Raleigh
Yesterday, while riding home, Joe and I saw a topless woman run down Edenton Street. She seemed to have come from the church and had her arms crossed over her breasts. I’d guess she was in her late twenties, plump, and wearing cutoff jeans. A man was leaning against the church, watching her and laughing.
Later I went to the art auction at the design school. My piece went for $7. I tell myself that most of the thirty or so people there were students without much money, but still, $7! I was so embarrassed I left and came home. Then I took a nap and woke up depressed.
April 20, 1982
Raleigh
Bobby accidentally broke his wife’s wrist during an argument. She visited us on the job site today and talked about it while drinking a Mountain Dew held in her good hand. Misty is small and pretty in the way that a country-and-western singer might be. She recently started an executive secretarial course at Hardbarger Business College. This is her first semester, and she’s taking a spelling class. “Let me give you a little pop quiz,” she said to Joe. “Spell class-action lawsuit.”
I thought she’d hit him with something a little harder, like arbitration.
April 24, 1982
Raleigh
Tiffany left Raleigh and went back to Maine to work at the reform school she went to, élan. I’ve missed her, so it was good to talk on the phone and hear about her new life. One of the delinquents she’s assigned to kidnapped two children, drowned them, put their bodies in plastic bags, and left them on the curb for the garbagemen.
That’s a bit more than delinquent, I think.
April 27, 1982
Raleigh
Bobby met his wife, Misty, at Skate Town, where we used to go as kids. Today after her spelling class, she came by the job site, and the three of us went to Hardee’s for lunch. They ordered roast beef sandwiches and then entered a contest. First prize is an all-expenses-paid trip to the World’s Fair, and while eating they speculated on who’d watch Brian if they won. Their best bet is Misty’s sister in Charlotte, they decided, and after dropping him off, they could spend the night in Bobby’s truck.
Then somehow we got onto the subject of shaving, which led to the shaving of legs. In Hardee’s at lunchtime, the place half full with black people, Misty looked around and observed that most nigger ladies have hair on their legs. Bobby said gorillas don’t shave neither. I flinched again and again, but they were oblivious and seemed almost innocent.
Susan Toplikar is going to New York for a year. Her place is bigger and cheaper than mine, so we talked and arranged for me to sublet it while she’s away. The neighborhood, Oakwood, is more settled than where I am now. It’s not all NC State students.
April 30, 1982
Raleigh
Joe and I were on the construction site when a man in a black car stopped to rage at us. “It ain’t fair for white men to come into this neighborhood and get jobs working on our people’s houses,” he said—a reasonable charge. He asked how much the homes we’d built were renting for, and when we told him they were for sale, not rent, he called Joe an ugly name.
“What did you say?” Joe asked.
“I ain’t afraid of you,” the man said.
He drove away, and I thought of him all afternoon until a bee flew into my eye.
May 10, 1982
Raleigh
I have cooked a chicken that already smelled bad two days ago. In my heart I know it’s spoiled, but I plan to eat it anyway because I’m hungry. For lunch I had a hamburger the size of a Susan B. Anthony dollar. All day long I installed doorknobs. It was all right.
May 20, 1982
Raleigh
Tiffany called to say she’s coming home. She’s miserable at élan. For the last three days her job has been to observe a girl in isolation who carves ugly words into her arms with splinters. “I didn’t come up here to be a prison matron,” she said.
She thought of staying and finding work somewhere else but decided she can’t live in a state with only one zip code.
May 26, 1982
Raleigh
This was our last night of Greek class. The Compos girls were out of hand, though, to be fair, they’re just kids. I’ll miss going there every week and studying with Lisa.
May 27, 1982
Raleigh
Tommy got into a fight at Shirley’s Lounge, a biker bar. The management threw him out, so he jumped into his car and ran over the management. He already had a DUI and wasn’t supposed to be driving but did anyway. An undercover cop followed him and shot out two of his car windows. When the officer got out of his Camaro, Tommy ran him over as well. Both victims are in the hospital, and he’s in jail instead of at work.
June 1, 1982
Raleigh
I’m going through my annual college-anxiety phase. It happens every year at graduation time. I used to think I could teach myself anything I needed to know, but I’m not sure I believe that anymore. I’d like to be educated and mature.
June 6, 1982
Raleigh
At the Capital Corral I met a college freshman named Brant, who had his high school graduation tassel hanging from his rearview mirror. He told me that Heart is his favorite band, and during sex he kept telling me that he loved me and wanted to get married, presumably in the next five weeks before he returns to Norfolk for the summer.
June 18, 1982
Raleigh
I called the number Brant gave me, and it was made-up. Then I called all the dorms at Louisburg College and was told there is no Brant. Tricked again.
July 30, 1982
Raleigh
Just as I’m packing to move into Susan’s and go to Greece, SECCA writes and invites me to have a solo show a year from now. This is huge for me. After getting the letter, I bought $15 worth of cat food.
August 6, 1982
Athens, Greece
Since Dad’s arrival, all he’s done is yell at people. He’ll ask someone on the street for directions, then tell them they don’t know what they’re talking about. He speaks combat Greek, and the people he talks to speak it back. Still, it was good to see him and Lisa and Paul. Three days alone here wasn’t such a great idea, especially in a room that’s an oven. I brought my transistor radio. There’s an OK jazz program, but everything else is Greek music.
There are a lot of blind people in Athens. A man got on the train tonight with what looked like mayonnaise in his eyes.
August 13, 1982
Heraklion, Crete
Dad bought us deck-class tickets—the cheapest—and while he and Lisa and Paul slept on benches, I stayed up and drank retsina with a stout Dutch girl. Her hair was short, like a boy’s, and she looked hard into my eyes when she spoke.
Over the course of the evening, I learned the following:
1. Her brother died three years ago in an automobile accident, and she cried for two years straight.
2. Last year she had an affair with a woman.
3. An apartment in Amsterdam is expensive.