Someone With a Pen: Richard Grayson’s Diary

Monday, June 1, 1998

8:30 PM. I’ve just spent the last ninety minutes riding around Billings at sunset in my brand-new Chevy Blazer sports utility vehicle. It’s so beautiful here. Riding along Rimrock Road, by the edge of the butte north of town, I went again to the western part of the city, where new development is taking place.

Last night at Ucross, I didn’t sleep well because my mind was too active thinking about my departure and my body was too active killing moths, which have gradually grown more numerous over the last weeks.

Tonight in my room at the Hilltop Inn, I don’t have to worry about moths, and if I have insomnia . . . well, eventually I’ll sleep.

Up at 5 AM, I listened to NPR and had breakfast at 6:30 AM. I was completely packed and ready an hour later, and I still had another hour before Sharon would arrive.

So I chatted with my fellow residents for the last time, and on the School House porch they presented me with a birthday card (“To Grandpa”) and present: a biography of Bette Davis and a guide to U.S. First Ladies. How sweet.

Pam took photos of all of us, and I kissed the women goodbye and shook hands with Robert and Agymah. I’ll miss my Ucross friends and hope I can see them again.

As Sharon drove me into town, we I talked about Wyoming and she said I was perceptive to see past the romance of open spaces and cowboy legend – because it is hard to live there: the isolation, the winds, the terribly harsh winters.

At the “bus station” in a convenience store next to a motel off the Interstate, it took forever to get the tickets and then I had to wait because the bus was late.

Watching two cops outside a motel room, I finally saw – once I boarded the bus – that they were bringing out a corpse in a body bag. As our joking driver said as we got on I-90, the guy must have gotten drunk and gone back to his motel room and beaten himself to death.

The trip to Billings took less than two hours, and the time passed quickly as they showed a video of Regarding Henry, a decent Mike Nichols film.

Once we pulled into the Greyhound station – most passengers were going on towards Seattle or Chicago on other buses – I called Enterprise to pick me up and I got my luggage. (Security is stricter at the bus depot than it is at the airport, I noticed.)

The old man who fetched me at the airport five weeks ago drove the seven blocks to get me today, and because the SUV was the smallest car they had – I suppose a Humvee would have been next – I got that.

After I checked in here and put my luggage away, I went right out, parking downtown at a meter and going to Wendy’s for a big salad bar and baked potato. Then I walked around Billings’ charming downtown.

I love the people here, because they’re more diverse and so much hipper than those I saw in Wyoming. I could definitely live in Billings – at least for the summer.

At the library I got a brochure from the local HIV/AIDS organization, and I see there’s a gay community here, and a Jewish congregation, too. At the McCormick Café, I got an iced tea and went on the Internet.

Alice and Josh sent new messages, and I wrote both of them back – and Gianni, too, though he’s probably in Europe now. Alice says the Richard Simmons Newsletter is doing very well and she recently sold two books, ending a long dry period. (She said nothing about my manuscript.)

My story about Grandma Sylvia – they titled it “Grandma, I’m Going to Make You a Star!” – appeared in the San Jose Mercury News last Thursday, and I’m looking forward to seeing what the article looks like in print.

I looked at other Web sites till my eyes hurt, and then I drove out to South 24th Street, where I got frozen yogurt at Baskin-Robbins, more iced tea at Barnes & Noble (I read the weekly Washington Post), and strolled around the Rimrock Mall.

In the car I listened to NPR, and back in my room I had some black bean soup and an apple I’d gotten at Buttrey before coming back here. After an hour or so, I went out again, cruising around the Montana State University-Billings campus and wandering the aisles of a Kmart.

The light here amazes me. Big Sky Country isn’t merely a tourist bureau slogan.

Tomorrow’s travel should be more hectic, plus I’ll be going someplace I’ve never been – except for Sky Harbor Airport where I spent a couple of hours exactly thirteen weeks before.

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Tuesday, June 2, 1998

10 PM in Phoenix. Marc and I just made a trip to Target before it closed because I realized I couldn’t sleep on the floor with only a blanket between me and the carpeting and with a tiny head pillow. So I got a sleeping bag and regular pillow for less than $25.

Earlier, I’d gone out to Albertsons with Marc to buy $47 worth of groceries. He’d had almost nothing in the refrigerator. Mostly I bought what I eat, but I told Marc to buy anything he wanted, too.

He’s got $50 and that’s about it: no bank account, his credit cards are maxed out, and I hope I can give him some money. If he doesn’t get something soon, Marc will take one of the $7-an-hour warehouse shipping jobs he’s been offered.

I don’t expect to sleep tonight, both because of the discomfort and because I’m jet-lagged and overtired and dizzy from flying. And from the climate change.

It was 35° when I awoke in Billings at 5 AM – and it was raining hard. I had my oatmeal and a banana and got back into bed and then exercised for half an hour with the weights.

I went out at 8:30 AM and got some yogurt at Buttrey and then had an iced tea at the McCormick Café. Alice said via email that Michael Pietsch at Little, Brown still has my book and she’ll call him next week. But of course it’s hopeless.

The other email was, I finally realized, from Todd. Titled “Your Billy Crystal Message,” it referred to the movie City Slickers, about urbanites in cowboy country. Todd said I am on his dream vacation.

He has the romantic ideas about ranches that I find so annoying, but it’s typical of Todd, who worshipped that Hemingwayesque idea of being a writer when we were in the MFA program.

I sent out more emails and mailed postcards. After reading USA Today, I checked out of the Hilltop Inn, brought back the Chevy Blazer, and was driven to the airport.

My flights were boring and a bit bumpy, but luckily I went right off one plane and out on another in Salt Lake City, and I did get a spectacular view of the Grand Canyon before landing in Phoenix.

It was 100° here, and I knew I should have stopped off to get a drink before I left with my Hertz-rented Escort. I was already dehydrated, and here I was in the desert (but not a cultural desert: the first thing I did in Phoenix was buy today’s New York Times).

Feeling dizzy and weak, I got off the Superstition Freeway (U.S. 60) in Tempe, stopping for a large Diet Coke at a Burger King.

Once I was hydrated, I was still a bit shaky, so I drove to Marc’s via the streets, past Arizona State University (I really would have enjoyed going there, and maybe someday I will be there) and east on University Drive.

I found Marc’s little bungalow off Country Club Drive without any difficulty. It’s very bare, of course; my brother is terribly broke. There was a message from Christy Sanford, who told Marc she had “very good news” for me.

I knew what it was, of course, but to make her feel good, I played dumb. Today the Literature Fellowship panel met in Tallahassee, and Christy and David Kirby pushed for me, and I got one of the eight $5,000 grants.

Now I have to figure out a way to keep my Florida address permanent. I can’t let people know that I’ll be in Maryland or that I’ll be a student. If my parents were going to be staying in Florida, it would be easier.

I think the grant money comes in September, and maybe Mom and Dad will still be in Fort Lauderdale then. Well, I guess I should be excited. After all, $5,000 is $5,000, and it may be worth postponing grad school at Maryland for that – but hopefully I won’t have to.

I got upset this morning when I called Florida Unemployment and heard that my check hadn’t been issued yet, but this $5,000 will help keep me afloat. It’s also recognition that I’m a good fiction writer, ten years after my last fellowship and seventeen years after my second one.

Sat Darshan called here; I’d emailed her Marc’s number this morning from the McCormick Café in Billings. I’m going to go over and have dinner with her and her family tomorrow evening. It will be great to see her and to meet Ravinder and to see how the girls have grown.

Marc and I have talked a lot. He doesn’t know anyone here yet. Mostly we spoke about our parents’ mishigass: Dad’s negativity, Mom’s compulsiveness, Jonathan’s disconnection from reality.

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Thursday, June 4, 1998

9 PM. Last evening I had no trouble finding Sat Darshan’s house in the Coronado District just north of downtown. There was a note on the door, “I’m swimming,” presumably written by Gurudaya, so I waited until Sat Darshan and Nirankar drove up.

Sat Darshan is much thinner than she was when I last saw her in Florida at the end of 1995 or 1996. She said my hair looked shorter, though maybe it was my being clean-shaven that seemed different.

I took my shoes off before entering their house, which is quite nice. Originally a side-by-side duplex built in 1948 – so the house is ancient by Phoenix standards – it has three bedrooms.

Gurujot came back from her summer job at the day care center at the Sikh Montessori school where Sat Darshan used to work. She’s grown into a pretty, very thin 18-year-old: much like her mother was.

Although I didn’t gather this till later, Ravinder is in New York, making money by driving a cab there “when he’s not striking,” Sat Darshan said, referring to the taxi drivers’ protests against Giuliani’s new regulations.

Sat Darshan took me on a tour of the house and out in the backyard, where they have a beautiful swimming pool that her father paid for. Tippy, the affectionate epileptic dog they adopted after their cat died in December, is adorable, and Sat Darshan took me on a stroll through the neighborhood as Tippy got walked.

I noticed the sidewalks said 1942-USA-WPA, and even more remarkable than their age and provenance was their condition: like brand new. The neighborhood is a collection of Sikhs, rednecks, Yuppies, gays and bikers – and to Sat Darshan’s surprise, it’s becoming fashionable and housing prices are climbing.

Her father bought the house across the street and signed it over to Sat Darshan, Ravinder and Ellen, but they charge Nirankar only enough rent to cover their mortgage once they add in the rental income from the little guest house behind it.

Nirankar is a lesbian and recovering alcoholic who is raising her two-year-old grandnephew Tyler, who’s part of the Khalsa family. Ravinder and Sat Darshan are going to take in Tyler’s half-brother or half-sister when the baby is born in September.

Nirankar’s niece Betty Lou, Sat Darshan explained as we sat outside for hours before I left at 9 PM, is a Jerry Springer show unto herself. She’s 19, had a baby (Tyler) by one guy, went to prison, got out and married a 15-year-old boy, left him, and shacked up with another guy who got her pregnant again.

Although Nirankar (Betty Lou’s biological aunt, but legally her half-sister since Nirankar’s mother and stepfather adopted Betty Lou when she was abandoned by her mother, their daughter) had stepped in to raise Tyler, Betty Lou got mad and sued for custody, which she got as birth mother. Then she promptly abandoned the baby, dumping him back with Nirankar.

Sat Darshan was going to adopt the new baby, but they’ve decided on a guardianship because the state will pay for the baby’s medical expenses and a little more.

I went out with Sat Darshan and her daughters to Chico’s Tacos, in a new shopping center that also brought not only an ABCO Foods Desert Market but a Starbucks, Einstein Bros. Bagels, a video store and a McDonald’s within walking distance of their house.

I was very impressed with Gurujot and Gurudaya, both of whom seem bright, cheerful and well-mannered – but also funny and pleasantly normal.

Later, as we discovered the anti-bilingual education proposition had passed in California, Sat Darshan told me that total immersion in English worked for her daughters. When they first arrived, nobody they knew spoke Tamil except people in a South Indian restaurant in Manhattan, and within a year, both girls learned English.

Early on, at the suggestion of a counselor who’d adopted foreign kids herself, Sat Darshan taped them singing in Tamil, and today Gurujot and Gurudaya can’t understand a single word of the tape.

Like her mother was back in the day, Gurudaya is a year behind the grade she should be in, so she’s going back to school in India as a twelfth-grader.

Later Sat Darshan told me how the hardest thing for her this summer is realizing that because her daughter is 18, she has to refrain from talking to her like she’s a child.

Last year, Sat Darshan said, she found herself saying something – she can’t remember what – to the girls as they were sitting on the couch, and it was her own mother’s voice that came out of her: “So I went to the bathroom, looked myself in the mirror, slapped my face, and came out and apologized,” telling her daughters, “Sorry, I was just channeling Grandma.”

Only yesterday did the state of Arizona approve her father’s nursing home care for coverage by ALTCS – Arizona Long-Term Care System – (the state doesn’t have Medicaid), which was the end of a horror of keeping every scrap of paperwork over the past three years.

God, it was great to see Sat Darshan. At dinner she told the girls (who of course didn’t remember me) how she and I met in college but how, years before that, she used to see me and Marc wearing suits and looking weird on the porch of Grandma Sylvia’s house – the one with those steep steps – on Snyder Avenue in Brooklyn, across from where she and her family lived.

I’ll see her again, of course, but I probably won’t accept her offer to stay over on Friday night, as it took only twenty minutes to get back to Mesa on Arizona-202, the new Red Mountain Freeway. I was able to sleep very soundly in my sleeping bag last night, making up for lost hours of slumber and dreams.

I had a pleasant, if uneventful 47th birthday today. By phone, I learned that my unemployment check was issued yesterday. I paid some of my credit card bills in advance, as well as Marc’s first electric and phone bills.

When he got the mail at 3 PM, I could see how upset he got upon seeing them, wondering where he’d get the money, so I just wrote out checks and mailed them off. It’s no big deal, and I know what a horrible feeling it can be not to be able to pay utility bills.

We went out at 6 PM to Mesa’s Dobson Ranch Park and sat on the grass for their regular Thursday evening summer concert. Tonight’s show featured a mainstream jazz group who were very good. The day was exceptionally cool, with a high of only 84°: just perfect weather.

I speed-read the New York Times for the past three days, and when I found myself crying as I read the detailed coverage of Barry Goldwater’s funeral in the Arizona Republic, that spurred me to get out the computer after I returned from Borders and to begin a story titled “My Life with Barry Goldwater.”

Later, I took a drive to trendy downtown Tempe. I would have loved Arizona State. (Sat Darshan said that Gurujot will go to a cheaper community college, and by the way, she may get engaged to a boy she met at school in India who lives in L.A.)

At the P.O. in downtown Mesa, I bought a mailing box, and later I sent my winter jacket and other clothes to Teresa and Paul’s house in Locust Valley.

Well, that’s my 47th birthday report. Three years to AARP membership eligibility, the big half-century mark – but that will be a different century from this one, so it seems very far away. This last year has been great.

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Friday, June 5, 1998

9:30 PM. I just got home from spending the evening at Sat Darshan’s house. Marc is in bed because he has to be up at 5 AM to get to the flea market. He took the one table and chair in the apartment, I saw, and loaded it into his car.

Last night I slept fairly well in my sleeping bag, but after I’d exercised at 6:30 AM, had breakfast, showered and dressed, it seemed like I might as well go into Phoenix.

Rush hour wasn’t that bad, and on Camelback Road I found a fancy supermarket with an espresso bar where I could get a giant iced tea with lemon and sit outside and read the New York Times and Arizona Republic.

Then I drove around and stopped off in downtown Phoenix where I walked around the civic center and checked out the Arizona Center, the new Bank One Ballpark, and ultimately the central Phoenix library, where I got my email.

There were birthday greeting from Alice and Justin, a note from Patrick, and a message from Teresa, who’s expecting me in a couple of weeks.

I saw on the Florida Department of State web page that fellowship recipients can’t be “degree-seeking students” and must be a resident of the state.

Of course, a decade ago I was taking two classes at Teachers College in the fall and had that New York state writer-in-residence award while I was staying at Teresa’s. But I kept my residency at my parents’ house in Davie, and I was there for most of December and from the end of January till May or June.

In 1981, of course, I took the fellowship and told Tom I couldn’t come to New Orleans to work at NOCCA as I’d planned to do.

Later in the day, I learned that my federal Student Aid Report was never sent to Maryland and it took getting through red tape and several frustrating phone calls to get it sent. It will get there by email on Wednesday, so I have no idea if I can get any financial aid.

As I told Sat Darshan tonight, I can’t risk a sure $5,000 for the chance to spend $4,000 in tuition and God knows how much else in expenses.

“But what would you do in Florida?” Sat Darshan asked.

Well, I don’t know, but I can do something: adjunct work again, if nothing else. Evidently fate has pushed me back to Florida and back to fiction writing.

This upsets my plans, but maybe this is what the universe is telling me to do. Even if I do drive up to New York, I don’t think I can rent an apartment in D.C. in two weeks because I can’t be sure yet of what I’m doing.

I didn’t tell Patrick about the fellowship, but I was kind of upset to learn I could have had a temporary full-time job at South last week if I’d let him know I wanted one.

Jeez, I wish I didn’t have to think about this while I’m in Phoenix, but I guess this is as good a place as any to puzzle it out.

I won’t make any rash decisions and I don’t want to use the fellowship because I’m afraid of trying something new.

Hey, that’s not likely, is it? Look at how I’ve traipsed around for the past three months.

Well, anyway, I got stuck on 202 and I-10 at 5 PM due to an accident, but it took me only 55 minutes to get from Mesa to the Coronado District.

I went with Sat Darshan, Gurudaya and Gurujot to Pizza Hut but had only soda and a salad.

Back at her house, we walked Tippy and talked for several hours. Mostly she talked about her trip to India and showed me photos of all her in-laws, as well as Ravinder, whom I’d never seen before.

It was wonderful to spend time with Sat Darshan, and I hope I didn’t seem preoccupied. I think she’s a little disappointed that I’m not going to experience 118° heat on my trip.

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Saturday, June 6, 1998

8:30 AM. I’m going over to Sat Darshan’s this afternoon. I’ll visit her father at the nursing home with her, and maybe do something later; I’ll call Marc when he gets home from the flea market to see if he wants to join us.

Although I slept soundly for four hours, I awoke at 2 AM and couldn’t get back to sleep once I started thinking. I feel tired now, as if I’m coming down with a cold or a stomach virus, but I’ve been stressed out a lot. It’s good stress, but still, it’s stress.

I’ve pretty much decided that I have to stay in Florida till next summer; I’m going to see if I can defer admission to Maryland till next summer. If I do their fast-track and take 12 credits for the summer, fall and spring semesters, I can still graduate by May 2000. If not, I’ll reapply.

Instead of driving up to New York with all my stuff, I’ll try to find the cheapest fare possible and take a plane. Either I can rent a car for that first week or rely on the kindness of Teresa and Paul. I wrote Teresa about this via email from the Tempe library this morning. I’ll call her when I get to Florida.

I also explained the situation to Patrick. Even though I missed out on the BCC-South job, perhaps – no, definitely – something else will come up.

Marc just called. So far he hasn’t made any sales at the flea market. I’m not surprised, given the season, Marc was told the flea market is good only from October to April. Naturally he must be depressed.

I spoke to Mom earlier, something I’ve been dreading. She’s depressed about Marc and Dad and everything in my family’s life. I even think she thinks my not going to Maryland because of the fellowship is bad news.

Right now I really can’t deal with my family. Hopefully, I’ll only stay in Fort Lauderdale for a week or so.

Actually, I could go straight to New York, but my flight is paid for and I need to touch base, see Patrick and Gianni, and maybe visit Nova, FAU or FIU to see about fall teaching jobs.

I think I’m letting my family’s gloom overwhelm me. But why?

*

8 PM. After an early dinner by myself this evening, I went out for a couple of hours, sitting in a Taco Bell in Gilbert, one of the fast-growing suburbs to the south. I drank Diet Pepsi, read the New York Times, and watched a boy about 17 in the next booth deal with his adorable three-year-old brother.

The kids who worked at the restaurant asked the boy if he was the three-year-old’s father.

“Yeah, I got myself pregnant,” he replied.

I thought it was sweet when the little boy, after jumping around frenetically, said, “I hurt my penis,” and then asked his much older brother, “Do you have a penis, too?”

Obviously it touched me in the way that Marc touches me. It hurts to come back here at 5 PM and again at 7:30 PM and know that he’s lying in bed, listening to the drone of the self-help tapes he gets at the library to buck up his spirits.

It must have been disappointing not to sell a single item at the Mesa Market Place Swap Meet today, especially since he shelled out $75 – about all the cash he has – for the flea market booth.

I wish he wouldn’t go back tomorrow, but Marc says, “It’s paid for.”

Yeah, it’s heartbreaking.

Although I refused Mom’s request that I give Marc some cash that she would reimburse me for, I’ll take out an ATM withdrawal or a credit card cash advance and give Marc $200.

The last thing I did after driving ten miles south of here – through the fast-growing city of Chandler until the suburban sprawl segues into rural fields that will disappear in a few years or months or even weeks – was to spend $40 at Smith’s supermarket.

Not only did I buy stuff for me to eat, but also foods  Marc likes so he can eat for a while after I leave here on Thursday.

This afternoon I left here at 1 PM and was at Sat Darshan’s in twenty minutes. We went to to the Kivel nursing home where her father lives in the Gimel Unit. (Downstairs, the Aleph Unit is for Alzheimer’s patients who live in a secure ward so they don’t get out.)

But even Mr. P in his wheelchair wears a wrist device that necessitated Sat Darshan’s disabling it when we took him outside after the attendant cleaned him and put on his Depends undergarments.

Sat Darshan is very good to her father. She brought him last Sunday’s New York Times and yesterday’s Arizona Republic. He seemed to remember me, but he was pretty quiet the entire time I was there.

I couldn’t tell if my presence had caused his silence or if he was usually like that. But Mr. P looks extraordinarily well, still handsome at 81 and appearing more alert than you’d expect, given his few words.

We sat outside under the shade of a huge canopy. It hit 100° or so today, and while it didn’t feel hot, I was enervated and dehydrated afterwards.

I guess when I think about my own family and how lost and helpless they all are, I discount all the problems that beset other people, like Mr. P’s. Of course, if my parents and brothers had more money, their current desperation would end.

We humans tend to generalize based on our own family problems, and so I imagine the difficulties Mom, Dad, Jonathan and Marc have are the only problems that matter.

But a lot of things can break people’s hearts.

When I find myself wishing that I had a family that was more “normal,” I forget that most other people have family members who are nowhere near “normal.”

At Ucross, for example, Julie seemed to have nice parents, but Liz and Robert both had alcoholic mothers, and Margot’s parents were so abusive she left home at 17 and didn’t speak to them for a decade.

I need to give up the anger and frustration directed toward my family. For me, it’s been easiest to simply escape.

It’s funny: at one time I felt my writing suffered because I wasn’t that honest about my homosexuality, but it’s actually far easier to write about being gay then to write about my family in an honest way.