A Writer’s Diary Entries From Mid-August, 1999

Wednesday, August 11, 1999

6 PM. I didn’t feel like going to another Rush-Ins meeting last evening. Instead, I drove to Nova, where I ran into Brian, one of my students from last fall, who’s starting his first year at the pharmacy school next week.

I went on AOL Instant Messenger to contact Jaime, who was online, but as usual, the conversation on IM is banal, and finally I told Jaime I’d stop harassing him.

Santa wrote that Ben approved my syllabus for Political and Civil Rights and she put it in her files.

Tom needs to put the page references in the margin for the Dictionary of Literary Biography article, and I don’t know how we can handle the references to the new book, since it’s not yet published. Perhaps we could cut out quotations, or I could pretend to make up page proofs for the book.

Tom’s sick leave hasn’t been approved yet by the school board, so there’s still a possibility he may be stuck at NOCCA when school starts. Tom said he dreads teaching at Tulane this fall, though he’d love to be at Salisbury State in the spring.

Annette got one of three A’s in her Pascal class, Tom said, but we both know how bright she is.

I did see some other email but left at 8 PM so I could watch a PBS fundraising special, A Walk Up Broadway, which presented New York City history as the show’s host and a historian went from the Financial District – past Union, Madison, Herald and Times Squares, Columbus Circle and the Upper West Side – all the way to Washington Heights and Inwood. I love New York City folklore and architecture and will always consider myself a New Yorker.

Last night I had trouble getting to sleep, but after getting up at 4:45 AM, I was awake for good. So at 7 AM, I went back to the office, where I downloaded most of my Web stories on disk in HTML format – “Coping” is now at the Storymania site – and read other stuff online.

Then I went to my parents’ house, bringing boxes and papers for wrapping things, and I picked up another batch of my clothes to bring over to my apartment.

After exercising, I called the University Dental Clinic and made an appointment to do the root canal next Wednesday morning. Even if I find Dr. Bellomio annoying, I get the feeling he’s a good dentist.

From the Nova Web page, I saw that my dental insurance isn’t going to be much better than the Signature plan I have now, so there’s no point in waiting until I start work.

Mom asked me if I were going to Dr. Sachs, and I told her no, that he was the butcher who did my front caps so badly. She said that he ruined her teeth, too, and that’s why she ended up with no teeth in front.

Anyway, I’d just like to get the root canal over with. While it’s not definite that I’ll need it, I think I probably will, and I’m better off having it done before I begin teaching this term.

At Barnes & Noble, I read today’s paper and half of next week’s New York Times Book Review, which featured five debut short story collections.

Again, I got no forwarded mail today in the new apartment, so I called the post office, but who knows if that will do any good? The lady who took my name and addresses was barely fluent in English. It’s frustrating because I know there’s a $550 check floating out there in addition to all my other mail.

I didn’t want to lie around the apartment all afternoon, so when I heard that The Matrix was playing at the $1.75 AMC Ridge Plaza, I headed over there, only to find out the phone recording was in error. So I opted for The Mummy, which was pretty terrible even for such a cheap ticket.

The latest guy who randomly shot lots of people – in a Jewish Community Center in Granada Hills, where he injured little kids at day camp – surrendered today. It turns out he’s an Aryan Nation/Christian Identity-type from the Northwest.

Patrick said he cried at the pictures of the kids scrambling out of the JCC into their parents’ arms.

*

10 PM. I went over to my parents’ at 9 PM to watch The Sopranos on HBO.

I hadn’t been at my apartment for a couple of hours, so I hadn’t gotten their phone messages and didn’t know that Mom had called at 7 PM to say they had been approved for the mortgage for the Apache Junction house.

Later Dad had called to see if I’d be home in the morning because he wanted to bring over the night table.

Earlier, I left my apartment, intending to meet Fred at the Stonewall Library and Archives at the Gay and Lesbian Community Center. I had to drive to Fort Lauderdale during a raging thunderstorm.

Although I thought I’d checked the address before I left, I figured I didn’t remember it right because I couldn’t find the place.

I actually did remember the number right – 1164 East Oakland Park – but from the outside, the building looked to me like it all belonged to the insurance company on the first floor.

I guess I expected a stand-alone building with a sign, like the gay and lesbian community centers I’ve seen in New York, Orlando and San Jose.

Anyway, I got disgusted and turned around after driving around looking at what I thought were likelier buildings.

At my office at Nova, I IM’d Josh. He thinks his face is getting worse from the Bell’s palsy and he’s very depressed.

He’s also had stress from Gabrielle’s pregnancy, though the baby seems okay now that Gabrielle’s had an operation to help her get to term.

Josh is buying a one-bedroom apartment on his floor and dealing with the paperwork now. He’s also got to deal with his mother – yesterday he took her to a gynecologist – and his new job. And he’s trying to find out if he can sue about the van that hit him while he was walking on Bleecker and Broadway.

Even though Josh is usually extremely negative, even I can tell he’s overloaded with stress – and that has to affect his Bell’s palsy. Today the doctor told him that his face will probably never again be what it was.

Earlier online, I had email from Justin Clouse (a nice short reply to my note), Jaime (he got the Men on Men book), and others.

Jonathan and Dad want to know if I’d be interested in buying the Cougar for $1,000 because otherwise they plan to get rid of it, as Jonathan will pay to air-condition the van and drive it to Arizona with Mom and the pets. I said I’d need to think about it.

Thursday, August 12, 1999

9 PM. I should have just had the root canal while I was at the dentist on Tuesday because now my tooth has been aching, and I’ll probably be in severe pain until I get it taken care of.

Hopefully I can get through those all-day meetings at school on Monday and Tuesday. Ben said that we’ll be given a free lunch both days, but for me, that’s not an incentive, as it will only stress me out not to have my regular food.

I guess I’ll see if the tooth gets worse and call the dentist to check if he can get me in on an emergency basis. This is my own fault.

Jonathan and Dad came over at 9 AM this morning and I helped them bring up the night table and the swinging chair from their patio.

I told them that having considered it, I probably will buy Jonathan’s car if it runs as well as they say it does. I’m embarrassed to ride my rusting hulk around, and even a car that only three years younger with 15,000 fewer miles has got to be an improvement over the Chrysler. I just hope that I won’t have to buy yet another car this year.

They went to get the van air-conditioned today, and Jonathan said if he’d known it would cost only $500, he would have done it years ago.

Dad booked a flight to Phoenix on August 25 to see the escrow agent. A one-way ticket was $880, but he could get a round trip for $280 and will just throw away the return ticket.

I got maps of their house – 1093 West 14th Avenue, Apache Junction, Arizona 85220 – on the Web, and I’ll show them where places like the supermarkets and banks are.

But the area is pretty far away from everything that I think of as civilized, although I’m sure that the suburban sprawl will change the place over the next few decades. Right now Apache Junction is what Davie was when my parents moved here twenty years ago.

Patrick got a call at 3:30 AM from crazy Robert F, who was that weird full-time temporary instructor with us at BCC-Central in 1982-83. He’s living in Plattsburgh now but had come down to see his father, who died in the nursing home.

In addition to being psychotic, Robert also has multiple sclerosis and he begged Patrick to let him stay at his house because he so fears homelessness. But Patrick didn’t want to do that; his daughter is still at home and his wife has a cold and had jury duty today.

What Patrick did for Robert instead was very generous: He bought him a bus ticket back to Plattsburgh and brought it over to the homeless shelter where Robert found refuge. He was asleep when Patrick got there, so Patrick didn’t have to see him.

No wonder the subject line of Patrick’s email was “Albatross.”

Tom told me to disregard the Dictionary of Literary Biography manuscript he sent via snail mail because he didn’t realize how much I’d over-written the article, giving him lots of material to cut.

So Tom emailed the new draft, and I added the page numbers for the quotations from Disjointed Fictions and Eating at Arby’s.

Tom eliminated all references to The Silicon Valley Diet book and ended by saying my recent fiction is “more realistic but less real” because I’ve dropped my self-conscious reflexive narrator to focus on gay fiction that – he quoted Jaimy Gordon – Tom found “leaden in the absence of my personality from the page.”

I brooded on that remark for far too long, but of course I have to consider the source. Given Tom’s opinions about fiction, his dislike of my recent work probably augurs well for the stories’ acceptance by a more general readership.

It’s not as if I’ve “sold out”; I just ran out of gas with my self-conscious schtick. Probably a lot of people who like my old stories will hate Silicon Valley Diet – but there aren’t many of those people, and instead I can try to pick up a new, hopefully larger, audience.

Hey, I’ve got to change with the times, and even if Tom thinks my recent fiction is a step backward, I am at least happy to be evolving.

Fred said that I could get the books for the Stonewall Library to him another way, so I mailed them to his house while I was at the post office to send a copy of I Survived Caracas Traffic to Bert Stratton.

In response to Fred’s question about a donation of kiddie porn that the Gay and Lesbian Archives recently received, I advised him that child pornography is different from regular obscenity and they will have liability now that they’ve seen the material and know what’s in it.

Jaime sent a sweet note, LOL-ing that I called him shy, inviting me to call him at home, and ending “Hugs.” I guess I got Jaime to like me – but the truth is that I’m kind of scared to phone him.

Oh hell, I’ll do it, only maybe not tonight.

Monica suggested she could come out here for lunch, and I told her to call me, but so far I haven’t heard back from her.

I did call Teresa, who’s all wrapped up in the negotiations for the sale of the lumber yard. The buyers are Hasidim whom Teresa thinks plan to run a ferry that will take people to the Foxwoods casino.

Originally they preferred a site in Glen Cove but rejected it because of inadequate parking. The Hasidim offered $1 million for the lumber yard, Paul asked for $1.7 million, and Peter is negotiating with the local Irish attorney that the Hasidim got to represent them.

Selling his father’s lumber yard is very emotional for Paul, but Teresa is also wavering. She told Paul that despite the sale, he can’t quit work – that was his first thought – and they’ll need to deal with financial planners to make their principal works for them so they can retire. After all, they’ll be losing steady income from the renters at the lumber yard.

Teresa said that Paul’s kids will probably be upset at the sale, but Paul can just give them some money.

“This is going to be like winning the lottery,” Teresa said. “It will cause a lot of problems and complications.” Meanwhile, Paul is very nervous – but then he always is.

Today’s mail didn’t contain my Unemployment check, but I got a credit card bill forwarded from August 3.

Josh had his first physical therapy session today, though he predicted that it will probably make him worse. I told Josh that Santa said her nephew’s face went back to normal after having Bell’s palsy and that he should try to be positive.

“I am positive,” Josh said. “I’m positive that will never happen to me.”

Tonight I took out $800 in cash advances and got money orders at Publix so I can make a deposit to my checking account in case the unemployment check never gets here. Now I’m really poor and in debt.

Oh well, it’s only money after all.

Friday, August 13, 1999

My tooth felt fine today, which was a blessing.

My foot pain comes and goes, but every day I’ve been taking over a box or two from my parents’ house back to the apartment, or in the case of books, to my office. That way I don’t do too much at once and make my foot worse.

I didn’t get any forwarded mail today, but I did get mail addressed to me here – so I’m glad I deposited the $800 in cash advances and money orders to my checking account this morning.

The banks now charge humongous cash advance fees, but I’m so much in debt that it hardly matters. At least I got First Carolina Bank to take off the double billing from the podiatrist.

This morning I also did laundry and picked up my self-inking stamp with my new address.

Monica was kind enough to come out here to meet me for lunch at the Bangkok Café at 12:30 PM. We sat for over two hours and talked, mostly about our weird families. Her parents were “controlling monsters” and her brother was “a psycho,” but I can tell that Monica enjoys telling lurid stories about her relations and friends.

She remarried her ex-husband Doug five years ago when he was in the last stages of lung cancer. Blake and Beau were happy about that, and at least she was with Doug in the last month of his life and he was glad that he could leave her with more money as his widow.

Of her four children, Blake has always been the one closest to her. He even has an apartment in the same complex where she lives.

Monica said Blake’s been openly gay “forever” and she has always wanted to shield him from what she called “the world’s cruelties.”

When he graduated law school, law firms were very homophobic, so even though Blake graduated second in his class with three book awards (like me!) – no big Florida firms would hire him.

So Blake was glad to set up his solo practice downtown with the financial backing of his mother and Doug. His friend Mitch rents space in his office.

Mostly Blake has been single, but he recently began dating a guy and seems happy with a steady relationship. I’m glad for him; I always had a little crush on Blake.

Monica is still a bit pretentious and artsy, but she’s also warm, intelligent, funny and charming, and I enjoyed her company.

It rained buckets all afternoon, but that really cooled things off.

This evening I chatted with Jaime for half an hour. I know I’m not his type, so I probably shouldn’t be flirting with him.

Actually, I’m better off having Jaime as a friend. He’s someone I can talk to intelligently, and he’s been at Nova forever, as both a student and an administrator, so he knows a lot of school gossip.

He was a Legal Studies major and told me that Stephen – Jaime says I sound like him: “You know he’s a sister?” – is a good teacher, that Charles isn’t, and that Les was very anal and mostly lectured, though he was “a wealth of information.”

Jaime also told me that Mark Kavanaugh – whom I don’t really know – seems to favor male students, especially athletes, and that the dean at Farquhar, Norma Goonen, used to work at the Fischler Graduate School of Education and Human Services, and “she was extremely unimpressive.”

What Jaime said about Les leads me to believe that I may come as a relief to at least some of the students who had him as their professor for Constitutional History I and II last spring. While I don’t have Les’s experience or expertise, I might be able to relate better to kids hoping to go to law school.

But I was somewhat bothered about what Jaime said in general. I don’t like hearing gossip about people at Nova or the Fort Lauderdale gay community – mostly because I don’t like the idea of other people knowing my business and possibly talking about me.

I felt that way about the University of Florida law school and Broward Community College, the only other places where I had a full-time job and was generally known in the academic community.

As I said to Monica this afternoon, I prefer shorter periods of employment as a contingent (part-time or temporary full-time) faculty member – like my current position as a visiting professor.

I don’t really see myself becoming an integral part of any institution or “scene.” Basically, I enjoy being a loner.

Wednesday, August 18, 1999

10 PM. Early last evening Thien phoned my office voice mail and left a message.

He said that he’s very happy, that he has a boyfriend and a bunch of new friends.

After picking up the message, I phoned him at his parents’. He told me two of his gay Vietnamese friends were over, and it sounded as if they’d been having a really good time.

At first, I thought he meant they were visiting from Vietnam, but Thien said they live just fifteen minutes away in Campbell. We chatted for a little while before I said I’d call back another time.

I’m glad he’s happy, but his English doesn’t seem any better, and I guess he’s okay with that since he’ll probably speak mostly Vietnamese for the rest of his life.

Jaime wrote me a thoughtful note email about his not being attracted to gay men of other races or guys with accents that are difficult to understand.

He says it’s always better to reply to someone you meet online that you’re not attracted to; not getting a reply always bugs him more than an outright but polite rejection. I’d like to get past the infatuation stage with Jaime already and just be friends.

Last night I dreamed that I was reading my 1969 diary. My diaries are on my mind, not only because of the thirtieth anniversary but because I have to put them in small boxes this weekend so they can get shipped to Apache Junction.

Mom says she’ll leave them sealed up in the boxes and put them in the master bedroom’s huge walk-in closet, where she says there’s room to put an actual bed.

Odd as it may sound, I’m coming to realize how much I’m going to miss my parents. But it makes sense: Now that I have my own apartment and more of a feeling of control over my life, I no longer resent them.

When I got to the dental office at 10 AM, Dr. Bellomio told me to “think positive,” but I knew he’d have to do the root canal. He loaded me up with Novocain and I was so numb I didn’t feel a thing.

I was a bit wary because Dr. Bellomio is not an endodontist and he’s an old guy who calls his black assistant his “girl,” but the root canal seemed to go smoothly and it went a lot more quickly than I’d expected.

He said the nerve was “angry” and would have given me a lot of pain within the month. He filled it, and although I expected I’d need more appointments, he plans to put in the post in nine days.

This afternoon pieces of the filling started to come off when I was in my office talking to my old student Mitchell Citron about different law schools he was looking at.

(Ben said that I could advise students about applying to law school, which is something I’m sure I will enjoy.)

I went back to the dental office and another dentist looked at it, but she said it wasn’t a problem.

Earlier, while I was still numb from the Novocain, I went over to my parents’ house and filled my trunk with the remaining boxes from the garage. Then I bought some food and soda at Publix.

Back at Nova after lunch, I met Andrew, the editor of the school paper, who’s a doctor’s son from Philadelphia, and we chatted for half an hour.

Sat Darshan emailed that everyone in the house has terrible colds. Gurujot went back to school in India, stopping first in Los Angeles and then Hawaii.

Yesterday Sat Darshan went with Gurudaya to Phoenix College to buy textbooks, pay tuition and look around. Even though the tuition is cheap and her ex gave her  some money toward it, Sat Darshan said that earning enough money is still a struggle.

Despite my pain from the root canal – right now my tooth hurts and I probably should take some Tylenol – I drove to the Gay and Lesbian Community Center at 7 PM and let Fred show me around the very impressive Stonewall Library and Archives.

He introduced me to the guy and two women working with him tonight.

The GLCC really looks like a nice place, and I should become a member. I guess I’m embarrassed that I’m not active in the gay community here the way I was in Gainesville.

Anyway, after I left, I drove to Macy’s and bought a pair Rockport dress shoes on sale for $59 (regularly $89). We’ll see if I can really wear them, given my foot problems.