A Writer’s Diary Entries From Mid-September, 2001
Tuesday, September 11, 2001
Noon. I had a bad night. After getting more of those chigger bites or whatever they are – four in my pubic area – I became very anxious and depressed and decided I wanted to go home to Arizona.
But now I can’t because the U.S is under terrorist attack and all airports in the country are closed, so nobody’s going anywhere.
As impossible as it is to believe, the World Trade Center’s twin towers have been destroyed after hijacked airplanes crashed into each building; the towers collapsed soon after the inferno began.
Another hijacked jet crashed into the Pentagon, and another one apparently crashed near Pittsburgh. The president left an appearance at a Florida school and Air Force One took him to an Air Force base in Louisiana, and he’s now apparently on his way elsewhere.
In New York City, all subways have been stopped, and you can’t drive via bridges or tunnels into Manhattan.
Teresa just called to say that things are crazy there, but she had to get off because her parents came in from Brooklyn, figuring that they’re safer in Long Island.
Sat Darshan called earlier. She couldn’t get Ravinder on the phone because there was some kind of phone shutdown, but another friend called him and he was safely asleep in Brooklyn.
Debbie brought a little TV into the office that played small grainy images of CBS and NBC stations from Springfield, Missouri, and the radio is using the network news broadcasts although they’re now breaking up and going back to local coverage.
I slept only a few hours, from maybe 12:30 AM to 3:10 AM, and as I really felt awful, I took an Ativan and more Klonopin.
Calling the Delta phone number, I found I could get a change to fly to Phoenix any day this week, but now I’m out of luck. Of course, everyone in the country is stranded.
The Ozarks are about the safest place I could be.
Nobody knows what’s going on. There’s sort of a state of emergency. As Debbie said, it’s like Pearl Harbor “only nobody knows who did this.” The best bet is someone like Osama bin Laden or another Muslim terrorist group.
I can’t imagine the skyline of lower Manhattan without the ugly twin towers. “I never liked working there,” Teresa said today.
I just heard someone on the radio – an eyewitness – saying the collapse of the World Trade Center was surreal: “It turned to confetti.”
There’s no telling how many people are dead in New York and how many injured. I feel stunned and numb, but I guess Americans feel the same way.
*
7 PM. The good news is that Debbie left her TV for me to watch. The bad news is, well, the bad news.
Everyone is as shattered and numb as I said I was at noon. I’ve cried a lot. I’m sure I knew some of the thousands of people estimated as dead in the rubble of the World Trade Center.
Bush is back in D.C. and will be on to address the public in an hour. My own anxiety seems so small as to make me feel ashamed. September 11, 2001 is being compared to December 7, 1941 and November 22, 1963.
It took a while for it to sink in for me and for me to get over my petty concerns about loneliness and chiggers.
Who could do any work today? Who wouldn’t want a benzodiazepine for anxiety? It’s like the sudden death of someone close.
I can’t imagine lower Manhattan without those twin towers. I could not believe that they could collapse. It’s sickening.
Listening to NPR about the people who jumped to avoid burning to death had me bawling like a baby. The world seems a different world. Is that melodramatic? I think of the cry of the announcer at the Hindenburg disaster: “Oh, the humanity!”
Cindy hugged me tonight. She said she wandered around town all day, feeling lost. Everything is closed from the post offices to the stock exchanges.
I know New York City so well, and I could identify with the people walking down Flatbush Avenue from midtown Manhattan.
And here I am in the isolated Ozarks. I have more stuff to report, but I don’t feel like it.
September 12, 2001
3 PM. I feel guilty about feeling happy when the world is such a mess.
Last night I kept the TV on all night, as I periodically awakened. I heard NBC News segue into the CBC, but I managed to get over eight hours of good sleep.
In one dream, Pete Cherches had written a comic book satirizing me and my life – and rather than being offended, I was delighted and laughed at my own stupidity.
This morning, unlike yesterday, I exercised and I went out in the first tram after 9 AM; the conductor sat next to me. I was the only passenger, and she had a bad cold, so just when I thought I’d escaped catching Frank’s cold, this hypochondriac has to worry again.
I got the special edition of USA Today and the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette (“Changed Forever” was the headline with a shot of the burning, but still standing, World Trade Center taken from the Brooklyn Bridge) and took them up to the Local Flavor Café, where the waitress said they hadn’t made tea yet but would start right away.
I read the news about the terrorism.
Earlier when I’d exercised to the rock station, I heard them dispense with music and instead take phone calls about “American Under Attack,” as NBC put it.
One caller bemoaned gasoline price markups; another said, of New Yorkers: “They may be Yankees, but they’re our Yankees,” and most were very upset.
I was impressed with a woman whose husband goes to the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville describing how he and his professor stopped some younger guys from harassing the many Middle Eastern students at the college – and how the radio host agreed totally.
Bush’s speech was okay, but he’s more like Carter during the Iran hostage crisis than FDR after Pearl Harbor. Maybe he’ll grow in stature.
The waitress said my iced tea was free “because today we’re giving thanks to our good regular customers.” I left a dollar tip and thanked her.
At the trolley depot, I overheard two guys talking about how the World Trade Center collapsed, and I spoke with them. They were from California and didn’t sound crazy about flying home after the airports open again.
Back here, I had lunch and then went to the library to go online.
Kate Gale asked if I was in New York; I told her no, and thanked her for checking on me. The Valentine Publishing Group forwarded a note from the writer Vincent Turco, who was trying to get in touch with me, but found that none of my old email addresses (JewishMail, AOL, etc.) worked.
Since they didn’t include his email address, I just called Vincent at his home in Memphis. He says he really admires my work a lot. Vincent’s had a novel published by St. Martin’s and he admires me. Wow!
I’ll email him tomorrow.
Frank walked into the library and came over to the computer. He was feeling better, and he said we could get together after dinner tonight.
I went on with my email. Rochelle Ratner sent a mass email saying she and Ken were okay, “safe at home,” and Tom in Stuttgart wrote just before taking off with Annette for a two-week vacation in Switzerland.
The Washington Post is probably taking his book review of Greg Bottoms’s Sentimental, Heartbroken Rednecks, he said, and the reaction to Tom’s out-of-print titles has been good.
Mark Bernstein said yesterday was like the JFK assassination for him, a loss not so much of innocence but of confidence, and he worries about his daughters in D.C and Chicago.
I actually did some editing on “Lindy and Me,” working on it as an email text. I want to expand the story.
I wrote back to Sat Darshan, Tom, Mark and a few other friends.
In the postal mail, I got a reply to my letter from Martin Hester. He included a $239.70 check for I Survived Caracas Traffic royalties.
The book is still in print, with about 70 copies left, some of which Amazon.com buys every once in a while.
Martin said that in order to make money, Avisson Press had to start publishing children’s books, biographies of famous people that sold to libraries. But lately the books are just not getting reviewed anymore.
Martin said I could buy copies of Caracas Traffic at cost, $4.35, and he’d just put it out of print if I wanted to do an Authors Guild Backinprint.com edition from 
iUniverse.
I checked out the New York Times website today and read the local news on the terrorism, with all their chauvinistic editorials and op-ed columns.
Even Justin Clouse, on Justin’s Life, who never mentions stuff in the news, did a journal entry about the World Trade Center and Pentagon bombings.
As I left the library, Kitty told me that Cedric will be doing a one-man Macbeth on the library steps a week from Friday night.
Walking back from the library, I got stopped by a car with an Oklahoma license plate. It was a group of young tourists wanting to know how to get to the Daily Planet Internet Café.
I must be a gen-you-wine Eurekan by now, I thought, because I was able to tell the guy two different routes he could take.
“Thanks, Woody,” the driver said as he drove off. I guess my New York accent sounds like Woody Allen’s.
Thursday, September 13, 2001
7 PM. Like Sat Darshan, I guess I’m a tragedy junkie, because I haven’t been as freaked out as everyone else about the terrorism.
Yes, it bothers me, but maybe because I expect the world to be horrible, I’m just not totally shocked. I never feel safe, so what difference does terrorism make to me?
Actually, my life has been wonderful since the tragedy. Today I learned that I’m a 
finalist for the job at Nova, and they want me to come to campus on Oct. 17, 22, 23 or 24; Thelma Sampedro said she’d make arrangements, but I said any of those days was fine.
Mom, when I called, gave me her typical reaction: she’s worried I’ll get my hopes up and be disappointed.
No wonder the loss of thousands of lives doesn’t affect me the way it does other people. Of course I’m happy. At least I’ll get a trip to South Florida out of this.
Teresa suggested I could change my airline ticket and stay longer in Eureka Springs.
Now, instead of being depressed about having nothing to look forward to when I return to Arizona, I can relax about job-hunting and await my trip to Fort Lauderdale.
Yesterday afternoon I called Josh, who said he saw the World Trade Center plane crash and fire from his window at work a few blocks away.
Josh said he’d call me back, but he didn’t, so I phoned Alice. She saw the collapse coming home from the gym on Fifth Avenue and 14th Street. Of course from there, you can see the World Trade Center straight downtown. I guess I should say, “you could see it.”
They won’t let cars below 14th Street, and June and her daughter needed to show a picture ID to walk home after staying the night at Alice’s. I got off because Alice was expecting Peter.
Almost immediately, the phone rang again. It was Simon, who sounded the same as ever. He’d called Josh, and Josh told him to call me. Josh couldn’t get a long-distance line out of Manhattan because all the circuits were busy.
It was good to hear Simon’s voice. He still lives in Marin County, but works in San Mateo, and he said he’s bald. I said I had hair, but couldn’t see.
Anyway, I went to dinner with Cindy. She knows my tastes now, although she did make brownies. (I had a half of one, which was still too much fat for me.)
Frank came by at 7 PM, and Crescent was there by then, so we all chatted about the bombings and Frank and I set off on a little walk.
Cindy was right behind us so we waited for her. She told us that Crescent said her menus for dinner are too starchy and criticized this choice.
Cindy tried to explain my bizarre eating habits – after all, I’m the only person at the colony now – but I think Crescent is having such a problem letting go that she still 
thinks of this as her and Ned’s bed-and-breakfast.
I guess that’s natural – and Arkansas is The Natural State, after all.
Frank seemed to know everyone we passed on our walk, and I actually knew some of them, too, at least by sight.
We went into the art gallery of Cindy’s friend James, near the library, where she was going to join him in watching CNN. James’s gallery has some great work, including a couple of his own paintings. He’s a pipe-smoking, grey-bearded old hippie, and he’s really nice.
Frank and I walked a little further. We have some of the same references: “Don’t step in the ungawa” from that old joke, and he also thinks of Plano, Texas, as “plain old Texas.”
When we got back to Dairy Hollow I showed Frank around my studio and I said I’d call him soon. I don’t know if Frank is attracted to me, but I’m not attracted to him.
Frank’s friend is supposed to fly here from Chicago for JazzFest this weekend, but the airports are still closed and few flights are running. Sandy has been stranded in Milwaukee, Debbie says.
I took the TV from the office into my room and got the CBS station from Springfield. I fell asleep to Dan Rather, and once again, I didn’t wake up until my usual time in the morning.
I exercised, bathed and took the tram into town just to buy USA Today and mail some credit card payments. Then I went to the library to get on the computer.
Dr. Susan wrote, asking if I was okay. I wrote her a long note about how I was doing.
Sat Darshan isn’t sure whether Ravinder will be able to fly home next week; she’d like him to stay in Phoenix and not return to New York, where Sikh cabdrivers are being beaten up by morons who think they are Osama bin Laden Arabs.
Mark Bernstein was very upset by the bombings and concerned about rising anti-Semitism, but I see only Muslims and Arabs, not Jews, being beaten up and harassed.
I completed my re-editing of “Life with Lindy,” deciding to leave it end in 1991 even though I’d like to update it by adding new sections going to 2001. We’ll see.
The big email I got was from Vincent Turco.
Vincent was so sweet: he wanted to tell me “what an amazing writer” I am, how I make him feel good about being a writer, that I’m “inspiring” and “ahead of [my] time,” that he’s in awe of me.
For Low Blue Flame, his webzine, he wants me to be one of four writers to write something based on one of a series of drawings or paintings. (I didn’t have time to see the website today.)
“Write whatever you want,” Vincent wrote. “This is largely a ploy to get to know you.”
I’m totally flattered. I’ll write him back tomorrow when I get my hour at the library.
Back home, I had lunch, read USA Today, wrote a little, and called Teresa. Diane had come from the Village to stay with her.
Teresa’s parents are in Mattituck. The attack badly affected her father. He watched the Twin Towers fall from the middle of Conselyea Street and threw up. A World War II veteran, he said it was “worse than Pearl Harbor.”
It was good to talk to Teresa and hear Paul in the background talking about feeding the dogs. I miss being part of the household in Locust Valley.
Cindy made black bean soup and corn muffins for dinner tonight.
My life seems to make sense.
Friday, September 14, 2001
8 PM. Debbie left the TV again, so I’ve been watching CBS’s coverage of Attack on America, as I did most of last night, when I slept only a little: mostly from 3 AM to 6:30 AM, when I’d usually awaken.
Today was a national day of prayer and remembrance. After President Bush went to an interfaith service at the National Cathedral, he flew up to New York to meet with the exhausted rescue workers, who haven’t found anyone alive in the rubble in days.
Obviously, all of the 5,000 missing people are dead.
Bush said this is the first war of the twenty-first century, and Congress has given the President funds and the power to conduct that war. I still have no conception of what kind of war this will be.
Air traffic has slowly started up, but we are now in a state of national emergency, and things will not be normal for a long time.
As I wrote yesterday, this seems to have affected me less than it has most people. I’m almost certain that’s because, as an anxiety-ridden person, I have lots of fears and have always felt that the world was always a dangerous place.
Yes, I’ve been shocked, but not totally surprised, that horrors like the collapse of the World Trade Center can happen.
Also – and it is terrible to admit this – but I am glad the 1990s are finally over, that people will now think of something other than their stock portfolios and material possessions.
I always had the feeling that I would do best in a time of crisis, and maybe the era we’ve entered is that kind of time. We’ll see.
While even pilots and flight attendants feel skittish about flying, I have only my usual fears, believing that the odds of my being skyjacked are nil.
It was a beautiful day here in Eureka. On the trolley ride downtown, where the mayor and I were the only passengers, I 
noticed all the flags out on the front porches and in the yards.
At dinner, Cindy told me she went to a noon service at St. Elizabeth, the town’s Catholic church.
The only thing I did was head for the café with my USA Today to drink my iced tea and read the news. After lunch back here, I used the computer at the library. It turns out that Vincent Turco’s drawings, the ones he wants writers to make our contributions based on, were out of a 1930s coloring book.
I selected one drawing of a young cowboy in a stable with a horse and a colt, and I submitted a revised version of the old Sun-Tattler column about my horse suffrage campaign in Davie.
I wrote Vincent that it’s probably too corny and mainstream for him and I’ll understand if he can’t use it.
I thanked him profusely for the kind words about my writing and told him how much they mean to me, especially during this period of my life when I’ve come to wonder whether I haven’t “ruined my life” by constantly returning to a “career” as a writer.
Vincent’s own writing in his novel seems so graceful that it makes me feel like a klutz.
Susan wrote that she’s very worried about the plans for her son’s wedding, which was to take place in Hawaii. Her son and his fiancée were supposed to leave tomorrow, and she doesn’t know if she, her husband, their parents and other guests will be able to get flights.
She said it sounds as if I’m doing what I need for myself.
Ronna wrote that all her friends and family in New York are okay, and she asked me for Teresa’s email address so she can get some advice about Long Island real estate.
Richard Kostelanetz wrote that he’s all right, but the whole fire company from Beach 61st Street near his office, is missing in the World Trade Center rubble and 
that Rockaway residents can no longer take pride in being able to see the twin towers from the Atlantic.
Mark Bernstein sent me what sounded like a Zionist diatribe, which made me angry, so I ignored it and told him the good news about being a finalist for the Nova law school job. Sat Darshan said she was happy for me.
Debbie spent much of the day in Fayetteville, but she took me shopping before she left for home late this afternoon.
Saturday, September 15, 2001
7 PM. Cedric came back early, and it was good to have him as company during dinner. He had driven all night from the nudist colony in Clarksville, Tennessee, where he’d given three performances after the school performance in Maryville.
Earlier I went with him to get some wine at Booze Brothers and saw how crowded the town is for JazzFest. He needed to go to bed soon after dinner because he was so sleep-deprived.
Last night I again slept well. CBS has returned to its normal TV schedule, as have the other networks, so if I watch TV tonight, it will be junk.
I felt good this morning. It’s odd how since the bombings, I no longer get that morning anxiety. I guess bankruptcy, joblessness, and my other worries pale in the face of the enormity of what’s happened.
I used the office computer to log on today, and I read the New York Times online. Frank Rich’s column, as usual, hit the mark.
Like me, he sees there might be some salutary effects if American culture did in fact change as of September 11. It will end our decade-long frivolous and decadent belief that we can have it all without hard choices.
The media has done well, giving up trivia like Gary Condit, and 
before that, all these hyped stories (Columbine, Elian Gonzalez, shark attacks).
If we are at war, as Frank keeps telling me every time we talk, it’s unclear what kind of war this will be – or how long it will last.
Mark Savage emailed me that in his opinion, Mayor Giuliani has had, like Churchill, his finest hour during this crisis. But how will this play out naturally in the weeks and months to come, I don’t know.
Right now it looks as if Americans will be called on to sacrifice the way the recently-fetishized World War II “Greatest Generation” did. But are we really up to it, or were the terrorists right in their judgment of America?
To go by the way New Yorkers and the people who’ve come there to volunteer have behaved, I would say yes.
When I was getting ready in the bathroom this morning, I found myself singing “The Impossible Dream.” I feel that even 
if I don’t get the Nova job, I’m going to be able to make myself useful in a difficult time – even if I haven’t quite figured out how I’m going to do it.
I guess if this were after Pearl Harbor, I’d try to enlist in the military or play some other part in the war effort.
With the end of the bull market and the collapse of Internet stocks, we were already heading toward a new era, but Tuesday may have plunked us down into a new, uncertain time.
Fran Lebowitz said on NPR that pre-Tuesday movies, TV shows and books already seem outdated and old-fashioned.
I think the iUniverse paperback of With Hitler in New York has the World Trade Center on the cover photo of New York harbor. If so, that will only reinforce that those stories were written in a very different time.
At 10 AM, I went to the library, and on the computer I wrote to everyone to ask how they are doing. Pete Cherches is fine, on his way to a real jazz fest – at Monterey.
Mark Savage first joked that he was trapped on the first floor of 
I.S. 93, buried under a pile of his fifth graders’ papers. But then he became eloquent as he described parents coming to sign out their kids on Tuesday, his horror at looking down Flatbush Avenue and seeing and smelling the plume of smoke from where the twin towers were.
He also wrote about how, when school resumed on Thursday, the kids in his class – two of whom lost relatives – wrote about their fears of war and going outside.
Jeff Baron is fine and glad that theaters reopened on Thursday night.
Patrick said South Florida, “home” to most of the hijackers, is traumatized, that his daughter is anxious, that the sounds of planes overhead makes him nervous – but he’s very glad that the Middle Eastern students at Broward Community College have been left alone.
Justin and Larry said they’re “okay but shell-shocked.”
Josh said his life is returning to normal, that he has a photo ID and a big New York City Department of Corrections jacket to wear to get back into his office downtown, where he’s trying to get the phone system to work.
So far nobody I know has suffered a loss. Thank God for email.
I confess – and feel guilty about this trivia – that not hearing back from Vincent Turco is very disappointing.
Maybe my reply and article turned him off. I guess I can’t know why he didn’t write back. I hope he doesn’t think I’m a creep. I’ve already started to get too much of a crush on him.
Back from the library, I called Frank, but so far he hasn’t responded to my message.
The airlines are saying they may all go bankrupt. I wonder if my flights two weeks from Monday will go ahead as scheduled.
Sunday, September 16, 2001
8 PM. Right now the world is a little too much with me, and I feel worn out even though I slept well last night, incorporating the plots of crime dramas on the TV into my dreams.
I’ve heard from more friends. Mikey smelled smoke when he got out of the PATH train at the World Trade Center and he had to witness people jumping from tower one. He didn’t see the second plane, but he heard the explosion, and debris fell all around him.
Mikey said it was like being in a movie, with people running and screaming, and when he got to his building, 10 Broadway, they were told to evacuate. He went to Penn Station and took a train back to Jersey: “It is a day I would rather forget.”
The saddest thing I heard today came from Sat Darshan by email and Dad by phone: a Mesa convenience store owner, a Sikh member of Sat Darshan’s gurdwara, was killed, presumably because some idiot thought he was an Arab Muslim.
It makes me sick. I’m worried for Ravinder and Sat Darshan’s community. Is this going to be like after Pearl Harbor, when Japanese-Americans were thrown into concentration camps? Are we going to have to give up our civil liberties?
I could barely read the many pages of coverage in the Sunday New York Times I got at Gazebo Books this afternoon.
When I asked Virginia, the bookstore owner, for her take on it, she mentioned how Bush had been planning to go it alone and abrogate the ABM treaty and not sign the Kyoto Protocol.
Then she said: “But now, all of a sudden, we see the U.S. must ask all other countries to join us in whatever the hell this ‘war’ is.”
Patrick said his priest thundered against Falwell and Robertson for saying this happened because God is punishing America for tolerating abortion and homosexuality.
“For once, I was proud to be a Catholic,” Patrick wrote, “when he affirmed that no God he knows works that way.”
Today I probably used the office computer too much, emailing friends, revising “Life With Lindy” even more, and working on other stories and what I hope will be my In The Sixties book.
I was also crazy over Vincent’s reply. He said that his initial impulse was to respond immediately, but he needed not to come off as too fawning.
I identified with everything he wrote about being a writer: feeling inadequate, being aware that success goes mostly to those who have connections and good politics, about doing his webzine as something pure and fun.
I told him I know how hard it can be to have one book out and to be his age.
He said he read about my work in an essay mentioning how Joyce Carol Oates used to be an innovative short story writer in the 1970s (as she was) but how “success” led her astray. Unlike unsuccessful me, I guess.
Vincent has stirred me to take risks in my writing again.
He may drive over here from Hardy, Arkansas, next weekend. Of course I’d love to meet him, but I’m scared I’ll fall in love with him – which would be an embarrassment, reminding me of how Brad Gooch told me he felt when John Ashbery came on to him in the GAA Firehouse back in the late 1970s.
Well, maybe Vincent won’t come, but I feel I’ve found a 
kindred spirit. I downloaded excerpts from his novel. but unfortunately, I couldn’t get a copy at Gazebo Books.
Tonight I need to relax and take a break from thinking about my own writing.
God help us all.
Wednesday, September 19, 2001
7 PM. I perked up today. Thelma Sampedro called late this morning, and she said my interview at Nova would be on Tuesday, October 23, and I should try to get in the afternoon before.
When I went online at the library at 2 PM, I made reservations for Delta flights leaving Phoenix on Friday, October 19, and returning the following Friday.
Assuming I can stay at Aunt Sydelle boyfriend Frank’s condo, I wanted to make sure I could arrive and leave South Florida at a reasonable hour so I could see Frank and Sydelle.
Otherwise, I would have taken nonstop flights on America West that arrive very late at night and leave very early in the morning.
I want to have a week to spend in South Florida and visit with friends and see the places that I so fondly remember.
I told Thelma that I won’t need the law school to book a hotel room for me because I was staying with relatives.
Coming in on Friday evening, I’ll have a chance to adjust to the three-hour time difference, and I can go to Nova on Saturday and check out the bulletin boards and get a feel for the law school.
I’m very excited about this job. Before I left the library, I checked my email. Rosalie had written that she’d spoken to Billie Jo Kaufman, who was very impressed by me.
They are looking for someone with a creative imagination to use a fresh budget for the program, and Rosalie told Billie Jo that I was very creative, and would be good working with students.
Rosalie said that someone at Nova – maybe Ben Mulvey? – had told Billie Jo that they never should have let me get away in the first place.
I’m going to make a full court press for this job, preparing all that I can. I really want it.
Yes, I’ll be disappointed if I don’t get it, but at least I’ll get a free trip to South Florida – well, I’ll pay for the Hertz rental car and other stuff, but I’ll be reimbursed for the flights.
I’ll also know that I’ve been seriously considered for a good job at a law school.
The interview is also going to be just at the time when I got sick a year ago. If the interview at Nassau Community College and my trip to New York in April marked the beginning of my real recovery from mental illness, then this trip six months later will mark the end of that recovery.
Yesterday I felt logy most of the day and had a little stomachache after dinner. Luckily, it passed quickly and I slept very well.
It was cool and cloudy again this morning, but after I exercised and bathed, I took the trolley downtown and read USA Today at the Local Flavor Café as usual.
When I got home, I revised “The Best Barnes & Noble in America.”
But I began thinking that I may want to give that title to a different kind of story, one that’s funnier and more open, lighter and more satiric. I’m thinking about using the company’s CEO Leonard Riggio as a character.
It would be something more like “The Greatest Short Story 
That Absolutely Ever Was.” So I need to think about that for a while.
I went with Debbie and Cindy to Hart’s and got my some of my own groceries even though they bought a lot of the stuff I’d asked for.
After putting my groceries away, I trotted to the library, where I chatted with Frank and the librarians before going on the computer at 2 PM.
Vincent wrote a long email, mostly about book reviewers and how they marginalize, compartmentalize, and generally get it wrong – as did the reviewer for Kirkus who called the narrator of his novel “retarded” and then other reviewers picked up on that.
I’d expressed trepidation about meeting him, and Vincent said he did find that one writer he admired turned out to be a know-it-all and pompous asshole, and that four others were “major pedophiles.”
I told him that I’m probably not either of those things. Of course, it’s good that he warned me off making a fool of myself – not that I can really imagine making a pass at him, cute as he might be.
Okay, I admit I’ve fantasized about him, but I can clear my head of that and be much more relaxed knowing that nothing sexual will happen.
I mean, it would kind of be sexual harassment, wouldn’t it? Getting Vincent’s respect is more important to me.
Besides, he won’t be staying overnight. We’ll probably just talk and walk around downtown Eureka.