A Writer’s Diary Entries From Early January, 1999
Friday, January 1, 1999
7 PM. I’m back in Fort Lauderdale, jet-lagged or maybe just tired from a long day of traveling. I’m also a little confused since I’m not used to being back with the oddities of my parents and Jonathan.
Last evening Marc got stuck with the car coming back from taking that kid to the skating rink. He managed to get four quarts of oil and start the car but was worried he damaged the engine.
I’m glad I decided to leave him a birthday card with two of the new weird-looking $50 bills. If Marc has to have dental work or car repair done, at least that’s $100 less he’ll have to shell out.
In my sleeping bag, I put the little TV on ABC/Channel 15 at 8 PM and listened to woody Allen’s Crimes and Misdemeanors.
I couldn’t sleep, but I was relaxed, getting frustrated at my insomnia only after midnight had crossed Mountain Time into 1999, and Marc’s Mexican, black and skateboarder-white neighbors did all their cheering, screaming, firecrackering and probably shooting stray bullets into the sky.
I did sleep for about four hours, so I wasn’t a total wreck at 4:40 AM when I got up, shaved and showered. Then I made breakfast as well a sandwich and sweet potato for the trip.
On NPR I heard that Bell Atlantic is probably buying AirTouch, When I told this to Marc as I said goodbye and left him the key, he said it made him realize why AirTouch stock was climbing so high in recent days.
In the 49° darkness, I drove through the Hertz rental return by Sky Harbor and got on the bus to the Delta terminal, where I’d never seen such a humongous line waiting to go through the metal detector.
We took off in a new 767 in darkness at 7 AM, but it soon became daylight. The movie screen didn’t work, but I closed my eyes for most of the flight except for my second breakfast.
We got to Atlanta in three and a half hours without bad bumpiness, and my flight to Fort Lauderdale was – lucky me – at the very next gate.
At Hartsfield, I ate my sandwich, called Dad, and strolled around a bit; it was crowded in the terminal. The 90-minute flight to Fort Lauderdale was boring, but at least I am now very relaxed when I fly, without a moment’s anxiety or panic.
Hopefully, I won’t get sick from all the coughers and sneezers whose germs kept recycling through the planes, but I’m not going to get stressed out about it.
Dad was waiting for me and he kept saying – six or seven times – how far away he parked. It turned out that he hadn’t realized you could walk through the parking garage and so he’d gone from terminal to terminal.
Things like that make me realize that he’s become an old man. If the parents on a Seinfeld episode kept repeating how far away their car had been parked, it would be funny to Dad because he can’t see that’s how he talks.
Another example of Dad’s getting older was that his fuel tank was on empty, so we had to stop to get some gas (I used my Visa Debit card) to make sure we wouldn’t run out on I-595.
Back at the house, Mom and Jonathan were – where else? – in front of the TV. It’s clear that they’ve watched too much with too little background knowledge about what Mom called “the Y2K glitz” and are afraid of the disasters that will happen next year. I didn’t bother to tell them that whatever occurs will take place in the real world and so will not affect them.
China, of course, ran to lick me when I came in, and that was sweet; I had the feeling that maybe she smelled Marc on me. Then I holed up in my bedroom, opening three weeks’ worth of mail, though I left the Christmas cards for tomorrow.
Mostly I worked on my credit card bills, all of which I’d already paid from Arizona. I got a Lord & Taylor card and some other stuff.
I put my creative writing fellowship check from the state into an ATM envelope after endorsing it; tomorrow I’ll deposit it and a cash advance check I got from Capital One.
Randall Murray sent me a letter someone wrote about my Boca Raton News column that ran on Wednesday, December 23; I’ll have to find a copy of that issue of the paper at the library.
Larry Brandt called to remind me that my BPM classes will be on Wednesday night at the Nova campus here and on Thursday in Boca Raton.
There was other junk too – actually, I meant to write non-junk, but I’m fuzzing out right now.
You know, as dirty and messy as Marc’s apartment was, it seemed more natural then the almost fascistic order in which everything in this house is arranged.
What a weird way this has been to spend New Year’s Day. But in one way it’s kind of fitting, like being in transition from one place to another.
So this is what 1999 is like: just the look of the year in print is stranger than any year I remember.
Tuesday, January 5, 1999
8 PM. I need to stop struggling. Today I felt, as I did yesterday, that life is a struggle.
Why? Because I’ve got classes to teach. Because my car continues to smell of gas and the puffs of smoke from the front are getting more insistent. I can tell the hose that they’re coming from, and so I’ll need to take the car in to the shop tomorrow, and I’m already imagining all the difficulties that will cause when I have to teach at night and at Boca the next night.
Life is also a struggle because I broke off the chain on the ceiling fan light in my room, and until that’s fixed, I have to write this in the room next door.
Life’s a struggle because I feel compulsive about my diet, my exercise, my credit card payments, reading the New York Times and listening to NPR.
I need to let go. I’ve been reading Susan Jeffers’s End the Struggle and Dance with Life, which I bought at Barnes & Noble this afternoon. I need to read something like that now. I feel like a goddamn mess even though I know I’m not one.
Last night’s American Literature class went all right. Most of my dozen students showed up in the classroom, one of the ones in the temporary building where I taught last semester.
I went over the syllabus and talked about the books and introduced Flannery O’Connor, who we’ll get to next week. I also asked the students about themselves; they’re mostly juniors and seniors, working adults majoring in various fields.
After letting them go at 8:30 PM, I drove over to Bread of Life, where I bought yams and bananas and a blank card with a Van Gogh painting in front, on which I wrote a note to Thien, enclosing a phone card so he can call me or his pals in Vietnam.
I always feel loving when I think about Thien. Although I was never wildly attracted to him, he brought out a part of me that I like, one that is generous and patient and kind. I hope I can see him again before I die.
This morning I worked on my Language 1500 syllabus and printed twenty copies out at Nova.
Online, I wrote to Ellen about bankruptcy, and I responded to Sat Darshan. She and the baby fell asleep early on New Year’s Eve. (Ravinder was in Los Angeles, buying goods for his store.)
She wrote that she sometimes feels like crying because of all the pain and crying Kiran is going through as she’s teething.
In Phoenix, I’d told that she should try to take more time for herself. With her father, the baby and her job, Sat Darshan has taken on so much.
But I guess that’s how she keeps herself busy, the way I do with my own obsessive compulsive behavior, the way Mom does with her cleaning and orderliness.
On campus, I went to the Maxwell Maltz Building, where the Psychology programs are housed, to check out the classroom I’ll be teaching in tomorrow night.
At 8 AM tomorrow I’ve got Language 1500, but it’s on the third floor of Parker, near the Liberal Arts office.
I also called Allison at Rexall Sundown and said I’d see her in Boca on Thursday evening.
It never got much above 55° today, but the winds make it feel colder than Phoenix was. When I walked for 40 minutes at 4 PM, I kept my hands in my jacket pockets all the way.
On Lexis I printed out the NPR Talk of the Nation “Book Club of the Air” program on The Complete Stories of Flannery O’Connor that I’d heard in May 1997, when I was riding around Garden City just a few days before I left for Ragdale; I can use some of the comments in next Monday’s class.
Just before I went out walking at 4 PM, a guy came to see the house. He spoke only Spanish, but Dad was off today, so he could talk to him.
The two cats now sit on a blanket in front of the front door and they move when we have to go in and out. I think the older cat, “Mommy,” may be dying because she isn’t very active and will sometimes stay put even when I’m passing through. Her daughter, “Baby,” always runs away.
Last night I spoke to Marc during the Fiesta Bowl. He thanked me for the $100, which he’d already spent, using it toward the $200 bill to fix his car’s water pump.
The AirTouch-Bell Atlantic combo may not come off because another company made a higher offer for AirTouch. Even if Bell Atlantic prevails, the merger will have to get government approval.
Marc said nobody may want the pager part of AirTouch because he can see that cell phones will soon make pagers obsolete: “It’s a dying business.”
It’s milder in Arizona than it is here, but the winter storms in the northeast and Midwest have killed over 50 people.
Thursday, January 7, 1999
10 PM. Another long day, but today was less stressful than yesterday. It also got up to 71°, a far cry from the wintry (for South Florida) weather of Monday and Tuesday.
Last night I was chilly again, but I slept deeply and was up at 6 AM. We were out of milk and bananas – something that would have never happened if I’d had my car – so at 7:30 AM, I used Dad’s car to go to Publix and then was able to have my breakfast.
After exercising at 9 AM, I read the first chapter of The Prentice-Hall Handbook, which is the reading assignment for tomorrow’s 8 AM class. And I began reading the New York Times before going to shower and shave.
After teaching late last night, it was good to rest for an hour this morning with my head on the pillow, my eyes closed, my mind meandering.
Today began the absurd impeachment trial of President Clinton. The senators have been unable to forge a compromise that could shorten or curtail or avoid a drawn-out, highly partisan trial with witnesses, though who knows what they’ll eventually come up with.
“Uncharted territory” and “uncharted waters” are the metaphors of the day. My parents had CNN on all the time before I drove Dad to work at 1:20 PM, just as Chief Justice Rehnquist was giving the senators their oath as jurors. In the car we listened to it on the all-news AM radio station.
As long as they’re going for months, it makes the Republicans look even worse. It’s about a year since we first heard of Monica Lewinsky, and Clinton’s poll ratings have been amazingly high throughout.
After Dad went into work, I stopped across the street from the mall at the Coral Springs Borders and had one small glass of iced tea as I skimmed the two free weeklies, New Times and City Link.
All the alternative weeklies, like the New Times in Phoenix, feature long investigative articles about local business people, government officials, doctors, clergy, etc. that I can never bring myself to read.
I do like the cartoons, especially “This Modern World” with Sparky the Penguin, and the people in the ads for all those 900 chat numbers usually are showing off their nice bodies.
I got a Sears credit card from that application I filled out in Phoenix. That amazes me, because I owed Sears thousands of dollars on my Discover cards when I went bankrupt. Maybe I can use the Sears optical department to get new glasses.
Today was Marc’s birthday, but Dad and Mom spoke to him and he was still quite ill with bronchitis. Tomorrow he’s supposed to be interviewed at the store for the job of manager, but I don’t know if he’ll be feeling better by then.
It bothers me to think of Marc sick and alone in that apartment in Mesa. I would call him now, but I wouldn’t want the ringing of the phone to disturb him if he’s asleep.
At Walgreens, I got the larger copies of the photos of me holding Kiran Kaur; we both look pretty good on them.
After a very early dinner, I left at 4:45 PM to drive up to Boca via I-95. Getting to Rexall Sundown after 5:30 PM, I was glad to see Allison again. She put me in the same auditorium as last term, relegating the Speech class to a smaller conference room.
Tonight I had six students, all women except for Aaron, and it was good to see familiar faces among my students. Rexall Sundown has become a familiar and pleasant environment.
I went over the first two chapters by 8 PM, and like my all other classes, they wanted the alternative of writing four shorter papers to the big research paper.
This weekend I have to write assignments for all my courses. Although there’s a lot more preparation involved in teaching this semester, the grading should be easier.
After dismissing the class, I drove down I-95 and across Atlantic Boulevard in the Cougar. At around 8:40 PM, I got to the Coral Square Mall and walked around until Dad and Norman closed the store.
Dad must have been tired because he let me drive home; he usually prefers to drive. He kept saying that he’d never had a busier day unloading arriving goods at Surrey’s.
Although Dad tends to repeat himself, I think it’s more of an affectation of age than any senile forgetfulness. Sometimes when people get old, we misattribute their oddities to the effects of aging, but they often have the same personalities and traits they did when they were younger; it’s just that the traits get exaggerated.
Monday, January 11, 1999
10 PM. I’ve just gotten home and I’m floating high as after a wonderful three-hour class in which the students and I discussed Flannery O’Connor. When teaching goes bad, it sucks, but the pleasures of a good class are enormous. Damn, I would have made a fine literature professor.
Reading Flannery O’Connor’s stories and criticism of them makes me recall why I got an M.A. in English 25 years ago. I’d nearly forgotten how wonderful it is to escape into a fictional world and to turn that world over in one’s mind and in conversation with others.
My students actually read the stories even if many of them didn’t like the grotesque scenes and depressing view of the world they found there.
I started off by reading aloud “Everything That Rises Must Converge,” a wonderful story, and apt in light of my recent problems with my mother.
This afternoon Mom asked me to find another place to live. She didn’t talk to me all day, but I was in and out, and whether she was deliberately not speaking, I couldn’t tell and didn’t care enough to find out.
At about 2 PM, the power went off, and that started the smoke alarms going off, sporadically at first, but gradually the piercing sounds became longer.
China came into my room trembling, and I’d been told she freaked out the last time this happened, so I asked Mom for her leash and I took her out of the house.
I told Mom we should disconnect the batteries in the three smoke alarms, but she didn’t want to do it. I have no idea why, but I couldn’t stand the sound, so I said she was being stupid and left.
That’s when she yelled out the door and called me a fucking something and told me to find a new place to live.
Tamping down my usual reflexive anger, I didn’t reply, figuring that she had become unglued by the noise of the smoke alarms. China didn’t want to get into my car, so I took her for a walk.
Sometimes I find that when my parents get more and more agitated, I just become calmer and calmer. It was like when Dad had his heart attack and my brothers and mother were so hysterical, and the more hysterical they got, the calmer I became.
At this point in my life, my parents have no power over me. I can live here or not till May.
I’m not like my father or Jonathan, who call Mom every couple of hours, or even Marc, who calls every day. I think what drives Mom crazy about me is that she can’t control me.
She has no friends but her pets, who are totally dependent on her – or so she thinks. Humans are too unpredictable. While I feel sorry for Mom, her stunted life isn’t my problem any more than her mishigass is mine.
Anyway, tonight’s class went great. I had gone for a long walk before having dinner and going back to the Nova campus.
I was up at 5:30 AM today and exercised before getting to school really early. After reading some websites dedicated to Flannery O’Connor to prepare for tonight, I emailed Teresa, who’s online again now that her Mac is back from the repair shop.
As she’s got a case of the midwinter blues, Teresa is thrilled she’s going to San Francisco to visit Deirdre on Thursday. Teresa says she needs to “shake up” her life when she gets back.
Jade returned from Vermont after two weeks, and although her mother’s influence is always apparent immediately after those visits, Teresa said she tries to ignore it.
For the spring semester, which begins while Teresa is in California, she and Paul managed to get Jade student housing at Purchase. It’s not quite what Jade wanted, but it will cost them another $3,000.
They got a new accountant – about time, if you ask me – who’s arranging for them to pay back their IRS debt in installments.
My 8 AM Language 1500 class at Nova went okay. I had us do freewriting on the subject of our names, and the students either read or explained what they wrote. I’ve always found that this is a nice icebreaker that helps me get to know their names.
Little by little, the students’ personalities are starting to become more obvious to me. The one thing that strikes me about them is they all seem like kids.
I mean, they seem really young, even younger than I remember when I taught day classes back at Broward Community College in the early 1980s and most students in my English 101 and remedial classes were just out of high school.
My gaydar picks up on one kid, Jason, who’s been the first one to arrive so far. He reminds me a little bit of Sean (who seems to have stopped replying to my emails). Of course, at this point in my life, having anything to do with any kid that age is totally out of the question, even without the teacher-student conflict of interest.
The Liberal Arts contracts were in my mailbox, and I signed them. For teaching five courses at Nova, I’ll be making $8,950 this semester.
Leaving campus at 9:15 AM, I headed for Barnes & Noble, where I got a cup of hot green tea and read the newspaper.
At Target, I bought socks, briefs and a couple of t-shirts on sale as well as some other junk. Trying on a pair of pants, I thought the legs were too wide – even for 1999.
My back ached slightly all day and still does, but it hasn’t “gone out” and I have no real pain.
It’s a pleasure to have tomorrow off, though I need to prepare for my Organizational Communications classes. My day was long but ultimately very satisfying. I like keeping busy.