A Writer’s Diary Entries From Early April, 1998
Wednesday, April 1, 1998
9 PM. Last evening I picked up Thien at Barnes & Noble at 6 PM and drove him back here because he wanted to see my “house.”
He was impressed with the grounds and the outside of the villa, but he said my apartment’s furniture was the oldest he’d seen in America: “It like what we have in Vietnam.”
We talked over tea, and although he uses object pronouns as subjects, omits linking verbs, and is sometimes hard to understand, I do know him better.
If I had any thoughts ahead of time about making any sexual moves on Thien – and I did – tonight ended them. The guy needs someone who will love him forever. He’s not so interested in sex that he’d give in to an overture from another guy who wouldn’t be there in three weeks.
I was sort of pleased to discover that I’m still a Dudley Do-Right when it comes to sex. There’s no way I could take advantage of someone that vulnerable although I don’t think Thien would let me anyway. We’re not that attracted to each other.
It bothers me that he’s internalized a lot of homophobia. Again he said, “I not lucky because I am gay” – meaning that it’s hard to meet someone in the gay world.
While I find such comments annoying, I can understand Thien’s dismay at the promiscuity and vacuous worship of beauty in the bars and even at the gay community center.
I told Thien there are lots of gay guys like him who aren’t superficial and who are interested in the person first, but I admitted they weren’t that easy to find. At 10 PM, I drove him back to The Pruneyard and came home in a hard, cold rain.
Last night I slept well, with persistent erections and angry dreams, both of which I seem to have a lot of lately. I left the villa early this morning to go to the city, though I stopped off in downtown Mountain View.
The Mercury News printed my letter today. In it, I noted the trend of school districts requiring student uniforms (prevalent in urban California schools and now adopted by 
New York City) and also that underfunded schools are now chasing corporate donations (last week a Georgia high school suspended a kid for wearing a Pepsi shirt on “Coke Day,” set aside to honor their prospective benefactor).
I suggested that these two trends needed to converge:
“Schools should require students wear uniforms sporting the logos of Microsoft, McDonald’s, Disney, Coca-Cola and other conglomerates. In this way, they can simultaneously impart seminal American values: mindless conformity and a worship of wealth.”
Pretty neat, if I do say so myself. If I had a column, I could have made it a really nice piece.
At the cybercafe, I logged on to AOL. My only e-mail of note was from Carol Magnis of 12-Gauge Review, asking for a bio note, which I sent.
On the XY boards, I get messages for my alter ego Evan, who occasionally posts responses in threads. While it’s fun posing as an 18-year-old (I rationalize it by saying it’s research for a story about young gay guys’ online culture), I have to fend off teenage admirers who tell me I’m so funny and smart.
I got on U.S. 101 in Mountain View and took it into the city, getting off at the very end of the highway.
Although I easily found the ViRx headquarters in a building on Sutter off Van Ness, their parking lot was full. As it turned out, I ended up saving money because I parked at a meter across the street and just fed it enough quarters to stay there for a couple of hours.
ViRx sort of looks like a doctor’s office, but everyone there is gay or female.
Sue had just been on the radio on a rock station, Live 105, which as an April Fools’ joke announced that it was becoming KGAY with an all-gay format; it was playing ’70s disco songs and other gay-themed music all day.
On the air Sue said that she was a drag queen trapped in a woman’s body and plugged ViRx, which needs volunteers for a new study.
In the latest Bay Guardian, they had another big “Call Sue at 1-800-960-VIRX” ad asking for HIV-positive patients with T-cell counts of at least 200 and a viral load of more than 5000. Sue said everyone with HIV knows their numbers today.
She introduced me to some of the other employees and took me to her office, which has a window and door onto the open courtyard. Sue’s worked at ViRx for two years, and it’s been the only job she’s had in San Francisco.
She makes only $31,000 – way less than her final salary with both the New York City Department of Health and a similar position in Philadelphia – so she’s planning to take a job with the Martinez health department at $45,000 if she gets it: “Otherwise, I’ll probably stay here forever.”
Robert makes $90,000 at his job with a biotech company working on some interesting drugs using PCR (polymerase chain reaction) technology.
Sue let her hair grow completely gray/white and cut it very short, “Gertrude Stein-lesbian style.” She told me she’s up to 300 pounds and that her blood pressure is high and that Ronna worries about her health. Although she said she might go to an eating disorder clinic, I doubt she’ll do it.
We went to a Chinese restaurant a few doors down, where I asked Sue how she manages the city’s steep hills.
“Mostly, I drive,” she said.
After Sue showed me the latest photo of her son, she said one drawback of her long commute was how little time she got to spend with him.
After 13 years of marriage, she still seems contemptuous of Robert, or at least she acts that way in front of others. Sue said that while she’ll never get divorced, she 
falls asleep on the couch in front of the TV to avoid sex with him – although they still do it once a week.
I told her about Gianni and Thien, and we talked about the Bay Area and the gay scene here and about Brooklyn and being Jewish.
It’s hard to believe that I’ve known Sue since she was in high school over 25 years ago.
Beatrice is still having health problems in Florida, and she’s dependent on Aunt Roberta, who can be overbearing; the two sisters complain about one another constantly.
While Sue is close to Ronna, she thinks Billy is selfish and she doesn’t really to him although she says he’s “still crazy in love after four months of marriage.”
After all these years, I probably know Ronna’s family better than I know my own relatives.
Sue had time to kill after lunch, so we spent an hour together, getting orange juice at Starbucks and going into a consignment clothing store and Wherehouse Records, 
where she bought the City of Angels soundtrack CD.
The neighborhood around the ViRx office seems to be a nameless, nondescript place between the Tenderloin and Nob Hill to the east and Japantown and Pacific Heights to the west.
I hugged Sue goodbye at 2 PM. By that time, this morning’s clouds had turned to bright sunshine. Getting in my car, I went west on Sutter and then California Street, all the way to Sea Cliff.
Stopping in Lincoln Park by the ocean, I walked around the Palace of the Legion of Honor (Rodin’s Thinker is in the courtyard) and drove through nearby neighborhoods and along the Pacific, passing the Cliff House and the Seal Rocks and the beach on Great Highway as I listened to Live 105 and “It’s Raining Men,” “I Kissed a Girl,” “I Will Survive,” Rocky Horror music, The Village People, “We Are Family” and other “gay” songs.
At the zoo I turned left, as it was getting to 3:30 PM and I didn’t want to hit rush hour traffic. Remembering that 19th Avenue becomes I-280 past San Francisco 
State and the Stonestown Galleria, I got on that scenic freeway.
But it was a rough ride. There were moments when I felt myself disassociating from my body, the way I used to when I had panic attacks – although this never quite developed into a full-fledged attack. Maybe it’s the mountains and deep cliffs on the freeway that freaked me out.
As I approached Villa Montalvo at 4:30 PM, I saw a deer scampering off the road into the woods. At the office, I got my mail: Mom sent more bills and one of those newspaper clippings I can never figure out the import of.
I used the office phone to call Delta and buy a one-way ticket from LAX to Billings (with a change of planes in Salt Lake City) for Monday, April 27. It cost $345, the lowest price I could find on the Web.
In her weekly notes, Kathryn said we’re having a potluck Thursday at 6:30 PM – I guess just her, me and Melissa (who called this evening to ask if I had any sesame seeds).
Temperatures are supposed to be below 60° till at least next week.
Saturday, April 4, 1998
It’s 11 PM according to my clocks, but I’ve already turned them ahead one hour for daylight savings time. It’s been a long and wonderful day.
Last night I read some more of The Artist’s Way. Though I resist some of the author’s ideas, I really do feel she’s right in that we need to get in touch with the God or whatever inside and all around us, and to be childlike and playful and open, especially to the “coincidences” and “lucky breaks” that are signs that the universe is trying to help us. Usually we just ignore these signs, the book says.
Gianni often accused me of worshipping logic and reason, but I’m not always that way and I can be open to at least some “spiritual” stuff.
Last night I did some freewriting about Viagra, the new impotence pill – Russell Baker had a column about it – and the impending end of Seinfeld, with its four characters on the brink of middle age, refusing to grow up.
In my freewriting, I accused myself of the same refusal to grow up, of trying to be a boy forever even as my knee keeps going out of whack (this is been going on for two days, and it’s painful now), my farsightedness grows worse, and wrinkles and wattles appear.
I date guys in their twenties, I’ve never settled down in one place, with one person, with one career, and I have no permanent address.
On the other hand, on the radio I heard a speech by Anna Quindlen urging people to “follow their hearts” the way she did when she quit her New York Times column to write novels. By her definition, I think I’ve been doing that all along.
I slept deeply and soundly last night.
At 8:30 AM, Mom called to read me a letter from the University of Maryland journalism school. Pending approval of the graduate dean, I’ve been admitted to their M.A. program in journalism.
I think I need to follow my heart and the God-voice telling me to go to Maryland. I’ll be in a good place, close to friends – not only in D.C. and Maryland but also not far from friends in Philly and New York.
I’ll be combining these loves: politics, journalism and academia. I’ll be learning, and as a Capital News Service reporter one semester, I’ll cover public affairs at a good journalism school at a big state university in the nation’s capital in the final years of the Clinton administration and the twentieth century.
I’ll be in a metro area that’s pretty liberal, with lots of Jewish and gay people. So basically I’m all but certain I’m going.
There are financial problems and all sorts of logistical problems, but I’m going to ignore them the way I did seven years ago when I started law school at the University of Florida.
Eventually I got that scholarship in Gainesville that someone else turned down. And if I need money for grad school in journalism, I’ll get it from somewhere.
In grad school, I’d definitely feel less guilty about reading newspapers and listening to NPR. So I’m kind of excited about this.
At the Saratoga library, I e-mailed Teresa and Patrick and Gianni and Josh.
Teresa still wants me to stay with her and Paul this summer, and she said her parents would be happy if I stayed in their brownstone in Williamsburg again. Apparently I was wrong about them being upset about the flood or the way I’d left the house.
I probably will go to Teresa and Paul’s and then to her parents’ and then get my car in Florida and drive up to Maryland. Mom said there was as slow leak in the back tire and it had to be replaced, but the car still rides okay.
I hope – no, I know – everything will work out, despite the difficulties. And even when I read the bios of the Capital News Service reporters who are half my age, I don’t feel intimidated. I’ve got a lot to do to prepare for grad school, but it’s still five months till August and I’ve got time.
Although I came back to the villa for lunch, I left before the wedding started at 2 PM and returned after 5 PM, when it was over and the bride and groom were posing for their last photos on the lawn.
While I was out, I drove to Milpitas, where I used my new Mervyn’s credit card and the 15% discount to buy (for an incredibly cheap $9 and change) a blue fleece hooded sweatshirt – the kind I had several of back in the 1970s – in a boy’s extra-large size.
Thien called and we met back at Barnes & Noble at 6:30 PM. He bought me an iced tea, and we talked and looked at books for what I thought was ninety minutes but it was really more than three hours.
His family’s story is amazing. His father and mother were rich in Da Nang and had ten kids two years apart – except there was only one year between Thien and the next eldest sister, who died of cancer at sixteen. She and Thien were in the same grade at school and slept in the same bed.
When his father went to prison after the fall of South Vietnam, they sent his mother and the kids to the country. She’d been a housewife with a lot of money but was forced to work to survive.
When Thien was ten, his mother sent him to Saigon to stay with his uncle, her brother, because there was no food in the country.
But while he ate better there, his uncle treated him like a servant and he was always cleaning, cooking and working in his uncle’s business selling bicycle parts.
Thien’s father returned from prison after seven years, but when his father came over to kiss him, Thien recoiled because he was scared of him; he barely remembered him and what little he remembered seemed so different from the man who returned.
His father, once strong and well-built, had become frail and old, but Thien eventually could see how happy his father and mother were to be back together again: “My parents, I think, like Romeo and Juliet, a big love story.”
We discussed Diem, Thieu, Ky, Madame Nhu, et al., and it was interesting to hear a Vietnamese take on these characters in the American war and on the French colonization. Next time we see each other, Thien said, we should go to Vietnamese restaurant.
Sunday, April 5, 1998
10:30 PM. I’ve just come from the Carriage House Theatre. The sound of the Art Farmer Quintet playing Thelonius Monk’s “Blue Monk” is still reverberating in my ears.
I sat in the first row with my complimentary ticket to see the film documentary A Great Day in Harlem, about a photo of the many jazz greats of the time that was taken in 1958.
Farmer, who is Dad’s age, 72, was one of the younger musicians in the photo. His horn playing is still impressive, and it was nice to hear traditional jazz from him and his quintet, three young African-Americans and a Jewish guy on piano.
I sat with a couple of the Montalvo office workers and their husbands and enjoyed the music immensely, though my mind kept going back to my stories.
My left knee, which began to give out in the last couple of days, is very bad now. It feels inflamed, and walking is difficult at times.
I know that knees are hinges which cause a lot of trouble (Tom and Justin are both victims), but I’m not sure if this is a temporary problem – that I somehow injured the knee and will soon recover – or if this is going to be a long-term or recurring problem.
This afternoon I put a plastic bag of frozen vegetables on it to ice it, but I’m wondering if it needs heat instead.
Oh, this is why I’d better go to journalism school now and hope I’m not already too old. After all, tonight I can remember that time, thirty years ago yesterday, when Martin Luther King Jr. was shot.
Last night I didn’t sleep well, and the time change didn’t help. Nevertheless, I left Montalvo at 8:30 AM because the weather forecast was wrong and it wasn’t rainy.
I took I-280 into San Francisco. Unlike my last two trips to the city, this time I didn’t have a problem with anxiety as I drove there and back on the freeway.
I got off at Army Street, renamed for Cesar Chavez, and I guess that’s the poor Latino neighborhood. There were groups of men gathered on street corners, and I assume they were waiting for someone with a truck to come by and pick up day laborers.
I parked at a meter on Castro Street, “heeling” my car with the front wheels turned to the curb because the space went downhill.
My inability to walk, plus the lack of a really pleasant café where I could read the Sunday New York Times I’d bought – the Castro has a lot of homeless people, and the gay people I saw this morning weren’t the most upscale crowd – led me to limit my stay.
I didn’t go far, but I spent some time browsing in A Different Light, the gay bookstore. There are an incredible number of gay books, and although I saw many things I’d like to read, much of the fiction there looked mediocre.
Back in my car, I drove the winding road up to Twin Peaks, the highest point in the city, and a vista that’s spectacular to the point of scariness.
Then I drove around till I found a nice neighborhood near Golden Gate Park and UCSF, settling in at a Starbucks on Irving and 9th Avenue, where I read the paper, people-watched, and eavesdropped on conversations.
“Compared to here, in New York City everything is hard,” I heard someone say. “Including ordering a ham sandwich.”
After about an hour, knowing that my knee prevented me from doing too much walking, I got back in the car and rode through Golden Gate Park.
Then I just drove around a bit; by now I’m familiar with San Francisco’s pastel houses with the garage door in front and the traffic signals and signs and the buses with electric wires overhead. The landscape has become so second-nature, I forget to notice it.
I stopped at 19th Avenue at the Stonestown Galleria, where I used the men’s room in Macy’s but didn’t see anything cheap enough for me to break in my new Macy’s credit card. On the ride back home, I began listening to the Feel the Fear audiobook again.
Back in Saratoga, I had some gunpowder green tea (hot – I used to adore that blend when I was a teenager) at Peet’s and scanned the Sunday Mercury News.
It was mid-afternoon when I got back to Montalvo, had a late lunch, read and did some abdominal exercises for half an hour despite dizziness and shakiness caused by I-don’t-know-what.
My old Franklin School friend George Schweitzer had a funny item in the Times Sunday Business section about the time he was giving a presentation to CBS’s affiliates about their new shows.
He’d shipped his informative, colorful slides about the new shows and strategy to the hotel where the meeting was taking place. Unfortunately, the previous hotel room guest received the package and took George’s slides to Tokyo:
I scrambled, spending the night before my presentation with crayons and a flip chart, hand-drawing pictures of the images I remembered from my slides. Murphy Brown, David Letterman and Dan Rather had never looked so, well, unusual.
But it worked. The next morning I prefaced my presentation with the story of the missing slides and then turned to my flip chart. The first drawing: the man in Tokyo with my slides. It was all smiles from there.
It’s a good lesson about how we have to improvise and be creative in the face of what seems like a disaster.
It was still light out at 7 PM when I went to pick up my ticket and the box office and take my seat for tonight’s show.
Monday, April 6, 1998
9 PM. I’m still running an hour behind after the time change, starting with getting up later in the morning and leaving the villa, after exercise and a shower, at 10 AM rather than at my usual 9 AM.
Today I went to the Target store on Stevens Creek Boulevard in Cupertino to buy some item (shampoo, deodorant, razors, vitamins) that I plan to ship ahead to Ucross.
I also bought a knee brace, which I wore most of the day though, if anything, my knee seemed worse today, “giving out” and causing pain in the kneecap at odd times when I walked, particularly going uphill.
I did beginning research on the problem, and I didn’t learn much except that it was very common, as I already knew, among older people as well as athletes, and that one shouldn’t ignore the symptoms.
What I’m afraid of, naturally, is that I’ll end up with problems like Tom’s that will require painkillers, surgery and a cane – not to mention paying doctors money I don’t have.
The Merc had an interesting analysis about the contradictions of Reaganism and Thatcherism and the “triumph” of the global economy that was written by, of all people, Pat Buchanan. I think he’s right that capitalism in the Anglo-American nations, 1980s and 1990s style, has been unleashed too far.
While it’s resulted in the enormous creation of wealth – today the Dow hit 9000 as Citicorp and the Travelers Group merged into Citigroup – it’s also dislocated people who are not skilled enough or swift enough to bend and shift with the global economic winds.
Of course I’ve been wrong for years about the coming crackup and it could all be 
wishful thinking on my part.
But I still believe that free-market American triumphalism will eventually fall victim to some unexpected event or be dragged down if Japan collapses, if the Year 2000 problem is worse than currently believed, or if the introduction of the Euro proves chaotic. Enough of that.
I reserved a Budget car for L.A., and there’s no charge to pick it up at Burbank Airport and drop it off at LAX. I also left phone messages with Kevin and Matt Iribarne, and I made a 4 PM appointment with Micki Anderson to interview me as an artist resident for a survey she’s doing as a report to the directors.
Kit Anders sent the issue of PlopLop with my “This Planet Is Overrated” in print. So that’s another new story published. If I hadn’t seen it listed when I was on the computer at the Los Gatos library, I never would have known it came out.
The printer works! I made a hard copy of “Anita Hill at the Roller Derby” to submit to the next issue of PlopLop.
Friday, April 10, 1998
7 PM. It’s chilly, and last night was ice-cold because there was no heat at all instead of a little heat. I just passed Melissa, and she too was freezing, so I spoke to a couple of buildings and grounds guys and they said it was because the gas had to be shut down after some plumbing work.
I hope it will be warmer tonight, but if not, I’ll sleep in my jacket again – not to mention my socks and my fleece pants. The temperature here is between 45° and 60° every day, with no end in sight.
I fear Wyoming will be even colder: it hit 29° in Billings last night, although tomorrow’s high there is supposedly a warm 69°.
Yesterday at 5:40 PM, when I went to fetch her, Kathryn was still working, and Melissa was late, so we went out to dinner later than planned. As it turned out, the concert was sold out and I couldn’t get a free ticket so it didn’t matter anyway.
We went again to the Willow Street Wood-Fired Pizza place, and I split a goat cheese/sun-dried tomatoes pie with Kathryn. Today she was heading for a five-day vacation in Joshua Tree, an eight-hour drive from here.
Kathryn surprised me by telling Melissa how “easy” I was – meaning that I accept everything. Well, I’m the opposite of a diva, I guess. Kathryn said my attitude is “very Californian,” so perhaps I fit in here on the Left Coast.
We chatted amiably over dinner. Melissa’s okay, but she’s not someone I could feel really close to, as we’re too different. Still, she’s pleasant enough. When Kathryn and Melissa exchanged whitewater rafting stories, I told them that a bathtub was as adventurous as I got in water.
There was a message from Shelley Wouk on the answering service when I returned. Her daughter, Laura, 23, found the email I’d sent to Dr. Bob Wouk on Prodigy.
Unfortunately, Bob died three years ago (not a great shock to me, given that he was an overweight smoker), but Shelley gave me her office number, and we chatted for about twenty minutes.
She said I sounded exactly the same I did twenty-five years ago. I didn’t recognize her voice at first, but then it began to seem familiar, and she sounded youthful. We both agreed we’re about 28 in our own minds. She and Bob had Laura after they moved upstate.
The Wouks moved to Piedmont, by Oakland, seventeen years ago. Shelley has always maintained her clinical practice and is on the faculty of UCSF in the pediatrics department. Laura is now back in San Francisco, Shelley said, at San Francisco State, after being at MIT.
I told her how sorry I was about Bob’s death and how I would have loved to talk with him as well; Shelley said that they still missed Bob terribly and that he would have loved to talk to me, too. (Shrinks know how to be nice.)
Her parents live in Miami Beach, so she’s in Florida a lot. I mentioned that last summer I passed that funky office on Remsen Street and Henry Street in Brooklyn Heights where she and I had our sessions back in 1972, and I told her about my life and career, blah blah blah.
She said she was happy I’ve had an exciting life. I told her I would send her one of my books. It was awfully nice to make the connection with her, a shrink who knew 
me so well when I was 21 and on the brink of adulthood.
Today was Good Friday, and tonight is the start of Passover; I would have liked to go to one of those varied seders reported on in a front-page story in today’s Times, which I read this morning at Peet’s Coffee & Tea.
At 11:45 AM, I started out for the city, taking I-280 and getting to Kerry Dolan’s apartment on 3rd Avenue, off Geary, with no trouble. We kissed and hugged and then took off, stopping so she could show me the nearby wealthy enclave of Presidio Terrace and Dianne Feinstein’s mansion.
I parked on California off Divisadero, and we went out to lunch at a trattoria called Food, Inc., “a real San Francisco place.” Kerry paid for my salad, which was very thoughtful.
She’s teaching three comp classes at the University of San Francisco and working two days a week as an editor on the GMAT for Educational Testing Service.
She gets her writing done mostly during school breaks like this one. She got into VCCA for three weeks in mid-July, and she asked me what colony life was like in Virginia.
Kerry was a little concerned because she had a bad experience she’d had in Hambridge, where she was about to go to the last time we saw each other: at O’Hare at the end of June last year.
I told her I’d had a good time at VCCA during my visits in 1981 and 1982 and that I 
thought she’d like it, too.
She also talked about attending the AWP Conference and how hard it is to get stories published. She still hopes to get a book and the mythical tenure-track creative writing job, though she knows the odds are daunting.
Kerry’s the first person in California that I told about going to journalism school at Maryland. She expressed surprise but said she can understand why I like the immediacy and recognition of being published that journalism provides.
A sixtyish woman at the next table overheard us and snapped, “A dying profession.”
“I know,” I said, “I just want to go to school again.”
It turned out, of course, that she was a former newspaper reporter who lost her job a few years ago.
I know that Kerry likes San Francisco, but she also shares my view that its inhabitants are too self-congratulatory. (New Yorkers are the same way, but they also complain about the city more.)
After lunch, we walked up Fillmore and looked at all the pleasant yuppie places like Noah’s Bagels. Then we went to Tea & Company, where I bought a lemongrass/sweet orange iced tea as we talked some more.
Kerry told me her boyfriend owns a toy company that makes a toy he invented although most of his income comes from his work as a patent agent.
We walked around Pacific Heights, which has gorgeous homes, and I got a great vista of the city at Alta Plaza Park before I dropped her off at her house. Then I drove through Golden Gate Park to 19th Avenue and down to I-280.
In rush hour traffic on the ride home, I listened to NPR’s reports on the big peace agreement in Northern Ireland that was signed today.