Someone With a Pen: Richard Grayson’s Diary

Sunday, May 14, 2000

7 PM. I had some pleasant dreams last night. I was in New Orleans in one, and in another, I got a call from Farrar, Straus saying they wanted to publish my new book.

I made a few trips to the office today. A guy in Phoenix answered my ad, but he calls himself “Stalwart” and posed in a white athletic shirt and briefs.

He’s very muscular and sounded like a humorless jock even though he’s not dumb – he prefers art house films, for example – but I got the vibes of possible domestic violence from him, and that’s enough to make me not respond.

Coincidentally, this issue came up while I was reading the Sunday Times at the Barnes & Noble café when Jim came over to join me. He said he’d read The Silicon Valley Diet last week and this morning he read Eating at Arby’s.

Jim said that things are rough because he’s ending an eight-month relationship. I sympathized, but then he told me that he had to get a court order against the guy, an ex-hustler named Barry, after he began to beat Jim up at the apartment building Jim owns.

“At the beginning of our relationship, he gave me a black eye,” Jim said “but he swore it would never happen again.” How a Harvard Ph.D. can be so stupid is beyond me.

When, later in our conversation, I mentioned Gainesville, Jim said he knew judges there because Barry had several bad-check charges in Alachua County.

Why does an otherwise intelligent man make such a stupid choice in a boyfriend? “I guess I like the excitement,” Jim said with a sheepish expression.

I learned that his mother killed herself in 1980 and that his father disowned him a few years later because Jim is gay, so I guess he’s got self-esteem issues.

But jeez, I’m a lot healthier being alone. Not one of the guys I’ve ever even contemplated having a relationship with could be capable of the kind of violence and lawlessness Jim’s ex-boyfriend practiced.

Just last night, Jim said, the guy phoned and threatened his life. If a guy ever hit me – and I can fantasize about wrestling or boxing or getting punched – but if a guy ever actually did that, I’d press criminal charges and also sue him.

But then I don’t think I’ve ever had a guy I’ve been involved with even yell at me.

Maybe I’m just too judgmental. Or squeamish. Late this afternoon I saw two Muscovy ducks going at each other like they were going to kill each other, and it horrified me.

I don’t know whether they were violently fighting or mating, though I suppose that these two activities are often not mutually exclusive.

I did enjoy talking with Jim about his interest in Irish Studies and Ireland. He asked me if I had lived in Silicon Valley because I seemed to know the area in my story. He grew up in Palo Alto, so I take that as a compliment.

On the book front, there were no reviews, of course. The Open Book, the gay bookstore in Sacramento, wants to order my book through a distributor that specializes in LGBT titles, so I wrote them both back and also forwarded the emails to Kate – not that I expect her to do anything positive.

Rick wrote, saying his novella is out and Twyla is colicky, so he and Margaret aren’t sleeping much.

This afternoon I called Mom to wish her a happy Mother’s Day, though she called me right back on a cell phone that, because of a computer glitch, was giving free calls all day.

Later in the day I called Aunt Sydelle. Frank had taken her to the cemetery west of Miami where Grandma Sylvia and Grandpa Nat are buried.

Sydelle said it doesn’t seem like a cemetery because there are no headstones, just the footstones, and no individual plots. On the other hand, the costs are cheap because there’s no perpetual care. I guess they just mow over the footstones.

Sydelle said that Scott left Washington for Tel Aviv this morning via New York/Kennedy for a weeklong business trip. She and Frank are planning to go to Phoenix in July, and maybe look around Scottsdale for a place to live.

She complained that Miami is too crowded and too Cuban and Hispanic now. I guess the Elian Gonzalez case crystallized even for those of us down here how “foreign” Miami seems.

My back is still messed up, but I managed to go through papers and throughout a lot of my manuscript boxes, most of which were falling apart.

I still have some of the Sunday paper left to read, but I’m probably going to watch The Simpsons and Malcolm in the Middle now.

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Monday, May 15, 2000

8:30 PM. Soon after finishing breakfast at 7 AM, I went to the office. Kate wrote that she would investigate the LGBT book distributor and said my book has been sent out to “a long list of reviewers.” Whatever.

On Lexis, I found the San Francisco Chronicle article giving the addresses of Bay Area bookstores, and that got me to write down the names of about 20 local Borders, Barnes & Nobles, and other bookstores and send them my mailing along with notes saying that Sunnyvale, Campbell or local streets were mentioned in my book.

I updated my curriculum vita and sent it to Dan Bivona, the chairman of ASU’s English Department, asking if he had any available adjunct courses. To my surprise, he wrote back immediately saying there was a good chance he could find a section of or two for me.

His office manager asked me to send her transcripts, letters of recommendation – Ben said he would write one – and a statement of my teaching philosophy, which I wrote and printed out late this afternoon.

Searching for all this stuff was a good incentive for me to go through a lot of my xeroxed papers, and I now have five trash bags filled with papers I can throw out.

When Mailboxes Etc. opened at 8:30 AM, I brought the huge package over there – my back is better – and later in the day I brought over two more packages to the post office. So I actually got a lot accomplished today.

Teresa emailed that she and Paul loved St. Martin – “though it’s expensive” – and she said the Mother’s Day family stuff went okay. Jade got her a plant.

“I need to cut this short,” Teresa ended the email, explaining that she had to rush to catch an early morning ferry to Fire Island.

I also heard from Sat Darshan, who also said her Mother’s Day was pretty good; Gurujot gave her a wonderful foot rub.

But last night at 12:30 AM Kiran barfed, and Sat Darshan had to change her sheets and bedclothes, and then the baby wanted to play. Ravinder, sleeping right next to them, never woke up.

I told Sat Darshan I admired her for her maternal dedication and Ravinder for his sleeping through the disaster, but I know she felt very tired today.

Her friend Rose in Germany phoned and among other things said that Helmut has become a full-fledged alcoholic who rarely works. I’m not surprised.

Helmut’s wife has a very good job and supports him. As Sat Darshan said, it’s to his wife’s credit that she’s stayed with him all these years.

I also heard from Gerard, the grad student in Tucson who was in his beloved laboratory. Although I don’t expect anything more to come of our email correspondence, Gerard seems goofily sweet.

WT told me that he’s really enjoying Lincoln’s Doctor’s Dog, and of course I always feel good when I hear something like that.

I can’t get over how nice Dr. Bivona at ASU was to me. Even if nothing more happens, he’s already treated me better than I ever was by the English Department at the University of Florida, which seemed so closed to outsiders.

I think most big state universities use graduate teaching assistants more than they do adjuncts.

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Wednesday, May 17, 2000

7 PM. I’m resisting the temptation to go back to my office or do chores because I’m a bit stressed and need to relax.

I ate breakfast at 6 AM and went over to the office to deal with the email. Amazon.com accepted me for their Advantage program with Diet, Narcissism, The Greatest and Arby’s.

Of course I already sent the books to Arizona, so I’ll have to wait to ship them to Amazon until I get out there. But later I saw they put up my descriptions of the books: a few blurbs and that tacky “About the Author” squib.

I got emails from Anthony and Evan, those two guys in New York who answered my Planet Out ad, along with one from Joshua, that Asian volleyball player in Australia.

At home, I exercised and got out onto the highways in time to get to Auto Driveaway just as Ms. Muller opened at 8 AM. After she inspected the car and wrote down all the dents and other irregularities, I signed the slip and gave her the keys. Soon the Mercury will be on its way to Arizona.

Walking two blocks to Andrews Avenue, I caught the bus after waiting about fifteen minutes while I read the Times Op-Ed page.

After all these years, it was my first time riding a Broward County bus; like the buses in Gainesville, it attracts largely a poor nonwhite ridership.

At the terminal downtown, I transferred to a bus whose ultimate destination was the Aventura Mall. Taking it through the mostly black neighborhoods of Fort Lauderdale and Plantation onto Davie Road, I exited when it stopped at BCC-Central.

I walked across the familiar campus and crossed College Avenue to Nova. In the Parker Building, I got a cold bottle of water and went to my office, where I rested for half an hour.

WT wrote a letter to everyone in the Liberal Arts Division thanking them for his year here. Rather than go back to his home in Dallas, he accepted a job in Baltimore. I know that he liked the D.C. area when he lived there as a graduate student.

The walk home from my office wasn’t bad, especially because it had gotten cloudy, but my foot began hurting by the time I got to my apartment, where I collapsed on the bed and read the paper until lunchtime.

At 1 PM, I went to the Delta ticket office to get my new flight from Phoenix to LaGuardia on June 28, six weeks from today. It leaves at 11:30 AM rather than 7:20 AM.

From there I headed to Barnes & Noble, where I sipped iced tea, finished the Times and read the Time issue on the 21st century workplace and economy.

The article lists teachers as one of the ten most endangered occupations because of online learning, but I don’t believe that computers will ever replace most instruction. People want face-to-face interaction and high-touch.

Back at the office, I found a note from Jenafer, who is still working for Valentine Publishing Group even though she’s now in Texas. She said Kate asked her to get my traveling schedule so she can arrange readings for me in different cities.

I like Jenafer, and while I’m not crazy about readings, I’ll do them if it can help sales of the book. And I guess I was wrong about Kate not wanting to do anything to help me with Diet.

In today’s mail, I got the application for a community college teaching license from Arizona. I need to get it notarized and have to get my transcripts sent out. Luckily, I already have a form to send to the registrar at Brooklyn College.

When I called my student loan agencies, I was relieved to hear that I’m now in deferment. And I got a $200 credit line increase on my First Consumers National Bank Visa.

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Friday, May 19, 2000

10 PM. In a futile attempt to find something about my book in either the May 15 Publishers Weekly or the new issue of TWN – despite my gut feeling that Jesse Monteagudo will not end up reviewing the book – I put a lot of mileage on the old Chrysler, which I half-expected to die at any time.

Last evening I took State Road 84 home from Bob’s News and Books on Andrews Avenue and South 15th Street, recalling how I used to get to Fort Lauderdale before I-595 was built.

Driving on S.R. 84, U.S. 1, Hollywood Boulevard and other streets that contain places from the “old” Broward County, I was reminded how much things have changed since I first arrived here as a visitor in 1979 and 1980 and as a resident in the years after that.

In a way, I miss the almost rural or at least small-town feel of those days, before power centers and massive public works projects and the towers of downtown.

Where did all the cows go? And the little white birds that perched on their backs? My 1982 campaign to give Davie’s horses the right to vote now seems both prescient and poignant. Or am I just flattering myself?

Last night I had two silent calls at around 10:30 PM. I’d given my phone number to Evan and Anthony in New York, two guys who are more interested in me than I am in either of them – but I had email from both this morning and one said he lost my number and the other said my line had been busy. That was because I took the phone off the hook after the hangups.

I deliberately stayed out of the apartment most of the day, not wanting to be here for the “pre-moveout inspection.”

Before 9 AM, I was at Mailboxes Etc., sending off another package. Tonight I’ve got three more boxes to mail to Arizona and the last of my xeroxes and other papers.

The major items I still have to ship are my TV, my antique video player and my microwave, but I’ll wait a week on those.

At the office I answered the few emails I had and initiated messages to Sat Darshan and Tom. (I told Tom I’d read some great reviews of Debra’s translation of Robert Walser’s The Robbers.)

From Nova, I drove to Aventura, and at the Borders there, as well as at the nearby Northeast Regional Metro-Dade Public Library, I found the May 8 Publishers Weekly. (At the Borders by Sawgrass Mills, the one where Nathan works, their latest issues of PW are still from April 10 and 24.)

When I phoned Aunt Sydelle, I got her answering machine so I didn’t get a chance for a goodbye visit while I was in her area.

Driving home via Biscayne Boulevard/U.S. 1 Into Hallandale Beach and then Hollywood, I recalled my first encounter with that then-lonesome road when I drove in the early morning from my grandparents’ condo in North Miami Beach to the Diplomat Hotel, where the New York delegation met during the 1972 Democratic National Convention.

After making myself lunch in my apartment, I went back to my office at Nova, where I read the paper, got today’s pay stub, and put With Hitler in New York on my Advantage list at Amazon.com. I hope they accept it; I enjoyed writing a description of the book.

Seeing WT, I congratulated him on his job at Johns Hopkins. He said that he and his wife – who never left Dallas and moved here because she dislikes South Florida so much – planned to live somewhere between Baltimore and Washington, where they were quite happy in the 1980s.

I made two more attempts to find TWN – in mid-afternoon at the Oakwood Plaza Barnes & Noble and then after dinner at various places on Las Olas Boulevard and Clark’s Out-Of-Town newsstand downtown.

At Office Depot, I got some mailing boxes, which I filled up with my photocopied papers. I’ve finally finished the job of throwing out most of my clippings, ending up with three or four boxes where I once would have needed fifteen or more.

Tomorrow morning I still have plenty to do – the laundry, going to the post office and to Albertsons – but I also hope to find time to relax.