Chicago
I read a funny article by Patricia Marx called “Getting Along with the Russians.” She says, “Education, not force, is the effective way to change the Russians. If we want a three-year-old not to put his hand on a hot stove, we do not beat him unmercifully. Rather, we teach him that a stove is hot, by pressing his hand to the burner for a minute or two.”
She goes on with soft approaches and offers harder ones if plan A fails. “Continue to send the Russians wheat, but package it in cartons filled with so many Styrofoam pellets that Russia becomes a big mess.” “Give them broken headsets at the UN.”
We had our final critique this afternoon. I read a brief short story by Joy Williams and then pinned first-and second-prize ribbons to my paintings.
December 22, 1986
Raleigh
Paul missed a class and borrowed a weight lifter’s notebook so he can catch up. Written on the front and back covers in Magic Marker are:
Born to be wild!!!
Break a sweat!
Pump iron, then your mate.
Once you go around, there’s no turning back…so raise hell.
Lift for life.
Love conquers all.
Grunt power.
If you raise hell you’re gonna burn your feet.
Doobies!
1987
January 13, 1987
Chicago
The deaf man has shaved off his goatee and is in my new painting class. Our teacher, whose name is Judy, started the day by showing slides, mainly of famous artists in their studios. We saw Matisse, Braque, and Renoir. When she got to Picasso, the deaf man became excited and tried to say something, perhaps “Picasso.” The teacher wasn’t sure how to handle it. She smiled, and just as she asked him to sit back down, he farted.
January 18, 1987
Chicago
In the mail we received a video guide of new releases. One movie is called Never Too Young to Die. The copy reads, “A vicious hermaphrodite wants to control the country, and only two people stand in his way. [Only two?] The resulting ‘battle of the sexes’ will blow your mind with a heady mixture of powerful heavy-metal music, state-of-the-art weaponry, martial arts, and espionage that makes this exciting action flick a winner.”
Times have changed when a hermaphrodite wants to control the country and only two people stand in his way. If he were a black or Hispanic hermaphrodite, he’d probably have a harder time of it.
April 26, 1987
Chicago
A woman at the IHOP tonight got up from her chair and crossed the room to eat french fries off the plate of a person who had just left. She was stylishly dressed and had a suitcase with her. Everything on the menu was too much, she moaned. It sounded like she was trying to watch her weight, though she was surely talking about the prices. Four chocolate chip pancakes were out of the question, she said, “so how about you sell me two?”
The waitress said short stacks just come in buttermilk, so the woman ordered a plate of french fries, which she ate with ketchup. Then she took syrup and poured it onto her spoon, the way you might with cough medicine. She had multiple spoonfuls of all the various flavors, one right after the other. In my nine years of going nearly every night to the IHOP, both here and in Raleigh, I have never before seen anyone drink the syrup. She had to be crazy.
May 5, 1987
Chicago
I told Dad I was disappointed that I wouldn’t be graduating in a cap and gown—the Art Institute doesn’t swing that way—and he said, “I’ve got your old cap and gown from high school. Want me to bring them when we come up?” Then he said, “Do you think it will still fit?”
A person would be in pretty serious trouble if his graduation gown no longer fit. It’s like outgrowing a tent, basically.
We had our final critique in sculpture class today. It was dull, which is good, as it’ll give me less to miss. I’m sad to be finishing school. I liked being in college. It was respectable to be a student. You get discount admissions all over town, and it makes you work.
May 6, 1987
Chicago
Today I worked for Marilyn Notkin. She had company coming and needed her storm windows removed, and knobs applied to her bathroom linen closet. I was taking out one of the windows in the sunroom when I broke it. Then I dropped one of the porcelain knobs she had special-ordered for the linen closet. “I guess this just isn’t our day,” she said when I confessed. It was the “our” that got me. It was my bad day for breaking things and her bad day for hiring me. “You don’t need to pay me,” I said.
She insisted on giving me something and settled on $7. I honestly would have felt better if she hadn’t paid me anything.
May 20, 1987
Chicago
Mom came for my graduation and stayed with me after everyone else had left. It was nice having her. We went out to eat with Amy every night, and she gave Neil lots of attention. I’d wake up and find them both in the kitchen, Neil in Mom’s lap while she smoked and drank coffee. She slept in my office and took naps on the sofa. This afternoon she left, and now I’m not sure what to do with myself. I’d looked forward to everyone coming, and now it’s over.
On Saturday, when the whole family was here, we got dressed up for cocktails and dinner. Lisa, Gretchen, Amy, Tiffany, and I were walking past the vacant lot on Leland that’s always full of drunks and drug addicts. Any time of day or night they’re there—white, black, American Indians, but strangely no Mexicans. They have fistfights, they build fires and pass out. As we walked by on our way to the L, a drunk woman fell in behind us and put her nose in the air, bringing up the rear in what she saw as a snooty parade.
Then someone yelled out, “Hey, they’re people too!”
May 22, 1987
Chicago
This morning a Jehovah’s Witness woke me up. Someone buzzed her into the building, and she came to my door with a small child and two copies of The Watchtower, which I paid 40 cents (printing cost) for. The child saw Neil in the background behind me and said, “Once we had a cat, but it scratched the baby, so we had to get rid of it.”
May 23, 1987
Chicago
My recipe for Koto Kai Pilafi:
Pour a little oil into a pan.
Wash a quartered chicken and rub it with garlic.
Dot it with butter, big dots or small—whatever.
Add 3 tablespoons of tomato paste and half a cup of water, and put it in the oven at 400 degrees.
Cook the chicken on its side for 15 minutes and then turn it over and cook the other side an equal amount of time.
Add 2 cups of water and 1 cup of rice and cook it for another half hour at 350.
May 24, 1987
Chicago
Last week, after being drunk for two days, F. came to. It was Sunday, and the last thing he remembered was Friday night. He woke up naked with no furniture left in his living room. The front door was open, and there were piles of shit on the floor.
May 27, 1987