“I’m going to fuck up this bike,” the man said. He tightened his grip on the handlebars, and I thought that maybe I could buy Julia’s old three-speed from Katherine. I was wondering if she’d maybe just give it to me when the man threw back his head and spat in my face. He did it a second and third time, but nothing came out, just a sound, ptoooo. I guess he was dehydrated from a day of drinking.
As the spit was running down my forehead, I saw a black woman walking toward us. As she neared, I took my bike from between the man’s legs and went around him, not riding but walking it. From behind I heard the guy calling me a sissy white boy and telling me to stay out of his way. I took a drag off my cigarette, still not riding, as that would give him satisfaction. Instead I walked, spit on my face, feeling victorious. He’d demanded a cigarette and I didn’t give it to him. So doesn’t that make me the winner?
October 15, 1983
Raleigh
Last night was the reception for my SECCA show. I wore a new shirt and a black jacket and combed my hair. Lots of people came, and I went outside twice to smoke pot. Though I was high, the show still looked good to me. It was a solid year of work. Now the party’s over and both Neil and I are feeling sick.
October 26, 1983
Raleigh
I went to Capital Camera this afternoon to buy slide jackets and talk to Mrs. P., the wife of the owner. She’s from Smithfield and told me that her husband suffers from high blood pressure. “His medication is thirty dollars a month!” she said.
Mrs. P. is very Southern. She calls everyone “honey” and wears half-glasses attached to a chain around her neck. The front door used to be open all the time, but now it’s locked and gets unlocked only when customers come—people like Dr. R., who came to drop off the film he’d shot in Europe. He told Mrs. P. that his wife had gotten sick in Paris, and Mrs. P. said she knows all about sickness. “My husband has high blood pressure, and the medication is costing us thirty dollars per month!”
Then she said that she was robbed last week. It seemed she’d forgotten to lock the door, and when she turned around a man put his hands around her neck and demanded all her money. She said she couldn’t believe this was happening to her and that she called him “sir.”
“I told him he was welcome to all the money and that I hoped he spent it wisely.” After she emptied the cash drawer, he asked for a cord or something he could use to tie her up with. “I promised him that if he let me be, I wouldn’t call the police,” she said. “So he didn’t tie me up and I didn’t call them.”
“But why?” I asked.
“Because I promised.”
“Can’t there be an exception?” I asked. “I mean, do you really have to keep every single promise you make?”
She said no but that he could have returned or sent one of his friends to rough her up. “I considered calling a private company and having them dust my neck for fingerprints, but I looked in the Yellow Pages and didn’t find any such business,” she said.
November 4, 1983
Raleigh
I washed walls at Tracy’s today. Meanwhile, her maid Julia scrubbed the floors. Julia lives in the Washington Terrace apartments and will not put up with any mess from the people she works for. “It’s not worth the fuss,” she told me. “I will not babysit, and I will be paid extra for holidays, including Labor Day and Memorial Day.”
After Tracy left, Julia called a number of people on the phone. To one person she described a man she had seen wearing a built-up shoe. “No, girl,” she said to the woman she was talking to, who apparently had questions about it, “you got to have a thing like that made special, and no, you do not got one foot tinier than the other.”
On Thursdays Julia works for the people who live next door to Tracy, a couple with a dog named Domino, who was not in his outdoor pen today. “You think he ran away?” she asked ten or so times before knocking on the couple’s door and hearing him bark on the other side of it.
Aside from working for Tracy, Julia and I have WPTF radio in common. We both listen to Open Line and agreed that Barbara needs to start putting some of her callers in their place.
November 19, 1983
Raleigh
On Thursday I was accepted into the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and on Friday I received insurance and housing information. I’ll leave Raleigh on January 2. It hasn’t really hit me yet, all the work I have to do before I go. Leaving. I am leaving.
“What’s David up to?”
“Didn’t you hear? He left and moved to Chicago!”
December 26, 1983
Raleigh
This is my twenty-seventh birthday. I’ve been anticipating this age for a long time, thinking that when I reach it, I’ll make a big change. I seem old to me now.
The Amtrak station is not answering their phone, which is a problem because I’m supposed to pay for my ticket today. My reservation will be canceled if I don’t do something fast. I’ve thrown out a lot these past few weeks and have packed most everything else for storage.
December 28, 1983
Raleigh
This was my last night at the IHOP. I’ve been going steadily since 1979, just drinking coffee and reading. On my way out tonight I said good-bye to my waitress and left a $2 tip. I didn’t cry, though I worried I might.
Also today I got a real winter coat, boots, socks, and gloves. The coat is down and super-ugly. I never thought I’d see the day that I’d wear a down coat. Gretchen came with me. Then I went and paid $183 for my train ticket. I liked the woman at the station and felt bad for hating her so hard the other day when she wasn’t answering the phone.
1984
January 6, 1984
Chicago, Illinois
Now I am in Chicago. Everyone came to the train station in Raleigh and saw me off. It was bitterly cold, and I cried as we pulled away and I saw Mom and Joe and Sharon and Dean and Katherine and the Parkers all waving. At the DC station I bought a Coke from a vending machine that talked. That was a first.
My three days visiting Allyn in Pittsburgh were a blur—smoked a lot of pot, snorted a good deal of cocaine, which never really agrees with me.
Tonight was a reception for new students in the dining area of the Art Institute. There was wine and cheese and people in uniforms who emptied the ashtrays. I’m not as hysterical as I thought I might be and am having a good time looking around. Visited the post office and the big main library and the conservatory of music, where Ned Rorem went. I am beside myself. On leaving the reception tonight, I saw a man sitting on a stool. He’d removed his artificial legs, which were lying on the ground beside him. What a place!
January 10, 1984
Chicago
I looked at four apartments today, the best being 820 West Cuyler. It’s a short street, and everyone in the building is from Mexico or Central America. There’s trash in the courtyard and on the landings, but the rent is only $190. The living room / bedroom ceiling is covered with plastic to catch the falling plaster. The floors are collaged with different patterns of linoleum, but the bathroom’s OK. There are plenty of windows and a kitchen big enough to do all my work in. Best of all, it’s eight blocks from an IHOP that looks exactly like the one I left behind in Raleigh, both inside and out.
January 15, 1984