A Writer’s Diary Entries From Mid-November, 1998

Wednesday, November 11, 1998

7:30 PM. After teaching the last two nights, it’s nice to be home this evening.

I’m listening to WNSU, the Nova station that has loud alternative music, and I’m going to read Rick Peabody’s manuscript. I must write the blurb tomorrow and get it out to him.

Last night I called Marc to tell him what was up with Dad. He was upset, of course, but he’d been treated at Bascom Palmer and knows it’s the best eye hospital in the U.S.

Marc, too, suggested that Dad has a malpractice case against the surgeon and also wondered if Dad doesn’t recover his vision, he might be eligible for SSI or other disability benefits.

I hung up at 11 PM (9 PM Mountain Time) because Marc wanted to watch a PBS special on Frank Lloyd Wright, whose Taliesin West complex is in North Scottsdale.

Although I slept okay, I was up at 5:30 AM. Before I went to work, I took Dad to Walgreens to see about the medications he was unable to get yesterday. I would have paid out of pocket for the brand, but the generic version was coming by noon, so I took Dad home and told him I’d stop by the drugstore after I taught my class.

He’s got one set of drugs to reduce inflammation that Mom has to put in every half hour, and they’ve been going crazy because the time keeps coming round.

I was in my office before 10 AM, so I had two hours to prepare and check email, both from students on Polaris. A firefighter was injured in a training exercise and a girl is being stalked by her “psycho ex-boyfriend” and neither could come to class.

Sat Darshan was sympathetic about Dad’s problems but she also said that if he’s blind in one eye, he should be able to collect a settlement “that will set up him and your mother for the rest of their lives.”

Right now he’s just got to get through Friday’s surgery and see what results. Jonathan told me he thinks it’s suspicious that the surgeon didn’t catch the “very large” piece of the cataract that the specialist, Dr. Scott Cousins, caught immediately.

Teresa, too, suggested I contact my old law school professors to find a local malpractice attorney, though she admitted that after all the misdiagnoses of Stewart Klein’s condition, he and Barbara were told they have no case.

On Monday I answered some ads, and the guy I was most interested in, Cami, wrote back twice already.

He’s about my age, 5’8”, 165 pounds, 31” waist, handsome from his picture, a guy who doesn’t smoke, drinks only wine, is HIV-negative and into “very safe sex.”

Born in San Juan, he came to Miami in 1979 to get his Ph.D. in Spanish literature, but he never finished and instead went into the business world. Eventually he got an M.S. in mental health counseling at Nova and is now a “freelance psychotherapist.”

He writes intelligently and asked me to snail-mail him my photo and some writing, which I’ll do. But based on my previous personals experience, I don’t expect much will happen with Cami even if we do seem compatible.

I went over to Larry Brandt’s office to see about my not getting my contracts, and it’s a good thing I spoke to him because he’d put me down to teach Speech – which I’m not qualified to do.

He got me certified provisionally to teach Management 3020, Organizational Communications, and gave me two classes in that course, including one on Thursday nights back at Rexall Sundown in Boca.

It’s fine with me, but Larry is so disorganized that I feel like taking the piles of papers on his desk and straightening them out for him. I know that if I had his job, I’d do it much more efficiently.

After I had a decent Language 2000 class, I came home, and while I was eating lunch, Gianni called from Madrid, where it was evening.

He gave me his phone number and Alejandro’s email and also Kelly’s number here, as she’s been trying to reach me.

Gianni sounded good. He said he’s pretty much adjusted to Spain, although he’s always finding out new stuff about the country.

He and Alejandro are going to Casablanca next week, and he’s excited that he will be on the African continent for the first time.

For Christmas, they’re planning to go to the Canary Islands, as Gianni decided not to return to the U.S. for a visit with his family in Maryland until next year.

Gianni said he meant to answer my last letter and wanted to say hi; I told him about Dad (who was sitting next to me as I talked to Gianni) and that otherwise I was fine.

I spent the afternoon reading and then walked for an hour at 5 PM. Aunt Sydelle called, saying she got what sounded like a bad cold in Washington visiting Scott and his family over the weekend.

Friday, November 13, 1998

7 PM. I just finished my walk half an hour ago, at about the same time that Dad and Jonathan arrived home. Tomorrow I have to take Dad back to the hospital for a 7:30 AM appointment with his surgeon.

Dr. Cousins got out the two big pieces of the cataract and most of the smaller ones; the others should dissolve by themselves. There was no retinal tear, and the doctor said that in two to three months, Dad’s vision should be okay.

This morning Dad and Jonathan left at 7:30 AM, but the 11 AM start for the operation got pushed back to 2:20 PM and the surgery didn’t end until 5:10 PM. Dad said he had a bad headache, but he’s sitting at the kitchen table, eating.

I phoned Aunt Sydelle, who went on and on about what I’m sure is a common cold which sounds much improved from when I spoke to her the other day.

I woke up at 5:30 AM, and before I went to Nova, I deposited Dad’s paycheck into his bank account. Once I was at my office, I graded the two remaining papers I had to give back today and read the main section of the Times.

Annoyed at yet another problem with JewishMail, I decided to transfer all my email to Yahoo. Since I already had the same handle, graysonric, all I had to do was transfer my address book and notify the people I write to regularly.

After speaking to Mom, I sent a message to Marc’s pager that Dad’s surgery had been delayed.

The Liberal Arts Department is having our Christmas party on Tuesday, December 8, and I’m supposed to bring all the paper goods.

I really like hanging around the Parker Building and seeing so many people I know: students and former students, full-time faculty, adjuncts, secretaries and other administrative staff.

It’s like being at UF Law School or Broward Community College or Long Island University or Brooklyn College when I was a student: a place where I feel part of the college community.

I had a pretty good class at noon, given that “revising the rough draft” isn’t the most sparkling subject to discuss. We’re coming to the end of both textbooks, and I have less than four weeks left to the semester.

In the early afternoon, I graded papers from the night classes, and at 3:30 PM, I drove over to Barnes & Noble to get iced tea and read the paper for well over an hour.

After I had a burrito when I got home, I went out for my usual late afternoon/early evening walk.

Saturday, November 14, 1998

6 PM. I woke up at 4:45 AM because I wanted to make certain I’d be up to take Dad to Bascom Palmer Eye Institute at 6:30 AM. Of course, I had plenty of time and began grading the Boca class’s papers – a job I finished by late afternoon.

Dad told me to drive the Cougar, and we went down University Drive, which becomes NW 27th Avenue In Miami-Dade. It had been a long time since I had gone that way.

A decade ago, when I was doing teacher-training workshops in Dade County public schools, I knew Miami and its suburbs really well, but I’ve lost my sense of where various neighborhoods are.

Arriving at the eye hospital at Jackson Memorial just after 7 AM, we had to wait for Dr. Cousins, a brusque man who never acknowledged my presence.

Dad was in and out of his office in five minutes, as the doctor looked at his eye after taking the bandages off and then gave him some prescription and instructions. Dr. Cousins told Dad that half the cataract had been left in the eye.

At the hospital Dad was able to see the big E at the top of the eye chart, a lot better than he did last week, when he was unable see the eye chart at all. The light coming in that obscured his vision has disappeared.

Driving home, Dad said that the doctor said his vision should improve every day. Itchiness and clear mucus discharge are normal, but sharp pain and greenish discharge mean that he has an infection.

After exercising lightly when we got home, I went to Walgreens to get Dad’s prescription and then stopped at my office at Nova for a couple of hours. In response to the email I sent out changing my address to Yahoo, I had a lot of messages.

Teresa wrote that when she had been with her parents yesterday, she had thought they were getting lethargic, but then she realized they’re just still emotionally upset over her grandmother’s death.

Sat Darshan told me to me email her at home over the weekend – I usually email her at work – to let her know how Dad was. I wrote back to her and Teresa.

Mark Bernstein said, “What is it with Miami doctors?” and told me that his 93-year-old mother’s physician gave her a shot she didn’t need, which caused her to suffer a heart attack.

Mark’s got his bags packed for Florida, so I expect to see him soon; it sounds as if his mother is not going to survive this.

Patrick wrote about his own health problems. Last week he developed a foot infection that wouldn’t go away, and the doctor discovered he has diabetes and needed to have a tooth extracted to help the foot infection go away.

Although Patrick has always been overweight, I know he doesn’t watch his diet, so I’m not shocked, but it must be horrible for him.

If I’ve had to deal with Dad’s illness, at least I’ve been very healthy, and even the two colds I got this fall were light.

Brad Richard sent me a new poem, and Kevin said he’s entertaining a visitor from Connecticut, “a real gentleman” – the highest compliment Kevin ever gives another guy.

This afternoon I graded papers and prepared the last essay assignment for the night classes, and I read today’s Times and Herald. I didn’t try to get the Sunday papers early because I still haven’t read last week’s Times Book Review.

At 5:20 PM, I went out for an hour’s walk and now I’m already sleepy because I didn’t get adequate rest last night.

While I was out, a woman who’d seen the house called and said she wanted to come over tonight and make an offer. Mom put her off, saying Dad had just been operated on. She told me that she doesn’t want to take less than her asking price and “can’t deal with moving right now.”

A little while ago, Dad knocked on my door and told me that his vision has improved a bit since this morning: “Now I can see even with my good eye closed.” His next appointment with Dr. Cousins is on Tuesday.

Monday, November 16, 1998

9:30 PM. I’ve just returned home after teaching in Coral Springs. I wish I had more energy in my evening classes, but I tend to run out of gas earlier than I’d like – though I expect my students don’t mind that I let them out a bit early.

Last night I went to Barnes & Noble for several hours and graded the ten papers I got on Friday, which I was able to hand back during today’s noon class. Now the only papers I must get back by Thursday are 14 that I got last Thursday.

Of course tonight I received about 30 papers, and today at noon I got several more. Still, that’s my job.

I didn’t have enough oomph in either class today. I got to school at 9:30 AM and had 2½ hours to email and read the New York Times. For the first time, I began to read comfortably with my reading glasses over my contact lenses.

I answered email from Tom, Sat Darshan and Teresa.

Teresa had a big Sunday dinner again yesterday. She said Paul likes it because he gets to “feel like the Pope.” Teresa told me that as a girl going to Sunday dinners, she always felt bad that at the end, they left her grandmother alone. Now she realizes that her father’s mother must have felt as relieved as Teresa does after everyone goes away and she can sit down, relax, and read the Sunday paper.

Sat Darshan told me that on Friday the judge said he doesn’t want permanent guardianship for either Kiran or Trevor.

He wants Nirankar to adopt Trevor and Sat Darshan and Ravinder to adopt Kiran Kaur, and he’s giving Becky until March to relinquish parental rights voluntarily before he takes the children away from her himself.

That sounds good, but I know that these child welfare cases can take many turns.

Tom related stories of rejections (“Neither we nor our readers are literate enough to appreciate this”), a former student who’s using The Little Book in his creative writing class, and NOCCA. I don’t think Tom will go to the new building in Bywater next fall, but who knows? Tom said he and Annette are going to California for Thanksgiving.

It started raining really hard as I left campus, and my driver’s side windshield wiper stopped going back and forth. I’ll have to take it in tomorrow, but Dad let me use the Cougar tonight, provided I filled up the tank so Jonathan can drive him to the eye hospital early tomorrow.

I went and did that, and picked up another of Dad’s prescription eye drops. Then I went to Publix, where I got $700 in cash advances.

At the post office, I got a $700 money order and added that to a $10 credit card balance refund check and put the money in the NationsBank ATM. That should take care of my deposits for the next month.

The Florida Cultural Affairs Division Guide to Grants for Organizations came out with an excerpt from “I Survived Caracas Traffic” on one page of it.

I don’t think anyone will say, hey, Grayson shouldn’t have gotten the grant based on a decade-old story, as it didn’t say that “Caracas Traffic” was my manuscript for the selection committee.

I got under the covers from 3:30 PM to 4:30 PM to rest before I made myself a Healthy Choice pizza and a garnet yam for dinner.

Driving to Coral Springs, I saw a terrific arc of a rainbow as I made my way up Pine Island Drive.

Tonight’s class went okay, but it tired me out.

Thursday, November 19, 1998

10 PM. Ken Starr has now been testifying before the House Judiciary Committee for twelve hours (with breaks) and it’s still going on.

But nothing has changed, least of all the opinions of the Clinton-haters or people like my parents, who view Starr as an evil mastermind determined to bring down the President at any cost.

Anyone who remembers the 1974 Judiciary Committee hearings on Nixon’s impeachment can’t help thinking of the remark that history plays out twice, first as tragedy, then as farce.

I can’t help agreeing with my parents and the Democrats on the committee, who believe this is a partisan witch hunt or kangaroo court – take your pick of clichés.

It’s been a long day for me. I again woke very early – at 4:30 AM – and was unable to get back to sleep. I did rest in bed with my eyes closed and was tired enough after grading some papers and eating breakfast that I decided to postpone exercising until I returned from Nova.

I had my class write in the computer lab while I continued to grade papers. This batch, and the in-class writing from tomorrow and last Tuesday, I’ll look over but not grade. Low-stakes assignments also serve their purpose.

Home at 10:30 AM, I exercised and read the Times and watched Starr’s testimony on CNN.

I still feel as though I’m drowning in paperwork. Back at the office for an hour this afternoon, I managed to grade all the papers I want to give back tomorrow.

Tonight I called Cami, and we spoke for about 45 minutes. We’re having an “early” dinner on Saturday, but I’m not enthusiastic about our date, as I don’t see us clicking.

He’s a little too different from me, and after I yapped about myself, I’m sure he probably thinks the same about me.

I don’t want to sound judgmental, but I just don’t feel comfortable with his manner. While he seems intelligent, warm, sympathetic and sophisticated, I just think we’re in different places in our lives.

I expect he’ll have really nice clothes, a tastefully decorated apartment, and a history of living his adult life as a gay man in a way that’s foreign to me.

Maybe I’ll go crazy for Cami once I get a look at him in person, so I’ll keep my mind open. After all, Gianni wasn’t much different from what I just described and we got on really well in many respects.

I don’t understand why I like to get involved with guys who are already involved, even though I didn’t know that Sean and Gianni had boyfriends when I first met them.

I guess that like one of those straight men that heterosexual women are always complaining about, I’m not fond of commitment. Certainly I’m not the domestic type.

Cami emailed that his life partner left him a year and a half ago (then he’s not a “life” partner, is he?), and I don’t want to be anyone’s life partner. Someday that may change, but I get antsy at the thought of “settling down.”

You’d think that with that attitude, I’d be much freer sexually, like a young kid going off to clubs till dawn all the time and hooking up with various people.

But of course I’m very uptight about sex – though I probably shouldn’t complain about that since it may have kept me healthy long after the deaths of gay men who were my contemporaries.

Well, we’ll see how Saturday night goes – but Cami reminds me of the guy I had a blind date with about ten years ago, the teacher who lived in Boca. Maybe I’m just too weird to meet people.

Anyway, I probably don’t have to worry, because I don’t expect Cami to be interested in me if I’m not interested in him.

At 5:30 PM, I walked for over an hour, so you think I’d be falling asleep by now. Last night I went to sleep early and actually slept about six hours.

Today I emailed Teresa and Sat Darshan and congratulated Craig Lowe on getting an award for Civil Libertarian of the Year last night from the Gainesville ACLU.

I looked at Florida Law, the UF law school newspaper that used to be the Docket, and the law school website, and saw that Liz is again having an informational meeting for potential Florida Bar Foundation Public Service Fellows at CGR.

It looks like the entire staff at CGR except the secretaries are all still there. The two and a half years I worked there as a staff attorney in social policy seem so long ago.