A Writer’s Diary Entries From Mid-May, 1999
Wednesday, May 12, 1999
6 PM. My foot felt a lot better today. While it still hurts and I continue to limp, I’m relieved that it improved rather than worsened or stayed the same. I’m not sure if I need orthotics, as Teresa suggests – she uses them – but I do believe my problem has been caused by trying to get a bargain.
I did have some shoe problems in earlier days, but when I lived in Gainesville and stuck to the more expensive Reebok products, I felt fine. Perhaps it’s not only style that makes the name brands expensive; they’re probably made a lot better than the shoes that hurt my feet.
I never should have let myself wear my current sneakers until they were literally falling apart, and as soon as I heal (no pun intended), I’ll get a more expensive pair of sneakers.
Last night I slept all right, though I had a weird dream in which Teresa was driving me out to Mattituck on dirt roads. The landscape was similar to those weird empty spaces in Wyoming that I experienced a year ago.
As usual, I woke up around 6 AM and exercised to Body Electric at 7 AM. Teresa went out early to make another exercise class; I’m surprised at her dedication, but it’s obviously doing her a world of good.
Calling to find out my bank balance, I learned that my NSU check had gotten deposited. (Thanks, Dad.) Online, I read the Front Page Plus and some other articles from the New York Times on the Web.
Last night I had an email from Tandeep, saying he would call me tonight. I told him I sprained my ankle (the real story is too complicated and embarrassing) but said I’d be happy to see him if I was feeling better in a couple of days.
I got a call from Kathryn Funk, who’s visiting New York with her boyfriend. They’ve been to the Soho galleries – the ones that are still left following the commercialization of the area, now filled with fancy boutiques and other high-priced stores – and to MoMA and other museums.
They also went to the top of the Empire State Building and to a baseball game at Yankee Stadium, which they were delighted to find was nowhere as cold and windy as Candlestick Park.
I told Kathryn I’d call her tomorrow morning to see if we could get together explaining that I was as far away from Midtown – in time, if not miles – as San Jose is to San Francisco.
When Teresa came back from exercise class, I took the minivan and spent an hour at Farmer’s Bazaar and Genovese, loading up on groceries and other stuff I may need through the weekend since I don’t know when I’ll have a car again.
Teresa was in no hurry to get to Barbara’s, feeling that she was unable to break through the wall of Barbara’s bossy friend Kathy and her Fort Lee posse. Teresa told me she’s definitely not going to sleep at Barbara’s tonight.
Instead, she planned to pick up Pam and go with her to the funeral parlor for the memorial service and then she’ll stay over at Pam’s tonight and then go to the graveside service in the morning.
After Teresa left, I spent the afternoon with Ollie. At one point, he was on my bed and had me rub his belly as he dozed on and off. (Like people, dogs involuntarily kick their feet while they’re asleep.)
I took him on three walks, hoping to avoid his usual “present” in the house – but all he did was pee. Then, when the gardener came, I had to keep Ollie locked up so he wouldn’t harass the poor man while he was working in the back and front yards.
Also this afternoon: I signed for a UPS package of ceramics from Italy, took phone messages from Paul’s cousin in England, put up the dishwasher and put away all its contents once it was done, read New York magazine and the Times (I have to buy the paper now since the subscription ended after I paid the last bill), and caught ten minutes of All My Children. Tonight I have to tape the finale of The Nanny (yech) for Teresa’s friend Bob in Rome.
Paul came home an hour ago, and we’re awaiting the arrival of Jade and her friend from school, who’ll be staying here a few days. Tomorrow night Miranda is staying over, so it will be a full house.
Although I didn’t accomplish much today, I’ve enjoyed myself, and at least my feet are getting better.
Thursday, May 13, 1999
8 PM. I woke at 6 AM and kept dozing off until I forced myself to work out to Body Electric at 7 AM. Paul had left for work, and Jade hadn’t shown up yesterday, so I was alone in the house.
My foot still hurt a bit, but after eating breakfast and getting rid of Ollie’s “presents” in the den – Paul says he does that to express anger that Teresa leaves him alone – I walked to the post office to mail letters. At the Indian convenience store, I bought the Times, which I barely glanced at.
Back at the house, Mom called while I was sitting outside with Ollie.
She said that I got an acceptance from a magazine called Rio, but it’s for “Mysteries of Range Management,” which has already been in a webzine and is scheduled to go into the fall issue of another literary magazine. Of course, getting three acceptances out of ten submissions confirms my belief that it’s a good story.
Mom said that I also got a letter from Nancy Dowd, who apologized for not getting off the reference letter to Ben Mulvey until now.
Marc was offered the job as the manager of Phoenix’s biggest AirTouch door, the one in North Phoenix, but it’s not any more in salary.
The larger sales would mean a few thousand more in commission, but Marc would have to fight traffic in his lousy Cadillac, which currently doesn’t have air conditioning, so he probably won’t accept the offer unless they can make it more worth his while.
I woke up Kathryn when I called at 9:45 AM. When I apologized, she said, “We’re still on Pacific Time anyway.” She and Larry got back at 2 AM after seeing Death of a Salesman and having a fabulous dinner out.
I said I’d come to the apartment where they were staying, which turned out to be literally next door to Josh: he’s in apartment 18M and their friend is 18N at 115 East 9th Street.
I quickly got myself ready for the 10:34 AM train, and the ride into the city was pleasant. On my Walkman, I listened to WNYC-AM radio until we got to the tunnel.
At Penn Station, I took the IRT to 14th Street and then took the L to Third Avenue and walked down to the same building where I was on Saturday. Isn’t that a weird New York City coincidences I left a note under Josh’s door.
I kissed Kathryn hello. Larry seemed very nice; I knew he was a lawyer, so we had something in common. He told me he was tired of seeing art museums and galleries, “which is more Kathryn’s thing.”
After they told me about all the places they’d been to, I took them to Veselka, where I got a garden burger and carrot juice and they were able to sample the restaurant’s famous perogies, blintzes and borscht.
Because of my foot, I was hesitant about going out with them for the afternoon, but I asked them if they’d ever seen the Brooklyn Heights Promenade.
After so many years away, my subway knowledge is imperfect, but it’s coming back to me. I thought our best option was to get a train at Astor Place (I explained the significance of the beavers on the tile mosaics) and we eventually got on the 5 train to Borough Hall, where I gave them a Grayson tour of Brooklyn Heights.
As we passed 44 Court Street, I told them the building housed two important places in my teenage years: my draft board and Planned Parenthood.
Kathryn and Larry seemed to like Montague Street, and of course they were delighted with the amazing view of Manhattan – and the Statue of Liberty, the ferry going to Staten Island, the Verrazano and Bayonne Bridges, etc. – from the Promenade. Even I still feel thrilled when I’m there.
I think it was thirty summers years ago when I first explored the Heights on my own, and I can remember how exciting it was to be 18 and 19 and to see the world beyond the middle-class Jewish and Italian enclaves of southern Brooklyn.
Unlike my brothers and many kids from my neighborhood – and despite my panic attacks and agoraphobia – I wanted to explore Manhattan and exotic places like Brooklyn Heights.
I do know a lot of good Brooklyn Heights lore, so as we walked around, I could talk about Henry Ward Beecher, Norman Mailer, the Jehovah’s Witnesses at the Watchtower, and the new artists’ neighborhood of Dumbo. Kathryn and Larry enjoyed spotting cute dogs, purple columbine and what they thought were weird-looking Brooklynites.
Walking up to the north end of the Promenade, I started over the Brooklyn Bridge with them before I needed to head back myself.
Kathryn and Larry both hugged me, and I felt really good that I showed them in a nice time. From the bridge I walked through Cadman Plaza and then across Tillary Street over to Concord Village at Jay Street and then down past New York City Technical College and the Marriott to the A/C/F subway station.
Unfortunately, I didn’t realize that the A train doesn’t stop Lafayette Avenue, so I had to go all the way to Nostrand Avenue to get the C local back to Lafayette. From there, I could just walk over to the LIRR station, which is now totally underground.
After getting some frozen yogurt and grapefruit juice, I hopped on the 4:56 PM train, which eventually got me into Locust Valley at 6:15 PM.
Jade had come home (alone) from Purchase, and she’d taken a message for me to call Josh, which I did. Naturally, he’d been astonished to get the note I’d slipped under the door. I chatted with him on the portable phone as I made my veggies and ate them on the terrace as the chazzers (Paul’s word) Ollie and Hattie tried to cadge food from me.
I need to speak to Tandeep tonight.
Friday, May 14, 1999
6 PM. Ollie is lying on my bed with me as I write this. I had another day playing quasi-host in the Big City even though I’m hardly a New Yorker these days.
Still, being an “expert” on the city to outsiders on does remind me of my New York roots, and hey, I can pass for a New Yorker even if I couldn’t answer Tandeep’s question about why the city is called the Big Apple.
(“It was never called that for the first 25 years of my life,” was my excuse for not knowing.)
Last night I read the paper in bed and then fell asleep long before Teresa got home from the ballet last night. Awake at 4:45 AM, I turned on NPR’s Morning Edition at 5 AM and drifted in and out of sleep till I exercised at 7 AM to Body Electric.
After showering and dressing, I went downstairs for my usual breakfast. Teresa was very agitated as she was preparing to open the Fire Island house for the season with Paul and the useless Miranda, who looked just horrible as I thought she would in the morning.
Miranda is such a kvetch and a schlemiel that I can’t see her being any fun at all at the beach house.
Teresa said that on Wednesday evening, when she and Pam arrived at the funeral home, a jazz band started playing New Orleans-style Dixieland music, and that lasted for forty minutes.
Charles Osgood hosted the memorial service. Ted Koppel was in and out, and various people in and out of the media got up and told stories about Stewart, most of which Teresa had heard before. (She also spoke.)
Yesterday’s gravesite funeral service was more somber. Teresa said that Barbara’s friend, a rabbi who’s kind of her boss in the school district, gave a “dismal” talk.
But afterwards they went to a nice restaurant, and then Teresa drove into the city to meet Miranda at Lincoln Center to see the American Ballet Theater.
Tandeep called here at 8:15 PM last night. I told him I could get the 9:37 AM train and meet him at Rockefeller Center by the gold statue of Prometheus. Having been at Rockefeller Center for the interview, he knew where the statue was and said it had scaffolding around it for some kind of renovation.
I don’t really understand why Tandeep had to leave Canada to go to the Indian consulate here to apply for some way to stay in Montreal beyond his internship year, but that seems to be the way it works.
This morning I spotted Tandeep right away. He told me that he’d taken the train down from Montreal and that the eight-hour ride wasn’t that bad because they passed through spectacularly beautiful scenery.
Tandeep has been staying in Rego Park with a friend from university in India, Simran, who works as a software consultant in Manhattan, and we were going to meet him for lunch.
When I asked Tandeep what he wanted to see, he said the Intrepid Museum, so I walked him through the 47th Street Diamond District (Larry and Kathryn had been taken with the Hasidic merchants there), past Broadway theaters where Amy’s View with Judi Dench and The Iceman Cometh with Kevin Spacey were playing, and then over the nondescript far western blocks to the Intrepid.
Unfortunately, by the time we got there, we didn’t have enough time to make it worthwhile to pay the $10 admission, but I took a photo of Tandeep in front of a slab of the Berlin Wall and we looked at the tanks, planes and World War II commemorative plaques outside the ship.
Walking back to Times Square, we got on the N train to Union Square and met Simran at his software company on Broadway at 21st Street. (It probably was once a clothing manufacturer’s “place” like the one Art Pants had back in the day.)
I had assumed we would be going to a nice restaurant, but we ended up eating outside at an order-it-yourself-by-the-slice pizzeria on University Place and 13th Street.
It was interesting to hear two Indian guys in their early twenties talk about their country and the very different lives they’re now living here in the U.S. and Canada.
I was kind of surprised that Tandeep had gotten pepperoni pizza. He told me he eats pork and beef – but he started doing that in Europe, not back home in India.
I get the feeling that he and Simran are Sikhs the way Americans like me are Jews and Catholics. The guys did wear their karas, the silver bangle, and I’m sure they had on the other Sikh stuff like the kirpan, but they certainly didn’t wear turbans or have thick beards. (Tandeep’s beard is more groovy Gen X goatee.)
When I asked Tandeep why he calls Sat Darshan “Mamaji” rather than “Aunt,” he said that’s because in India, every older female is one’s aunt.
Tandeep was planning to visit another Indian friend in Rye, so after we said goodbye to Simran at his office, we took the subway to Grand Central, where he bought his ticket and got a train schedule.
I wanted to get back to Long Island before rush hour, but Tandeep had some time before his train and said he wanted to see the UN, so when we got outside at 42nd Street, I pointed him east and told him to walk to First Avenue. He said I should visit him in Montreal and we shook hands.
Sat Darshan had emailed me about Tandeep this morning, so I wrote her that I was seeing him and gave her a full report when I got back home.
One thing I did accomplish today was to pay my car registration and insurance. Yesterday Mom had sent the notices which were forwarded from Gainesville, where I don’t need an emission test and the insurance is cheap ($299 now).
While I was in Manhattan, I took out $400 from a no-fee Republic Bank ATM, and when I got back to Locust Valley at 4:45 PM, I had time to get two money orders at the post office so that I could avoid using a check with my Fort Lauderdale address.
I’m alone here with Ollie and Jade, who told me that by now she loves Purchase so much that it’s hard for her to come home from the campus for the summer.
“Here it’s the same old same old,” she said.
“I guess you sort of outgrew them here,” I said, and Jade didn’t disagree.
I told her it usually takes a while to adjust to college and said that, like her, I didn’t really find my place at Brooklyn until my sophomore year.
Thursday, May 20, 1999
7:30 PM. I just returned from a walk to the post office to mail some bill payments. With only Paul and Jade in the house, I feel a bit like an intruder here.
Teresa is at Fire Island with Ollie. We arrived at the ferry terminal in Bay Shore at 1:30 PM to get there in time for Teresa to load her new TV and tons of other stuff. After that, I had the car to myself.
Getting off the Oyster Bay-Seaford Expressway at Jericho Turnpike, I stopped at the Borders in Syosset to get an iced tea, glance through the new issue of XY and buy a copy of Poets & Writers, whose classified ads didn’t yield any literary magazines or webzines to which I could submit “Silicon Valley Diet.”
With a 32-page story, I should probably just wait for book publication. I did email Kate Gale today, asking her what was up and if she still wanted to send the contract.
I also told her that I knew Red Hen Press was a stable operation but that I naturally felt a little insecure about giving her what is to me a lot of money.
Maybe I need to think about this subsidy as a risky investment that could just disappear, so I won’t freak out if I lose it all. Not that I expect to, of course.
My cold is better today although this afternoon I got dizzy due to the congestion in my sinuses. I have a productive cough, but my nose isn’t so stuffed and runny, and I’ve had a lot of energy although I felt a little shaky at Borders, so I didn’t stay there long.
Still, it felt good to be doing something familiar like that. If I were in South Florida, I’d be spending more time reading, writing and going online.
When I returned to Locust Valley, Alice phoned to invite me as her guest to a 4 PM awards show hosted by Peter celebrating the best newcomer actors on Broadway. I declined, citing my cold and how I’d have to rush to get to Manhattan on time. I also don’t have a sport jacket, so I would not have been properly dressed.
I finally had some email today.
Sat Darshan suggested my physical problems were probably my body telling me to slow down. While that could be, I hardly feel I’ve been overexerting myself. I told her she is the one who does that, especially since Kiran is going to bed later and later but still requires middle-of-the-night feedings.
Patrick replied to my comment that New York City now had less crime than Fort Lauderdale by telling me that his mother’s purse was stolen by a black couple in the Publix in Hollywood last week.
Kevin wrote that he’s still working at Warner Brothers Records, where all the executives are unglued by MP3. He told me he went to the premiere of Star Wars Episode One: The Phantom Menace last night and enjoyed it a lot.
Jade did, too, but I’m turned off by all George Lucas’s hype. The Star Wars movies were fun but not very interesting to me, and this movie seems more like a marketing event than a film.
Jade has a rash on her side, and it looked to me as if it might be shingles, which I know can be very painful. Tomorrow she’ll go to the doctor. People with autoimmune diseases like Jade are susceptible to shingles, so we’re all concerned.
She’s come such a long way from being the screwed-up high school kid who was doing heroin three years ago. Sometimes I forget how serious her lupus can be.
The Times had a front page story about workers wasting company time online. Apparently some employees are even going on the Web to research the stock market.
Remember how at the start of this decade, I thought there would be a stock market crash and an economic depression? That’s what happened after the intense stock market speculation by ordinary people in the 1920s.
But we’ve now had years of similarly risky investments in the stock market and none of my predictions has come to pass. By now the Dow is around 11,000, so I have to admit I was totally wrong. Well, it’s not the first time.