Today T.W. and I worked alone, nailing siding onto the Pratts’ house. I made mistakes, and he was patient until I took a measurement and marked the tape instead of the board. He asked then if I thought I’d ever amount to anything. His tone suggested that if I did think I’d amount to anything, I was fooling myself.
T.W. comments on every woman he sees, with no exceptions. We ate lunch together at the Golden Skillet. A waitress was bending over to clear a table, and he smacked his lips and commented loudly on what he’d rather be eating.
Spook girls have good legs, he says. “There’s a pretty little spook girl works over to the nigger store. I’d like to take her home to my wife and say, ‘Here you go. Treat her like a sister.’ Get me some pigger nussy, some soul hole.”
“Monkey and the baboon playing in the grass. Monkey sticks his fingers up the baboon’s ass.”
“It was easier to get pussy back when girls didn’t have no cars and had to depend on men for rides.”
“Slippery as a puppy’s peter.”
“Get me a granny raisin cake. It’s got a pitcher of an old granny on the cover with her hair all up in a bun. If they don’t got none, buy me a male Hershey bar—you know, the kind with the nuts.”
To a fifteen-year-old girl he called out, “C’mere so I can smell of it.”
At the end of the day he decided that I’m too shy with women.
August 13, 1981
Raleigh
Today T.W. asked, “Did you get any cootie last night?” At the sight of one girl, he said, “She could make a bulldog break her chain.” When a young woman passed on a bike, he yelled after her, “Don’t you know it’s illegal to peddle pussy in this town?”
August 14, 1981
Raleigh
Today I helped T.W., mainly fetching tools. He says my problem is that I had me some college and that all those students at Kent State should have been lined up and shot. T.W. is a member of the Johnston County KKK. At lunchtime he said he was so hungry he could eat a horse dick fried in tar. We went to the Big Star to buy lunch. It’s my grocery store, the one I shop at, and I withered when he started barking at women like a puppy.
T.W.’s best hunting dog just died. He has her kidneys and her spleen in a jar in the front seat of his truck. After work he planned to take them to the vet.
August 27, 1981
Emerald Isle, North Carolina
Dad wants to buy a beach house and name it Apedia, after Yia Yia’s hometown in Greece. He does this every year—gets us all cranked up about a cottage. The real estate agent told him at the start of our vacation that the age of the private beach house is over, that times are changing, and that he might want to consider a condo instead. One of the ones we’re staying in is for sale, so Mom sits up late, drinking wine and thinking of how she might rearrange the interior. If we buy a place, we’ll need to rent it out at least ten weeks a year. That means furnishing it with stuff we won’t cry over when it gets broken or damaged or stolen.
Dad says, “A guy needs a place where he can gaze into the ocean and sort things out.” It costs more to have a condo on the end, with a view of the water, but he says hell, you might as well go all out.
Today I got a pair of beach sneakers called Gold Seal Sea Dogs.
August 30, 1981
Raleigh
On our last night at the beach, at around three a.m., we started throwing sopping-wet washcloths at each other. The sound of one smacking against someone’s face, or their back, was the funniest thing ever. Tiffany was great company this week. Every night we got high on the beach and made up coastal limericks. This morning Dad had us wait in the hot car while he returned the keys to Carteret County Realty and talked to someone about financing the condo he swears we’re buying. He was in there for twenty minutes. The condo is $110,000. I can’t believe we’re falling for this again.
September 17, 1981
Raleigh
I’ve had it with Briggs Hardware. Again today when they asked what I was looking for, I was at a loss to tell them. “Something wooden,” I’ve said in the past. “Something shiny.”
I don’t want a tool to do something with; I’m just looking for something to draw. In the toy department, I asked to look at one of their jack-in-the-boxes. The saleswoman got snippy when I didn’t want to buy it, and when I reached for my knapsack and said I could explain, she said, “I don’t want to see none of your old mess.”
I turned to leave and saw all the employees standing at the front counter talking about me. They think they’re hot stuff because the store was pictured in National Geographic.
From there I went to Monroe Tire & Service. No luck, and as I was leaving, a man came in with a horribly burned face.
September 26, 1981
Raleigh
While I was walking down Hillsborough Street after visiting Lyn last night, a carload of drunk guys pulled alongside me and shouted threats. “Fucking faggot!” they yelled. “We’ll kick your ass.” They were really into it, acting as if I’d done something to them personally, or to their mothers. At one point I was pretty sure they were going to get out of the car and start something. I wondered then if it would be too undignified to take off and run into the Hilton. As it was, I ignored them until they drove off. “Faggot.” It seems to be written all over my face lately.
October 1, 1981
Raleigh
Tomorrow I return to work at Mrs. Winters’s house. Last spring her porch was painted, and I’m to scrape up the drips. She’ll likely stand over me while I do it, monitor me the way she did when I removed her storm windows. She’ll play radio station WPJL (We Proclaim Jesus Lord) and pick, pick, pick.
She and her husband cleaned Trailways buses for forty years, and because they’re black, I imagine they’ve heard every insult in the book.
Tonight at the IHOP I sat next to four NC State students. One of them was planning to break up with his girlfriend because she’d spoken to another guy. Another was short on money, and his friends offered to cover his bill if he’d drink the entire pitcher of raspberry syrup. I was willing to add another 50 cents if he could do it without throwing up.
I’m going through another talk-radio phase. Last night I listened to Open Line, where the guest was Hap Hansen, the channel 28 weatherman, who explained how he lost forty pounds. Most of the calls were from friends of his.
October 6, 1981
Raleigh
I’ve paid my rent and my phone bill, leaving me with 43 cents. In the late afternoon I went with Mom and Dad, who are thinking of buying a rental unit on Clark Avenue, a duplex—this instead of the beach house that was all just talk. The current tenants weren’t home, and while I was walking through the place, almost snooping but not quite, I came across a kitten taking a nap in a red NC State beanbag chair.
Last night on Open Line, the guests were from the Anti-Defamation League. Klan members and jerks called, saying they’d drive the Jew carpetbaggers out of the South and back to where they came from. I am into Open Line.
October 7, 1981