Someone With a Pen: Richard Grayson’s Diary

Monday, January 24, 2000

7:30 PM. Unlike last night, this evening I’m ready to get into bed. I’ve been cranky today ever since the electricity went off at 8 AM after violent thunderstorms swept through the area.

I’ve just come back from Publix, where I got milk and a few other items, and it’s starting to get chilly.

The temperature should go down to the 40°s tonight, so I hope the air conditioner also produces a little heat although it never quite works the first time the system tries to change over.

Last night I had an interesting (okay, only to me) dream in which Ivan appeared. I don’t think I’ve seen Ivan in over twenty years, but somehow I knew it was him and his father whom I ran into at a menswear show.

We chatted, and then as I took my leave, I braced myself because Ivan was going to kiss me goodbye and I really didn’t want to be kissed. So I just endured it as stoically as I could.

When I awoke at 6:15 AM, the storm was raging, and I lay in bed for a while; then I had breakfast and got back under the covers for an hour.

Just as I was getting up to exercise to a Body Electric video, the power went out, so I figured I might as well head over to Nova after I shaved, showered and dressed as best I could in the dark.

Because the traffic lights were out, I had to take a roundabout route to school, which added about 15 minutes to the usual three-minute ride.

At the office, I spent some time online and about an hour preparing for class by going over the chapter on civil procedure.

The electricity had returned by the time I got home after 11 AM, so I could use the microwave to heat up frozen vegetables for lunch.

I started today’s Intro to Law class by reading an article on asbestos suits that dealt with some procedural issues, trying to show the real-world relevance of what we’re learning.

Then I gave a ten-question quiz. Grading it after class, I was dismayed to see the scores patterning out like the last quiz, with most students clustering around 60, with only three 80s (the highest grade) and the same girl getting a 20 both times.

I know colds and flu are going around, but I had six or seven students out again today, and I’m sure all of them are not sick.

The better students tend to get both 80s on the quizzes and check-pluses on their briefs, so I suspect that they are both smarter and do the reading carefully.

I know from my fall classes that a lot of the Legal Studies majors aren’t going to have an easy time getting admitted to law school, so I definitely can’t expect them to grasp difficult first-year law school concepts as college freshmen or sophomores.

I think my lectures and our discussions are good, but I guess the test that I’ll make up for Friday may have to employ a grading curve if the results match the quizzes.

I came home with 3 PM to finish reading the paper and to listen to NPR news. As a political junkie, I find that even I am overdosing on media coverage of the Iowa caucuses tonight.

It’s obvious that Bush and Gore will win big, that there may be some upsets by McCain and Bradley in early primaries, but before Florida’s March 14 primary, it will all be over. And Bush is a sure winner in November.

If Gore lucks out, maybe he can do a little better than Dukakis did in 1988 against Bush’s father, but I can’t see Gore getting over 46% of the popular vote.

Teresa wrote that she’s tired of Jade coming home so often from college and said that if Jade doesn’t go through with her Italy study abroad this summer, it will take her five years to graduate. I will tell Teresa that five years is pretty much the norm these days.

A survey of the freshman class at colleges reveals that they are more anxious about paying for college and feel more overwhelmed by their work than any previous group of first-year students. They were also bored their senior year of high school, which these days seems like nothing so much as a waste of time.

Yesterday I was amused to read in the Times Book Review that the conservative writer Richard Brookhiser, trying to show how ignorant college students are, said he’d met one who had not heard of Lafayette. I doubt if the majority of college freshmen have heard of Lafayette.

When I despair about my own intellectual abilities, I should compare myself at 18 to my students. Of course, I had the advantage of a first-rate elementary school, junior high and high school education.

And of course, I had lots of advantages in life. I grew up in New York City in the 1950s and 1960s, an ideal place and time; I was white, male, middle-class, Jewish, gay and short. All of those things gave me an edge with which I’ve done very little.

Jeff Baron sent a mass email: he’s going to Australia for seven weeks to direct his new play, Mother’s Day, in Sydney. And he listed all the current and upcoming productions of Visiting Mr. Green from Sarasota, Chicago and Philadelphia to Vienna and Madrid.

When Kevin sent me a note saying that he hates temping at Warner Records (which, it was announced today, will merge with EMI) and wants to get his SAG card – he did a non-SAG movie over the weekend – I told him that one day he would be doing stuff like Jeff is now.

That guy Ben in Tallahassee never replied to my last email, and I probably also heard the last of Lynn and Vish. But better to drop contact than for me to keep stringing along guys I don’t really have an interest in.

It’s two years since my last relationship – with Gianni – and I’m not foreclosing on the possibility of future love affairs, but given a lot of factors, I don’t expect any.

My newly-capped tooth is definitely cold-sensitive; I don’t care what the dentist says. I suspect the problem is somebody’s incompetence.

It amazes me that in a world so dependent on brain power, incompetent people seem to be in every field.

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Tuesday, January 25, 2000

3 PM. It did go down to the 40°s last night, but it wasn’t cold in the apartment, and I don’t expect it to be much worse tonight.

The East Coast, from the Carolinas to New England, is getting a heavy (well, six inches sounds heavy to me) snowstorm today, and New York and Washington are a big mess.

I wonder how Tom is adapting to Salisbury; I’ll have to write to him.

Last night I fell asleep early, woke up at 11:45 PM and turned on Nightline’s  coverage of the Iowa caucuses, which went as expected: The spin is that Bradley is done and that Forbes and Keyes did better than predicted.

I woke up at 6 AM and I felt a bit harried all day. Of course, what’s harried for me is laid-back for most people.

I put in a load of laundry before I exercised at 8:30 AM, and then put the clothes in the dryer and took off to get a haircut at Supercuts.

Back home in half an hour, I spent the morning preparing for tonight’s class. I’m going to give them the objective memo assignment and then go over the first half of the chapter that describes the writing process; I also need to discuss where to find administrative rules and regulations.

Steven caught me as I arrived on campus and told me they’re bringing three candidates for the permanent position to Nova to be interviewed.

Each of them has a J.D. and a Ph.D. in History. One guy is from Alabama, another is a woman and the third is a “Jewish man from New York City who I think is a member of our club.”

What thrills Steven is that he and Charles actually agree on these people. I take that as my definitive exit from my temporary position and Nova Southeastern University.

I guess I’m glad about that, as I don’t want to postpone journalism school any longer. But of course it’s going to be a hassle to change my life. On the other hand, it’s really exciting.

I decided that I’m going to give Charles’s old quiz on civil procedure tomorrow – it’s easier than the one I made up – and use his old midterm on Friday.

To me, the quiz is a bit simplistic, but Charles isn’t a lawyer, and probably here is where my own legal training is a disadvantage for the job: I tend to underestimate the difficulty undergraduates have reading cases and applying legal rules.

I searched everything so I can essentially relax a little rather than work my brain out trying to come up with my own test questions for Friday.

WT emailed asking if I knew Rick Peabody. It turns out that WT knew Rick, but he was better acquainted with Gretchen Johnsen when he lived in D.C as an MFA student at American University in the mid-1980s.

I showed WT the issue of Gargoyle that had my interview, and he told me that at one time Gretchen had asked him to consider taking over Gargoyle after she and Rick broke up.

After learning that I also knew Miriam Sagan quite well, WT must think I’m really well-connected. Actually, it’s just that I’ve been around a long time.

I exchanged some great emails with Kevin, who thanked me for always encouraging him all these years and for continuing to write. He just come back from an audition for a cell phone commercial.

Kevin said it’s been raining hard in Los Angeles and nobody there knows how to drive on wet roads, so he was being very careful.

I also got a chatty note from Jenafer saying she doesn’t need the mailing list for months, which is fine with me. If Kate had ever written me in such a friendly manner, we’d have developed a lot more trust by now.

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Saturday, January 29, 2000

9 PM. As I was getting home yesterday around 4:30 PM, someone was leaving a message on my machine, so I picked it up.

It was Bert Stratton. He told me that he, Alice and their daughter Lucy were in just for the weekend for an unveiling on Sunday. (Later I realized it was for Alice’s mother.)

Other family members’ flights, like that of their son Teddy at Brandeis, who is coming in from Logan, were delayed by the storm sweeping the Southeast, so their dinner plans with them would have to be canceled.

So Bert asked if I could come up to the Boca Raton Country Club and Hotel where they were staying and join them for dinner. I agreed, and as soon as I put away the laundry, I drove up to Boca.

The grounds of the place were intimidating. My car seemed out of place among all the luxury cars and limousines, and in my polo shirt and jeans, I felt weird surrounded by the well-dressed and well-heeled.

The valet who took my car gave me directions to the hotel part of the club, advising me to take the service elevator.

It’s been years since I last saw the Strattons, but they looked like themselves – except for Lucy, who is now 15 and in tenth grade. I’ve seen Bert in publicity photos of the band, of course.

I know they have money, but they hadn’t been to the Country Club before. However, Alice said it really wasn’t much more expensive than the Radisson, so they decided to try it.

We walked around the expansive grounds past an enormous kapok tree, by the swimming pool, and through the various lobbies and corridors with tony shops.

Our reservations at the most informal restaurant they had there, Chauncey’s, were for 8:30 PM, and we chatted outside for about 15 minutes. Bert and Alice are nice people, unpretentious and interesting.

Like me, Bert is a newspaper junkie. I was curious about Cleveland, a city I’ve always wanted to see, and after the second time they invited me to visit them, I told them not to say it again or I’d take them up on it.

Bert amazed me by telling me he rents his studio apartments for as little as $350 a month, saying, “They’re decent places – like the ones you knew in Brooklyn.”

I told them about Arizona – Bert’s sister has a place in Scottsdale she stays at part of the year – and my job and my plans, and Bert told me about all the different venues Yiddishe Cup has played over the years. As a traditional klezmer band, they have been certified by some state arts councils, and some booking agents have them on a list.

Alice teaches physical education, and the kids go to expensive private schools; Jack, 11, didn’t want to come to Florida and stayed with friends in Ohio. Bert said that Teddy, “who marches to a different drummer,” likes Brandeis; he aced the SAT but had lousy grades and got into Brandeis only at the last minute and with no financial aid.

After looking at the expensive menu, I had a “simple salad” and iced tea, which of course Bert paid for – and he paid my $5 valet parking fee as well.

The Strattons are going back to Cleveland on Sunday morning just after the unveiling, and I’m glad that today was mild and sunny so that they got to enjoy real South Florida winter weather.

I got home late last night and didn’t fall asleep until midnight, But I made certain I slept for as long as I could and I didn’t get up until 8:15 AM today. It took forever to get going this morning.

At 11 AM I went to Starbucks for an hour, and then I finished the Times over a baked potato and Diet Coke at Wendy’s.

At the office, I checked email: nothing much. Another guy answered my Planet Out ad, saying he was “very attracted” to my pic. He’s 29 and a bit stocky, and though he sounds fine, I don’t expect anything will come of this.

I notice I get replies from guys who surf the ads on Friday nights, probably because they feel lonely.

Vish finally did reply briefly, but I’ve lost Lynn and that guy Ben from last weekend. I really don’t expect to meet anyone. I feel I lucked out with online ads once with Gianni, and I met a dear friend, Kevin, and one pleasant acquaintance, Jaime.

In my quest for email addresses for my mailing list, I went to the Brooklyn College website and got some English Department faculty with email. (A lot of the older professors, like Baumbach, don’t have online addresses.) I’ll check out the faculty at other schools where I taught, starting with Long Island University and Kingsborough Community College.

When I go online at college sites, I also search the term “gay” and get GLBT student organizations and professors interested in gay literature.

Back here, I spent 90 minutes grading the short answer questions of my Intro to Law midterm. I still have to read their six essay answers, and it’s taking a lot longer than I expected.

At 4:30 PM, I drove to Borders on Sunrise Boulevard and brought back Sunday’s New York Times, which I’ve been reading all evening.

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Monday, January 31, 2000

7 PM. I’m still a little depressed, though yesterday’s discovery of the relatively bad student evaluations can’t be entirely responsible.

Maybe today is just an off day. Or I’m coming down with a cold. My throat is sore and scratchy again now, but I have this every few days and can’t figure it out because the cold never quite happens.

I can’t really say what this sadness I feel stems from, but I know that eventually my mood will brighten. On the other hand, sometimes I’m certain that I’m a better person when I feel sad or depressed. For instance, when I left the house this morning, I looked more closely at the waterfowl and other birds hanging around.

And I felt so bad when I saw that skinny gray cat on campus that I went to my office and came back down again to feed it a can of cat food that left a fishy smell on my fingers afterward.

When I told Dr. Deniz, the Turkish biology professor and medical doctor who was passing by, that I couldn’t bear to see that cat looking so skinny, she said, “You have a good heart.” But I don’t – not really.

Still, when Mustafa, one of my students, told me he has to go to court on Friday on charges of careless driving and riding a motorcycle without endorsement, I felt I had to spend time with him looking up the statutes on Lexis.

He was confused about the procedure, and it appeared to me he didn’t get proper notice. So I kept trying to convince him (“Please!”) to get an attorney even though he says he cannot afford one.

I almost wish I were a bar member so I could represent Mustafa in court myself – if I knew what I were doing, that is.

When I feel a bit down in the dumps, I’m more sympathetic to the plight of others, and maybe that’s a good thing. When I gave my Intro to Law students back their papers and went over them, I tried to reassure them about their grades.

I’m too soft-hearted to be an effective teacher because I want to give everyone good grades. But maybe that’s only because I want everyone to like me and therefore it’s only a matter of ego and selfishness.

In class, I talked about constitutions and statutes, stare decisis and civil law systems, and we went over United States v. Lopez, the 1995 case where the Supremes start invalidating federal laws because they couldn’t find interstate commerce clause authority to act.

I still feel I’ve done a shoddy job of teaching this semester, but I guess I’ve done the best I could.

Yeah, keep telling yourself that, kiddo.

Back in the office, I went on the websites of LIU and KCC but couldn’t find email addresses for faculty; neither college has a decent email directory. However, I was able to take a “virtual tour” of Kingsborough that showed photos of the buildings I remember from teaching there in 1978 and 1979.

Looking at the Tallahassee Chamber of Commerce package that came in today’s mail didn’t lift my spirits – not after I saw that even the Leon County Democratic Party’s Newcomers Guide mentions the area’s “Bible Belt traditions.”

Along with religious stations, Tallahassee has only affiliates of the major TV networks and PBS; there’s no WB or Spanish station. Well, without cable at least I’ll still have CBS and NBC, which I couldn’t get in Gainesville.

The Leon County School Board members all seem to be Democrats, and so is the local congressman. The 25% black population must help, and there must be liberals at FSU as well as at FAMU.

But Tallahassee is more Southern than Gainesville, though I don’t know if that will affect my daily life. I can still get the New York Times delivered there, and I have my email contacts with the old world.

Maybe I’ll feel better if I let myself feel apprehension about moving to Tallahassee rather than just blindly go there.