Love in the Grass

8-3 2:45 PM Su
I read about --well I couldn't keep it straight.  After the death of David, the people of Abraham broke into two states.  Jehosaphat was the ruler of one and Ahab the ruler of the other.  Ahab was slain by the Syrians.  God would not protect him because he had gone a whoring.  Mighty Men of Valour would be a good name for a band.  When am I gonna blow up that rollercoaster?  I'll read a few McMichael poems before I go back upstairs to shower.  I'm in the backyard at Keniston.  I was sweating through a basketball workout when I took a left-handed shot over the garage and into the neighbor's backyard.  What else?  I have chores to do.  I did fifteen minutes, but I'm struggling through the '92 thing cuz I'm at the part where it's a bunch of lame rehearsals of Lisa Addison.  I have to trace the grafitti style Leo Politi letters in my drawing.  I have to write to Bernie and pay my bills and get my TB test.  What else?  I haven't done the third person for a while.  I start teaching a class of seven aphasia kids on Tuesday.  Airliner, windrustle, leaves shaking, ice cream truck, dog barks, car drives by, solitary bird peep---
Aerials, scores of cables crisscrossing--God what else?  "Vacation" was on TV.  Mi bro took me shorts.  Me girl made me curse 'er.  Me car looks like crap.  Kurt Vonnegut says to wear sunscreen.  What will I eat today?   What kinds of birds are these arranged in a perfectly spaced group of six on the wires like dots on a die and one outcast apart?  A craps roll.  Seven.  That's a loser, I think.  They seem like young birds.  Indistinct color.  Not very big.  Young crows or adolescent Brewer's blackbirds.  They all fly away.  Flies buzz.  A golden moth.  Sex rivalry.  A suitor is beaten to the punch and driven off.  Love in the grass.  They're still going at it.  She was lovely.  Big black eyes, soft brown fur, delicate curl in her antennae.  I walked over to get a closeer look.  The guy took off.  Littler ants than usual have been thriving.  I'm finding them on the pages of books, no bigger than a comma.  I wonder if there's any propane left in that grill.  Man, was it steamy in Powerhouse.  A couple of Euro-geeks held up the dart game last night.  The shirt I borrowed from Thing was too small. 

Stops at the Border

Sa 8-2 3:00 PM
We're at the National Sports Grill in West Covina.  Shirelle came over bright and early and pestered me non-stop for three hours 'til we left the house.  She said, "It's such a nice day."
I said, "Oh, and the niceness of the day stops at the border of this property?"  She wasn't going to let up until we went out.  I was thinking more along the lines of not straying too far from my couch because I didn't sleep much this morning.  Now that we're here, of course, she's tired, and she wants to go home.
The Cubs are beating the Dodgers four to one.   There's pool here and darts and NTN and big windows to look out at the nice day in the parking lot.  I've only been drinking iced tea.  Gracias is here.  He says he's never had a brain freeze.  "Are you kidding me?"  I say.  "Not even coming out of Seven Eleven on Tetley in Hacienda Heights slurping a Slushee?"
I read the paper and did the crossword.  Thing told us about a party for Quentin Tarantino tonight.  I was going to take the Red Line downtown later today, but that all got sidetracked.  This weekend, I'm going to enlarge my rollercoaster photo--tomorrow.  My mom might come up, too.  Esteban and Fredo ordered ice cream sundaes.  Fred says graduating from college was the most amazing thing that ever happened to him.  That, he says, or the time he fell on his back and  couldn't move for about ten seconds.  Nippleage.  I like nipples.  I'm so glad God put nipples on tits.  Piazza looks like he doesn't want to play today.  They're showing shots from a catcher-cam mounted on Rick Wilkens' mask.  I said, "They should have a drunken-fan cam."  Shirelle went out to the car to sleep.  It's about a hundred degrees out there.  I ordered a jumbo Amstel.
      You made your bed.  Now lay in it.  What else?  Esteban was born in San Juan, Puerto Rico.  His dad was a liquor distributor, and they sent him there.  He was there for about a year when he was a baby.  They thought he was going to die because he wouldn't eat.  They fed him through an IV at his temple.  It wasn't until they got back to LA that he got better.  His mom thinks that's why he eats so much now.  He thinks that's why he's such a freak.  Cindy Johnson's was the first pussy he ever touched.  He met her at St. John Vianney summer camp.  They went to the movies.  On the way home, they pulled into a school parking lot and that was where it went down. 

7-31 Th 8-1 Fri 5:58 PM
Looks like I never got here yesterday after working all day and being so tired.  I just shot baskets for a few minutes shy of thirty.  My wrists soak the paper with sweat.  I've got a Modelo open on the white plastic lawn table and my watch is on it and a bottle opener, the Christ fish one, and a book of poems called The World at Large, by James McMichael, who was an instructor of mine who gave me an A on a paper about Ulysses and an F on a paper in which I satirized Ulysses.  The phone was ringing upstairs.  I'll check my messages when I'm done.  Did I mention there was a joint, too?  I've got to shave this beard.  It feels like my face is being torn with a hundred thousand copper wires.  Steve Gracias invited me to a barbecue at his apartment in Westwood.  Pablo and Fredo will be there.  I went over to Lorelei's house in my sweaty tank top.  Knocked on the door.  Her housemate, whom I'd never before met, answered barefoot in a summer dress.  I introduced myself.  She said she was Julie.  I asked about Lorelei.  She said she was out of town.  I said I wanted to talk to Lorelei about a subpoena.  It felt like saying penis.  I said, "I don't know if you know about the.. incident."  I didn't know if I should mention it. 
"The stalker," she said. 
"Yeah." 
"Lori's out of town 'til Wednesday," she said.

What else?  Supposed to take the Red Line downtown tomorrow.  Alice in Chains blares out of the upstairs window.  My mom's supposed to be up for lunch Sunday.  That was probably her calling.  I don't know whether or not to color my Leo Politi drawing of downtown or not to color me Leo Politi drawing of downtown.  Don't know if I should fire up this joint.  Don't know if I should bake my chicken tonight.  Have to shower now.  Do my page in third person.  Visit Jim and Aaron.  I'll draw this label before they're all gone.  [Bohemia]

Hot Alcoholic Librarians

W 7-30 1:40

Best Deer Antlers Trading Co. 

I'm at Colonel Sanders' Kentucy legacy on Olympic about a half mile from school.  I've got to start walking back in a few minutes.  The architecture of the apartments makes me think of mythical days of the sunny 1950's.  I'm drinking pink lemonade.  Paul Simon is singing his happy, whistly, tune, "Me and Julio Down by the Schoolyard."  I'll leave when it's done.  Principal Perez wants to see me about room environment.
Now I'm sitting at the lunch table facing the view of downtown.  We are drawing our art project a little while every day until someone kicks us off  to seat a class here.  Even though there are many other tables here, and this is the only one where we can see our view of downtown, the yard duties do not seem capable of deviating from their simple plan.  I explained the logic once, unsuccessfully, and gave up. 
The bell just rang.  Children scurry about putting away balls and jumpropes.

Larry used to steal girls' panties from the dorm driers. Morning wood.   Mourning would.  Carlin says Thing doesn't want to socialize.  She told him to put on his extrovert mask.  I murdered people on the pool table.  Thing says, "I should go talk to this girl.  Go talk to her, Carlin."  She says, "YOU go talk to her."  He says, "YOU."   She says, "You."  Another guy moves in.  Carlin says, "He looks like a dullard."  We got 40's swing music in here.  Regular crowd mill noise.  "Who let the Hair Bros. in."  "They just walked in here.  They were playing at the Coconut Teazer."  They stop talking.  Wait for a spark.  Nothing comes.  A girl grabs her forehead.  Carlin says, "That guy looks like the guy from the band...shit..." She can't think of the name, sings a few bars of the song, "Swim out past the breakers/and watch the world die."  Thing says, "Toad the Wet Sprocket?"  She says, "No."  I go, "Everclear."  Carlin doesn't drink, but she's slurring like she's wasted.  "You're like Edgar Allen Poe," she says.  I tell her she doesn't know what she's talking about.  She insists.  I insist.  I say, "Edgar Allen Poe was a dreary, melancholy, morbid, gloomy, death-obsessed alcoholic."  She shrugged her fingers at me, like I had just proved her point.  I frowned at her.  She said, "What are you writing?  You write so fast." 
"Where are all the hot alcoholic librarians?" I asked. 

nada

Tu 7-29 10:45 AM
I left my book of essays in the car.  I'll get it at lunch.  Most of the class is at recess, but some kids are in here playing checkers, Battleship, and Perquackey.  After lunch, we'll correct the math homework and introduce the next lesson.  At lunch, I'll nuke my chicken and read my essay.  After lunch, we'll work on our drawings.  Then we'll play basketball.  After school I have an appointment at the DMV to get my driver's license.  That will cost at least a hundred bucks.  Fuckers.  When I get home, I'll eat an apple.  I have to buy some fresh chicken for tomorrow night's dinner.  I'll do my page of third person before class.  After class, one hour with Jim.  Ugh.  I have to check my e-mail before class, too.  Urg.  Bed by eleven.  Read that Wallace Stevens.  Now what?  The bell rang.  I have to bring the kids up from the playground.  Maybe if I wait long enough, Mr. Tuboko will figure to bring them up.  I'm hungry.  I had a bowl of cereal for breakfast and peach orange mango juice with a vitamin for dinner last night.  I ate a plum, a grilled parmesan and garlic cheese sandwich, a few dates, a few peanuts, and a couple little chocolate chip cookies.  I picked up my asthma medicine and a couple C batteries from Payless yesterday.  You hear the hum of the air conditioner.  Here are the kids now.  Sounds like a jungle in here now.  I'll write more after math.  Aftermath.  Hopefully I'll think of something by then.  Kids don't listen.  Ugh.  What else?  In the cancer story I read yesterday, the narrator talked often of Schopenhauer.  Later that day he was a featured name in "Antonia's Line."  The character, Crooked Finger, who believed in Schopenhauer, hanged himself.  I got a basic idea of his philosophy from those two works.  I am in denial enough to believe that joy occurs on occasion, that hope is a necessity, but neutrality can be miserable.  Who can think?  It's lunch time.
Now I'm in the teacher's lounge.  The microwave hums on my chicken in peanut sauce.  The TA's babble in Spanish.  There's a payphone, a coke machine, a drinking fountain, fake plants with fake roses in wicker baskets on laminated doilies at each table, salt and pepper shakers, napkin dispenser, half pint carton of apple juice, scrape of chair on floor.  Handwritten cafeteria menu.  Ugh. 

7-28-97 Ugh

7-28 M 12:25
Room thirty-three.  The kids are at lunch.  I got game one of the Angels doubleheader in Cleveland on the radio.  Before lunch we sat at the lunch benches downtown and drew what we saw.  The kids kept crowding around me to look at mine.  I heard, "Yours is the bomb!"  A lady came to watch over my shoulder.  I felt like a celebrity.  Another lady came and said how much she liked my drawing.  She said, "Oh, you just do an outline and fill in the details."  Diana asked if she could have it when I was done.  Makes me feel good.  It won't be done for like a week.
I didn't get out of bed early enough to do my '92 pages.  I forgot to bring my lunch.  I ate two toaster waffles, though.  I'll wait 'til I get home to eat.  I have to pick up my prescription in Larchmont Village after school.  Do I have time to walk?  I'm almost done with my night school attendance.  I just have to fill in the bubbles and fill out my time card.  When should I watch "Antonia's Line",  Before or after night school?  Whipped through the paper today.  Going to read a short story called "I Want to Live".  I'm wearing my good shoes;  I won't be able to play basketball with the kids.     Angels two, Indians zero in the bottom of the ninth.      Jesus just busted in.  He's doing a puzzle a map of the moon.  He wants to let in Luis, but I told him it was my lunch break and I didn't want any kids buggin' me.      What else?   Don't remember dreaming anything.    Two hours 'til we go home still.  I don't have enough books to put together any kind of a consistent curriculum.  It's pretty much what I can make up each day. 
The weekend sure went fast.  Almost seems like I went to bed Friday, and when I woke up again it was Monday morning.  I went digging through my old baseball cards last night.  I have an autographed Roger Clemens rookie card.
I offered the students their choice of Social Studies read-around or silent reading from library books.  They voted unanimously for silent reading.  Goodie gumdrops, now I can finish this and begin my short story.  I wish I wrote a short story every month.  If I quit my job and wrote full-time, would I be able to do it?  Or would I become a self-loathing alcoholic, destined to always fall short of the mark?  I tried to draw Quoyle.  It wasn't too hard until I tried to draw the hand over the chin.  I need a mirror or a model, but I don't want to disturb the kids because they're reading so nicely 

[a pencil drawing of a somber, wide-headed, closed-mouth man].  Starting to miss my lunch.  When I bring back my videos, shall I rent new ones?  I hope my other credit card bills come today.  I got an offer from First USA to transfer to them other debts.  I'd like to transfer everything to the GM card.  Then I'll get a bigger rebate when I buy a car.

The Backyard on Keniston

7-27 Su 1:?
My hand is wet from washing a peach.  I'm in the backyard.  The old breeze does its old rustle in the old.  "Go around the street and ask 'em what it is?"  Carli brought this loose-skinned, pinkish, orangeish, leathery bag full of wet red seeds. The inside looked a little like bread.  "I wonder if it's a breadfruit," I said. 
After this, I'll shoot baskets for a half hour.  I told Carlin I was thinking of going up to the Korean BBQ place.  She said she wanted to go.  I asked when she would be back from the party in Highland Park.  She said around five.  I said, "Are you going to be mad if I don't want to go anymore?"  She said yes.  I hear some jazz piano in the neighbor's backyard.  I've got a Dutch movie to watch called "Antonia's Line."  I brought a book out here with me called I'll Tell You a Tale.  I'm going to read one before I play basketball.  I called the pharmacy.  I don't know if I can pick up my inhaler today.  The guy on the phone didn't know whether or not they had to call my doctor first.  I told him that before they changed me over from Thrifty, I never had to through this whole calling the doctor business.  He left me on hold a long time and hung up.  I still have to read the Bible today.  What will tie me over until Korean BBQ time?  What else?  Could draw the LeBaron in the driveway with it top down next to the garage, the triangle of the roof, the boards' straight lines, the circle of the basketball hoop, crisscross of net, square on rectangle of backboard, squares on rectangle doors, seams in the driveway, cinderblock bricks to keep doors from blowing open, oil-soaked concrete where Carlin parks her car, a wasp landed there, green hose, mesh fence, mesh hammock, old brick BBQ, wood fence, whitewashed wall.  Not much.  Blades of grass.  What else?  Tomorrow, back to the routine.  Tonight I pray for something to care for.  Would like to go out drunk and eat and talk.  Some neighborhood hangout. 

7-26 Sa 5:19 PM
Some house in Benedict Canyon where Thing's house-sitting.  Shirelle's nuking a bag of popcorn to stave off her terminal boredom.  We've just come from the Museum of Radio and Television in Beverly Hills.  We saw a Rat Pack retrospective with a concert in St. Louis with Frank, Dean, Sammy, and Johnny Carson.  It was fun.  "I've got enough gas to get to Pittsburgh."  We ate Red Lobster.  Thing and I would've chilled a while and read the newspaper, but Shirelle was whining like a ten-year-old brat that she was bored and wanted to go.  I'm drinking Miller GENUINE DRAFT LIGHT Cold Filtered Beer.  The cat here hissed at me.  I hissed back.  Shirelle took her popcorn to some other room to watch "I Love Lucy."  Thing is reading the New Times.  Frank and Sammy and Dean set our cravings in gear.  We discussed going to the Whiskey Bar.  I haven't played a game of pool in a while.  Played a great game of darts last night.  The GIP came and picked me up at Molly's last night.  We went to Burger King and Jack in the Box, but they were both closed.  So we went to Bob's Big Boy.  Thing is making rum and cokes...