Someone With a Pen: Richard Grayson’s Diary

Saturday, November 21, 1998

10:30 PM. I just got back from my date with Cami. I feel unsure of how I feel. We ended up in bed together, and although we didn’t have sex, eventually he got naked and I had just my briefs on (though we both had socks on).

On the way back to his apartment from the Italian-Argentine restaurant on Galloway Road where we had dinner, Cami said, “I don’t know how you feel about this, Richard, but when we get home I want very much to cuddle with you.”

So we ended up doing a lot of cuddling, which I like, and touching and stroking. This morning I threw out my back exercising, but obviously I wasn’t incapacitated.

We spent also spent time in bed just talking – which we also had done, naturally, before dinner and at the restaurant.

When I first saw Cami, I thought, okay, nothing’s going to happen, but as the evening went on, he got somewhat more attractive. Still, he’s not anything like the pretty boys I’m used to.

As he said at one point, “Face it, Richard, we’re both middle-aged men.” A lot of my problem, of course, is precisely my inability to say that to myself.

Cami is also different in many other ways than the guys I’ve – to use Monica Lewinsky’s term – “fooled around with.” He’s not skinny like the others. His body is a lot like mine: not fat but rounder and fleshier and not hairy.

I told Cami that his was the first uncut penis I’d ever seen close up, though it didn’t look as odd as I was afraid it might.

But the only time he really looked cute to me was when he put on a pince-nez to read the menu in the restaurant.

Except for Woodrow Wilson and maybe Clifton Webb, I can’t recall ever seeing anyone wearing a pince-nez, and never anyone in real life. Cami offered it to me so I could also read the menu.

He’s also a responsible adult, more so than I am, a stable person who’s lived in the apartment (very pleasant) that he bought fourteen years ago.

I like Cami, but I don’t know him. Oh, I know facts and feelings: he’s a psychologist, and before that worked as an editor in the corporate world for Spanish in-flight magazines and Burger King, and before that was a Ph.D. student in Spanish literature at the University of Miami.

He went from being the president of his sophomore class at his all-boys Catholic high school in San Juan to being the “queer” of the junior class, dreading the taunts and teasing he faced every day. He’s had a number of long-term relationships.

Cami has lots of friends, and while I said I had lots of friends, too, that’s not really true. Certainly, I don’t a close friend in South Florida; there’s nobody here like Teresa, Sat Darshan, Ronna, Gianni, Alice or Kevin – and nobody, really, to just hang out with. That’s my own fault, of course.

Cami showed me pages of a book proposal for a self-help book lying on the floor of his office. (Naturally, I thought about Alice, who’s a literary agent interested in self-help.)

He first went into therapy because so many of his friends had died of AIDS and he was in the midst of a breakup which left him suicidal.

He likes classical music and gets up no later than 6 AM, so he’s an early bird like me. (I was so glad when he said I should come over at 5 PM.)

As a kid, Cami was fat, but he grew out of it. He runs as much as seven miles several days a week. Cami thought my skin was “baby-soft” and asked if I’d once worn an earring (because of the fold in my earlobe that Scott Koestner once said is a sign that I will eventually have a heart attack).

Cami said he has performance anxiety about sex, which made me feel better.

Hey, I’ve hardly ever been with another guy when it wasn’t my bedroom, so that was a new experience. But I’m definitely not infatuated with Cami the way I was after one meeting with Terence or Jody.

He’s not fem or cute the way guys I’ve been attracted to tend to be. But he’s an equal, and I guess that’s scary to me.

As a shrink, Cami can probably tell a lot by what I told him about myself. Anyway, as I said, I’m not sure how I feel. It was nice to hold and caress someone and feel that physical intimacy that’s been a rare gift in my life, but I was glad when he became obviously tired and said he was “kicking me out.”

On the drive back up the Palmetto and I-75, I was happy to be alone to think. I exited at Griffin Road and as I drove through the fog, the air smelled sweet with the jasmine aroma of honeysuckle.

Today I graded the thirty or so Coral Springs papers. I don’t know what caused my back to go out, but perhaps I’ve been overdoing the walking. Right now I’ve got the heating pad out.

The couple who were here the other day sent an offer on the house for $173,600 – which is even below the price Dad would have rejected summarily.

I asked Dad his drop-dead price, and he said it was $1,500 under the listed price of $185,000.

Mom said that their neighbors would be upset if they sold their home for $173.6K, which seems low even to me.

Last night I went to Albertsons for groceries, to Office Depot to xerox my Boca Raton News column from Wednesday and to Chevron for gas.

Before I left for Miami this evening, I went out only twice today: to make an ATM withdrawal and to use the Nova computer lab.

I saw that Susan Mernit left New Jersey Online to take the position of director of new media at Parade, so I sent her a congratulatory note.

Sat Darshan emailed that that she has to see about getting food stamps and WIC for the baby since Kiran Kaur is considered a family of one.

She also asked me to tell her what happened on my date with Cami.

---

Sunday, November 22, 1998

7 PM. I was surprised at how well I slept last night.

This morning I called Cami to say hi and tell him that I enjoyed last night. He’d just come from running and needed to stretch, and I wanted to go out to Barnes & Noble, but he said he was glad I called.

Now I’ll let him make the next call – if he does.

If he doesn’t, I’ll be disappointed, but it won’t take away the pleasure I had last evening.

While reading the Sunday Times over ginger peach iced tea at the bookstore, I stopped frequently and let my mind wander. Being intimate with someone new makes me feel really alive.

Cami isn’t somebody I’m likely to obsess about – and that’s probably healthy.

In a way, last year with Gianni was the same thing. I really liked him but I wasn’t “in love” with him the way I foolishly felt I was after just one night with other guys, for example.

Maybe this is me learning how to have a mature relationship. I feel awkward with guys my own age, not only because I’m more attracted to younger guys, but also because I don’t have the same kind of experiences that most gay men in their forties have had and I feel left out. While they were active in “the community,” and sharing common events – including many, many deaths from AIDS – I was living my own little life.

Yet I think Cami is someone – he’s a shrink, after all – with whom I’d feel comfortable discussing my feelings about this or about my lack of sexual experience with more than just a few other guys.

But if it’s not Cami, eventually I’ll meet someone else. I’m not going to wait breathlessly for his call because I know from experience that it may not ever happen.

I spent the morning in the bookstore reading, and this afternoon I went to Starbucks and graded the five late papers from the Boca class.

While I still have more papers to grade, at least I accomplished what I needed to this weekend.

I think my car is coming to the end of its lifespan. The gasoline smell I noticed a couple of days ago has become more pronounced, and this is probably a serious problem.

I can’t get by without a car, but I can use my credit and the money coming in next month to spend $2,500 to $3,000 on another used car.

The Chrysler New Yorker did last me 4½ years, and I put a lot of mileage on it, so I can’t complain. I can’t be like my parents and pretend everything is going to last forever.

When Dad rejected the buyer’s $173.6 K offer, the guy quickly offered $180K, But Dad just said he’d leave his counterproposal in our mailbox so the guy could retrieve it.

Dad asked me to find a real estate attorney for him, though he said he doesn’t want to leave Florida until after the end of January when he finishes his treatment at Bascom Palmer. At that point he expects his vision to be improved.

My back ached all night, but I slept well anyway; using the heating pad helped. For the first time in a long time, I didn’t exercise today. One day off won’t kill me – and there’s no sense risking injury that would make my back feel worse.

Today is the 35th anniversary of John F. Kennedy’s assassination, and I of course will never forget that day. But by now the majority of Americans are too young to remember November 22, 1963.

Thinking about Cami, a part of me feels that he could see what a mess I am and realized I’m not someone he wants to get involved with.

On the other hand, I’m not a high-maintenance lover, and I’m not going to be overly dependent or be an alcoholic like one of Cami’s old lovers. I’m not jealous or demanding, and I’ve been faithfully monogamous in the past.

When I got to the gate of his apartment complex on Saturday evening and gave the guard his phone number, he repeated the numbers after I said them, but he said in Spanish, so then I switched to Spanish as well.

I wonder if it bothered Cami that I don’t hablo español. I doubt it since he’s had Anglo lovers.

Did I talk too much about myself? I should have found out more about him.

He’s a former Ph.D. student in Spanish lit, so why didn’t I ask him what he thought about Borges and One Hundred Years of Solitude and other Spanish-language writers or filmmakers like Buñuel?

---

Thursday, November 26, 1998

10 PM. I’ve just gotten in after taking myself to the movies tonight. Todd Solondz’s Happiness was a deeply disturbing comedy about a psychologist who molests his 11-year-old son’s classmates, an obscene phone caller, various rapists and obscenely needy people.

It presents the furtive gropes and spasms of sex as futile attempts at warding off loneliness. Certainly, it made me feel that the “cuddling” Cami asked me to do with him on Saturday night, that I acquiesced to, was sort of pathetic.

Last night I woke up at 1 AM and for a couple of hours I turned Cami over in my mind: how he never called me back and how, once again, even with a guy I wasn’t all that attracted to, I find myself feeling foolish for calling him last Sunday morning, as though what had happened the night before meant something.

Although I wouldn’t agree to have sex with him, I think I still would have better off if I’d just gone home after dinner because what happened created a false sense of intimacy, at least on my part.

How I react if he calls in the next few days will depend partly on the mood I’m in at the time, but at least I’d know he wasn’t that interested in me, either.

Today I got around to grading only five papers from the Coral Springs class, so I’ll have plenty of work this weekend and next, and the weekend after that I’ll be preparing to leave for Phoenix, so I wouldn’t see Cami until January anyway.

Whenever I clicked with a guy before – Sean or Gianni or even Jody and Terence – we always spoke on the phone the next day, and if you really like a Saturday night first date, you don’t wait this long to call back.

I spoke with Kerry for an hour last evening. She’s doing what I did and taking a term off from adjunct work to go to artists’ colonies.

Kerry got into a new place in Columbia County, New York for June, but before and after that she’s already been accepted by VCCA (where she had a great stay last summer), Millay and Ucross, and she wanted my advice since I’d been to all those colonies.

I told Kerry I hadn’t been at Millay since 1984, so my experience there might not be relevant, but I praised Ucross and liked talking with her about it because I got to relive all the pleasant memories I have of Wyoming – as well as those at the other colonies and at Villa Montalvo.

In the end, I think Kerry will probably opt for Millay, both because she feels it’s more “prestigious” (though I can’t imagine how that would affect a writer’s career) and because she can probably get into Ucross another time more easily.

Of course, she’s still awaiting word for MacDowell, and if they give her April, too, she’ll go to New Hampshire.

Perhaps it was my clogged sinuses, but I felt tired and sluggish all this Thanksgiving. I didn’t really get up till 7:30 AM and I kept needing to rest, so I didn’t accomplish much.

Although I’m very much in debt, I took out another $500 in credit card cash advances; I’m taking the car to the mechanic tomorrow, and he only takes cash, not credit.

Mom made lasagna and sweet potatoes for our vegetarian Thanksgiving meal, but I only had a little of each as I mostly ate my Healthy Choice turkey dinner.

---

Sunday, November 29, 1998

4:30 PM. I slept poorly because of my back; it was hard to find a position where I could sleep in comfort, and I don’t find it easy to sleep on my back.

I awoke with a sore throat that persisted throughout the day. I’m sucking on a zinc lozenge now, trying to avoid my third cold in three months. But if I do get sick, it’s because of the stress I’ve been under.

Still, today I came to the conclusion that I’ve been unsufferable in my suffering. I’ve been upset because my back, my car, my parents, my students and some guy I met last week won’t do what I want them to do.

Duh, big surprise. I’m going to be 47½ on Friday, and yet it’s news to me that backs go out, cars break down, students are lazy, first dates don’t call?

Do I think I’m perfect, so much so that they should erect a statue of me downtown? Come on, Grayson, grow up already!

As far as Cami goes, he’s gone. Instead of getting myself worked up, whenever I start to think about him now, I’ll try hard to stop and not make myself an injustice collector. After all, he didn’t break any promises to me.

We didn’t have a contract. Maybe he didn’t call me for one or two or a thousand reasons, and if I try to figure out why or let myself get outraged, the only person I’ll end up hurting is myself.

I don’t like shoulds, so I can’t say, “He should have called me.” Get over it, kid.

My car, I’ll take care of.

My students’ papers? I made up a schedule of conferences for this week’s classes, and I’m not going to lecture or berate these kids. I’m only going to be at Nova one more semester, so there’s no point in getting upset about the few weeks left in this term.

My back will get better if I treat it gently; I did stretching this morning, and that seemed to help.

If I get another cold, I’ll take care of myself and it will get better, too.

I need to let up on my parents and Jonathan. They don’t need me being judgmental even – especially – when I’m proven right. No family is functional and I can’t wish they were other people, for then I’d be another person, too.

So – here’s the 37th cliché of the day – I’ll clean up my act. And I’ll also clean up my skin so that I don’t get more zits.

Six months from now, I’ll be at journalism school in Maryland. I don’t know how I’m going to manage it, but it’s something I want to do, and I’ll find a way.

Last night I finished reading nearly all the Sunday Times and today I read the rest of it, as well as the Herald and Sun-Sentinel.

At 7:30 AM, I went out to Publix to buy groceries, and I later spent a couple of hours at Barnes & Noble and thirty minutes at the Nova computer lab, printing out my student conference schedules and checking my email and Lexis clippings.

Mary McGrory gave a speech about her career at a dinner in her honor that excited me because when I’m at the Capital News Service, I hope to be reporting from Capitol Hill, waiting on marble floors for important people to come out of meetings and lie to me.

The week ahead will be stressful, as I still have to look at research papers every day, I still have to deal with the car, I still have night classes in Boca Raton and Coral Springs, and I still have to cope with all the unexpected things that invariably go wrong in five days.

But next weekend I shouldn’t have all that much work, and next week will be easier since I don’t have to go to Boca on Tuesday.

It’s kind of cool out this afternoon, and I was chilly wearing shorts.

On Friday evening I spoke with Marc, who was upset because he took the car in for just a tune-up and they fixed a lot of things he didn’t ask for and charged him $350. But at least Marc had a nice Thanksgiving at his friend’s family’s house in Tempe.

Well, I’m ready for November to end tomorrow.