A Writer’s Diary Entries From Late December, 1998
Wednesday, December 23, 1998
7 PM. It keeps getting colder. Tonight it’s supposed to be in the mid-20°s, And this morning it was 34°; today’s high was about 53°, way below the norm of 65°, and it seems like a completely different season than the 76° it was a week ago.
Well, this is the Christmas season, and maybe we will even get some snow.
Last evening I went to a free concert by the San Marcos Symphony at the Chandler Center for the Arts, straight down Country Club Road as it turns into Arizona Avenue about nine miles south of here.
My assumption is that Chandler was once a small town rather than a suburb because the older part of the city is far away, and the newer section abuts the Mesa border; rather than grow outwards from Phoenix, the once remote outpost has now met the metropolitan area.
I was surprised at the size and contemporary look of the auditorium. The Symphony, a local Gilbert/Chandler orchestra, played some Christmas carols for an audience singalong in addition to the inevitable seasonal selections from Handel’s Messiah and my favorite, Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition.
The crowd was mostly older – probably some snowbirds – but also families with kids, and directly in front of me, two clean-cut guys about 20 or 21, one with dark hair, the other blond with glasses.
At first I thought they were Mormons, but when the lights went down they kept discreetly putting their arms around each other and snuggling their shoulders together.
I thought that was sweet, even after one whispered to the other and they left in the middle of the Mussorgsky.
I’m myself left before the Hallelujah Chorus ended so I could beat the parking lot rush. When I got in at 9:15 PM, Marc was watching TV.
I noticed a fax from AirTouch with a list of their top sellers: Marc was #1 by far, with over $70 per hour, with Nick, the guy I met, next at $56 per hour. Marc also sold the most cell phones and his store reached their sales goal for the month.
When Marc tells me about work, I keep thinking he’s giving me examples I can use in my Organizational Communications course.
Tonight I read the chapter on nonverbal communications, which is really fascinating stuff. I hope to do at least a halfway decent job with the classes, which start two weeks from tonight.
I need to make more progress in the text, and I also have to start preparing for my class in American fiction of the 1950s and 1960s – but at least I already have some background with that material.
Last night I didn’t sleep as well as I had been, but it was fine, and I got up just before exercising to Body Electric at 6:30 AM.
Because I had only one pair of socks and not much underwear left, I asked Marc to leave me the key to the laundry room, and after eating breakfast, shaving, showering and dressing in layers for the chilly weather, I put up a load of my dirty clothes.
Then I went to Smith’s for some groceries and the New York Times. When I got back, the washer was finished, and as I put my stuff into the dryer, it occurred to me that I haven’t done laundry since I returned to Florida in August. I sort of missed taking care of myself, and laundry – unlike cleaning – is a chore I always enjoy doing.
At 11 AM, I wanted to read more of the paper so I walked over to the hospital, and while the cafeteria was serving lunch, I got a soda and sat at a table with the Business section.
I’ve told Marc that the hospital cafeteria not only has some good vending machines, but really great food. For lunch, there’s a salad bar, fresh fruit, hot entrees, nice-looking desserts and beverages – as well as the company of doctors and nurses all around you.
Apparently these little apartments were originally built as places to live for the young doctors doing their residency at Mesa Lutheran Hospital.
After lunch, I drove via the Rio Salado Parkway – not a real highway but an under-construction extension of 8th Street on this side of the dry river bed – into downtown Tempe.
After I walked around the ASU campus a little, I went to Mill Avenue, a terrific street featuring all kinds of shops, cafes, restaurants, and lots of young people. It must be really nice when the university is in session.
It kind of made me get excited about living in College Park when I go to Maryland even though it’s probably not as nice as Tempe.
Sitting outside at a table at the Starbucks on the corner of Mill Avenue and 5th Street reminded me of what I liked about Gainesville: the atmosphere of a college town. But Tempe, and I hope, College Park, have the added advantage of being part of a major metropolitan area.
It’s great to be around young people and also older academics like myself: you can just tell by looking at some people that they are smart or share some of my sensibilities. 
Mill Avenue is a place where I feel comfortable, and I hope I can find that in College Park.
There were probably early visitors for the Fiesta Bowl around today as well as Christmas tourists. On the mountain by Sun Devil Stadium was not only the huge purple and gold “A” but lights in the shape of the Magi on their camels.
I was back in Mesa after 3 PM, taking a walk through the cemetery as I listened to the first hour of All Things Considered.
I spent so much time outdoors this afternoon because it was sunny and windless that it didn’t feel as cold as it might have.
The entire United States is colder than normal. While it got up to 63° in New York City on Tuesday, today it didn’t get above freezing there.
Before I came to Arizona, I bought baby oil gel, and I’ve been using it for my very dry skin every day. I’ve also brought out the Chapstick I first got in arid Wyoming in May.
Friday, December 25, 1998
9 PM. An hour ago I came home from visiting Sat Darshan. When I got there, she had just come back from South Mountain with Ravinder and Tandeep, and she was as queasy as I had felt last June.
Ravinder left for the store, and I spent three hours with the baby, Sat Darshan and Tandeep, who is an interesting guy. I like learning about what India is like and about the Sikh way of life. (Gee, that sounds like it was written by an eight-year-old.)
I had my disposable camera with me, and so I took pictures of the baby and the others, just as I had taken photos of Marc before he left for his dates yesterday and today. Last night he came in at 11:30 PM.
Instead of going to the party, Marc and Debbie spent the entire evening at Applebee’s, and today they went to the movies at the Superstition Springs Mall.
He likes her, but she definitely likes him more, and Marc is turned off by her neediness. “I don’t want someone more fucked-up than I am,” he told me, explaining that Debbie was a battered wife for 13 years, and to him that suggests that she’s messed up. He thinks she wants someone to take care of her.
She’s 41, and Marc also finds her a little too old; he says he gets along better with the twentysomethings in his store. (In that respect, he takes after his older brother.) So I was surprised when he told me he was going out with Debbie again, but I can understand his enjoyment of her companionship, especially given his months of loneliness.
Up at 6:30 AM today, I had cereal and listened to the radio, did an impromptu workout, and after going out to get the Times from a vending machine, I read the paper at home.
Today was Russell Baker’s final column, which he devoted to his lifelong love of newspapers. I will miss his columns; too bad it’s not A.M. Rosenthal who’s retiring.
As Sat Darshan had said, there’s nothing open in Phoenix on Christmas day – not even the Chinese restaurants that allow Jews to have a traditional holiday dinner. (Since her father’s birthday is today, she knows about where to go to eat on the holiday.)
I phoned Mom and spoke to her and Dad briefly. My $1,250 grant check did come, and I instructed them to just leave it in the drop leaf until I get home, when I will deposit it.
Mom said I got some Christmas cards from Kevin Urick and Villa Montalvo – and a lot of bills which I probably paid already.
I took a walk up and down Country Club Drive and felt weak when I returned. But some oatmeal and fruit perked me up before I went to Phoenix and drove around prior to arriving at Sat Darshan’s.
She told me stories I’d heard before – about her and Helmut during the tornado when they were staying at Ellen and Wade’s house in Charlottesville, about Libby pumping her breast milk after her mother’s funeral.
I guess I’ve spent a lot of Christmases with Sat Darshan and Libby. Anyway, before I left the house, I wished Tandeep a good trip back to Montreal.
Sunday, December 27, 1998
8 PM. Even if I do need to save money, these weeks in Phoenix have been well worth the expense of the trip. Perhaps if I hadn’t been living with my parents, I wouldn’t have felt the need to come here. But my stays in the Western U.S., even that weeklong trip to Los Angeles in 1991, have always seemed to clear my head.
Although I never have taken my parents’ and Jonathan’s views of the world as anything but delusional, it’s good to be away from their negativity and inability to face reality.
When Dad turned down the $180,000 offer for the house, it once and for all confirmed my judgment that they’re not going to move. Marc is glad he didn’t wait for them, as he, too, knew how long he’d be waiting.
The way I’ve reacted to my parents’ worldview has probably been a bit extreme: instead of being unable to deal with change, I constantly force change upon myself and forgo a stability that might have value.
Still, after this idyllic vacation in Arizona, I’m ready to deal with – and I’m actually looking forward to – spending the next four months in Florida. After that, I’ll be in journalism school in Maryland for a year.
Then I’ll either stay on in the D.C. area or take a job elsewhere, and if there’s nothing pending and anywhere, I will probably move to Los Angeles.
Washington, the seat of political power, and Los Angeles, the entertainment capital, are two cities where I’ve always wanted to live.
I’d also like to go back to the Bay Area, but it’s so expensive there – and maybe I’d like to see what Seattle and the Pacific Northwest are all about.
I am perfectly aware of what a dilettante I am and how people like Alice think that I’ve wasted my life, but of course I don’t see it that way.
Even if all my varied experiences don’t lead to anything concrete, I feel I’m growing and my mind is still active and ready for new challenges. It’s lucky I live in a time that allows me to reinvent myself so often.
Of course, there’s a downside to the ease in which I can act out new roles as easily if I were in the movies: I somehow have to compensate for the lack of security and stability in my life.
Marc got up early to go to that Phoenix flea market for the last time. He’d already paid for the spot for the month, so I suppose that the paltry $75 he made today was $75 more than if he’d stayed home. But the flea market seems a waste to me.
Still, maybe my returning to the familiarity of adjunct teaching is the equivalent of Marc’s going back to being a flea market vendor.
At Borders when it opened at 10 AM, I discovered they didn’t have the Sunday New York Times. So I bought the paper at Albertsons and read it at Einstein Bros. Bagels, where I had iced tea, and then at Wendy’s, where I had a baked potato and Diet Coke.
It looks like Clinton’s impeachment trial will soon begin in the Senate, but there seems to be a consensus that the trial will be brief and end either in an acquittal or a censure agreement or both. That would end the Monica story a year after it began.
The one thing that 1998 showed us is the tolerance of the American people. Conservative scolds like William Bennett and Judge Bork scratched their heads at the lack of outrage evidenced by Clinton’s high approval ratings.
The right-wingers are now the ones out of touch with the American people, just the way they once accused liberal intellectuals of being out of touch.
Americans are able to see ambiguity rather than hew to some strict moralistic code. That’s why despite the Matthew Shepard torture-murder – or maybe because of the reaction to it – the level of tolerance regarding homosexuality is higher than ever.
Just as all but the most loony people who express anti-Semitic or racist views routinely preference their remarks by saying of course they’re not anti-Semitic or racist, now everyone on the Right except Fred Phelps has to pay lip service to their lack of hatred toward gay people even as they make homophobic remarks. That’s a step forward.
When I phoned Sat Darshan and wished her a happy birthday, she invited me to drop by tomorrow evening after she gets back from work. For now she’s tethered to that baby. I don’t know how she can deal with being there for her without any let-up.
Perhaps Ravinder steps in to relieve her occasionally, but I haven’t seen any sign of it. I suspect he has a traditionally Indian view of the role of the father, and I don’t think that extends to going farther than my own father did in day-to-day child-rearing.
At least in Pennsylvania, Ronna has her mother to spell her, or Matthew when he’s around, and Ronna can afford a regular sitter to stay with Abigail for a few hours, just as Libby could with baby Wyatt during my 1991.
I got back the photos tonight, and the best one was taken by Sat Darshan: it’s of me 
holding the baby. For some reason, I look good on that photo. My uneven skin tones, deep wrinkles and turkey neck really make me look old in most other pictures.
This is terribly narcissistic, I know. At least my body is better than my face – which is the reverse of the situation when I was young.
Set Darshan asked if I could find her a certain kind of weekly planner at Borders, so today when I inquired about it at the information desk, I said, “My daughter-in-law told me to get this,” and waited to see if the woman would bat an eye.
She didn’t.
I have to try this experiment more often and see if any clerk says, “But you look too young to have a daughter-in-law!”
Tuesday, December 29, 1998
6:30 PM. This time yesterday, driving on Loop 202 on my way back from Phoenix, I couldn’t help noticing the russet-colored sunset over the Valley. But I knew that its beauty was caused by pollution.
As she walked me to the door last evening, Sat Darshan sniffed and asked if I smelled her neighbors’ wood-burning fireplace. “I wish I had one of those,” she said.
Of course, if her neighbor used their fireplace today, they get a $50 fine because Maricopa County is under an air quality alert; they’ve even asked people not to drive unnecessarily.
This morning I left the house at 8:30 AM, driving down Country Club Drive into Chandler. Turning on Ray Road, I drove east toward the Ahwatukee Foothills, which are in the city of Phoenix, east of South Mountain.
It’s a new area, filled with big-box store strip malls only a year or two old. Finding a Barnes & Noble, I settled in with iced tea and the New York Times for a couple of hours.
The front page had all these trend stories I like: how black and white TV viewers watch completely different sitcoms; how German Chancellor Schroeder’s cabinet represent a generation of Germans who grew up, as I did, way after the war; how a Massachusetts court case on separating siblings for adoption may represent a change in children’s law; how Denver’s downtown, like many big-city downtowns, has lured people who want to live in the middle of cities, not in suburban sprawl; and how online retailers exceeded their most optimistic predictions this Christmas as sales boomed even as brick-and-mortar stores (a new retronym) didn’t do all that well.
Last night Sat Darshan recommended several literary novels to me, and I kept nodding, aware that I’ll probably never read them. She is probably much more of an enthusiastic reader of fiction then I, a putative fiction writer.
Well, at least I realize it now. This year was going to be my swan song as a fiction writer, but I did get to take advantage of the fellowships at Villa Montalvo and Ucross and from the Florida Division of Cultural Affairs based on work I did long ago.
For all the free time I had this year, I produced basically one complete new story, which I wrote in a single day.
In the next few months I’d like to finish the two or three stories I’ve begun – the Silicon Valley, Wyoming and Arizona stories, I call them – but who knows if I will?
It would be nice if I could get my last book of stories published, but I expect the rejection from Hanging Loose Press soon – if it’s not already awaiting me when I returned to Fort Lauderdale.
I’ll keep trying places, but I don’t know which small press to try next. Right now I can’t afford to subsidize a book.
Well, actually that’s not really true. If I wanted to get published that badly, I could find the money.
Yesterday I saw a brochure for a First Consumers National Bank secured card, so I made out a $500 check and sent it in with an application, hoping to get a Visa with them along with my two MasterCards.
Amassing all these credit cards may be very foolish – but my strategy has forced me to put what is now about $11,000 in savings accounts and CDs, even if they’re earning negligible rates of interest. Of course, we’re in a no-inflation era.
It has amazed me that the stock market has returned to near its July highs after the panic and collapse of last August. Like Bill Clinton, the Dow Jones Industrial Average reminds me of those plastic Bozos that would pop right back up every time you punch them in the head.
In the Tempe library, I checked my email. Teresa had a nice Christmas “with the usual cast of characters.” Jade is still in Vermont with her mother, and Teresa half-suspects she’ll change her mind again and stay there. If she does, Teresa said I can have the room in the basement.
Alice said she’ll be accompanying Peter to Orlando for an Alabama Shakespeare Festival event. I told her I’d see if I could come up, but I would end up spending too much money, I think.
George Myers replied to my Christmas card with his new email address. He asked if I knew anyone in journalism who’d like to do a story on his attorney because he’s trying to get Steven Hill publicity as part of his payment for the case against George magazine.
Although I didn’t write back yet, I think I’m going to propose myself. I could write a cyberlaw story about Hill for either a legal or a general-interest publication.
At 3 PM, I put on my radio Walkman and went around the winding suburban streets east of here filled with older adobe ranch houses and orange trees. It was about 70° but cloudy: perfect weather.
Thursday, December 31, 1998
8 PM on New Year’s Eve. I’ve got my usual end-of-the-year anxiety combined with nervousness about tomorrow’s trip back to Florida.
Walking in the cemetery today, I looked at various headstones: the one with a New York skyline for “our very own Broadway star”; the heartbreaking footstone of three brothers and the sister, none of whom reached adulthood; and all the beloved mothers, fathers, sons and daughters who died of cancer, heart disease, suicide, AIDS, accidents or old age.
The cemetery is not a bad place to go on the last day of the year. Nor is the hospital: on my way back from the cemetery, I stopped across the street at Mesa Lutheran for a Diet Sprite in their cafeteria.
It got up to 74° today and was really lovely, if polluted with carbon dioxide ozone and particulates.
Marc came home at 5 PM, and at his suggestion, we went out for dinner. By sheer luck, the Mint Thai Café that I picked out as we drove through Gilbert offered a nice ambiance and good food.
After returning here a little while ago, Marc went out to drive the kid from next door to a skating rink. Although Marc is nice to his neighbors, I think they take advantage of him.
Well, I’m ready to go back to Florida. I’ve set the alarm for 4:40 AM and my plan is to leave here at 5:30 AM for the Hertz rental car return, hoping that will give me enough time for my 7 AM flight to Atlanta.
This year taught me a lot. Although I may not have been productive as a writer, I did get to experience living in different places – as different as Silicon Valley, Wyoming, and Long Island as well as Phoenix, and briefly, Los Angeles and Philadelphia and even five days in New Orleans.
It’s kind of a rootless life, yet I felt comfortable every place I’ve gone to, thanks to friends and family and whatever sense I’ve gotten into my brain over 47½ years.
I say it every year, but this year really was the best one of my life. My 1999 diary is in my night table drawer in Fort Lauderdale, so if I don’t get home tomorrow, I’m going to have to write my January 1 entry in my steno notebook.
I hear Marc coming home now. Happy new year.