent a card, Jade phoned – I’ve been alone in the house for several hours. Alone except for Ollie, my shadow, that is.
I’ve been reading the Sunday Times and doing an extra half-hour of Body Electric to make up for the one I missed yesterday, eating what I like (the Silicon Valley Diet, of course) and enjoying being alone in a house: something I couldn’t do in Florida.
Paul took his mother to the big family Mother’s Day dinner at Peter’s country club in Douglaston, and Teresa is working her party. She offered me the minivan, but I’m happy just to sit home by myself.
The sneakers I bought at the Kmart at Penn Station yesterday are hurting the arch of my right foot, so I put back on my old disgusting ones and don’t feel like moving too much.
Besides, I took the minivan this morning and went to Starbucks and Farmer’s Bazaar, where I purchased some groceries (breads, butter, scallions) for Teresa’s party as well as my own stuff.
The shower downstairs started to run uncontrollably during the night on Friday, so Paul had to shut off the water. That meant I had to forgo showering and shaving, etc., yesterday morning before I left for LaGuardia at 8:30 AM.
It was a dark, chilly day, and after I returned the rental car – don’t ask what it cost – I took the Q33 bus to the Woodside station, where I got a MetroCard and took the 7 train into Grand Central.
The restoration of the terminal proved as startling as everyone had claimed; with the blue Zodiac sky ceiling, the additional light and the reclaimed staircases, it’s now a great public space, not some dreary place to walk through as quickly as possible.
Josh greeted me at the door of his apartment downtown. He looked good; both Josh and Alice look surprisingly youthful. I waited while he called his mother to explain that he wouldn’t be there on Saturday as usual but would come on Sunday for Mother’s Day.
Josh’s mother is blind, totally addled, has Parkinson’s and is in wheelchair. At 83, “she may outlive me,” Josh said.
Over lunch at Veselka, Josh told me that he’s stayed with the city all these years because being a civil servant gives him a lot of time off to take care of his mother.
But when Giuliani replaced his old boss (“the devil you know”) with his own woman, she was told bad things about Josh and tried to force him to work on a project that would have been “a career-ending move.”
Lately, the new boss has come to realize that Josh is one of the best people on staff, but he felt so disrespected that he accepted a job with the Department of Corrections across the street.
It’s not a fait accompli, and he now expects his boss to match the slightly better offer made by Corrections. Still, he plans to leave the DOT.
Josh realizes that continuing to work for the city holds him back; his friend Brina left the DOT a year ago and is already making twice Josh’s salary.
Gabrielle is coming to New York City to live in August (she’ll be here in a couple of weeks for another visit), and they’ll have to say in Josh’s cramped apartment until the time they can find an affordable larger space.
Gabrielle will be working as an LPN until she passes the RN test. Because of Gabrielle, Josh isn’t speaking to Harry’s wife and will see Harry only alone. (I’ve met Harry’s wife, and that’s no loss.)
Josh thinks that Denis has been depressed over something, but Josh still wants his late distribution of the profits from the KGB Bar. And Josh says that Todd is distraught about some kind of trouble caused by his son, who is now in his twenties and lives upstate with his girlfriend.
We went back to Josh’s apartment and then I accompanied him on a trek down Broadway to find unfashionable black Levis, which Josh hopes he can use to get around his boss’s new ban on wearing blue jeans.
If I didn’t get the 2:10 PM train, I would have had to wait two hours for the next one, so at 1:30 PM Josh walked me to Union Square, where I took the N to Penn Station.
Manhattan still seems a little skeevy to me, but I’m sure I’ll get used to it again soon. Still I guess I prefer the clean if arid and congested suburbs of the sunbelt. Teresa said there were new Oyster Bay line trains, but I got an old, greasy, grimy one at Jamaica, and it only accentuated my own feelings of dirtiness from not showering or shaving.
At the Locust Valley station, Teresa was waiting for me because she’d been passing by as the train stopped and thought that I might be on it.
By the time I got home, Paul had fixed the water problem – his plumber friend never showed up – So I could indulge in what seemed like a luxurious shower.
Teresa’s parents arrived for dinner, and of course I have to be the spoilsport, eschewing both the lobster her parents brought and Teresa’s pork chops in favor of just salad, bread, asparagus, potatoes and corn.
The dinner table conversation was mostly about food and Italy (as two separate subjects or as one), but I enjoyed the company and the meal in the dining room.
Paul left the table abruptly and fell asleep in the living room, eventually joined by Teresa’s father as she, her mother and I continued to chat.
After Teresa’s parents left, I went to my room and read the Times in bed until midnight.
In the morning I called Mom to wish her a happy Mother’s Day. She said that Marc had driven back to Phoenix from Las Vegas, where he and his friend Lou stayed at the Mirage and saw what Marc thought was “the most amazing show” at the Bellagio on Friday night.
Mom said that Dad will deposit my $1,940 Nova paycheck on Monday.
Sat Darshan wrote that I may be contacted by the Arizona Adoption Services Agency because she used me as a reference. Her nephew Tandeep will be in New York City for a few days this coming week, so I told Sat Darshan to give him my number.