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

Sunday, June 7, 1998

10 PM. Marc and I got home an hour ago. The moon is full tonight, but I’ve noticed it out all day here.

At 5:30 PM we arrived at Sat Darshan’s house, and as I parked, Marc saw her watering the lawn and recalled that the last time he saw her was when she was “a skinny girl with long hair in a bikini.” That was 21 years ago, the hot summer day of the July 1977 blackout when she and Helmut were visiting from Germany.

Sat Darshan drove us to South Mountain, at the end of Central Avenue and up five miles of winding roads to an elevation of about 2500 feet. Her dog Tippy accompanied us on the trip.

We could look down at the observation point at the city of Phoenix and the whole Valley of the Sun. Saguaro cactuses were everywhere, and the lookout was filled with people, mostly Chicanos, enjoying the view on a relatively cool evening as the sun began going down.

It was the most beautiful sight I’ve seen in Arizona so far, and it was good for Marc to meet Sat Darshan and get whatever tips she can give him, since after six years here, she’s an experienced Phoenician. He was discouraged after again not making a single sale at that lousy flea market.

On the way down South Mountain, I got carsick and asked Sat Darshan to stop so I could rest for ten minutes. Actually, it was her heavy foot on the brake that made me queasy, the way driving with Grandpa Herb used to.

Back on 9th Street, I hugged her goodbye and thanked her for her hospitality, saying I’d probably be back in the Valley before another year goes by. It would be nice to return in the winter, but of course now I expect to be in Florida this Christmas.

On our way back, I impulsively got off the 202 and onto 101 going north and found what I wanted: Old Town Scottsdale. Marc and I spent an hour walking among the Western-style stores for affluent tourists, and we had frozen yogurt outside in a plaza.

The streets have art galleries and nice restaurants, too, and it was a nice change from the plastic, cookie-cutter malls of Mesa.

This morning I bought the Sunday Times at Borders and read the main section and the news of the week in review there. At the bank, I got a $160 cash advance and left it for Marc.

I feel as if I’m coming down with a cold. Perhaps it’s allergies, but my throat is sore, and that’s a bad sign.

Wednesday, June 10, 1998

8 PM. Marc got sick today, so I’m glad I stayed on. Today I started to feel better, though that’s a relative term. Still, I’m not sorry I got a cold and am staying in Phoenix an extra week. With the unseasonably cool weather here, it’s much more pleasant than hot and muggy South Florida.

In the past week I’ve experienced daily life in Phoenix and I’ve spent this week with Sat Darshan. This is sort of a way to reenter real life gently after the warm cocoon of Villa Montalvo and Ucross.

Yesterday I felt so awful that I decided I might as well go out. I had done a few things on the computer earlier, and so I went to Kinko’s and printed out stuff, sent out some emails and got on AOL. I did that this afternoon, too, and I also went to the Tempe library to get on the Web again this morning.

John Childrey Jr., the Liberal Arts coordinator at Florida Atlantic University-Broward in Davie, replied to my query: “How are you at teaching fiction?” I responded so excitedly that I pressed the send button down too long and sent out eight copies of the same message.

On AOL, I attached my “adjunct” vita and sent it to the Florida International University English Department head, and I submitted “Old Songs” to the slick webzine Pug.

Also, I printed out my résumé and a cover letter to send to that criminology professor at FAU for the Juvenile Justice Education Project and I sent a letter to Dean Stewart at the University of Maryland, telling him I need to defer my admission to the journalism program till next summer, if that’s possible.

Gianni phoned Mom last night. She told that to Marc, but Gianni was on email, too; he says he has a lot to tell me and wants to see me when I get to Florida.

I emailed other friends as well, and I checked Lexis/Nexis and printed out a shorter, more focused version of my bank merger article for a Local Opinion column in the Boca Raton News. (Who knows if they even have the page one guest columns anymore?)

This evening, in the Mesa library, I used the CD-ROM databases to print out articles about AirTouch, where Marc has a second interview tomorrow. AirTouch is a beeper/pager/cell phone/PCS communications company, and from five retail stores, they’re expanding to forty and they need managers.

Marc was telling me about the company and that they’d call by Monday if he’d get a second interview, so when the phone rang today, I knew it was AirTouch.

Marc had two other interviews today, and he’s got a two-hour session with Circle K tomorrow, just before his second AirTouch interview.

I know he’ll be feeling awful, if my own virus is like his, but I guess he’ll manage okay. I did offer to drive him to Phoenix and wait for him if he feels too ill to drive. Basically, this is a cold virus, and the only worry I have is getting labyrinthitis or sinusitis and the dizziness they cause. I was very dizzy last night, and though I desperately needed sleep, I couldn’t drop off until 1 AM.

I got up around 6 AM and exercised lightly to Body Electric (the TV show may be less vigorous than the impromptu exercises I’ve been doing since I left Florida) and then got back into bed instead of rushing out as I did yesterday.

Despite my illness, or because of it, the days here have seemed as filled as were the six days I spent in Los Angeles. In Borders this morning, as I drank blackberry-sage iced tea and read the New York Times, I realized how lucky I’ve been to have had the experiences of the last three and a half months. Being out West has changed me, though I’m not certain how.

When I got home from the bookstore, I got a call from the New York Times, which is going to print the letter I sent them on Sunday about food vendors. An op-ed article stated that street vendors in Manhattan arose because the “cheap, quick lunches” once available from cafeterias, Irish bars and other inexpensive restaurants have disappeared.

My letter pointed out that there are fast-food restaurants all over Manhattan – and takeout sandwiches and salad bars available in delis and groceries as well. I will be thrilled to see my name in tomorrow’s Times – or in a future issue – with the Mesa, Arizona address after it. It has been a while: the Times rejected my last five or six letters.

After the Mesa library, I went to Albertsons to get groceries for me and Marc. Despite my sleeping bag, I’ve pretty much made myself at home here – which is what I wanted to do: make myself at home wherever I am.

The difference between the way I travel and the way someone who’s a tourist travels, is that I’ve definitely thought of Ucross, Montalvo, Libby and Grant’s house, and Marc’s apartment as my home, albeit temporary ones.

I talked to Sat Darshan at the office this morning and again after she got home from work.

Saturday, June 13, 1998

10 AM. I’m still nauseated, though it comes and goes and is a strange kind of nausea that could almost be mistaken for hunger – for sugary stuff, especially. I haven’t vomited, but I almost hope I do because then at least I’d get momentary relief and I’d finally face my fear of vomiting.

Marc came home from Prescott and Flagstaff impressed with the beauty of the drive into the mountains, and he decided to go to Prescott’s flea market for the weekend.

I didn’t want him to go, both because I didn’t want to be sick alone and because I was afraid he’d become ill with nausea like I did while he was away. But there’s no dissuading my headstrong brother. He might sleep in the car in Prescott tonight.

I felt better after writing yesterday’s entry and I took a drive at 3 PM then. At Kinko’s, I got on the Web and AOL for eight minutes to check my email. Guess what? “Those Old, Dark, Sweet Songs” – which I’d submitted on Wednesday – was taken by the editor of Pug, a Rome-based Gen X webzine. And they said the issue will be up by the end of the month.

So much easier than the work and expense of submitting to little magazines – and I’m more sure that this webzine’s issue with my story will actually appear, unlike the here-today, gone-tomorrow print magazines. But that was the only good news I had.

I felt okay last night, and I even fell asleep at 10 PM, but I woke up at 1 AM feeling sick to my stomach and I stayed awake for hours. Maybe it’s the mucus in my stomach. Maybe, by coincidence, I have two distinct illnesses: an ordinary cold plus something wrong with me that’s causing the nausea.

If I had just the cold, I’d be fine, as it doesn’t seem to have gotten worse. I didn’t tell Marc yesterday or last night that I felt sick. Perhaps I should have.

Today is the second day I haven’t exercised, but how could I? I won’t even get the New York Times today. I did go out to Smith’s at 7 AM and bought a digital thermometer because I had chills and figured I had a fever, but I registered only 99.0°F.

When I called my parents, they told me to go to a doctor, but I’ll wait until Monday. If all this is just a virus, there’s nothing a doctor can do.

I know I won’t be flying back on Tuesday: I can’t risk it and I’m too scared to go on a plane feeling this sick. I think I’ll delay making another new flight until – if? – I start to feel better.

I don’t know how I’m going to get through this.

*

2 PM. When I called Sat Darshan, she said, “You have the nauseous cold.” “The nauseous cold” is what her co-workers who have had this bug have called it. She said I’d probably feel better by tomorrow, but right now I think I’m going to die.

I wish I had warned Marc, and I worry about his getting it in Prescott and being too sick to travel. Sat Darshan said Marc’s an adult and I have to let him make his own decisions.

My mistake is probably in trying to eat whenever the nausea subsides, for then I get sick again. I had bread and cheese an hour ago, and since then I’ve been really sick. I did go out to Albertsons to get the papers, though I could barely skim them.

I just sat out on the front step, and it’s pleasant in the shade although they predict a high of 98° today. I only hope “the nauseous cold” is all I’ve got. Like Sat Darshan said, you can’t be nauseous forever.

This is gross, but I know it’s coming out in my excrement. I guess I just need to flush this out of my system and I’m sucking on ice cubes so I don’t get dehydrated. Let’s hope I get through this.

Sunday, June 14, 1998

6 PM. Yesterday I felt sicker than I can ever remember. I learned that I’d be better off if I could vomit because then at least I would have gotten more immediate relief from my nausea.

I’m still queasy, and I ate lightly, but I haven’t felt – yet, anyway – that pervasive nausea that I had all day yesterday. It waxed and waned, and around 5 PM, I thought it was passing, but then it came back. Of course, being nauseated for such a long time taught me that I could feel that sick and not be in a state of panic.

I watched In the Name of the Father, a good film which took my mind off my illness. Then I got into Marc’s bed, but the nausea had me back in the bathroom. Yet finally I fell asleep – and I had my first sound sleep in a week.

And after I awoke, at 6 AM, I felt rested, if somewhat weak, and the nausea had mostly subsided. That was what I’d hoped for, but the queasiness returned after I ate.

In fact, right now, after a veggie burger, some vegetables and a cup of frozen yogurt, I feel kind of sick – sick enough so that I’d ordinarily be very agitated.

When the woman at the Borders counter where I bought the Sunday Times asked the perfect question, “How are you?” I told her, “I’m getting over ‘the nauseous cold.’”

“Oh, everyone in the store has had it,” she said. “Some people just get queasy and some get really sick.”

Marc hasn’t gotten the nausea yet but he said he felt really flu-ish this morning, with swollen glands and congestion and body aches. But it passed, and although he did only $37 yesterday, he did over $100 today – still not very good, but better than he did at the Mesa flea market last week.

I read a great article in The Atlantic on the Southern right-wing capture of the GOP while I sipped iced tea at Borders, and then I bought the New York Times – Republican presidential hopefuls in Iowa are indeed playing to the wingnuts, with hostility to gay people and abortions as their main strategy – and read some more until I began to feel a little too queasy.

Back home, I exercised very lightly and went back to reading the paper. I revised my article on bank names again and went to Kinko’s to send it to the New York Times as a “From the Desk Of” column in their Sunday Money & Business section.

On AOL I got an IM from Camille in Fire Island. Her daughter just had a baby girl yesterday, so I congratulated the new grandmother.

Later I called Fire Island and left a message for Teresa. At this point I’m not going to be able to get to Long Island before Teresa and Paul leave for New Orleans next Tuesday, so I’ll have to come after they return.

Mom said she still hasn’t gotten my unemployment check from Libby. I should have called Libby anyway by now, and I’ll call her tomorrow.

I did have the pleasure of seeing my story in the prototype of Pug on the Web. Brad, the editor, asked me to proofread it, and I printed out.

It’s got a lot of graphics, including tame homoerotic drawings of a black man and a white man. For me, it’s kind of a different story, but who knows? Maybe identity literature will give my career as a “gay writer” a boost.

Yeah, right.

Well, it’s always nice to see a new story “in print.” I may have produced only one published story at Ucross, but it was published in record time.

I bought Dad a Father’s Day card at Kinko’s and mailed it before I came home.

Yet again I changed my flight, to a week from tomorrow, and I extended my car rental for another week. Hopefully I’ll feel better by then, and I can enjoy Phoenix a little more and not associate it so much with my illness; I’ll end up spending three weeks here.

Well, the world has been continuing while I’ve been ill. There are more signs that Asia’s economic troubles are really bad: Japan is in a recession, if not a depression, and I expect there’ll be a real slowdown in the U.S. next year – and the Year 2000 problem will make the world economy even worse.

Thursday, June 18, 1998

9 PM. Yesterday afternoon I lay down for a while, and after I ate some dinner at 5 PM, I drove into Phoenix to visit Sat Darshan. I bought that talking “silly slammer” which seemed to amuse Gurujot and Gurudaya.

Sat Darshan and I walked Tippy, and it was nice to see more of her neighborhood. A gay couple she’s friendly with were getting into their car with a female friend, and the guys stared at me as if I looked cute. After being ill, that makes me feel good.

I played with Tippy, who lets me rub her belly the way China does. Sat Darshan and I talked about my family, and I told her about the anger I feel toward my parents. She said that this fall it will be three years since her mother died, and only now is she starting to feel like she would want to talk to her mother sometimes.

Because she felt very tired, I left at 7:30 PM; I’ll go over there again before I leave, probably over the weekend.

Driving back, I took the Rio Salado Parkway north of Sun Devil Stadium and just south of the dry Salt River; it was such a pretty night, as all nights in the desert have been. Before coming home, I stopped at Fry’s, a big supermarket and drugstore. God knows why I so enjoy being in supermarkets.

I slept well and exercised more vigorously this morning. But I’m still very congested and I continue to blow my nose all day.

After sitting and reading the paper in Borders, I went next door to the CompUSA store when it opened at 10 AM to see if I could get the modem fixed. I probably should have done this in California, but I had no way to use the modem at Villa Montalvo anyway.

The boy at the service counter at CompUSA was uncomprehendingly obnoxious and he said they’d call me when it was ready – “probably on Saturday” – and then dismissed me.

I pointed out that he didn’t take my phone number, and that just seemed to annoy him. This rude treatment brought back all my regrets about going to those Notebook City crooks back in Sunrise just before I left Florida.

After lunch at home, I returned to the area around the Fiesta Mall and went to the 1:15 PM showing of The Truman Show at a multiplex.

The film was clever in its critique of our media-soaked lives but ironically, the media hype about it had revealed so much that nothing that happened was surprising. If I’d seen it cold, I might have been blown away. It reminded me a little of the 1960s British series The Prisoner with Patrick McGoohan.

All Things Considered comes on the radio at 3 PM here, so it was on the car radio when the movie let out, and I continued listening to the news at home until dinner.

Mom called, telling me that Dr. Larry Brandt of Nova had phoned to ask if I wanted two courses that begin in mid-August. I left a message on his voice mail and will try to get him tomorrow. Of course I’ll take the classes.

I couldn’t get off the phone with Mom without her again going on about how Marc better get a job soon.

She’s also upset that nobody’s called him back and said, “You don’t know. . .” and then said that Jay, Marc’s ex-boss and ex-friend, is probably telling prospective employers bad things about Marc.

When I hung up, I thought, cruelly but honestly: Sometimes I wish she were dead. I have such hostility toward my mother that I don’t even want to write about it.

Instead, I’ll write that Marc and I went for the third week in a row to the Dobson Ranch Park concert this evening.

Because it’s much hotter now, with today’s high over 100° (though the humidity was 12%, lower than I’ve ever experienced), there was a smaller crowd. Still, the jazz band was pretty good, and it was bearable to sit in the shaded part of the grass.

When we came home, I watched a Seinfeld episode I hadn’t seen before.

If my family no longer lived in South Florida, I’d be more looking forward to going back there. At least I’ll touch base with Patrick and Gianni and Nova and FAU and other schools. I can go to New York as soon as I’ve done that.

I can’t understand why I’m still so congested, but I’m grateful I no longer feel queasy. But of course I half-expect the nausea to return. Somehow I imagine I’ll be sick this Saturday the way I was last Saturday.

Friday, June 19, 1998

9 PM. A couple of hours ago I went to a talk by the author of There Are No Accidents: Synchronicity and the Stories of Our Lives at the Changing Hands Bookstore in southern Tempe.

Robert Hopcke, a Berkeley therapist, made a lot of sense talking about Jung’s concept of synchronicity and how we make our lives meaningful by using the consciousness that happens particularly at moments of transition when we’re most open.

Marc got a call from AirTouch Cellular, and he starts working there on Monday morning. Marc’s first day of work is an example of synchronicity. I was here to help him through the hardest three weeks. It will be a challenge for him after this, of course, but at least he’ll have the stability of a job and steady income.

Now that he’s got the job, I’m sure he’ll also get the job offer at another place: Circle K, that check-cashing store, or Dillard’s. Naturally Marc feels relieved.

At AirTouch, they’d been waiting for the drug tests, which finally came in today. And all Mom’s gloom and doom talk was hogwash. I feel part of Mom wants Marc to fail, so she can go on believing he needs to depend on her.

Anyway, I do believe that it was all to the good that I got sick and had to postpone my departure twice.

Before 6:30 AM today, I called Larry Brandt and accepted the two Monday and Tuesday night eight-week classes. They’re Argumentative Writing for Business, so I guess Nova is starting two new clusters in the Fort Lauderdale area.

That also might mean they could be canceled, but if they both run, that would give me an income for eight weeks of about $350 a week, and that’s just for two nights.

I’m sure I can get as many classes as I can handle for the fall. I’ve taught Argumentative Writing enough by now to do it my sleep.

When I phoned Unemployment, I learned that a check for $576 was issued yesterday, so if I’m lucky, I will get it by a week from Monday, before I leave Fort Lauderdale for New York.

After I spoke with Teresa – this past weekend she was busy catering several parties – I made a flight for the day after she and Paul come back from New Orleans.

I’m flying from Fort Lauderdale to LaGuardia on Tuesday, June 30 – last year on that date I flew to LaGuardia from Chicago – and going back on Monday, August 10, a week before I begin teaching at Nova. That will give me six weeks in New York.

I found the flights when I surfed the Web at the Tempe library this morning. The Delta round-trip costs a little more, but I’ve got more miles invested in their frequent flyer program.

After the library, I went to Einstein Bros. Bagels on Alma School by Main Street and read the Times. Then I walked over to Smith’s supermarket at the same center to do some grocery shopping.

Marc had told me this morning that the guy from AirTouch had asked him to stay by the phone today, and just before I walked into his apartment, I hoped he would have the job. And he did.

He’ll be working at their headquarters and main store to start. It’s on 17th Avenue (avenues run west of Central) and Northern in Phoenix. Right now there’s a cellular phone war in Phoenix, with AirTouch, Sprint, AT&T and another company offering all kinds of low-cost plans.

The PCS and cell phone costs have gotten so low that I think I’m going to get one. Up till now, I had considered it a luxury. At least for now, the cell phone business is exploding, and the experience on the job will help Marc even if he’s under a lot of pressure to make sales.

At the southern Tempe shopping center where I went to the author lecture at the Changing Hands Bookstore, I found a Trader Joe’s, a California institution I’ve gotten fond of. Nearby there was also a Whole Foods Market.

Don’t ask me why I love supermarkets, but it seems less of a vice to spend money in them than throwing my money away at high-priced clothing, jewelry or electronics stores or at the new Casino Arizona that opened today across the Salt River at the Salt River Maricopa-Pima Indian Community. (All they have are poker tables, the only gambling the state can’t regulate away.)

I don’t know Phoenix itself that well, but I’m familiar with Mesa and Tempe and the East Valley after three years here – oops, I mean “three weeks.” I guess the slip is understandable.

It seems to me that the car culture and big box store shopping centers of the East Valley are exactly like those in the West San Fernando Valley in L.A., and parts of Silicon Valley, West Broward, and streets in every Sun Belt town and city: Archer Road in Gainesville, College Avenue in Ocala, Coffeen Avenue in Sheridan, South 24th Avenue in Billings, etc. Only the downtown areas retain any distinctive characters.

Tonight’s lecture made me think about another synchronicity: my “Dark Songs” story. I wrote it because Rick Peabody notified me about a “sex and chocolate” anthology, I submitted it to the webzine Pug on pure impulse, and just as their issue was going to print, they took it even though they usually don’t want fiction. It went from creation to publication in just five weeks.

And there’s also the synchronicity of my finding out I got the Florida fellowship the day I arrived in Arizona.

Now I need to get to bed so I can get up early. Marc is going to the flea market in Prescott and I need to go with Sat Darshan to the auto mechanic in Phoenix so she can leave her car there and I can drive her back home.