Florida–2003 Continued
SUNDAY, 11/16/03: 4:28AM: Waked earlier from a dream of being with Paul in a strange hotel where the shower was a cube of bamboo lattice (with other cubes like it on two sides of a central hallway) lined with plastic: on the floor you could see through it to where the plastic didn't fit to the sides so that the water could flow freely to the floor below, and on each side were loose sheets so that when you soaped up, you could rub against any wall and have the sliminess of the soap reflected back onto you. The idea seemed to be for TWO people to shower together and mutually rub and stimulate each other until an orgasm would be almost inevitable, and I started soaping myself up in the dream and began to get excited, and woke to find myself excited almost just by the erotic sensual possibilities of such a shower arrangement. Then wake at 4:28 (non-time-change reflected in all the clocks that say 5:28) and the room is light enough (particularly with the slat closest to the bed missing from the vertical slats of shades across the room, situated alongside the bed) to go to the john, and had a decent shit, at last the wiping is away from the clay-like, copious, yellowish wipings that came away softly and permitted a clean swipe only after the fifth or sixth wipe, and now it's back to the semi-problematic (is there something WRONG to produce this?) "clean, wet anus" condition where the wipe produces almost no residual shit, only a translucent, brownish liquid, as if the shit were expelled with a lubricating rush of almost-clear fluid that left the fluid as the only substance to wipe away, in only one or two wipes, before a clean orifice remained. Back at 4:38 to type this to 4:46, glancing at the outside lights before getting back into the comfortable bed, the red light still blinking on the caller-ID unit on the nightstand. Wake and lie a bit, thinking, doing the first count of "days left," and get up at 7:25, Paul up already, we go to Bagel Bar East at 7:45 for breakfast for $16.37, Paul leaving tip in cash because he knows the waitresses, quite crowded, Paul's Nova omelet VERY fishy, so I only taste it and he doesn't finish it, and I have challah French toast with powdered sugar and butter and maple syrup with two eggs over easy and a cup of hot chocolate, and lots of nice ice water with the pills. Back at 8:34, his girlfriend picking up a hard-faced late-teen walking a dog out in front of the building before Paul could make a victim of himself making some cutesy comment about the dog or the dog-walker and incurring the clearly redneck wrath of the frowning youngster. For the third time someone gets out of the elevator, leaving it for us JUST as we go to push the button for service, and I'm up to read the paper, Paul goes out to "wash the car and get his cock sucked," as he reports, and though for MOST people I'd find it hard to believe, with Paul I believe it! Look through The Economist, which he subscribes to, all of it in 3 hours, and most of the lengthy articles are unsigned, and it looks VERY academic, and very pricey for a "discount" of something like $89 per year, coming out weekly. Get the rest of the paper from him and do the puzzles to 10:20, and wash my face and pack my clothes and catch up with this by 10:41, Paul saying he's going to catch a quick nap and we'll leave for Fort Lauderdale at 11AM, supposedly for the one location in which the memorial service for the suicide and the food and drink that supposedly await us---are awaiting us. Odd that my plans to come down here, made so many months ago, "happened" to coincide with two VERY different kinds of deaths (of bleeding at 98, of suicide in his late 30s). Humidity is beginning to build up in the room surrounded with windows looking over the parti-sunned south and west horizons, and I will probably take everything into the kept-dim living room to show Paul that I'm ready to leave at any time. Now 10:45AM. Out on the balcony to look at the view, then decide to take #24 at 11AM, view north from Dick's 11th floor two-bedroom (bought two years ago for $70,000 and worth more than $160,000 now, with a monthly maintenance of $130!!) North Miami apartment, and #25 panorama of downtown Miami on the right, Miami Beach on the left, from the bedroom of the apartment where I slept. Glance through Dick's Sexaction magazine for females and she-males. Drink ice water and cubes from fridge. Leave at 11:20, Paul carting a large bag of porno that he got from Bob that he got from someone else who died. He recommends Jalisco for a beef (dry) and a chicken (moist and tasty) taco from 12:30 to 1, and to Roger's house at 1:30, third car in drive, and most of the early guests are black and not very attractive, though Paul likes the tall Black with cornrows. Roger, the host, is small and dried-up looking, and then in comes Tom, older and very tanned, with sharply defined muscles and veins that stand out, which Paul describes as the usual look of advanced HIV sufferers who are taking meds, including some mouth lines that he describes that I didn't even notice. Then a Spanish couple comes in: she was Michel's supervisor at the bank, where he was a teller, her pudgy husband who never sits down, and a cute son that the tall black mother of three children says will soon become a terror, so she'd better cherish him for what he is now. I finally get a vodka-orange for myself when Paul says he won't drink because he has to drive back to Homestead, and fill my plate with ham and potato salad and two tuna-salad sandwiches that I vaguely worry about the mayonnaise in, as well as the seemingly yokeless deviled eggs, ALL mayonnaise and spices in the hard whites. Take one macadamia-nut chocolate from the LOAF of candies and chocolates and sugary treats someone sent, and look with appreciation at the mantel taped with dozens of cards that Michel had sent to Roger through the years, equating himself with Pumpkin, the little Yorkie that paddled around the apartment, getting under my feet once, and photos of the two of them with Paul in a restaurant in Beziers, where Paul had influenced a number of Americans to buy houses and retire to. Family members come in, speaking mostly Spanish, and Paul is VERY easy with them all, chatting and asking questions and offering to get drinks or beers for them, and other gays come in, whom Paul noted as being ALL positive---as Roger himself has been for almost 20 years---except for Paul and me. The subgroups keep very much to themselves, and I'm almost taken as a straight woman, because the tall Black tells endless stories about how surprised she was at her pregnancies, how they were carried, what her husbands thought about them, and how different she was from women who found it difficult to conceive. I finish my food and determine NOT to sample the cakes and cookies and candies that abound, limiting myself to two Hershey sampler pieces from the table and a few of the peppery chips. Loved the cork-under-glass in the bathroom, the deep blue pool right before the dock at the Bay, across from which a complex of million-dollar condos had just been built, and his smallish, three-bedroom house was now flanked and fronted by gargantuan palaces made by buying up adjacent lots and doubling the size of the previous house over the two lots. The bright blue twinkles from the pool contrasted sharply with the tannic brown of the bay, ruffled by passing boats, for which two drawbridges, raised, slowed our journey as Paul drove me on a tour of Fort Lauderdale: the posh shopping street of Los Olas (some kind of tree, he said), skirting the private house, now a museum, he said we might visit, but didn't, and the various beaches, some of which he said were primarily gay. But we only saw ONE man waist-deep in the crashing waves, and not many of the people walking, running, or skating down the street were that attractive. It hit me for the dozenth time that this would NOT be a good place to live, so I could look at the blossoming penthouses atop buildings with lack of desire. Finally at 2:40 Paul asked if I was ready to leave, and I said I thought we were waiting for some kind of service, and Paul said there was none, Roger only getting teary when Michel's ashes arrived, which were now sitting on the central table in a Delft jar, surrounded by photographs from his smiling life, reiterated by the women from the bank who said that he made them laugh ALL the time, even when he was saying something depressing. He was 40 years old, and I remarked he was only halfway through life. Paul said goodbye to all the right people and we left at 2:55, having to move two cars to get him out of the driveway, and we drove directly home by 4:14, tired, and he was pleased by how short the drive was, giving me hope that he WOULD drive me up to Miami Beach Sunday morning to meet Rita. I think I'm going to take a nap, but turn on the TV to see if the image has returned from being out last night---or the night before, and it IS, turning on to SKATING, some Canadian championship that is won handily by the blond Russian [Evgeny Plushenko] I can't think of, and then I keep on TV to see a program about Leh but Paul says it's already late to go swimming, so we're out with suits and towels and a paper bag for him to gather trash to get to the almost-deserted clubhouse at 6PM, sign in, change, and he swims four laps in the long pool, I paddle around looking at the stars and floating, and when he's done he's DONE (just like sex) and into the shower to find that they don't provide soap (as they didn't provide a key to the lockers, which he used when he found the first one open anyway), but I washed off and we walked back, looking at what the paper the next day proved was Venus setting about an hour after the sun, and he wants to watch 60 Minutes, so I'm in to his room about 6:45 and watch junk to 7, then junk of 60 Minutes: gay colonel gypped of his pension 8 days before he retired; Equatorial Guinea's king ripping off its people as he had been ripped off by the oil company giving him only 12% of the revenue, where other countries got up to 60% of the revenue; and some reporter finding it was dirt easy to walk through chemical plants right in the middle of New York, Chicago, Pittsburgh, and other places with lethal containers of chemicals just WAITING (now that they've HEARD about it) for terrorists to come in and kill millions of people. UGH! Then watch a VERY poorly done Nova on shark attacks, which turned into lifestyles of elephant seals, harbor seals, and otters, and VERY little except shots of CARCASSES fed to the sharks, and one shot of a dead sperm whale being bitten into pieces by sharks. I leave at 8:40 and try to piece together a dinner with toast and peanut butter and jelly and Key lime pie and Italian garlic toasts, supplementing my two (light on gin) gin and tonics through the TV shows, and get severely lectured by Paul about not leaving ANYTHING on counters or DRIPS of TOUCHES of sweetness that would attract hordes of ants. Finish washing up at 9:24, Paul already in bed, start looking at some of the Sunday Miami Herald, but it's overwhelmingly big, with numerous puzzles, so I give up at 9:55 and go to bed, nothing on TV, tired enough to be sure to fall asleep.
MONDAY, 11/17/03: 5:47AM: Wake from dream and pee and start typing at 5:53: I've eaten a snack-dinner (like last night, after TV, or this noon, the tacos at Jalisco before the buffet at Roger's in Fort Lauderdale) before going to a party at an Upper West Side address I've never been to before, and when I get outside the building I meet people going to the party, so I never get the name or apartment number of the hosts, and go in to find everyone's sitting around having dinner off plates on their laps, so I have a bit to eat and then find myself in a mass of people (I guess from the crowded masses of elephant seals on the PBS special about sharks in the Farallon Islands last night), and I'm next to a cute guy and I try linking fingers with him, and he RESPONDS, so I roll toward him and we start kissing and I push him into a corner and want to have sex with him, and someone behind me starts pulling down my pants, but I panic, thinking this is a "normal" party, but just then there's a kind of announcement, "OK, time to take the clothes off," and I realize it's a sex party, grateful not to be embarrassed. Take clothes off with everyone else and someone near me says, "Here's your outfit," and hands me a pile of green material which seems comprised of three pieces: a filmy, green veil that seems to form an undergarment, a plasticky, green cape, almost like a carapace, which closes with large, awkward snaps along the neck-and-shoulder line, and some sort of bulbous headdress, like an inflated ellipsoid of green, resembling a tapered, balloon-disk flying saucer or a monstrous caricature of a nun's wimple perched atop the head. As I'm adjusting these, I ask a nearby woman, "How many years has this group been meeting?" "Oh, about two years." Ah, so fairly new. "Has it always been---" and I motion vaguely to the two women nearby. "Mixed? Just the last few times." "Oh." I finish dressing and go out a rear door into a huge backyard, maybe over an acre, that seems to extend "to the river," though in the darkness I really can't tell, and when I hear that EVERYONE is supposed to host these in turn, I remark to no one in particular, "I hope they don't expect EVERYONE to have a 25-bedroom apartment on an acre of garden in the back." There's some sort of formalized ritual, or game, going on in the yard, and I return to the house for more sex, but I have to LEAVE for some reason, and walk south, but when I try to find my way back, I locate the house OK, but when I look at the INNER apartment-directory, it's a modernistic sculpture with no names, but only representations of who lives inside, with sticks and levers and buttons and decorations sticking out in all directions like hatpins in an enormous pincushion, everything made out of various colors and shapes of wood. So I go to the OUTSIDE array of bells and nameplates, and this is simpler, maybe six or seven names, and I think it MIGHT be the top, but I'm not sure, and I ask someone leaving if they know the name of the people in the apartment throwing the party, but they don't know, and then I wander down the front walk to see someone else FROM the party and they say, "Schnauer," but I can't find THAT name on the nameplates. See two guys in costume, one with white paste almost flattening his eyelashes to his cheek, and ask if THEY'RE going to the party, but it turns out theirs is up the block, and I'm not invited, and I wonder if this is somehow an indication that I'm not going to be invited back, and walk north again, trying to find this larger building between sets of smaller ones on the block, and think I'm about to get there but only see something else that tells me "Oh, I forgot that, but the place I want is just down the block," possibly based on my surprise last night when Paul wants to WALK to the Community Center for swimming, and it's farther than I thought and he surprised me by taking along a plastic bag for his customary trash-walk, and I almost despaired of getting THERE without tiring out my feet in the flip-flops. Think I'm JUST coming into view of the place I'm looking for when I wake up and AGAIN lie in dazed stupefaction (tautology?) at the realization that, as much as I looked forward to getting BACK to the party, or enjoying another like it in the future, it was only a dream, and even getting back to SLEEP would not retrieve the wonders that I'd left behind, now knowing that they're left behind FOREVER, and there MUST be some grim analogy to my recognition that my SEXUAL activity is now permanently behind me (except for jerking off), and my feeling of vaguely negative anticipation of six full days here in Homestead before meeting Rita and Denny in Miami, and then five days with them before even beginning to get back to NYC. Theme: trying to get back to where I REALLY want to be, but being denied, and the inevitable thought ensues: "Will I wake up (die) before attaining my goal (NYC) in THIS dream (vacation)?" Stop typing now at 6:18AM, hoping that catching up with yesterday in File 4 will FILL that, abutting the end of that with this dream as the start of File 5. And now type at the END of the dream at 12:50PM, having gotten up at 7:28AM, still sleeping amazingly long, feeling vaguely sore here and there from the swim yesterday, wondering how I'm going to occupy my time, and shit two long, yellow turds, and Paul's eaten, so I have toast and jelly and granola and pills without juice to 8:15, and get to INDULGE in all the puzzles, a difficult crossword and Quote-Acrostic finally being solved with the Scrabble, Jumble, and Word Sleuth, and when I go out to the john, Paul has put Monday's Herald at my door, now being delivered to him, so I skim through that, nothing really there, and do the puzzles, and then he describes my lunch-to-be, saying he'll be leaving for his 1PM bridge game at 12:15, and that DOES strike me as odd, so when I come out again and he's still here at 12:20, I say, "We won't talk now, but I DO realize my vacation here is VERY strange with you providing me with food and entertainments, and I hope you don't mind," and he pleases me by responding, "I enjoy your company, you're not demanding, I like having you here, when I want to do something I do it, and you're content to sit in your room with the puzzles, and believe me I'd TELL you if you were getting on my nerves, which you aren't. You don't say, 'Take me here, take me there,' like C., and that's just great." Well, OK, if he's OK with it; I'm DEFINITELY seeing what it's like to have NOTHING to do and managing to occupy my time quite nicely, like finishing this by 1PM and ready to have the lunch he left for me. Good-tasting chicken and bean soup and a beer fill me up by 1:45, and back to puzzles and TV on the Nazi Waffen SS, four hour-long episodes, some of which I'd seen before, emphasizing the Jews' ability to pay their way out of Europe AND the "difficulty" of following the racial-purity orders to eliminate the Jews. Start watching the History Channel on "president-killing guns," when Paul calls me to dinner at 7:21, decent salmon, black-eyed peas, lima beans, Hardy's Chardonnay, and applesauce. Get BACK to TV at 8PM for The Men Who Killed Kennedy, to 11PM, clearly one of them LBJ, which I'd always thought true, but here all but proved, along with the corruption of Texas in general. Would that this would CONNECT with getting Bush out of the Presidency!!! Bed, tired, at 11:05PM.
TUESDAY, 11/18/03: 12:48AM: Wake and realize I had ANOTHER dream: We may be in a musical, or a TV show about a musical, and we're looking to be produced, with the lead lady a friend of ours, but the producer is having trouble auditioning the right people and we're having trouble getting auditioned. We've come up with an idea for a revolving stage, with rolling wheels (from TV commercial just before I went to sleep?) as a sort of footlights-carrier, in the middle of which can be popped up trees, flowers, or other musical-number "foredrops" (do I have to say, not backdrops?), and at first I thought the whole carousel-top rotated, but it need be only downstage. It's past midnight, but we have to get there, and without transition we're traveling in Akron daytime along roads which have been shifted and upraised by an earthquake, so that I can observe, "They really made the roads thin around here," since the 5-6-inch ends of jagged road can barely support us, or our car, it's not clear which, without crumbling, and at a particularly big orchestral climax, a whole segment of road-edge collapses down into chunks of concrete that must be good for SOMETHING theatrically, and I wake and transcribe dream, missing many of the details and all the convincingness, by 12:55AM, but still, this early, feel that I have to pee again. 5:29AM wake and pee and dress and go out at 5:35 to see what I can see of the Leonids, but there are bright lights from the road and the porch next door, so I walk to the lake edge, producing a number of plops into the water, and see a lot of stars, some gray areas that appear to be neither cloud nor star-area, THINK I see some movement but probably not, and then a plane flashes its lights as it passes low on the right, and a VERY high, unblinking jet, or satellite, parades from right to left, and I glance at my watch at 5:45 and 5:50 and 5:55 and come in at 6 and undress and finish this at 6:08AM, disappointed not to have seen any showers. Then remember to record a dream that has me in some kind of esoteric organization where data is available through numbered slide-sets, and I've seen some, contributed one, and look at arrays of numbers to see who should get which ones and which should be mailed to whom, and remember no other details except for an impression of young, eager, maybe somewhat naive participants in this arcana. NOW finish at 6:10, expecting to see some dawn light when I turn off my bed-lamp. Pee AGAIN and earplugs in and back to bed at 6:15AM. Up 7:27 to shit. Breakfast, then papers and puzzles to 9:35 and leave for Costco at 10, pay $1.44 cash for a good fruit smoothie, I guess he pays a bill of $97.08 for stuff he buys, then we're to Shorty's lunch in Kendall from 12-12:41, which I guess he pays for, then to the underground parking at Waves Mall, elegant and under-crowded, and to Johnny Rocket's for him to have an original burger and me a hot fudge sundae, he paying the $8.86 bill at 1:14, then drive to Naranja XXX video (with adjacent sign on bus-stop bench: "Don't patronize them!") from 2:10-2:40, me stewing in hot car while he says there's nothing interesting inside except Spanish attendants who are more interested in talking than getting his money for porno videos. Home at 3:05, lie a bit, phone for a $152.50 cheap ticket on Delta (when neither American nor United have flights out of Melbourne) from Melbourne to LaGuardia on Friday, the 28th, but the flight leaves at 7AM! I either get someone to drive me there early Friday or late Thursday so I can get a motel for the short evening. Work puzzles to 4:18, lie to 5:25, shower to 5:53, TV to 9:40, when Paul gets back from another bridge game, and dine to 11, then TV about Master and Commander, rather boring, until midnight, and bed 12:10AM.
WEDNESDAY, 11/19/03: 7:06AM: Up at 6:51 and go in to shit, hear Paul walking around, back at 7:06 to type the dream from this morning: influenced by Master and Commander documentary over at midnight last night, I'm sailing or walking around a semi-oval, filling in requirements as numbers on a required itinerary, and I need a few codes to finish an outer loop and only one of an inner loop, and it wasn't this EXACTLY: I'm inventing a simile to the dream I had because I can't remember the details of it, only the IMPRESSION of it, and the rest is gone now at 7:11AM, and back to bed. 7:28: Lie and debate Actualism, but get obsessed about a "master travel" list and get up to see how Paul would contribute to it. He agrees it's a good idea, I have breakfast, look through binoculars at an alligator right outside his neighbor's lawn, he vacuums the kitchen floor, I type this at 8:19, having suggested a morning in the Everglades, and he comes up with Sloppy Joe's for lunch south of the Everglades outlets. Puzzles to 10:15, shit again, leave at 10:40 and to Wal-Mart at 11, he says to check out travel agent, and I try to check with her how to get to Miami on Sunday, and she has no Metro information or map, but gives me a phone number to check on getting from Dadeland's last bus stop to the airport, which looks like about 10 miles, and she says there'll be taxis there for me. Paul still refuses to take me, though I say the roads will be unblocked from the FTAA convention 6AM Saturday morning. Then he doesn't come back, so I read magazines until he shows up at 11:30, asks her about the Queen Mary II to get "Call them" from her for his unsatisfied question, and we drive out Canal Road to Alabama Jack's 12-12:45, me having grilled dolphin, dense and slightly fish-tasting, but more like tuna or shark, while we throw crackers to the voracious gulls, with needlefish below, fatties (with ass-cleavage yet) next to us, then drive back for him to show me the NASCAR track, which they let us INTO, after #27 exterior at 1:24, for #28 of NASCAR INSIDE, Turkey Point nuclear plant, jet in central sky above center, and back at 1:52 to have a piece of Key lime pie and then flick through TV endlessly to 3:40, nothing very good, VERY bored, VERY reluctant to catch up with this, but MUST do it, so I do, getting disgusted with Paul's CONSTANT repeating, but then he gives me the INNER case of a satchel he bought, and it fits this AlphaSmart PERFECTLY, with a front slot for camera and a strap that may replace my OLD shoulder bag! Watch Star Trek series now at 3:40. Then junk TV until Paul starts cooking dinner about 5:30, but then gets on the phone until 6:40, when we have lovely pork in his curry sauce after gin and tonics, and asparagus with a spicy mayonnaise sauce, and a Hardy Cabernet Sauvignon that he loves, and then he has an after-dinner drink (after telling me PLEASE to not eat so much and go on a diet) as we talk about the 9 destinations he wouldn't mind traveling with me, two each year (I fantasize) in 2004-2008. Then he announces he's going to sleep at 9:10 and my toilet bowl seems to have set ITSELF to leaking a second time, and I type this by 9:20 and prepare for bed, having showered earlier. Thank goodness the mosquito bites are almost gone, still THERE, but they hadn't itched at ALL during the day. Bed at 9:30PM, more "normal" than the midnight last night.
THURSDAY, 11/20/03: Pee at 2:24AM. Wake while it's still dark with a dream, but don't record it until I wake again at 6:36AM: We're traveling in Southeast Asia, in a tiny country whose language no one knows, but someone makes a hit by describing something good by saying, in the language, "It is not bitter," and a small group of natives smiles and applauds. There are other small interactions that I forget, but then we're in our bus, going to our next destination, and we've volunteered to transport a young couple with a baby in two of our unoccupied seats, and the baby starts crying (maybe patterned on the baby in Wambaugh's Onion Field on the History Channel last night, which almost led him to kill himself from guilt about giving over his weapon to criminals who shot his coworker) and I seethe with displeasure and hatred of the parents who'd let their kids get to the point of uncontrollable crying without keeping them out of the public, or placating the restless kid BEFORE he or she starts crying and destroying everyone else's peace. Again, much of the richness of the dream lost in the retelling. Go to the john at 6:42, having been in bed over 9 hours and STILL feeling tired. Passing thought that I COULD go to the community house and EXERCISE, but that's not on my plate during a vacation, thank you. 7:02: Shit and get out morning pills and AGAIN find that I have only 8, missing the calcium, I think for the second time. Check through the rest of the mornings to find that all the others DO have the 9 pills. HOW could I mess up TWICE in one filling? Breakfast with Paul, again going through Bush-hate as the conversation topic, and I finish distributing the pills, finding that I'd shortchanged THREE calciums, but at least I've taken at least TWO per day, as before, and only missed the third three times in 14 days. Make the bed for the trip away to Islamorada today, cooler, but still wonderfully clear, as I'd feared it would NOT be for our Keys trip. Fine sugar-ants in my Almond Roca wrappers that I left on the floor, and now see an ant-trail along my baseboard: Paul will KILL me! 8:10AM: Paul's got his door CLOSED, so no papers for the time being. Put on TV. Watch junk and The Big House, about Sing Sing, on History and The Triangle, with Luke Perry as "haunted ship #54" to 10AM. Have grapefruit and Nonnini toasts and flick through and he doesn't return until 11:05! Leave 11:12, and get to Islamorada (I drive 20 miles) at 12:24 to Islamorada Fish Company for grilled teriyaki dolphin Reuben to 1:20 with CUTE daddy at a nearby table with GREAT arms (the daddy, not the table), and as we leave we hear them calling STANDING-room names. Price La Cheeca at $179 and end at Key Lantern Motel for $39+3.46 tax, absolutely adequate room with spotless shower and two big beds at 2:10PM, and Paul naps at 2:20 and I look at the beach behind the Lorelei but there's nothing there, even walking to the end of Madeira Street to see another part of the beach and back to room at 2:45, work puzzles to 4PM, and go into room at 4:40 to find Paul finally up. At 5:10 order a Bush Wacker at Lorelei and Paul has a Rum Runner combined with a Pina Colada and pays for it, and we sit at the beach and watch the sunset, nicely colorful, and Paul leaves at 5:35, the guitarist moans even through my earplugs, and people SHOUT, and HIGH, WHITE clouds flow EAST athwart STABLE, lower GRAY clouds. Extraordinary! 5:45 INCREDIBLE mauve-purple-pink cloud-area forms. Ending is SHOCKING pink and orange with gray cloud-veils at 5:50. Back to room at 5:55, 6PM to Morada Bay Bar, loud from bistro next door, loud from music and loud-mouthed 51-year-old bartender to whom Paul gives his card so he can move to Homestead. Have sloe comfortable screw (which appears on the bill as Sex on the Beach), good, then to Pierre's upstairs (past an even cuter second-floor bartender) to my seared Hudson Valley Moulard duck breast with mushroom risotto cake, foie gras and cassis demi-glace for $28 and wild mushroom consommé with Shiitake, Inoki, and couscous for $8, tasty. Paul finds a wine, Novellum, cheapest, for $30, quite good, and I taste his seared teriyaki watermelon under his snapper curry. Bill totals $98.90 or $113.90 with tip. Back at 8:25 after abortion of bread pudding for a free dessert with good anglais/butterscotch/chocolate syrups on the side, no charge, and walk down to beach for DAMN song-amp pollution and LIGHT pollution from far sites, SHIT! Back at 8:48, Paul watching Michael Jackson fracas, and I type this to 9:03, ready for BED. Bed 9:12PM at the noisy Key Lantern Motel.
FRIDAY, 11/21/03: 7:53AM: Pee at 1:23, and again at 6:27, forgetting the first dream, which I'd said to myself I'd remember as Xing the Y, but had no idea what that was now, and then the second dream was the typical "Got to get to class, but can't quite find the way, which is very complicated" dream. I'm walking down a street, somewhat like some around Akron University, and think, "I always go the LONG way around two and a half sides, while I can go around ONE and a half sides from here and get in." But then I'm confronted by a valley filled with water that I hope might be shallow, but I see someone coming from the other direction, and he quickly wades in up to his CHEST, and I figure I can't POSSIBLY get so wet, and see what look like piles of wet clothes on the edges of this pool and wonder if they're actually people, or only piles of wet clothes people left behind. Know that it's now getting to 1PM, the class started at 12:30 and I had nothing ready for it, though I think this will only include handing back the tests I think we did LAST time in class, so I'm not missing THAT much. Wake and am much too lazy to type it out, lying waiting for Paul to wake up, marveling that he napped for TWO HOURS yesterday and got to bed last night before I did, and he's still sleeping after more than nine hours. Amazing. Traffic loud outside despite the covering white noise of the LOUD air conditioner, and in the john I hear someone VERY close coughing VERY loudly. And then I seem to have gotten new, or recovered old, mosquito bites, and think I should pick up some no-itch in one of Paul's numerous shopping trips. Finally Paul's out of the shower and I decide to take a shower, too. 8:04: DEFINITE new mosquito bite on my left knuckle. What an ITCH! And need to shit, too. Dress to 8:29, leave motel at 8:35,and drive to breakfast at Ollie's to 9:14, Paul sharing my Ollie's Southern Omelet and my sharing his burnt toast. To plant shop for him to pick up three new potted plants and back home at 11. Watch TV, Paul picks up John-John at 2 while I have a big bowl of Sugar Frosted Flakes, almost killing the milk, and lots of toasts, with a piece of Key lime pie, down to the last slice. He picks him up, brings him here at 2:10, and they leave at 2:30 when John-John comes in AGAIN to shake hands with me, Paul STILL insisting he'd be willing to suck my cock for $20. Watch lots of the old Action series with the funny Jay Mohr from 2-4:30, some of Star Trek, other stuff, and he calls me out for drinks on the patio from 6-7:30 as we talk about the same old things, then dinner 7:30-8, still-good pork and carrots and a mediocre Chardonnay-Semillon mix from Burkhardt, or some such winemaker, then more drinks, me with a Galliano and lime, to 8:35, then watch part of Wizard of Oz, which ends at 11:15, the Jay Mohr Comedy Special, VERY homophobic and outrageous and funny with MUCH too much applause from a ditzy audience, and during breaks tune into Close Encounters of the Third Kind, which ends up including footage inside the ship that was in Special Edition, or whatever it was called, and that's over at 12, getting to bed on that minute.
SATURDAY, 11/22/03: 6:33AM: Pee at 2:55. Then wake a few times, each with a different dream: 1) Something about a quiz show, or answering a list of questions. 2) Something intensely sexual, but I wake thinking, "Not act on the sexuality now, wait till I get back to NYC." 3) Most recent: I'd watched a play and wanted people to go back to see it, but a couple said they hadn't liked it and didn't want to spend the money, but then someone came out with free tickets. Then up the stairs rushed a group of people shouting, "Sting! Sting!" and it appeared he'd be coming up soon, so I turned to the auditorium and climbed over a small railing to get a second-row center seat, by which time people who had been sitting in the two side sections had begun to flow into the center for better seats. Back in 2) A group of us had been selected for a photographic study of faces, and (sort of based on the selection of Dreyfuss to go onto the spaceship in Close Encounters last night) I'm chosen first, my head framed as I step toward a closet-like wooden framework, having to stoop a bit, as it was made for people shorter than I by about four inches, I had my picture taken and then could get some good food, and noticed that they were clandestinely taking my picture while I was doing THAT, and then we all had things to drink and I was feeling VERY good and lay back in a supporting nest of attractive men, allowing my arms to fall in a calculated halo about my head, seeming to think that I was looking VERY fetching for photographers, and AGAIN naked limbs nearby seemed to accept me, and I started caressing people near me, who responded positively, and I felt that I was REALLY blessed with personal fulfillment and rare beauty and was REALLY enjoying myself, when I would wake again, think to take notes, and then doze back to sleep. Then, finally, now, it's 6:42 and I have to pee again, and will do that and come back to bed for maybe another dream to complete my eight hours of sleep since I got to bed at midnight. In recording this dream I went to File 6, figuring that putting in today's notes would fill out the rest of File 5, which it did. Up at 8AM, having done a GOOD Actualism session (maybe the first of the trip?), not having ANY idea where I'll be sleeping tonight "between Homestead and Miami." Paul phoned the Biscayne Bay Boat Tour at 8:30 to find them not answering even though they're supposedly open at 8AM, and he said he'll drive me out to the 10AM supposed sailing for 2-3 hours and then pick me up, which would give some form to today. Unfortunately, the chance that we could have spent tonight in Fort Lauderdale seems to have fallen through: a friend of Roger's was selling an 8-unit condo for $350,000, or something like that, and Paul thought it was a great bargain for 7 one-bedroom units and one big three-bedroom unit that he contemplated moving both himself and his brother into, and I questioned his even THINKING about the idea, comparing it to Matthew's and Archie's getting a free Shar-Pei dog and having to move without really wanting to just for the dog, and after Paul had said that his lifestyle here in Homestead was just about perfect, was he REALLY willing to give it up (or put it all onto Richard's shoulders, since Paul has no attachment to Richard's current 11th-floor apartment in North Miami, figuring he'd just as well accept moving to Fort Lauderdale to take care of the 8 units there if they DID buy them), and he got a little annoyed with me and said there was really no comparison, since the dog was just a dog and this was a worthwhile INVESTMENT that was worth the MONEY, and he could be just as happy, maybe even happier, in Fort Lauderdale rather than here, since he could sell THIS at a nice profit, Dick could sell HIS at a nice profit, and they'd both be happy with the $8,000/month added income. AND he said that IF he could look at it, he'd drive us up to Fort Lauderdale tomorrow (today) to LOOK at it, and then we'd stay overnight in Dick's apartment in Miami and Paul could then drop me off at the hotel on Sunday morning. THAT sounded great! So I didn't call the number for the Dadeland-Miami metro service. BUT then someone called to say that ANOTHER buyer, who'd thought he might only take FOUR units, decided to take ALL the units, so THAT was now out of the running. Type this now at 9:12AM, in the right file, up to date, with practice cars roaring around the NASCAR track in the distance and SUPPOSEDLY the FTAA meeting over without too many protestor protestations in Miami, so the roads should be back in use, and I'm STILL hoping that Paul will volunteer generously to not only take me to the BUS on Sunday morning, but to the HOTEL on Sunday morning. THEN all I have to worry about is getting to the Melbourne airport early FRIDAY morning, leaving that final obstacle up to the good graces of Rita and Denny and whoever else might come into it. Got to bug Paul now at 9:15AM about getting to a possible 10AM boat-tour departure, having my Deet and sunglasses and reading material ready, and must remember to take his cap from the car when I go. But just then he brings in the papers he's finished reading and says we'll be leaving in about an hour. "Aren't we trying for a 10AM departure on the boat tour?" "Since they didn't call back, we're not going to do that. We'll just go out for some errands." "OK." Plan-change #452. So I prepare to take a shower with my newfound time, and here comes plan-change #453: "I have marked in my calendar that there's a 1PM Birdwalk, with professionals, up on Kendall, would you like to do that?" "Sure." So I shower and put on a clean shirt and socks: he does a washing load just about every day, so I have to keep changing clothes just to have something to add to the stack and give the impression that I'm a clean-living person who changes clothes with a NORMAL rate of turnover, not my usual "four days to change" rate. Pretty dried off from the shower now at 9:35AM. 7:41PM: Finished with dinner and drinks, Paul in his room watching his black video, I come in to finish this. Leave about 10:25. To Cutler Ridge Mall Kmart, then Shorty's for lunch 11:50-12:20, awful sliced pork plate and corn for me, good sweet potato and hot chocolate, and Paul loves his ribs and offers me a burnt end. I pay in cash, then to go try to find 1PM Audubon Birdwatchers, but he INSISTS on staying on the west side, going around and around, while he said the directions said the EAST side parking lot, so he finally asks a moke-driving security officer, who says it IS in the east parking lot and we get there at 12:57 and wait for the guide, Paul, and at 1:11 we see the first monk parakeet, BIG! Yellow-chevroned parakeet I finally see thanks to his patient directions, and Muscovy duck, white ibis, coot at 1:30. Palm warblers, Fisher's (not peachface) lovebird CLEAN on a sparse pine, GREAT clear, soaring, rare short-tailed hawk, #30 green heron on right, Muscovy duck on left at 1:45. #31 white ibis and Muscovy. Yellow-bellied sapsucker, twice, clear, #32 Scheffleria blossom at 1:56. Shrike, mockingbird, blue jay, kestrel. Hill mynah, white-winged dove at 2:35. Hummingbird haloing tree! End at 2:42, Paul tired, saying, "They can go on forever, but I just want to leave." Kmart for possible TV-bookcase ensemble, but they don't have one to sell after 3:02, buy Band-Aid anti-itch gel for $2.86 at 3:18PM, then into another Kmart 3:40-4:02, buying two bookcases that we lug into van, then stop at Diaz for milk and chicken enchilada and beef fajita (Fajita de Res), and rice and beans and salad and sweet plantains, and that goes 3:40-4:02, me drinking LOTS of ice water and peeing, and SWEET Spanish waitress, paying $14.94, and home 4:53 for me to make a gin and tonic and take it outside to look at the lavishly pink and gray clouds toward sunset, and a 12-14-year-old lands one and then two Rainbow Bass, then has his shiner bait taken by an 8-inch gar, and then Herb comes to pick him up in his golf cart, and I WONDER what's going on there? Finish my not-that-great onion-and-cheese chips for 99¢ with the gin, finding that the sexy kid came from North Carolina a year ago and is catching fish for a barbecue he and Herb are giving tomorrow, and he hopes to catch the third and "Thank you very much" when I wish him luck tomorrow. Paul talks on the phone and obviously MEANS for me to take the bus tomorrow at 7:15, so we have dinner of what I bought, which he likes, and I have more Galliano and lime and he washes up to the end and shows me porno that leaves me cold (after talking to Richard Trout about coming up to see him on December 11th, staying 4 days, and returning December 10th. Right! Then to the room to type this, leaving the packing to tomorrow, ending this at 7:55PM, so if I get to bed at 8 and sleep until 5, dawn, that'll be 9 hours, already too much, so maybe I should finish the puzzles from the paper NOW! Finally finish everything (though the Scrabble words are sure questionable, but the paper will probably arrive before we leave tomorrow. Bed now at 9PM.
SUNDAY, 11/23/03: Pee at 2:07AM, almost exactly halfway between 9PM bed and 7:15AM departure for bus. Then wake and turn light on at 4:12 to record dream about following John A. through Central Park, as he's heard about this lecture by Pat Oliphant at the Museum of Natural History, and "He's hardly EVER given a presentation, and he's the world's expert in whatever-it-is [I don't have the slightest idea at any time in the dream] and NEVER gives an interview, let alone a personal lecture, so we want to get there early before the 8:30PM start." I walk around an upper terrace as I usually do (usually getting lost) and see John going down a very long staircase that starts just BEYOND the entrance to the terrace I'm on, and I think, "I NEVER saw that staircase, so I MUST remember that THAT'S how to get across the Park in the shortest way." He's always several yards ahead of me, so that when we get to the Museum grounds, I lose sight of him, but the small grouping of chairs around a projectionist on an upper level indicates where the show will be. He might be saving me a seat, but as I look over the very small number of people clustered around the screen, he's not there. I decide to find my own seat, but the rows in the back won't have a very good view over the heads in front, the sides would be at too great an angle, and the front seats---but as I look and look, more are more are filled up, and each of the empty front-row seats has been reserved for someone, even someone important as is breathlessly announced by the person sitting next to "Pat Wiess," and then the right side of the second row can't support ANY seats because the ground is VERY muddy and even has water-puddles and marks of foot-slides where someone's slipped disastrously. Then even the back seats are filled, and more and more people are coming in, so I try upstairs, but it's difficult to get up to (and here I remember going through a narrow passage, and a very handsome man kisses the young man in front of me as he squeezes past him, and then a woman passes ME and is kissed by him, bending her backward over the hunched body of another teenager, and he looks at me as if he knows I'd seen him kiss the other guy and want him to kiss me, so he does, but I wish he'd done it longer and with more feeling), and I climb an odd foot-at-a-time stairway that gets narrower and narrower at the top, and someone is following me up so closely that as soon as my foot leaves the lower perch HIS foot is placed on it, and we're holding onto side supports to maintain our almost horizontal body position as we climb to the second-level balcony. But only the projectionist has a view of the screen, the rest being obscured by tree branches and draped curtains that seem impossible to move, so I'm magically down to ground level again, seeing if there aren't views through the hedges surrounding the seats (like peering through the hedge on the bird-watch yesterday to catch sight of a caged red-headed parakeet making a noise we could all hear) but there are no openings, and it's getting close to 8:30 and it suddenly occurs to me that CHARLES had told me about this lecture, not John, and I should have called HIM to arrange to see this, but now NEITHER of us will see this once-in-a-lifetime lecture. Wake fearing staying awake until time to pack for the bus, and finish this at 4:26AM. Up at 5:46AM, more to stop thinking about today's and Friday's traveling, and though it's still absolute night out, the Sunday Miami Herald is lying in the driveway. So I'll have puzzles to work during my waits and rides, if needed. Shower to 6:15 and get ready to pack. Manage to get everything in, lots in the new computer case, and have the last of the Sugar Frosted Flakes, get puzzles and comics from the Sunday paper, scissor-trim my beard, ready to go at 7:10, and leave at 7:15, when Paul gives me his card if I have problems, which I'd not thought of doing, and get to bus at 7:27 with an odd line way in BACK of it. Look in the door and the driver's doing something, ignoring me. I sit on the bench at the front, fearful that all the women in back will think I'm trying to get in front of them, but then a guy joins me in front, looks in the door, and waits with me until the doors open at 7:33 and only the two of us get on, he going way to the back of the accordion-middled bus, I glad to have exact change of $1.25. I had checked my wallet at Paul's and found I had only $20s, asked for change, and Paul had only $16, so I insisted we exchange, both "forgetting" that he had a roll of quarters that he could have helped me out with. The bus makes many circles around both Homestead AND Florida City, but finally gets on the busway to stop for a wheelchair, which takes AGES to board and strap down, five people helping, and she gets off at the next stop. The passengers a real cross section: when two drunks get on, the tiny, female, black driver states peremptorily, "No food and no drink," and they sit three seats apart, one QUITE unshaven and unkempt, the other talking across to a quiet Mexican---could they be lovers? People have cell phones, families get on and off, small groups and singles, few women, mostly Mexican laborers going heaven knows where on a Sunday morning. Cell-phone calls and jabber. Finally get off the bus at 8:45 and I look at Metro map, which appears to go AROUND the airport by a large berth, being closer NOW than any other time, and anyway I don't have the card to get through the turnstiles to the Metro and the only places to get cards seem to be INSIDE the turnstiles. AND no one to ask information of. I go toward the end of the station and as I approach the street I see a lone taxi across the main thoroughfare and wave to him and ask how much to the Doral. He knows where it is, says the fare just went up, and even phones someone to verify that the fare would be somewhere between $25 and $28, though it would be strictly by the meter. Off at 8:50, he offers me the Sunday paper, we talk about the New York Times Sunday puzzles, which his wife does, about his 30 years living in Forest Hills, then in California, now here, where his wife just lost her job as a designer, and we should be soon to the Doral. We go the short length of the airport and he has a map that shows the Doral NOT at the edge of the airport, and I would have gotten MUCH closer had I ridden the Metro to the very end and taken a taxi for about $4, but I get there at 9:14, the meter registering $25.10 and I hand him $30 and ask for $1 back, so a $3.90 tip is just over 15% and he's very happy with it, saying that at first the Doral didn't allow taxis to wait outside, but they boycotted it by refusing to take people TO it, so they came to a compromise that pleased both of them. Lug my bag out, telling the porter "No," when he asked, "Checking in?" and "No," when he asks, "Playing golf?" So he leaves me alone. In to the main desk and ask for the Robinson room, and they won't give me the number but connect me. Dennis answers and says he'll be out to take me on a quick tour: Rita's in the spa, due out at 10. He comes the side way and I put the bag on my shoulder and he shows me the start of the golf courses and the outside of the spa with the curtains of cold and warm water, buys golf balls and a plan for $11.25, I pick up a Blue Monster scorecard, then we're back toward the spa to see Rita coming out, and she offers the top of her head to be kissed since she's getting a bug now and Dennis has gotten rid of the bug he had when they got here. BIG, BUSY lobby area, lots of cars and luggage being checked out for a bus. Deepak Chopra center being built, and we pass alongside the Atrium restaurant, which they never ate in, since they went out to Miami most evenings. The breakfast buffet lasted them until dinner, and she drove the cart when he played one game given as part of the tour. They paid about $1000 in taxes for their $4000 prize, advice of a lawyer who knows taxes. Denny complains about Rita's slowness, but she finally packs by 10:40 and we're to the lobby, where they question the bill to 10:50 and I pick up information and then sit with Rita and chat (scaring away a cellphonist, who glares at our mere conversation) while Dennis goes for the car, having gone out to it four times already with their and my bags, we bringing up the rear as we go out and pack the rest of the trunk and leave at 11:05. They want to get Rita home to rest from her bug, so we don't go to the Butterfly Jungle as planned, and I pass the un-ridden roller coaster the SECOND time. Stop at Subway for my good ham and honey-mustard and olive and lettuce and pickle and relish sandwich and macadamia-nut cookie dessert and Max root-beer soda, good, and we drive STRAIGHT back by 3PM, convincing them I'd rather take the stuff off the "too-short" (but it really isn't) bed than sleep in the open beside the pool table, and don't even unpack when I ask about the computer, and he shows me many of his music clips after I go through all his talk-music-comedy clips and generate a list of about 75 of them that he can put as MPG images on one CD for me to take with me, and Rita's eaten while I've done that, Denny goes through the frozen foods, where I opt for the beef and portobellos with mashed potato frozen dinner, and then have some wonderful microwaved-for-softness dried fudge his sister made them months ago. Juice to drink with my pills, then isolate many puzzles and do them until 9:10, using the desk in the storage room, not bothering to "put down Mom's picture with gray hair that she didn't like, so she won't stare at you," as Rita suggested, and finish with the comics until 9:30 and fall into bed at 9:40, quite tired.
MONDAY, 11/24/03: Pee at 2:35, wake at 6:15, doze, up at 7:20, breakfast on my own of Life cereal and toasted nut-roll and bear-claw, which they don't call a bear-claw, and orange juice, watch the videos on the file AMOVIE that he'd suggested to me, then, since he told me how to minimize all the games I couldn't solve on FreeCell and then shut the computer off, I played FreeCell knowing that I wouldn't disturb his 99% statistic, with only 1 game lost through a goof of Rita's and 352 won in succession. That goes to 10:44 and I switch off to watch a TV tape of Isaac Mizrahi giving Rosie O'Donnell a haircut through his cute friend, and neither of them strike me as more interesting than Azak was, of whom Isaac reminds me. After that is the 90-minute American Masters special on Gore Vidal that was recommended to me, and Rita comes in to watch the 10 minutes at the end she hadn't seen. That goes to 12:30, having had lunch of a defrosted sliced ham sandwich under spinach leaves, with some kind of cheese spread, and another glass of juice, and half the apple tart with ice cream on it. Then she gets out the large box of photos from the hall closet, MAYBE setting off my back, which was sore for the next few days, and I look through to 2:30, selecting two of her and Denny that make them both look sexy, but she calls them "special" and files them away, though she gives me an old one of Grandma and Mom and Helen just a baby, and one of me with my boxes of stamps, and then I pull out the big box of two under the desk and start looking through them, taking some few that are loose but wishing I could take more, and then toward 5 she says I can take anything I want, since she'll throw most of the rest of it away, and I start back at the beginning, taking more until 6:45, when Denny comes in, giving me a sheet of instructions for IRS Form 706, talking longly about how the basis price of Helen's stocks are established, how the lawyer was wrong with his "on the list" simplicity, and trying to get information from incoherent me about how to buy and invest in bonds rather than stocks. We talk about places to eat and settle on Foreman's about 7PM, and they dawdle and I look through more photos until we leave at 7:25 to a place past The Dove and it's pretty crowded, except it has a VERY loud, obviously VERY drunk woman just SHRIEKING every other comment, until at the end I SHOUT something back, and everyone says I'M wrong, even though two women at the table ACROSS from them turned in amazement at one of her screams, and two others at the opposite wall questioned the waitress about such behavior, but Denny was obviously annoyed, talking about loud talk on his corridor when he'd start shouting into his phone, and they recommended the 8 oz. filet, which was cooked perfectly, starting with a large salad SMOTHERED in blue-cheese dressing, and I ordered a Shiraz/Cabernet combination over their protest that they didn't like Shiraz, but they both said it was VERY good when they swirled it like I insisted. Their hash browns were excellent, their onion rings marvelous, they actually had mushrooms in addition to the too-sweet (per both) stewed tomatoes and side of corn that was only frozen, and we ate and drank and packed up much of our food to take back at 8:40, me getting the bill for $98.44 including tip, marvelous! Across to ABC to buy two bottles of Beaujolais Nouveau, Drouhin and DuBoeuf, for me and a bottle of Fonseca port for Denny to treat me with in the evenings for the rest of my stay. Back to quick-nuke some dark chocolate to eat with the port, we talk about photos and other things, and I excuse myself to get to my room at 9:45 and toss everything off my bed and get to bed at 9:50, finding that I have a VERY sore back when I change positions, particularly when getting up from sitting. Even hurts to turn over in bed!
TUESDAY, 11/25/03: Pee at 2AM. Dream of passing a table on which is displayed a model of some kind of rustic house, and when I want to look at it, I somehow hook a corner of the base of it and it twists off the table and falls onto the floor, and when I retrieve it, I'm confronted with a stern-looking fellow with bloodshot eyes rimmed with what seems to be raw bloody flesh, as if his face were CUT to let the eyes see through the obscuring face, and though he's being FIERCELY condemnatory of my activity, I can feel his calf and foot PRESSING against mine with such INSISTENCE that when I move he moves right along with me, and I think he MIGHT be interesting if I could get him in the dark so I didn't have to look at his bloodshot eyes and could only feel his clearly strongly built body. Up at 7:12, back awful but SLIGHTLY better than last night, but I have to walk in a stooped crouch to move without pain, and I FEAR to move because I FEAR the pain that comes with an unusual twist or strain. Decide I MUST shower and change my clothes, getting out the khaki pants, finding the other dark shirt smells, so I put aside the blue pants dirtied from the photos yesterday and the two short-sleeved shirts and the long-sleeved blue that I need to clean for my trip back to cold NYC Friday, all in a stack for Rita to launder with her stuff. Clean underwear and socks and the white shirt, which has a blue stain on the front of it I see later, and finish that at 7:45. Breakfast, Rita in bed, of Rice Krispies, another nut-roll, and grapefruit juice (oh, yesterday I checked my e-mail, too, mailing back to the lawyer that if I'd been home I'd have OK'd no interim report, deleting about 42 junk messages) and then look through the pictures I'd looked through YESTERDAY to select the ones I want, and Rita joins me at the end to OK my picks, and get to lunch at The Dove at 1:25, empty dim place, for salad and an enormous veal parmigiana to her lasagna with not enough meat, and my penne on the side isn't bad, and I have a glass of merlot, and we leave at 2:25, bill about $29.07 in all, and Rita stops at TWO grocery malls for stuff, the second only for cheaper mushrooms and a gallon of milk, and then at a third stand for fresh, good tomatoes, per her. Back at 3:25 and I MUST clean my teeth, but she shows me some NEWER pictures, giving me copies of family and her, and Helen's funeral, and then I watch a two-hour Trockadero Ballet special on Bravo, not that great because they've gotten so GOOD they concentrate on wowing the audience, but they're NOT as good as the best women, training since 5, or the best men, though they try VERY hard and the skinny cute one can sure carry around women heavier than HE is, and I watch that to 5:35 and then pee and GOT to get to catching up with this, doing so by 6:30, Rita having made reservations for "Continental Flambée" at 7:15, when Denny will meet us there, and Rita calls in to say we'll be leaving in half an hour and would I please clear up the photos on the kitchen table and she's looked through ALL I picked out and they're OK. Will have a LOAD going home. Ah, forgot the morning time spent looking through dictionaries, thesauri, and encyclopedias for "Brass monkey balls," but can find NOTHING about them. Try the Internet? Now out at 6:32PM to clear up the kitchen table, TIRED from doing nothing all day, ONLY THREE DAYS TO GO! Put things away, get pills, look at some old comics, and leave about 6:50 to drive across causeway to Melbourne and get to tree-lined main street to see Denny sitting in front of the restaurant. She parks and he comes down to meet us, kissing her on the top of the head, and we get into the quiet outer room where the inner room is more lit and noisier. I'm still full from lunch, so when I see a long list of drinks, I find a Champs Elysees with Grand Marnier, Chambord, and sour mix, and Denny gets a Cosmopolitan, which isn't very good until I mix a jigger of mine with his and it improves, and mine is WONDERFUL. Then we get salads with 1) mushroom crepe with GREAT cream sauce for Denny, 2) goat cheese for Rita, and 3) baked brie and apples and almonds for me, then 1) salmon for Denny, 2) mahi for Rita, and 3) snapper with potato crust for me, with good green beans and TINY rice grains, which are good under the Bearnaise sauce. I order a Vouvray, about cheapest for $35, and they like it, and he has profiteroles for dessert, Rita the blackberry crepe, and me a cheapo Bananas Foster with a flaming sauce poured over ice cream in a bowl. Great waiter from Nice who knows Mougins and seems to like me; when I say, "Could I possibly---?" he says, "More Bearnaise sauce?" and I smile, "You read my mind." Bill at $81 is puzzling until he suggests he didn't add the wine, and then it comes to $118, still without tip, but good nonetheless. Drive back about 9:30, full, laughing and talking with Rita, and Denny beats us back anyway, then takes me to the computer to show his Finance.Yahoo.com listing of about 30 stocks, and he goes through Merrill Lynch, highly recommended opinions, and Morningstar, good chartings, and gives me printouts of all six Helen stocks, many of which have increased almost 50% in the year since she died! Fantastic! I go until 10PM, almost falling asleep, and part company to take pills and blow nose and put on nightlight in john and type this to 10:18, going to bed later and later. Bed 10:25, and INSTANTLY the phone rings, and about five minutes later Denny knocks on my door, I take out an earplug and hear "Paul's coming in about three hours, to be home tomorrow morning," and I feel a touch of jealousy: I won't be the SOLE guest anymore, and wrap a sheet around me to see Denny busily making up Paul's bed in the other room, and I clear out all my stuff from the bathroom shelf except my dop kit, hiding my "no room to fit" bottles and pills. Return to bed, back still sore.
WEDNESDAY, 11/26/03: Wake at 5:16 and think for a bit, then pee, then try to recall the dream: In the future there's a way of coming back to life to do something in particular, and there's a definite start, almost visible, and a variable end when the task is accomplished. Along with this, there's a definite erotic component that wakes me with the first erection in ages, and I think of the irony of having three other people around to recognize the smell of semen if I jerk off, Paul certainly VERY aware of it, and I type this to 5:32, only ONE full day, Thanksgiving, left in this 29-day marathon-to-Marathon boring trip. 7:04AM: ANOTHER extraordinary dream: I've gotten an invitation to a party in some NYC suburb I've never been to, like Queens in the 30s---wait, just recalled a prior fragment: I'm in my apartment and become aware of a small hole with a view of another apartment, and I think there's a guy down there who's about to undress for a shower or to go to bed, and I think he'll NEVER look up to see my little peephole, and think to get my binoculars, when I also become aware it might be a MIRROR on a wall below me, and I'm actually on a balcony overlooking a whole apartment below, and why hadn't I realized this before. Another erotic jolt. Back to next: I'm riding in the backseat of a taxi to get there, and we're unwrapping little candies to eat, leaving the back of the cab in a real mess, but my companion doesn't seem to care, and when we stop, there's another passenger in a jump seat in front, and the car starts forward, almost driving this guy's head into a pole, and he does a comic double take when he sees how close he's come to being bashed. When the taxi leaves, an INCREDIBLE scene is revealed: we're in a town square, maybe the size of the finale of Hello, Dolly, with buildings all around, and an enormous "vehicle"---it could be a tram, a bus, or even a land-moving ferry boat---starts from its terminal toward "the station of normal access," so this is a free shuttle into this Land of Oz, with people dressed in 30s style, definitely women with parasols and large hats, floating down the center of the street loaded with passengers who've already seen the circus available here. I seem to know that the second 7-story building across the street is the party-building, and most of the straight people are leaving in preparation for the gay party to end all gay parties, but my companion is attracted to a hovel to our right: green-painted wooden facade looking like shutters nailed over windows (the white metal awnings lowered over windows down here in Florida as a hurricane protection?), producing a rather featureless facade, but above the third floor there's a smooth space and an ENORMOUS overhanging---auditorium?---on top (reminding me of that neon strip I saw atop a building coming back from Flambée last night, looking like a flying flagpole until it appeared to outline the top of a projecting top floor---apartment? gym? ballroom?---but I KNEW if I went down there I'd lose the location of the party-house, and so I started across the street, marveling at the bright colors everywhere, the clarity of the air that seemed fresh and countrified, hoping that I could find my way back here again, and then woke DIRECTLY to an awake sense of wonder at the WEIRDNESS of the scene coupled with its "undoubted reality," and I rose to write under bed-lamp to 7:11AM. Up at 8, determined to keep SOME semblance of earliness, and Paul's door is tight shut, Denny's at work, and Rita's not to be seen, so I turn on the kitchen light and have Rice Krispies and a banana and a toasted nut-roll and read old papers until Rita comes in and tells me to go out the open garage door and pick up the daily paper, which I get and leaf through and do a puzzle from the past as she has her breakfast and we chat, and I get out the last of the stuff and go through more of Mom's trip books, though I find even more to take out, and that finally ends at 12:15 when Rita has to start preparing for tomorrow's 3PM dinner, and I clear off stuff and get Emperor's New Groove, the Disney animated with David Spade as Kuzco transformed into a llama, moving rather slowly and predictably, except for some vaguely magical side characters and nature studies. Reheat the veal and penne from yesterday's lunch, with grapefruit juice, and later I feel a need for munchies, so have Special Cheesy Nacho Chips to finish, then Denny's home and insisting that I watch him demonstrate some war-game that he insists I can become addicted to, pouring me a glass of port to make sure my judgment is impaired, then going TOTALLY too fast, as even Paul would agree, in using all the advanced techniques that I'd have no hope of learning. Then I try a bit of FreeCell and even PAUL is impressed enough by my speed to tell Denny that I'm very fast, but then they stare over my shoulder and I say I just feel self-conscious and make some dumb moves and in the end have to kill a game because I've lost it. Checked through Helen's coins and find nothing spectacular, and Rita says I should take one of the 1971 Eisenhower dollars, which is reportedly worth $5, as a Christmas present, so I take it. Then Rita calls for help with peeling onions, which I do, and then Paul and I share cleaning mushrooms for the mushroom soup that's served with vermouth as a pick-me-up and rolls as a side, and she lets me know that's all SHE'll be doing for my dinner, and I pick up Denny's recommendation of Terry Brooks's The Sword of Shannara, which lets me out of the family conversations for quite a while, and then Denny volunteers to make me nachos for the rest of my dinner, and a tequila-triple sec-grapefruit drink to go with it, right when Rita suggests she go to Juno for me, so I go and find that Frank Kretchmer's died in Hong Kong, Claudia is offering the Beard dinner on Monday, December 1, for $60, to which I reply that I'll take if she can take me over the Internet, but I'll call Monday to make sure, and the lawyer says he's gotten a couple weeks' extension for his report, so he can send the waiver to my address, and I e-mail that I'll be back and he can do that. Then eat the nachos, tasty with Denny's jalapenos on, and just finish when Paul comes in with two friends and insists on playing pool, while Denny insists on taking things off the table so he can find them later. Oh, I'd also brought out this AlphaSmart for both Paul and Rita to see and work with, and they press some buttons I'd never seen, and bring to my attention that Option-Enter checks for characters in ALL files, which I'd never read or done before! They also check Applets and I find I have a CALCULATOR, which I now test and find it even does 5 to the 2.3 power! They get loud, asking Denny to play music for them, and Rita sits in the living room and watches the Lily Tomlin special, and I feel I can do nothing better than take The Sword into my room and catch up with this from 9:01-9:23, and will read for a bit before falling into bed. BUT I look through Garfield and University of Akron yearbooks till 10PM. Shit again, take pills, hear Rita outside, bed at 10:13PM.
THURSDAY, 11/27/03: 5:51AM: Wake with severe back pain as I shift positions, and then I get a small leg-cramp to boot. Two dreams: 1) sitting at a counter with Joe Safko and I feel something at the lower cavity of my right ear and with a fingernail extract a small, bean-sized, fatty capsule from inside my right earlobe, and when I touch it closely, it seems to be built around a sprig of something like lettuce, or a celery-stalk leaf, that ended in a thorny spine that I'd extracted part of, but this part had caught and festered, and to protect itself, my body had secreted this fatty capsule to isolate the irritating thorn from my flesh, and I kneaded it in my fingers and finally nudged Joe and said, "Do you want to see something really gross?" and he said neither yes nor no, so I showed it to him and he evinced no interest whatsoever, though I thought it one of the marvels of the natural world. 2) I'm watching a film about some Civil War in Spain, and the camera moves to the side along a sheer-walled canyon to focus down about 150 feet on a road coming through a pass in that canyon, and then zooms in on that road as a woman tentatively enters the frame, looking furtively behind her, and two metal chutes loom ominously over the bottom of the canyon, as if a trap had been set and molten lava, or boiling water, or other killing substances would be poured down in ambush on a column of enemy soldiers who were due to cross below, and then the screen is filled with flames and the woman's voice-over mutters portentously about "Hitler," and I wonder how easy it will be to disguise an actor as Hitler convincingly if they only show him from a great distance. Wake and feel relief that it's the next to the last day and that tomorrow night I'll be home with my bad back, and finish typing this at 6AM to go pee. Lie and think and count: 5 pill-sets, 4 meals, 3 day-night-day cycles, 2 actual days, 1 trip, and think: I still want 1 book: Love in Time, 1 movie: Way of All Flesh, and Channel 13's Taming of the Shrew, and flights back and GETTING HOME! Up at 8:25 and type this; Rita talking in kitchen and Thanksgiving Day has begun. 9:35AM: Shat for the SECOND time (pre-trip almost-diarrhea?) a LARGE amount, then had breakfast of Rice Krispies and a heated nut-roll with orange juice and my pills: 4 pill-sets, 3 meals, 2 days, 1 trip. Looked through the paper and got Rita to find a tape measure and told her the mattress was 6'2" and the bed itself 6'6", so it is NOT too short for ANYONE. Then shut the door and start numbering note-pages and sorting Visa slips. 11:06AM: Numbered 11 pages of notes, though a day may have been lost somewhere, but receipts should square things away, and 33 receipts, so far totaling $51.87 AmEx, $103.27 receipted cash, about $157 un-receipted cash, and $1434.75 in Visa receipts, totaling roughly, so far, around $1900, or about $65 a day, rather astounding! NOW what to do at 11:10AM, just about 25 hours away from home? 11:57AM: The Sword of Shanarra, which Denny said I could NOT have, is SO much like The Lord of the Rings (without the poetic language or the unity of point of view) that it's worth noting: 1) The band of seven that starts, some good, some bad, some weak; who become less good, good, and strong, respectively. 2) The monsters coming from all over, always defeated "miraculously," but we even get THEIR point of view here, ugh. 3) The heroes are separated into many places: a) the main hero alone, presumed dead, despairing, yet we KNOW he's got to live, b) the secondary hero with an underling seeing the main mage "falling to his death," like Gandalf with the Balrog, but since "there were rungs in the pit," he comes out later; like "the tree on the edge of the pit," and "the ends of the fallen bridge that could be brought back across," rather more uninteresting that Deus ex machina, c) other groups "facing certain death" that don't die, and MANY chapters ending d) the room was empty, the chamber was empty, the great hall was empty. Is he writing a story or a screenplay? "Hopeless" is never hopeless, "doomed" is never doomed, even the dead don't stay dead, and then there are always the sudden powers "finding his life-force on the other side of the mountain," and "reading his mind" and "seeing the monster before it attacks," as well as earthquakes that ALMOST close off the last exit, and 4) bands of bad people who really ARE good people, despite what you might think. SO derivative---and are the modern computer games any better? Now, at last, the last afternoon here at 12:03PM. #33, yesterday, of the trio around a sort of pickup dinner, before Paul trimmed his hair. I read all the last 40 pages of Sword, many, many, many battle scenes that were obviously going to turn out whatever way they turned out, so that the book would be longer without telling what happens with the sword, Orl Lomo, or whomever, turning into the duplicate of Golum, with a mania for the "precious." I read until 1:30, then help peel and cut potatoes for the now FIVE of us, only Dennis's friend Dennis joining us, and then shower and wipe it out (to save it from mold) from 2-2:30PM, negotiating the drapes and doors to hang the towel outside to dry, my only encounter with the screened-in porch. Dress in my last clean shirt, less than 24 hours to go. Dennis comes in at 2:40, rotund and bright-eyed, and I excuse myself at 2:45 to finish The Sword. Do so by 3:05 and out to talk to Rita as she finishes preparations and open the LeBoeuf Beaujolais Nouveau, which isn't very good, and drink some until we start dinner about 3:45, conversation somewhat stilted, and we eat and eat until 5, when we go into the computer room and talk about Dennis's music, and finally the two Dennises go play pool and I select my 100 songs AGAIN, since he lost the last list, and I brush my teeth at 7:10 and start packing at 7:17, figuring this is just TOO much to handle, feeling drunk and just want to go to BED and go to SLEEP and get up and FLY HOME! Go through AGONY getting everything squeezed into the bag by 7:45 and get Rita's scale and measure it at only 25#, but then we're talking about how I'll probably get breakfast on the flight and OH NO, I didn't take the CONFIRMATION number out before I packed! So at 7:50 I go BACK into the bag to FIND IT!! FIND the clipping with the confirmation number and REPACK the bag with EQUAL sweat, hoping the zipper will hold up YET AGAIN, as it has HUNDREDS of times before, and it closed at 8:02 and Denny comes by and says, "You're going TOMORROW?" "Yeeees." "That's brutal---but I promised!" I sure hope so. I'm sweaty from the packing, and Dennis is saying he wants no more wine because he's driving home, and no more coffee because he's going to sleep soon. So am I, I hope! I've said goodnight, Denny says he'll be up at 4:45AM to have coffee and dress and get me up at 5 to leave at 5:15 to get to airport at 5:30, which sounds good. Pee and suddenly Rita appears to take photos of me, so she takes two and says goodnight AGAIN, and I type this at 8:35PM, hoping to get 8 hours' sleep. Earplugs in, ignoring feeling I MIGHT have to take a shit, and bed at 8:40PM, hopefully exhausted. But can't sleep. Wish I had a sleeping pill. Think about endless things. Check watch at 9:25PM. Probably doze.
FRIDAY, 11/28/03: Wake at 1:55AM to pee, trying to shit but can't. Try to go back to sleep but can't. Think of trying Actualism, but don't. Suddenly remember that I didn't take my keys out of my souvenir-bag: will they let me into the building? What if Bob Lambiase isn't home? Spartacus? John? Beverly? Toba? Think and think. Could I get Rohypnol from Jaffe? Why can't the government let me have the sleeping pills that work with me? Would there be an instant-acting (rather than taking two weeks to click in, as Ambien seems to do) anti-anxiety that would work for the days before flights? Think and think. Look at watch at 2:35, again at 3:05. Think and think. Finally get up at 4:07AM and shit enough to make me feel like I won't need to do it again until I get home. Paul's door, open at 1:55, is now closed. Wash face and put light on and trousers on and find comb in my shoulder bag and type this until 4:27AM. At least I can have a decent breakfast and take my morning pills before the two non-food flights that I checked last night when Rita said there probably WOULDN'T be breakfast on either flight. There isn't: "Only beverage service." What beverages on a 7-8:30AM flight? Will put my socks on now at 4:28 and go into the kitchen before Denny's alarm rings and he comes in to make coffee. Have cereal and look at the assortment of bars put out for me, along with my CD, and about 4:50 RITA appears, saying SHE was awake, didn't need coffee, and would take me to the airport. I have banana and roll and grapefruit juice and pills and my stomach says "MORE than enough" at 5AM when I go back to start dressing, comb my hair, put everything into the shoulder bag and my pockets and type this at 5:08, ready to go! Rita gets dressed and even DENNY comes out, looking disheveled, and he says he won't be able to get back to sleep anyway, so he might as well stay up. Rita looked AWFUL at first, with wetness below both eyes, but she sounded and looked better when she was dressed. Out to the car and there's trouble with the lights and the door-open signal, so when we HAD been ready to leave at 5:15, as prescribed, we actually left at 5:17. Dark slow ride around town and across the causeway and past the police car, and into an almost empty airport at 5:35AM. Only about three people at check-in, and most of it is automated: put in my credit card and it pulls up my reservations with "seats," which the attendant says I should push if I want to see if I can change my seat. There IS an exit-window seat available just BEHIND the wing, so in any case it's better than my middle seat even farther back on the wing. My Atlanta-NYC seat is three or four behind the wing, so I'll be scooched around at an angle if there's anything to see. But at least I have TWO windows. Then to the check-in bag inspection, and he opens it and takes everything out, which is a great pain, but then he rubs a white pad around and I ask, "What's that?" and he said it's a chemical rub that will pick up residual matter which will be analyzed and show up (for grass?). He gives me the key to the lock, saying he'll lock it after he's finished, and when he starts putting things back after going into MANY of the small bags, I suggest he search for my KEYS, and he empties out the glasses-bag, but refuses to go into the dop kit ("I won't touch your personal items") when it's not in the little photo bag. Let's hope they're there SOMEWHERE---again, I can always get them from Bob Lambiase's apartment. He jams the stuff in, all at the wrong angle, and I suggest one thing here, one thing there, and he gets tighter and tighter with me, and when he struggles with the zipper, the handle breaks off and he has a plastic substitute that at least enables him to close it with the other fellow folding the contents in on themselves, but I see a couple strips of red-and-blue plastic bag CAUGHT in the zipper, so this might REALLY be the end of this bag. It IS checked through to NYC, anyway. MANY times when I tried to help him, or give him advice, he kept shouting out, "Don't touch the bag, DON'T touch the bag." SooRRRy! Then he carries the bag to the carousel and I thank him again for his patience and he pointedly ignores me. Other guy directs me to the gate, I have some water, and see that it's 5:50AM. THEN there's the PERSONAL security: put bag into tray, take out the computer, get asked what it is, put my SHOES on the counter, take my coins out of my pocket, and get ushered kindly to a seat where I lift my legs for a metal-search, then stand on the two footprints and get a body-search, finding the stuff in my breast pocket including a pen, but it does NOT seem to find the key pinned to my right pocket. Then back to the desk to get told my camera will be back from its check: oh, they asked what speed my film is, and they say 200 is OK. I can put my wallet and money away. JUST hear on the VERY loud TV above my head that a cold front is COMING to Atlanta, so its temperature of 62 will be the high for the day. The guy again asks about my word processor, asking if it's an Apple. Finally pick it up and get to Gate 3, not many people, and sit UNDER the TV so I won't have to look at it and catch up with this by 6:13AM. All the flights are listed as on time. Look at my boarding pass and I have an electronic ticket, and the flights are scheduled at 7:05-8:30 and 9:30-11:35, but as usual I expect the actual flying time might be as much as 1/3 less, more like an hour and an hour and a half, I'm hoping. TV says something about the weather clearing up and the storms' having passed, so I hope it'll be clear to look out. Think to type more, hoping to get to File 8, but can't think of anything else to say without getting verbose---HA. Board at 6:45 with a LOUD kid two rows behind on crowded plane. 70-minute flight. Off at 7:16, clear and bright Florida. Announce landing at 8:21AM. Start down at 7:52, clouds and a bit bumpy "at all altitudes" and land at 8:23, RAINING and DARK at gate at 8:30. To gate T4 at 8:48, still boarding at 9 for the 9:30 flight at two hours' duration as scheduled. Weather map shows "weather" to west, not YET to NYC, but NYC has rain and 53°. Start boarding at 9, and I board at 9:09, flight time of 1 hour 27 minutes! Leave gate at 9:32. Damn kid behind me coughs ARTIFICIALLY and FORCEFULLY all the time, and kicks seat. And then BABBLES between coughs. AWFUL. Take off at 9:45, into clouds at 9:46. ABOVE clouds at 9:50 for BEAUTIFUL sky. Shit a bit. Start down at 10:45, into clouds, and at 10:53: touching down in 20 minutes, NYC at 55°. At 10:58 shadowed ground appears. Land at 11:15 with ceiling only about 60 feet. To gate at 11:25. Off plane at 11:35, to luggage at 11:40. Get bag at 11:42 SPLIT OPEN (but probably that was caused by the plastic bags caught in the handler's closing, which I would have struggled to open, and when I get home and pull the zipper back to its origin, it CLOSES PERFECTLY!), which is a pain, since it's raining, but I have plastic bags on top. Out at 11:47, no one checking, and into cab at 11:50 and home at 12:12PM for $23, to Bob's, who answers and gives me my keys, and HOME at 12:20. Get 8 messages: 1) Dorothy Hunter will call back after 12/1, 2) blank, 3) Ken BOOKED US BOTH on Pacific tour, using my Visa number, making full payment and insurance, 4) blank, 5) 11/21 Carolyn: welcome home, Brooklyn Philharmonic at St. Ann's on 12/10 at 8PM and 12/14 at 4PM, 6) James Beard confirming Tuesday, 7) Ken about 12/1 Beard, just this morning. Call Arnold at 12:26 and WCB. He calls back 12:30-12:55. LW Ken 12:55. LW Charles 12:56. LW Carolyn 12:57. Skim mail to 1:48. Lunch to 2:05 of corned beef. Enjoy playing Spider and looking at my view. Spartacus invites me to his Thanksgiving leftovers and I take a bottle of Taylor champagne, get tired talking to him and leave early, and get to bed 9:45 but up at 9:48 to jerk off to 10:18, then sleep.
SATURDAY, 11/29/03: 5:19AM: As predicted, with bidis to jerk off, I had an incredible dream: I'm younger, living in the Village, and I've made a lunch appointment with Bruce Jaffe at 12:30AM, but then get a telephone call from Bob (Hayes?) (whoever the sexy senior student in Actualism was that I wanted to go to bed with whose last name I can't remember) for lunch and I impulsively say yes, then hang up and remember I MUST have lunch with Bruce Jaffe, since he's more important and I CAN'T renege on HIS lunch. Bob said he'd be outside in his purple sedan, and I run down the hill to my building to see a purple sedan drive up, and I just go to the door and say in all simplicity, "I can't." He doesn't like it, but in his direct, enlightened way, he simply accepts it and I hope he leaves before Bruce comes up and he can see that I'm having lunch with HIM. Get up to my apartment and it's jammed with people having a meeting, and I can't find my SHOES! Get a pair of dress shoes with impossibly long, untied shoelaces, and try frantically to tie them by skipping every other lace-hole, but they get tangled and I'm left with impossibly long laces to tie, and suddenly there are colored ribbons attached to the shoes, and when I finish they're ludicrous cake-like objects with colored streamers like I'd stepped ankle-deep into Technicolor mud, so I can't POSSIBLY wear them. Search under a chair and find ONE red sneaker, but I can't find the other, and then I go down a stairway to my lower floor, and up the stairs comes Bruce, looking distractedly at his watch and not even looking up at me, saying, "I've waited an unusually long time for you---" but I greet him at the lower doorway and say, "Let's go," and I fly out into the rain with only my sock feet, knowing I'll get wet, but maybe no one will notice I have no shoes on. Then the rain is over as we're stopping at the end of a line of people waiting for a VERY slow elevator to get into a special building where he wants me to look at an apartment he’s trying to rent, called Good Proportions, because, as he says with a serious face, "It has good proportions." He said the doctor was just up there, which is why there's a long line for the entrance but we can go to Tuller's for lunch, after, because they're open till 4:45PM, but I say, "Can't we go there FIRST [since I'm hungry and want lunch and fear Bob might pass here and see us together] and wait for this crowd to clear away?" And he looks at me as if I'm stupid and says something that makes me feel stupid, but by this time I'm waking up, having forgotten LOTS about the BEGINNING of this dream, but get up and turn on the bright light to record it by 5:30, feeling dry-nosed and shit-assed and drunk/hung over. Put Vicks up nose, take two aspirin, and shit. Up at 8:32 and Spider to 11:45, then breakfast and leisurely into the day, looking at some of the Times, doing puzzles, enjoying. Change from October to November calendar sheet, waiting to proof journal before changing to December. Determine to go to the gym DESPITE my bad back, and decide to go EVERY OTHER DAY: once for StairMaster only, wearing REGULAR clothes to save time and laundering underwear then, and once for machines, in gym clothes, not changing underwear. Today, do the StairMaster for 15 minutes at low 30-minute level, then 15 more at the regular 15-minute level. Out for the Times and get DELICIOUS egg foo yung at Great Wall, REALLY enjoying it. Bed at 12:02AM.
SUNDAY, 11/30/03: 4:55AM: Dream of riding somewhere with an older man like Cathy O'Sullivan's father, who's dating a woman I know rather well, and he told her he went to bed with another woman. I tell him in all seriousness that if he ever does anything like that again, he'd better not tell her, because she'll leave him at that moment. I want to add that I don't intend to blackmail him or anything, but I can feel his suspicion toward me as I keep piling vegetables into the bottom of his little refrigerator. Oddly, he's chewed at the ends of each item (celery, red pepper, romaine, zucchini), whether to make them soft or to prevent anyone else (me, for instance) from eating them. They kept coming until the bottom shelf was full of them. Earlier, I'd stood outside the house looking at the VERY distinct details of the original screened-in porch, with its two kinds of NYS license plates in the window, one blue, one white, as he explained the oddity of putting an air conditioner in the window of the living room, then adding a porch with an air conditioner in THAT window, then a garage with an air conditioner in THAT window, then a porch outside the garage with an a/c, so that there was a nested box three-deep of additions, where the outside air conditioner was in the exact form of a modern, cowled, powerful motorboat motor, complete with propeller, outside what looked like the back door of a trailer: very neat in its small fitting, looking never used, since the entry was from the side into the original house, not through the additions. He was very proud of these additions and I kept looking at a photograph of them on an inside wall that was somehow in front of the whole house. An episode BEFORE that I'd forgotten: my BACK went out at the end of the gym session, as I picked up my gym bag, and it troubled me before I went to bed, but when I got up this morning it was AWFUL. I had to brace my hands on my thighs as I SLOWLY straightened up, since it was TORTURE to walk bent forward; but when I was FINALLY almost erect, the pain almost disappeared, as it was a PAIN to lower myself slowly to the edge of the bed to type this, but AS I sit there's no sensation of discomfort at all in the back---so long as I don't MOVE! Finish this at 5:05AM. Finally had to move to File 8, which I'd been waiting for the last two days. Up at 8:38 and continued with Times, Spider, and puzzles. Back bad all day, so I play Spider until 11:37AM, when I realize with a jolt that Ebert and Roeper is on, so I watch that, then have breakfast, talk to Spartacus about how good the egg foo yung from last night was, and have the rest of it for lunch about 3:45PM when I hang up from talking to him. Read more of the Sunday Times, making a huge pile to be put out, interspersed with playing Spider, and so relieved that I told everyone I'll be back MONDAY that the phone doesn't ring, except for John, who calls during lunch, and I say I'll call him back later for his payment, after I balance my checkbook.
MONDAY, 12/01/03: Bed 1:57AM after playing Spider until 12:05AM and deciding I MUST brush my teeth, find to my depression that no sound came through on the third part of the Physics series, so I assume there's no sound on ANY of the rest of the tape, and am quite mystified when the SECOND hour has SOUND!! How could that POSSIBLY have happened: I'd set ALL the programs at once before I left, and I ASSUME no one changed anything WHILE I was gone, yet the results are DIFFERENT for two consecutive tapings! MYSTERY! Watch an hour's program that I CANNOT remember now, from only 13 hours before [Prince William]! Then pee at 7AM, back AWFUL, and take three aspirin and at 9:40 up with back better, so I take two more aspirin and finish off a roll of film with the spectacular front moving in from the northwest: #34 at 10AM of my table, #35-37 outside of my windows. 10:10 call Fred, who's about to go out and will call me back, 10:12 call Sherryl, who fills me in on back problems [1) Tylenol, or acetaminophen, causes no gastrointestinal bleeding, but you must be careful with dosage, since it can cause kidney or liver failure. Advil, or ibuprofen, is better for the back. But she uses aspirin, which is safest. 2) heating pad for spasms: heat and relax, and ICE right after trauma, if possible. 3) lie on back in fetal position, roll back and forth, or pull knee toward body, WITH heat. 4) BABY the back for a LONG WHILE. No lifting or torquing back. Good to stretch back muscles; do knees-up sit-ups]until 10:37, then leave word with Mildred at 10:45, who calls back at 11 and talks to 11:25, happy to have me back, and leave word with Shelley at 10:36, who calls back while I'm playing Spider later, and we chat, and leave word with Vicki at 10:47, exhausting all the people I have to call. The Watchtower time/temperature goes off at 10:50, comes back at 11:30, down to 44° by 3:20 when I finish this. Have breakfast about noon, then indulge myself in Spider until I finish this. NOW to do SOMETHING with today. Carolyn calls and I ask her to bring a loaf of bread, which she does: unsliced! Make her curried tuna, which she likes, looking through my photos from Mom and she leaves about 3PM after being here over an hour. Skim through Dazed and Confused that I taped before, then pass time blissfully before going to the gym to do machine-work at a VERY low level, but STILL getting sore muscles from it, and get out new suit and go to join Ken at the Beard for Abacus from Dallas specially priced at $60. Rather late, watch TV, and bed at 12:10AM.
TUESDAY, 12/2/03: Up at 8:30, square checking account, and call John to come for his payment, and he arrives at 10:05 bringing the last notebooks he's transcribed, picks up four diskettes, chats about the trip, and leaves at 11. I check that I brought back $343 in cash at the end of the trip. 11AM it starts snowing for a blustery 15 minutes, then stops. I continue with the mail, making piles and throwing more and more away. Lunch of Spam, dinner at the Beard from Tosca in DC with Ken, with rather awful couple alone with us at the table, getting out late at 11:15PM and bed after midnight.
WEDNESDAY, 12/3/03: Carolyn, or Change with Arnold at Public Theater matinee after lunch at Calcutta beforehand. Watch Tales of Hoffman on TV during dinner 9:30-11, then more TV after.
THURSDAY, 12/4/03: Finish unpacking, phoning at 12:30PM for 12/6 MAN at the Dean Street Hot Tub, hoping to be accepted though it's after the 12/3 deadline, find that I should go to the Met Museum tomorrow before the Met Opera, call Charles about that, and sort out receipts and Visa bills and notes, numbering Visa slips A-JJ, going through old October bill that Bob Lambiase paid for in mid-November, and November bill that includes ALL the trip Visas, conveniently, and mail letters and get groceries, feeling almost caught up to date, and proofread journal through printed page 19. Nice looking at CLEAN apartment at last!
FRIDAY, 12/5/03: Starts SNOWING HEAVILY, but I still go out to the Met Museum, seeing most of what I want, walking CP to Opera, lasts to 11:50PM!
SATURDAY, 12/6/03: Get stamps, aspirin, ibuprofen, VHS tapes, cash in morning snow, then proofread and type FLAPAUL thru page 46 at 5PM, changing November calendar page to December, and get ready to type Summary, dreams, photo pages.
FLAPAUL SUMMARY PAGE
FRI,OCT.31: Train to DC 11:20-3:09, to Paul's for dinner, house tour, and bed.
SAT,NOV.1: Shop, Patunxet Wildlife Preserve, phone Yanofskys, drink at Rumors Bar, dine at Vidalia, stop in St. Matthew's Cathedral for choir rehearsal.
SUN,NOV.2: Jug Bay tour, North Beach Traders' Seafood lunch, second cousin's kids at their house, cousin's chicken dinner with family in countryside.
MON,NOV.3: Prince Frederick Senior Center, Applebee's lunch, walk through Annapolis, John Paul Jones's tomb in Chapel, Peeble Museum, Pirate's Cove dinner.
TUE,NOV.4: Junior Varsity, Other Side of Big Bear, Hod Rodz, A.W.O.L., Bust a Nut #3 porn tapes, Nice and Fleezy, Thursday's lunch, FreeCell, Tastee Freez dinner.
WED,NOV.5: Marie McLean's burial in Arlington, reception at Paul's, Smokey Joe's dinner and at Community Center for another of Paul's bridge evenings.
THU,NOV.6: Mysterious Places book-skim, Neptune lunch, Nowhere in Africa DVD movie-additions, Runaway Jury, The Matrix Revolution, dinner at Applebee's.
FRI,NOV.7: Conquest end and Voltaire (Arliss) before 3:40PM Amtrak auto-train dinner with cute Charlie the bartender and not being able to fall asleep.
SAT,NOV.8: Arrive 7:45AM, Lone Cabbage Fish Camp lunch, Tosohatchee visit, Orlando Wetlands Park closed, crocodile and turtle, egrets, Barney's Steak and Seafood before sleeping at the extraordinarily cruisy Parliament House Hotel.
SUN,NOV.9: Flat tire, Laird's in Windermere 10:40-12:50 for lunch, Wal-Mart, Avi's at 5:04, great house-tour, including dolls, Durango Steakhouse dinner.
MON,NOV.10: Casperson's Beach, N'tino's Pizzeria breakfast, Venice tour, to Matlacha and Pine Island south of Punta Gorda, Quality Hotel in Cape Coral, The Lost World: Jurassic Park, and dinner at Perkin's Restaurant and Bakery.
TUE,NOV.11: Perkin's breakfast, to Naples for Lemon Tree Motel, Burdine's Frullati, Naples Zoo, Naples tour and sunset pier, Pazzo dinner with SHAWN!
WED,NOV.12: Breakfast at First Watch, tour countryside, Gator Farm and snakes, Homestead Publix market, to Paul's and unpack and drinks and dinner and drinks.
THU,NOV.13: Homestead tour, Everglades walk and Flamingo Motel and Eco Lake walk, drinks and dinner at chain-restaurant at Flamingo, watching wildlife.
FRI,NOV.14: Dolphins in bay and HUGE crocodile near lake, Mahogany Hammock boardwalk, Alligator Museum for Florida panther and Burmese tigers and snakes and other animals, NASCAR roar starts, Boys in Training DVD, walk around "his" lake, drinks at Capri, dinner at Federico's in Redland Hotel, stuffed.
SAT,NOV.15: Mosquito bites itch. To Miami for Mitchell's apartment with Shar-Pei and Archie, to Jimmy's for lunch, to pet shop, dinner in Dick's 11th-floor apartment and later drinks with older Bob and Carlos with incredible tales to tell.
SUN,NOV.16: Bagel Bar East breakfast, Fort Lauderdale for Las Olas tour and Jalisco lunch and food at Michel's suicide-memorial service at Roger's. Back to swim in Paul's clubhouse, TV before dinner, looking at Sunday Miami Herald.
MON,NOV.17: Three meals supplied by Paul as I watch TV on Waffen SS and Who Killed Kennedy and other junk, again drinks easing evening.
TUE,NOV.18: Costco shopping, Shorty's lunch, Johnny Rocket's hot fudge sundae, Naranja XXX video for Paul, puzzles and TV until late dinner and bed at 12.
WED,NOV.19: Wal-Mart shopping, Canal Road to Alabama Jack's lunch, inside NASCAR racetrack, TV and puzzles and nothing until drinky dinner.
THU,NOV.20: The Triangle with Luke Perry on TV, Islamorada Fish Company lunch, La Cheeca tour, Key Lantern Motel rest, Lorelei sunset GREAT. Morada Bay Bar for drinks and Pierre's for fancy French menu, food, and elegance for $114.
FRI,NOV.21: Ollie's breakfast, Action, Wizard of Oz, and Close Encounters.
SAT,NOV.22: Shorty's lunch, Audubon Birdwatch Walk, Diaz for Spanish takeout.
SUN,NOV.23: Bus 7:33-8:45, taxi to Doral tour, ride to Satellite Beach via Subway sandwich, start looking at Rita's photos from Mom, TV, Denny's computer.
MON,NOV.24: Gore Vidal on TV, photos, Foreman's Steakhouse dinner, ABC wines.
TUE,NOV.25: Trockadero Ballet on TV, photos, Continental Flambée good dinner.
WED,NOV.26: Emperor's New Groove on TV, start The Sword of Shannara for Denny.
THU,NOV.27: Thanksgiving dinner with all and Dennis, finish book, pack for NYC.
FRI,NOV.28: Fly Melbourne-Atlanta 7:16-8:23, Atlanta-LGA 9:45-11:15,home 12:12!
FLAPAUL PHOTOS
ROLL 1:
13 at 10:46, 10:35 train (not here) is 10 minutes late
14 of Jug Bay at 11:02, maybe with some birds as white dots in the photo
15 and 16 of the rowboats in front of a museum-quality old brick house on a peninsula, framed first only by branches, and then by bright-red berries on the bushes below
17 Isabel damage at 1:18
18 John Paul Jones's tomb
19 of the chapel dome
20 of SOMETHING after we circle the tomb
21 of Isabel damage into the sun along the bay-front
?? of six military men carrying casket to grave, just down hill from Kennedys
?? from the back, showing their dad's name and Lee Mansion at top of hill
?? from the front
27 egrets flying
28 egrets sitting in the closed park
30 Avi and collection
31 just collection, not getting the HALF of it
34 gibbons at 1:02
35 and 36 colobus at 1:10 from the boat-tour
37 maybe even a Green Flash at sunset at 5:38?
ROLL 2:
1 at 9:26 of Chokolosker Mall
2 tame cock at 10:04
4 blue heron at 1:09
5 alligator and Paul
6 bittern at 1:30
10 great blue heron on fence at 4:25 to
13 to 4:30
14 ibis-tree at 4:40
15-18 ENORMOUS crocodile from 8:52, possibly 15 feet long
19-21 600-pound Burmese tigers, in awe of their speed, power, and affection
24 11AM view north from Dick's 11th-floor two-bedroom (worth more than $160,000 now, with a monthly maintenance of $130!!) North Miami apartment
25 panorama of downtown Miami on the right, Miami Beach on the left
27 NASCAR racetrack exterior at 1:24
28 NASCAR INSIDE, Turkey Point nuclear plant, jet in central sky above center
30 green heron on right, Muscovy duck on left at 1:45
31 white ibis and Muscovy
32 Scheffleria blossom at 1:56
33 yesterday, family trio around a sort of pickup dinner, before Paul trimmed his hair
34 at 10AM of my table
35-37 outside of my windows