Chicago
Ted H. is my painting teacher. He says “Yeah” to mean “Isn’t that so?” and has gray curly hair. At the start of class he said that no question was a stupid question. So I raised my hand and asked if we could use part of the room as a smoking section.
He said “No” twice, and several of my fellow students whispered, “Good.” One of these, a woman, was wearing a smock with the signatures of famous artists printed on it: Matisse, van Gogh, Rousseau. She had brought four of her paintings to class, large landscapes, and leaned them beside one another against the wall.
Later in the afternoon, Ted took us to the museum and talked about de Kooning. I like how worked up he got. Signature Smock glared at me the entire time we were in the museum, though I don’t know why.
October 1, 1985
Chicago
I read a National Examiner article about Christina Onassis, who has apparently gone to a weight-reduction farm. She’s trying her best, but still they referred to her as a “lardy lass” and, worse still, “that Greek tanker.”
October 17, 1985
Chicago
I stayed up all night and worked on my new story. Unfortunately, I write like I paint, one corner at a time. I can never step back and see the whole picture. Instead I concentrate on a little square and realize later that it looks nothing like the real live object. Maybe it’s my strength, and I’m the only one who can’t see it.
October 20, 1985
Chicago
On Thursday the Cherokee Nation elected their first woman leader. Her name is Wilma Mankiller.
Kim’s husband gets his hair cut at a place called Blood, Sweat, and Shears.
October 24, 1985
Chicago
Before leaving school tonight I reexamined the painting of a briefcase I’ve been working on and got depressed. It looks like it was done by a seventh-grader. At the end of class I signed it Vic Stevenson. That’s the name of the motel manager in the story I’m writing. Between now and my critique, I have to come up with some sort of justification for this painting. Ted, the teacher, is one tough customer and will chew me up and spit me back out again if I’m not on top of things.
October 26, 1985
Chicago
In the park I bought dope. There was a bench nearby, so I sat down for a while and took in the perfect fall day. Then I came home and carved the word failure into a pumpkin.
October 28, 1985
Chicago
Critiques get depressing when you realize that everyone’s just waiting for his or her own turn. It’s a monologue as opposed to a dialogue. “All of a sudden I realized that you don’t ‘arrive’ at Milton Avery, you pass through him,” a landscape painter said today. This was after she’d pulled herself together. Before this, she’d cried. “I don’t want to talk about it, I just want to do it.”
One guy, Will, shook his painting up and down, insisting that it was not a painting of a beer can but an actual beer can. The longer I’m in school, the more exhausting these critiques become. I went overboard, I think, but it wasn’t until later, getting high at home, that I realized how embarrassed I should be. After presenting what I called “my line of products,” I read out loud something I’d written about the IHOP. Ted said that my paintings are basically signs. “We do not enter their space, they enter ours.” That seems about right.
December 5, 1985
Chicago
I ran up the stairs to the L platform this afternoon and reached it just as the train I wanted closed its doors and took off.
“Sorry, but it just left,” said a guy who stood not far away, leaning against the railing. “You just missed it.”
I nodded, huffing for breath.
“So, can you help me out?” the guy asked.
“Excuse me?”
“I did you a favor, now you do one for me,” he said.
“What favor did you do?” I asked.
“Told you about the train,” he said.
That’s like me telling someone who’s standing in the rain that it’s raining. I mean, what kind of a favor is that? I told the guy to leave me alone. Then I sat on the bench, and he stood over me, cursing, until the next train arrived.
December 8, 1985
Chicago
Here is the recipe for Kim’s spinach soup:
One 10-ounce package of frozen spinach
2 cups water
2 cloves garlic, mashed
1/5 box of spaghetti
Olive oil
Parmesan cheese
Add water, spinach, and garlic in pot. Cook until spinach is thawed. Add olive oil—enough to cover surface of water. Break the spaghetti up and cook it separately. When it’s finished, add it to the olive oil, water, spinach, and garlic combination and top it with grated Parmesan cheese.
December 26, 1985
Raleigh
For Christmas I got:
a radio/tape player ghetto blaster a wristwatch
a rubber flashlight
a hat and neck warmer
socks
underwear
a blank tape
a file
two rubber stamps
a lighter that looks like Godzilla a blue checkered scarf
Back in the World, stories by Tobias Wolff oil paints
razors
1986
January 13, 1986
Chicago
I am trying my best not to spend much money. With nothing coming in, I have to clamp down, so at Walgreens I bought a bar of Fiesta brand soap, which is horrible but costs only 20 cents. I used it last night and still smell like one of those deodorizing pucks they put in the urinals at gas stations.
March 2, 1986
Chicago
Tiffany spent the past five days back in Raleigh with an ice pack against the side of her face. She says that a man, a stranger, insulted her on the street in New York. She insulted him back, and he smacked her.
“That’s her story, if you want to believe it,” Mom said when she called to tell me about it.
Anything could have happened to Tiffany. She has such an adventurous life.
March 3, 1986
Chicago
Folding clothes at the Laundromat last night, I could feel someone at my back, close but not quite touching. It was a black woman eating an apple. She was maybe twenty-three years old, and as I continued with what I was doing, she talked to me. “What days do we eat meat?” she asked.
I thought it was a riddle at first. I mean, who’s the “we” here? I told her we eat meat whenever we want to, or can afford to.
“Can we eat meat three times a day?” she asked.
“Sure,” I said. “If we feel up to it.”
“Where is there a Catholic church?” she asked.
I told her I didn’t know, and she said, “You a lie.”
Then she went into the bathroom and stayed there until I left. This is a busy week with me and lunatics, whom I tend to see as either signs or messengers.
March 10, 1986
Chicago
This afternoon I was hit over the head by a hammer. I was on my hands and knees, picking up bits of plaster, and shoved aside the ladder I’d left it resting on top of. When it fell, it felt just the way I always imagined it would. I was stunned. Now there’s a bleeding lump the size of a small egg on the top of my head. It’s what a cartoon character would have, only it’s me.
March 14, 1986