A Writer’s Diary Entries From Early April, 2000
Monday, April 3, 2000
3:30 PM. These long Mondays are tiring, but after today there are only three more left.
In a dream shortly before I awoke at 5 AM (which still felt like 4 AM), I had arrived in Sydney after a long plane flight when my Australian hosts wanted to take me around the city. We were walking toward the harbor, when I protested that I was jet-lagged and wanted to go to bed. Obviously, that was a comment on my feelings about the change to daylight savings time.
Still, I made it to school by 7:30 AM, and I got through a rather dry class in which I had to get past the New Deal cases in order to begin lecturing on post-1940 liberal constitutionalism.
The midterms were due today, so I had the usual phone and in-person excuses about illnesses, waitresses at family-owned restaurants quitting, and other difficulties making it impossible to hand in papers on time.
During my office hours, I read the news section of the Times, articles on Lexis/Nexis, and some websites.
These days when I get email on the Nova Messenger system, I’m as likely as not to delete it without reading it since I really don’t care about issues that affect faculty long-term.
I guess I’m not like WT, who’s still charging about leading the way on issues like Parker Building repairs, which won’t help him because, like me, he’ll be gone in a few months. Still, WT is an administrator, and for them, three months is a long time.
Although my contract doesn’t expire till May 31, once I’ve finished teaching three weeks from Wednesday and handed my grades, there’s really nothing left for me to do at Nova but get out of my office.
I just went out to get the mail. The envelope from Yaddo was thin, so of course it was a rejection.
Well, I’ve still got Dairy Hollow, although I’m suspicious about them because they are new and I have never received anything formal in the mail. I also applied to Ragdale, though I didn’t get in the last time I applied.
In a sense, I might be better off not going to a colony and again spending more time on Long Island with Teresa and Paul or just hanging out in Tallahassee, getting accustomed to the place.
I think I’m going to take a day off and drive up there and rent an apartment. I’ll probably rent a car, though it seems kind of silly because I have two cars here. But I can’t take the Chrysler very far, and before I trust the Mercury on long trips, I need to take it into Sam’s and have it tuned up so that it stops stalling out.
I suppose I could take off next week, but I think the following week is better because Friday the 21st is the Good Friday holiday.
The rental manager called me to come to the office today to fill out the 60-day non-renewal notice that her assistant couldn’t find yesterday. After she finally got the printer to work, she gave me some documents, one of which was a list of clean-up charges that indicates not only will I lose my entire $99 deposit – big deal – but that I’ll actually owe Cameron Cove money.
This morning I began thinking that maybe I should pay for a mover. If it’s under $1000, it will be expensive, but it might be worth it to avoid buying new stuff in Tallahassee. I may be poor, but I’m also getting too old to deal with moving. After all, I practically crippled myself when I moved into this apartment eight months ago.
I know that I’ve had “failed” moves in the past – to Albany in 1979, to Tampa in 1994, to Maryland a couple of years ago – but this move to Tallahassee may be different. Staying around here isn’t really an option.
Tally is “safer” because I can lower my denominator and live more cheaply there and not deal with the traffic and stresses of a big metro area. Like Gainesville, the state capital is small enough so that I feel I can be in control there even if I’m going alone.
*
10 PM. Class went all right this evening, though perhaps it was a bit dull and maybe not organized enough. I tried to run it as I would a book discussion group, but that doesn’t always work. Oh well. I let them go before 9 PM and then went to the office.
In a new email, Sat Darshan said she feels more depressed about the presidential election this year than she’s felt about any since 1968. It’s possible that she and Ravinder can finalize Kiran’s adoption as early as June if things go perfectly. Kiran is doing well in preschool and she can say everyone’s name except her own; she can’t pronounce K or F sounds and calls fish “pish.”
Tom wrote that Annette got a limo to and from DFW to the Motorola headquarters, where she had five one-on-one interviews. Although she’s got three courses this term and two in the summer, Annette expects Motorola to make her a job offer. Tom remains the pessimist, however.
As I expected, despite his workload at Salisbury State – how is he going to grade 90 research papers from his film class? – Tom keeps turning out poems.
Responding to my query, Backinprint.com said they should send a cover for the reprint of With Hitler in New York for my approval in four weeks, and if that’s okay, then it will be another four or five weeks and I can get (or order) copies.
I don’t have the money, of course, but I’ll borrow it, just as I’ll need to make cash advances to pay the $2500 to Valentine Publishing Group once The Silicon Valley Diet is shipped to me.
Judge Jackson issued his findings of law in the Microsoft antitrust suit at 5 PM, and as expected, he came down hard on the company. The NASDAQ swooned 8% today alone, but the old-economy Dow stocks soared as people abandoned high tech for blue chips. It looks as if the dot-com bubble may have burst, but who knows?
I saw the grey cat in the parking lot as I left campus. He looked so skinny. I hadn’t seen him in weeks and I didn’t have my backpack, so I drove to Walgreens and bought cans of Friskies. When I came back, the cat was gone, but I left the food out for him in the place where I often see him.
At home, I had some fruit and watched the last 20 minutes of Ally McBeal. I’m not as tired as I probably should be, but night teaching tends to act like a stimulant.
Friday, April 7, 2000
7:30 PM. Last night, hungry for sleep, I got into bed at 9 PM, but that proved a dumb decision. It would have been better to get under the covers a bit later when I was totally exhausted. Instead, I just wool-gathered, listened to a top-10 hip-hop countdown on radio, read a little, had sexual fantasies and didn’t get to sleep till 11:30 PM, which didn’t allow me to get the hours I need.
However, once I shook off my morning doldrums, I had a high-energy day until about an hour ago when my Energizer Bunny batteries began to slow down.
Before class, I wrote emails to Sat Darshan, Teresa, Kevin and Mark Savage and did some other stuff on the Web. In class, I went over the Flag Salute cases and the World War II Japanese-American civil liberties cases, and then Dennis and Brandenberg.
I played parts of the oral arguments in Abington School District v. Schempp, returned the midterms, and passed around a sign-up sheet for their research project, a career sketch of a Supreme Court justice.
Teresa replied to my email about yesterday’s stressful experience trying to see the doctor with her own HMO horrors, saying that they recently switched from Vytra because it became too expensive and restrictive.
Paul now goes to Leon out of pocket, but his HMO switched his blood pressure medicine to a cheaper alternative until Teresa screamed at the clerk who’d second-guessed Leon and his medical degree.
Kevin seems to be more cheerful. He has a new agent, and the guy Kevin liked on their first date last weekend called back for a second date next week, when they’ll see the re-released Sunset Boulevard.
I spent time on the Web and Lexis and ordered a TV and VCR for my Monday night classroom.
At 11:15 AM, I went to a lecture by the last of the candidates for the permanent Legal Studies/History position, a Texan named Nick who seems to have an extensive background practicing criminal law, including death penalty appeals.
He had an accent so strong that at first I thought he said one death penalty defendant’s original lawyer had “slapped” during the trial; of course he was saying slept.
Nick’s lecture on the federal court system, complete with the kind of PowerPoint demonstration that I always find distracting, was fine, though I wondered how well non-lawyers like WT and Jim understood it.
Hungry as a bear, I rushed home for lunch, and afterwards I drove to downtown Fort Lauderdale to get videos from the Main Library for Monday’s classes. This way I can save myself a trip this weekend.
Instead of getting off I-595 at University Drive, I drove further, to Flamingo Road, so I could check out the latest issue of Publishers Weekly at Borders, as the library didn’t have it.
About one-third of the reviews had June pub dates, but I expect if the magazine does review Diet, it will be in that little roundup “Fiction Notes” after the standalone reviews, and those are still May.
After a quick iced tea at the Borders café, I came home to preview a video, exercise, and get the mail. The new Authors Guild Bulletin has Diet listed next to my name among the “Books by Members.”
I went back to Nova to get my paycheck from Santa, showing up just as my old Language 1500 student Jason came in for his first paycheck. He told me he’s working at the Women’s Resource Institute. God, I find Jason so cute, even if he is nerdy, scrawny and short. Actually, I probably find him cute because he’s nerdy, scrawny and short. I guess I’m attracted to young guys who are non-threatening.
I don’t know if it’s getting a copy of the new XY on Tuesday, but I’ve been incredibly horny this week. Not that I’m complaining, as I’m glad that I haven’t totally lost interest in sex. Maybe I should call that guy Ben now that he’s back from San Francisco.
At the website of the Tallahassee apartment complex Palms of Magnolia, I filled out a very detailed application form, so I expect to get a call from them soon.
Sunday, April 9, 2000
9 PM. Last night I read until 11:30 PM and then fell into the kind of deep, refreshing sleep I’ve been craving. It was 7 AM when I awoke, and for me, seven and a half hours of sleep is about as good as it gets. Better than tonight, no doubt.
Today was delightfully cool and brisk here while it snowed in New York and Washington. Putting on long pants and a jacket, I went to the office for an hour.
Kate emailed, asking what address I wanted the books sent to. They arrived at Red Hen Press yesterday, and she’d written at noon their time, so if I had replied earlier, I might have gotten them by Wednesday.
Still, I’ll probably see the books by next Saturday. Part of me dreads it, of course. I’m afraid to look at their cover, the blurbs and author bio and pic, etc. Not to mention that I’m afraid to look at all that prose some joker wrote that will fill up 180 pages.
I left the office at 8:30 AM, exercised at home, and got to Barnes & Noble before 10 AM. Michelle was working at the café, and Lynn Wolf and Paul Joseph were browsing nearby shelves, so I felt at home as I immersed myself in the night class’s papers, iced tea, and the Times Magazine issue on the suburbs. (Charles McGrath, the editor of the Times Book Review, had an article mentioning that he lives in Jersey, so I found his address later on Lexis.)
At noon I stopped at Whole Foods/Bread of Life and bought cereals, frozen wraps, pad thai, garnet yams and bananas as well as dried persimmon sticks for novelty’s sake.
After lunch, I spent several hours at the office, writing Patrick, Teresa, Sat Darshan, Mark Savage, Rick Peabody and other friends I’ve neglected.
Patrick did get that endowed chair at BCC – meaning he’ll get an extra $5,000 a year for five years. And he’s currently up for Professor of the Year, an honor he definitely deserves. He’s been busy with committee assignments, getting out P’an Ku, and the usual teaching.
Rick said the baby is due in three to four weeks and that Margaret has been healthy. He’s ready to give up teaching (I had told him about Tom at Salisbury State); Rick’s working a lot and has a book out next month.
He was surprised to hear that Kate is doing my book; he and Lucinda are both in the new Red Hen Press anthology. I was sure that I had told him about The Silicon Valley Diet before, but then Rick has had a lot on his mind lately.
Mark’s second grandchild, Yitzhak Yosef, was born a few weeks ago, so I congratulated him on the endurance of his Y chromosome.
Mostly I worked on Louie Crew’s list of GLBT scholars, finding the ones on his massive compilation that are connected with literature, creative writing or related fields. This involved a lot of clicking and pointing, and because I went back to the office for another hour after dinner to start entering some of the email addresses, I now have a sore wrist, arm and shoulder.
I guess I feel that I don’t have much time left to prepare my publicity blitz for the book, but in reality, there’s probably plenty of time. Still, there’s always more that I could be doing.
Of course, I need to make sure I keep up with my teaching duties for the next three weeks. For example, I told my night students to read the first half of Cornered: Big Tobacco at the Bar of Justice, and I only started reading the book this afternoon between visits to the office.
I also worked out again and marked up the cases I’ll go over tomorrow morning – though I know I could teach New York Times v. Sullivan, Griswold v. Connecticut, Roe v. Wade, etc., in my sleep.
Vish left a message while I was out, so I phoned him an hour ago. He’s not even tried to meet anyone since we last talked, and I encouraged him to stop avoiding Internet personal ads. At the very least he needs some guy friends. It was interesting to hear that Vish prefers older guys, unlike me, who can still be boy-crazy.
Monday, April 10, 2000
3 PM. I’m so exhausted from not sleeping that if the TV and VCR aren’t in my classroom tonight, I may have to dismiss the students early. Even worse, I promised the Liberal Arts secretaries that I’d monitor the office starting at 5 PM, so I’ve got to eat and go to school really early.
Last night I kept CBS’s live black-and-white broadcast of Fail-Safe, the nuclear war political thriller I first read when I was about 14, on the TV so I could listen to it in bed. Unable to get the slightest bit drowsy, I figured I’d catch the last half-hour in the living room. But just before the 11 PM finale, though, the phone rang.
It was Thien. He had called Teresa’s and she would give him only my email address, but of course Thien doesn’t have a computer. However, he eventually found my current phone number from a letter I’d sent him.
Thien is now renting a bedroom near downtown San Jose with a family (fortyish parents with kids); He shares a room that has a private entrance. He’s working ten hours a day with only one day off every two weeks for what sounds to me like a Silicon Valley sweatshop: a Milpitas plant where he assembles parts for microscopes.
His English is still very poor, and it’s no wonder, since he hangs out only with his Vietnamese friends who speak Vietnamese. He seems surprised that the young boys in the house where he lives prefer to speak English to one another even though their father does not approve.
In the last two years, Thien hasn’t really become much more of an American, and it bothers me that he’s so isolated. I think that he has no idea he lives in Silicon Valley, the heart of the Internet economy, and he doesn’t seem to have much connection to life outside the Vietnamese émigré community.
Thien likes to work long hours and come home so tired that he goes to sleep immediately rather than “do something bad” – the bad things being thinking too much, feeling lonely, and going out to clubs. He’s not as close to his two Vietnamese gay friends anymore, and he says I’m the only “American” who he could ever talk to. He says he can’t really understand anyone else.
I wish I could do something for Thien. It’s weird that he called when my story was published by Blithe House Quarterly and again now that the book is out. I’m so fond of him, but the cultural divide is so great that I think we could never bridge it – and so I still think my story has meaning.
I don’t see how Thien can ever get himself near the mainstream of American life unless he goes to school. Immigrants who don’t have that community of their fellow country people are better off. If Thien lived anywhere but San Jose or Orange County or a few other Vietnamese enclaves, he would have been forced to learn English long ago.
It’s like the Cubans in Miami: the Elian Gonzalez case proves how insular they are and how cut off from America.
I guess my own great-grandparents never really became American, either, in that they spoke little English – except for Great-Grandma Bessie, who as Great-Grandpa Max’s second wife was assimilated to the point where I remember her saying “Que será, será” when I was a little kid.
All my grandparents came here as kids and seemed totally American to me even though nearly all their friends were also Jewish. But they interacted with all kinds of people in New York.
Grandpa Herb was in the Navy and seemed quite comfortable talking to his black and Puerto Rican coworkers and customers in the store on Fulton Street. Grandma Ethel’s final best friend was Christine, her roommate in the adult home, who was Catholic and probably German or Irish.
If Thien’s parents had gotten out in 1975 rather than 1995, he probably could have become an American, too. I think he’s unhappy, and any money he does manage to save will probably be spent on a trip back to Vietnam.
I played the very start of the Roe v. Wade oral arguments from May It Please the Court before we discussed the case.
In my office, I helped students with their papers and phoned other students who were absent today but left messages for me to call them back.
Teresa emailed, saying that someone had called and he “sounded foreign and friendly” But she didn’t want to give out my phone number, so she took Thien’s. The kitchen restoration work in the Locust Valley house has ground to a halt, for some reason.
Teresa said she’s going to a bris with a female mohel, noting that her friend named her second son Jacob, “which doesn’t seem to go with Matthew, the first son’s name – but Jacob seems to be the rage these days.”
Grandpa Nat’s father was named Jacob Ginsberg. But there was no way my parents would have named Jonathan – who’s “named after” him – Jacob in 1961. Jacob sounded like an old Jewish man’s name back then.
Similarly, Marc was named after Grandma Ethel’s father, but Mom and Dad would never have named a child Max.