New York
While straight men watched the Super Bowl on NBC, the other networks fought it out for the women and homosexuals. Funny Girl was on channel 9, and the Bette Midler remake of Gypsy played on channel 2. Meanwhile, channel 13’s Nature special was devoted to cats. Hugh and I switched back and forth from musical to musical to the mother calico teaching her young to hunt. It’s a lesson that Dennis, our cat, apparently slept through.
February 10, 1998
New York
Helen called me over to rub some Tiger Balm into her back. Our mutual neighbor Joe had offered to do it, but she turned him away, saying she didn’t want to get raped. “I’m not into that,” she told me. “Especially in my own bed.” The other night she confided that her real name is Elena, and that her childhood nickname was Rocky because she got into so many fights. She sent me home with some spaghetti sauce that had chunks of chicken breast in it. Hugh threw it in the garbage, just as he threw away the veal she gave me the day before yesterday.
February 13, 1998
New York
A German publisher has offered a nice advance for Naked and Don thinks we should take it. “That’s what the Japs coughed up,” he said.
February 15, 1998
New York
Helen called at eight a.m. and then again three hours later. “Get over here. I made you the chicken with the potatoes and peas.” I went and she told me about her latest fight with the deli on Spring and Sullivan. Their delivery boy is deaf and Helen’s accusing him of stealing her pen. It seems a simple enough mistake. The kid probably used it and then accidentally stuck it in his pocket. I think of how confused he must have been when Helen lunged at him, demanding it back. She later called the deli, saying, “That freak ain’t allowed in my house no more. He wants a tip? Let him keep the fucking pen!”
She accuses the Grand Union deliverymen of stealing canned goods from her order and selling them on the street. That’s how paranoid she’s gotten.
February 16, 1998
New York
Lots of domestic violence on Cops tonight. A young woman is punched in the face and her boyfriend goes bananas when officers enter his trailer to arrest him. He’s strong, and it takes three men to bring him down. Meanwhile, his girlfriend is screaming, “I only want to talk to you, baby.” To the cops she pleads, “He didn’t mean to hurt y’all. He was askaird.”
As the boyfriend is taken away, he yells, “I ain’t never gonna forgive you for this, Randi. When I get out I am going to fuck you up.”
She answers, “Do you want me to pay your bail?”
“See,” the guy says to her as he’s pushed into the car, “they don’t know what you’re like. They don’t know how you talk to me, how you make me have to beat you up.”
“I’m sorry,” she cries. “I’ll get you out tonight.”
February 22, 1998
New York
They’re broadcasting the closing ceremonies of the Winter Olympic Games in Nagano. This means I can return to writing without having Hugh yell every five minutes, “David, get in here—hurry!”
I sat him down the other night and explained as gently as possible that I do not care about ice-skating. I do not care about Michelle Kwan or Tara Lipinski and would be happy if I never hear the words triple lutz or double axel again. I told him that on Friday and walked into the kitchen an hour later to find him in tears. “It’s heartbreaking,” he said, watching his beloved skaters.
Last night he called me in to watch Michelle Kwan do her final routine. The competition is over, but they’re allowing the skaters to come back and do whatever they want without fear of judgment. They don’t let the bobsledders do it, but apparently the ice-skaters have a lot of fans like Hugh, who can’t get enough. Right now they’re killing time with a soft-news segment explaining that “rice is very important to the people of Nagano.” The narrator is taking his three-minute story and stretching it out to ten. The secret is to t a l k v e r y s l o w l y.
March 4, 1998
New York
I called my drug-delivery service and they sent a young white man named Luke. Like all of them, he arrived on a bicycle and knocked on the door with four different grades of pot. I complained about the construction noise coming from the hotel they’re building next door, and he said, with sympathy, “Oh, dude.”
I asked where he lived, and he said Williamsburg. “It’s like a party place but really laid back.”
Luke was like a parody of a stoner. I think that’s what I liked about him. I’d hate it if the person selling me pot in the middle of the day was super-articulate. That would make me feel like even more of a loser.
March 13, 1998
New York
Helen fell this afternoon and I watched the paramedics carry her down the stairs. According to Joe, she’d been up on a chair changing a lightbulb and may have broken her hip. Her daughter arrived, dressed in a fur coat, and said, “You must be Dave, the one she drives crazy. Welcome to the club.”
March 19, 1998
New York
Hugh goes through phases with the New York Times crossword puzzle. He’ll do them religiously for a few months and then drop off entirely. Sometimes I’ll look over his shoulder and whenever I get a correct answer, I’ll feel so smart and capable. Before she died, Mom started doing the crosswords from the Raleigh News and Observer. She bought a book of easy puzzles and it broke my heart to find them in the bathroom wastebasket. Three-letter word for “Placed out of sight,” and she’d have written put instead of hid.
I never cared about puzzles one way or another until this weekend, when I completed the crossword in this week’s People. The clues were, I’ll admit, pretty simple. “All ___ ___ Family.” “Singer once married to Sonny.” It was on a fifth-grade level, but after I’d finished, I couldn’t stop staring at it.
I showed it to Hugh and then went through the recycling pile on the curb and found two more Peoples. I love getting stoned and doing the crossword, but they’re even better first thing in the morning.
March 27, 1998
New York