A Writer’s Diary Entries From Late March, 2000
Wednesday, March 22, 2000
5 PM. I just had a veggie burger and am awaiting Marc’s arrival. His plane from Orlando, the stopover, was due in at 4:15 PM and he was going to rent a pickup truck at Budget.
I wish I felt better. Last night I had a bad case of insomnia, due in part to my upper back/shoulder blade ache. I think I reaggravated the injury when I put on my backpack on Monday evening. Perhaps I’m getting too old for a backpack, so I’m going to carry it by the top handle for a while.
Anyway, I ended up getting less than five hours sleep.
– – Marc just phoned from the airport and said he had to check his bag, so he’ll wait for it and then take the shuttle to Budget. I gave him directions, though it’s hard to believe he’s never been to my other apartments in this complex.
I’ve pumped up the air mattress and put sheets on it and I’ve tried to clean up a bit and spray the air. I got out a key for Marc, though he may be spending much of his time at Lou’s.
Anyway, my class this morning wasn’t the most focused, but it wasn’t terrible either, and I tried to be energetic. Before and after class, I spent time gathering addresses and email addresses for my publicity blitz for the book.
Yesterday I wrote down names of friends from Brooklyn College or editors of little magazines I’ve published in, and today I found property addresses for everyone from Mason and Nancy to Eugene and Hal. My email list hit 2100 this afternoon.
Perhaps this is all for naught, but I’ve enjoyed doing it as a fun research project. After reading that Elton John has an apartment in Atlanta, I found his address on Lexis.
Looking for one teacher at San Francisco State whom I read about in the Arts and Leisure section last night led me to the college’s Gay and Lesbian Studies minor and the faculty members there who might be interested in my book.
At school this morning, David McNaron asked me if I could tell him who appointed each U.S. Supreme Court justice. Of course I could not only do that but also tell him the year they were appointed and which justice they replaced.
I complimented Caroline Gordon and Steve Alford on their book reviews in Sunday’s paper and mentioned to Mark Cavanaugh that I’ve got a book of short stories coming out. And I bid 99¢ on eBay for that copy of I Brake for Delmore Schwartz.
I’m certainly not like Lois Weisberg (to whom I mailed a copy of With Hitler in New York), but I do know a lot of people from various worlds: academia, the law, the literary world, politics and gay rights.
Malcolm Gladwell says that you can actually do better with “weak” contacts because your strongest friendships tend to be with people who are very much like you. Thus you’re much more likely to get a job from a friend you know only slightly.
Today’s mail brought the latest HRCNCF newsletter from Gainesville, which is now one of the most gay-friendly cities in Florida.
Well, I’m either going to finish today’s paper or lie down until Marc comes. On the phone he said he immediately felt the humidity when he left the plane and wondered how people could stand it here in South Florida.
Thursday, March 23, 2000
7 PM. I hugged Marc when he showed up at my door last evening. He’s lost about 20 pounds since Christmas and said he bought a 34” waist pair of pants for the first time in years.
He had to wait so long to get his rental pickup truck that Budget gave him two free days although the price was already cheap because he reserved the rental online.
Marc looked tired from the long flight. He left Sky Harbor at 8 AM and stopped in Amarillo before landing in Orlando at 3:30 PM. Then he didn’t have much time till the flight to Fort Lauderdale.
After Marc used my phone to call Dad to say he’d arrived – Marc was grateful he didn’t have to speak to Mom – we went out to get a bite at Wendy’s, where he complained a lot about Jonathan.
Because Dad will be working when Marc’s return flight arrives, Jonathan drove with them to the airport in the morning so he could get an idea of how to go there, and Marc said Jonathan was completely discombobulated by the seeming complexity of navigating the roads.
Whenever Mom or Dad isn’t feeling well, Marc says that Jonathan gets panicky. That’s no wonder, I said, since he’s very dependent on them and may not know how he’ll survive after they’re dead.
Both our mother and Jonathan have this very odd view of the world as a dangerous place.
I remember how hard it was for me to live with my parents and Jonathan a year ago here in Florida, and I hope Marc finds this week a relief – much as I did the two weeks I spent with Marc in Mesa at Christmas 1998.
At work, he’s got a new store manager, a young black woman they brought in from Atlanta, who he says doesn’t know how to talk to people.
The change in the calculation of the sales staff’s commissions that has just begun to appear in their paychecks is essentially a 15% pay cut. But Marc’s got a lot of stock options and wants to stay with Vodafone AirTouch so he can profit from them.
Some supervisors have suggested he try to move from sales to a management position, but so far he hasn’t decided if he wants to try that.
As we drove around Davie and Plantation, Marc noted the changes since he left here nearly two years ago. To him, it seems a lot more congested than Arizona, and after living in the dry Southwest for so long, the Florida humidity is very hard for him to take.
He planned to stay with me just for last night and spend the rest of the time in Lou’s condo. (Lou lives nearby with his girlfriend.)
There seems to be something wrong with the air mattress, as it doesn’t stay as firm as it should after I pump it up – but Marc managed to sleep on it, probably because he was so exhausted. I was very sleepy, too, and I got into bed at 9 PM and fell asleep within an hour.
Marc gave me the tape of the Barry Farber radio show, which he had copied – Jonathan was supposed to do it, “but you know him” – but I wasn’t ready to listen to it.
As Marc said, it’s strange to hear Grandpa Herb and Grandma Ethel’s voices, and I’m sure it will be a little upsetting for me to hear it.
But I should listen to it before I mail it to Cousin Jeff. I’m afraid if I listen to it this evening, I’ll never be able to get to sleep. Last night I slept well, though I got out of bed a number of times, as did Marc, to go to the bathroom.
We hung out this morning, though I made a quick trip to Publix at 7:30 AM and Marc went out for a walk and a quick trip to the bagel restaurant. While I was at work from 9:30 AM to 11 AM, Marc fell asleep in my bed.
I read some more of Malcolm Gladwell’s articles, part of The Tipping Point, and they gave me more names to look up, as does just about all my reading these days.
Without any classes today, I returned to the office from 2 PM until 3:30 PM and found some more virtual and meatspace addresses.
Like Mom and Jonathan, I am more than a little obsessive. Marc says his own obsessions show up at his job, where he has to do everything methodically and completely.
Around noon, after we chatted for an hour, Marc left for a lunch date with Al, a guy he used to work with at the flea market. I know he will be happy staying with Lou, who is to Marc what Teresa is to me.
Speaking of Teresa, Pam emailed me from her brand-new computer and said that Teresa and Paul got off for London as planned.
I’ve been exchanging emails with this very bright Asian high school senior in Bethesda who’s waiting to hear from Boston University, where both his sisters went to college.
But even though I made it clear from the start that I was interested in him only because he was a writer and seemed both smart and literary, I feel a bit odd about the correspondence. Even on a casual basis, it’s getting harder to relate to someone so young.
Although I need to do a little more research when I get to school early tomorrow, I’m basically prepared to teach the morning class.
When I drove the Chrysler, the new tire felt a bit funny, so I won’t take it very far for now.
Marc’s visit has made me realize that I’ll be leaving here really soon for Tallahassee. I now think I will probably not go to Los Angeles or New York or Phoenix in May as I had previously planned to.
I’ll need to spend all my time here preparing to move: clearing out of this apartment, getting the car and furniture sold, getting out of my Nova office, taking my files from the office computer, and doing what I can to promote the book online.
Friday, March 24, 2000
7:30 PM and I just got home from Nova. Considering that I first arrived at my office at 7 AM, it’s been a long day, so it’s no wonder that I’m exhausted. Of course, I also spent considerable time out of my office today.
Before class, I covered the blackboard with notes on the Progressive Era cases that upheld economic regulations (Hipolite Egg and Muller v. Oregon) and the World War I free speech cases (Schenck, Debs, Abrams).
Going over the cases with additional material from my notes made for a pretty lively class. Because the material is so fascinating to me, maybe I make up in enthusiasm for what I’m lacking in historical knowledge. But it’s weird teaching history classes without having taken a single class in the subject as an undergraduate.
Just before class ended, I gave four of my students four Supreme Court cases I printed out from Westlaw for them to brief.
Back at my office, Charles dropped by. I told him that I had worried needlessly about running out of material and that I was now about a week behind in my syllabus.
Charles and Jim asked me to attend the 11 AM presentation of Gary Gershman, the candidate for the permanent position who was on campus today.
As I listened to his lecture on Lochner and many of the same cases I’d been discussing this week, it seemed that his teaching style is close to mine. Like me, Gary is a big-picture guy and likes to bring in examples from the present.
He even said he would have used Nina Totenberg’s report on the Supreme Court case involving the Massachusetts law prohibiting Burmese products: the exact thing I did on Wednesday!
Watching Gary give a sample lesson made me feel very good about my own teaching ability and instincts. But I got the feeling that Charles disapproves of Gary’s approach to teaching – just as I felt his disapproval over my own teaching methods when we were talking in my office earlier. I’m starting to think Charles is kind of a jerk.
Yesterday I felt I couldn’t wait any longer to get “Anita Hill at the Roller Derby” published somewhere, so I submitted it to Storymania.
This morning the story appeared on their New Titles webpage, “published” at last, and yes, I’ll put it in my bibliography.
I got a reply on Planet Out from this guy Ben (Benito), a fortyish M.D. who recently moved to Miami to do cancer research at UM-Jackson Memorial.
He’s exactly my height but outweighs me by twenty pounds (probably all muscle) and is an opera lover who lived most of the 1980s in Seattle. He sounds intelligent and warm.
I never did contact that guy from last week, but I think I’ll contact Ben even though he didn’t have a photo, so I don’t know what he looks like.
That high school kid, Warren, surprised me by writing back after I basically said goodbye, thinking I’m far too old to be writing him. He said he wanted me to continue writing to him and that he didn’t think I was too nosy when I asked if he went to Montgomery Blair High School.
But I still don’t know what we have in common. Of course, I don’t know what Ben and I have in common, either, but at least he’s out of high school.
Sat Darshan sent a hilarious list titled “You Know You’ve Lived in Phoenix a Long Time When . . .” that she said had gone through the Sikh community. It included stuff like driving with just two fingers (or oven mitts) in the summer and not necessarily associating rivers with bodies of water.
I tried to call Marc at 3 PM, but Lou said he was asleep. He phoned me a couple of hours later and said he was going out with friends tonight. That was fine with me.
I went to the Borders at Sawgrass and read the news and business sections of the Times while drinking their strong iced tea.
On the off-chance that they had reviewed my book, I checked out the new issue of Publishers Weekly, but the latest publication date for any of the books reviewed was in May, and I had given a June pub date for The Silicon Valley Diet.
Of course, even if PW does review my book, it will probably the usual weak review they’ve always given me. Still, that would give the book some legitimacy – at least in my eyes.
I did so much work for my classes in my Nova office today that I won’t have to spend a lot of time there this weekend.
Monday, March 27, 2000
3:30 PM. I’m really sleepy, and I’ll lie down as soon as I finish writing this. Hopefully, I can rest, if not sleep, for a little while and then I’ll try to eat something and go to school to teach the torts and procedural issues found in A Civil Action.
I reread the book to its finish last night, and I graded the late papers this morning, so I’ve been able to spend the past hour reading the Times and watching the video I found on the Great Depression.
At 7 AM, I was at school, I putting my notes to the 1920s cases on the blackboard.
I’m not sure that doing that is such a good idea because the students straggle in and then don’t listen to me because they’re busy copying everything down. But today I gave myself a break and started my lecture a little later, after playing a couple of sections of the videos on the 1920s.
I also gave out the sheet with the take-home midterm questions on it, and after class I printed out three cases for three of my students for their briefing assignments.
In the office, I spent the usual amount of time on Lexis and the Web, collecting a few email addresses for my address book.
I haven’t had any new messages in my Yahoo inbox since Saturday, so I think something might be wrong with my account.
I did send out a couple of messages, but I spent most of the time checking out A Civil Action websites, gathering discussion topics for tonight’s class – though I don’t know how effective that will prove.
I left Nova just before noon, dropped the videos I used today into the Davie public library’s overnight depository, and came home to eat lunch and rest for a while.
These long Mondays aren’t good for me, but there are just four of them left, and after that I won’t be working for a while and I’ll probably be sleeping a lot more.
Actually, I probably got about seven hours of sleep last night. That’s pretty good, considering that my back pain was bothering me.
‘Well, time to close my eyes and get under the covers. Perhaps I’ll revive somehow and become more alert.
*
9:30 PM. Tonight’s class wasn’t thrilling, but my students did discuss A Civil Action with some intelligence. It was clear that they either read the book or got the video of the movie. I tried to steer them toward topics relevant to tort law, and for the most part I was successful at that.
Although I constantly berate myself for not being better prepared, I am doing the best I can, and I’ll try to keep doing that for the next four sessions.
If I were paid more and if there was a reason for me to extend myself more, I guess I would. At least I know that the books I assigned my students are all interesting.
The difficult thing about this academic year as a visiting Legal Studies professor is that I’m constantly teaching each course for the first time. If I were to stay at Nova and keep teaching these classes, I’d constantly be improving.
Remember 25 years ago, when I was teaching that first composition course at Long Island University? I felt frightened before every class and I had many discouraging moments.
At this point in my career, I have no fear whatsoever in the classroom; I feel as if I belong there, that somehow I was meant to be a teacher.
Notice I didn’t say “a teacher who is brilliant.” I have breadth and range but not depth and discipline. My fiction is also like that. Perhaps much of my life is like that.
But why not play to my strengths: spontaneity, humor, improvisation, a wide range of knowledge? If I tried to be Les or Steven, I’d only be that much worse. And hell, who wants to be either of those guys?
I’m glad I have tomorrow off. I need to wean myself from Nova Southeastern University. But if I could do it with the University of Florida and before that with Broward Community College – my only other full-time jobs – I can easily do it again.
Unlike Steven, I have a life. I spend most of my time at my desk concentrating on my life, not my job. In three weeks, my book will probably be shipped, and that will take my mind off Nova.
And by late spring, I’ll have so much to do: sell the car, plan my move to Tallahassee, get all my files off the computer and onto disks. I’ll have to ask Ben when he needs me to be out of the office.
After class tonight, I signed up with a Net payment service and paid Kent Weil for the copy of I Brake that I bought from him on eBay; I told him to send the book to Mom’s address in Arizona.
I also used Yahoo’s People Search to find people in the Bay Area with well.com email addresses because I think The Well people are cool.
Wednesday, March 29, 2000
8 PM. Despite severe back pain, especially when I got up from a dream and needed to turn over in bed, I slept soundly yesterday.
Marc came home around this time last evening, took a shower, packed and also got into bed early. He awoke a little later than I did, at 5 AM, and after we hugged each other gingerly at 6:15 AM, he left for the airport.
An hour later, I was at school, printing out Supreme Court cases from Findlaw.com for my students to brief.
In class, I played Nina Totenberg’s NPR report on today’s argument over prayer at high school football games and finished up the chapter on the 1920s and the struggle between liberal and conservative constitutionalism. Our class was fairly lively.
I spent my office hours from 10 AM till noon writing email messages, reading and doing the usual. I wanted to cheer Kevin up because he seemed so down in the dumps about his career in Los Angeles.
From the reply I got later – which I saw in the West Regional Library at 2:30 PM – Kevin did sound a little better but said he just wishes he weren’t alone so much. On the other hand, he said that on Friday he’s got a date with a guy who looks like a GQ model.
Tom wrote that he managed to get back to Salisbury okay, glad there was no US Airways strike.
His poetry class got awful grades on an easy test, and he said he’s never had such a bunch of dead-brained students. However, Tom’s film students are getting better now that he’s Whalenized them into looking at movies much more carefully and deliberately (“reading a film”).
He probably will go with Annette to Fort Worth (which was heavily damaged by tornadoes last night) if she gets the job there; she’s flying to DFW Airport tomorrow for another interview.
Alice just returned from several weeks in Europe. She rode the Orient Express from Italy to London, but then when she got back, Alice found out that the editor who wanted to take an article on the trip from her is no longer at the travel magazine he worked for.
One of Alice’s clients, the author of Date Like a Man, is getting all sorts of TV offers and is meeting with Darren Star, producer of HBO’s Sex and the City about a possible guest appearance on the series.
Myself, I’m a little fed up with all my attempts to get names and addresses of people who might be interested in my book, so I’m going to slow down for a while.