10-3 F 11:43 AM
Jack in the Box on Wilshire near La Brea.  I returned the Ultimate Breakfast Sandwich they gave me yesterday for the Ultimate Cheeseburger it was supposed to be.  After school today I'm going to drive down to the charter office.  Then I'll settle down to watch some baseball and write and read and not go out.  Try not to let Shirelle's bats in my belfry.  The air conditioning in here is a little too chilly.  There's a Miracle Mile sign outside the window.  Sycamore Tailor is [written in an arrow] around the corner.  There's a sign for BARCELO'S-INCOME TAX-INSURANCE-NOTARY PUBLIC.  The IMMANUEL MISSION CHURCH is across the street.  Across from that is a Bank of America [logo].  PLEASE HELP US KEEP THIS NEIGHBORHOOD LITTER-FREE.  [Jack in the Box logo and THANK YOU drawn in some logo letters].
6:47 PM At home now on the floor at the coffee table.  Today there is a bottle of Tylenol on the table  and a packet of Primatine Mist tablets with the tablets removed and my watch and the New York Review of Books.  What else?  Got the game on.  The dreaded Giants are up one zip in the sixth.  Guess I'll have a puff soon.  Do the '92 page. It's actually '93 now.  Do my one page.  Develop the flashback within the flashback.  Read some Naked and the Dead, the Mailer bio.  Next Friday, I meet with Julia and Kathleen at Borders.  Should I make tacos with my leftovers or just have grapes for dinner.  I sweated for a half hour on my treadmill.  What else?  No pink on the horizon tonight.  Just hit the char.  Didn't do much.  Jim had been sitting in the employee lunch patio eating a hamburger in his costume.  They were supposed to change out of their costumes before they ate.  Rule number seven:  Thou shalt not eat in thy Goofy suit.  He'd already spilled ketchup down the orange vest--Devon White just hit a grand slam. 
Mr. Zannat asked if I played basketball.  I said I was pretty white.  That's not too professional.  Fernandez just struck out Bonds while Johnson tossed out Mueller trying to steal.  It was beautiful.  I could do more push-ups this time.  Did I just hear Joe Morgan suggest that Jim Leyland is out-managing Dusty Baker?  Kent just cracked one.  That Bonds DP was huge.  MVP:  Charles Johnson.  We'll see.  I should call baseball games.

Ugh

10-1 1:19 PM W
Stayed home with a case of the October boogers.  Got game two of the Marlins/Giants playoff on in front of me.  I'm sitting on the floor with my back against the armchair, writing on the coffee table.  A coffee mug shares the TV Guide with a bottle of beer and the remote control.  You need the TV remote to turn the TV on and off and to make sure the TV is on channel three.  You need another remote to turn on the cable box and turn channels, but you can't adjust the volume with that one, you need the other one.  A third remote is for the porno machine.  The batteries are weak, though. You can PLAY, FF, REW, and STOP, but you can't turn the power on and off; you must get up and walk over to it and press the button.  The cable remote is lying across a marble marijuana pipe.  I put it there to cap the bowl so as not to waste any smoke.  Green Camel matches from the Dublin are right next to that, and next to that, a burnt match, a wad of toilet paper, a box of Tylenol Allergy Sinus Anti-Histamine Nasal Decongestant Pain Reliever, a clear plastic ziploc baggie too small for sandwiches with a corner full of marijuana left in it,  Thing's copy of The Naked and the Dead (First edition paperback), place held by three-year-old notebook page, Wiley Coyote pen (purchased at Ralph's supermarket), roll of toilet paper, maroon phone, cord dangling off the edge of the table and over the couch, two yellow Albuterol inhalers with orange caps, and a piece of string.  I don't know the story behind the piece of string.  The breeze lifts the bag, but it doesn't go anywhere.  I was hearing an essay about baseball realignment. 
Some rich guy with a big gold ring sitting in the front row off first base talking on his cel phone got knocked out by a foul ball.  Smile.
I fell like talking a stove-flame-heated, red hot, straightened paper clip to this wart on my thumb.
What if it comes out that Jim had sex just once with Mary and knocked her up and they aborted the baby? 

                                                                      ...toss it in the trash?  (Sad face).

I'll go ahead and declare the Marlins NL champs.  Leyland's smart enough not to rely on Gary Sheffield and his reunion with Bobby Bo's gonna produce a big fall for the one-time Buc slugger.

Is It Lying to Be Who You Want to Be and Not Who You Are?

9-30-97 10 AM Tu
Time to christen another book. It took forever to finish that last one.  Let's hope that the coming weeks are filled with interest and inspiration, that the lines come rapidly.  Surely by the time I finish this book Jim will have moved beyond page 40.  We have Thursday off for Rosh Hashanah.  That will be the day.  I want to finally arrange that El Nino fishing trip.  Between ballgames on Thursday, I'll cruise down Olympic to that charter office to figure what I can figure.  I'll call or e-mail Steve soon.  Today at lunch I'm going home to watch a few innings of the Braves/Astros playoff game.  Maybe I'll grab a paper on the way.  I started The Naked and the Dead last night.  So far, seems like after one chapter, it's your standard war novel.  Total Hemingway impression.  What I'm getting from Mailer is that we make ourselves.  He set out to be what he is and had more resources and connections than talent.  I think knowing this helped me to do the page I did last night.  Helped me resist Shirelle and be who I want to be.  Is it lying to yourself and others to be who you want to be and not who you are? 
     I have to fetch the kids.
5:57 1/2
Stayed home from work tonight because of the sneezing fits, the snot attack.  You can't teach like this.  You feel miserable.  So you load your pipe and crack your beer and put on some October ball, call in sick, pull of your shirt, and watch Orel Hershiser go to work on the Yankees. 
I tried calling my mother but she wasn't home. 
"I see that chick at work.  I think Hercules is banging her."
There were a couple of Q-tips in a Rolling Rock bottle.  Through the green glass the ear wax looked bluish. 

More Concerned with Perpetuating the Legend of my Drunkeness

9-29 M 10:30 AM
At my desk in my bungalow on the playground again.  The kids are writing in their journals.  We played some ball this morning.  Got a good sweat going.  What else?  Jim's flashbacks are out of control.  Norman Mailer is a geek.  We're going to read a story called "Kites in Flight".  I drank a diet shake for breakfast.  I ate a Rice Krispie snack at recess.  Only two grams of fat, seventeen grams of fiber.  What else?  I saw my colleague, Mike Tannaz, at the beach by the pier yesterday.  He was waiting for a girl when he spotted me and said, "Hey, John."  I told him we were going to the pier.  He said he lived close by but didn't go up to the pier much anymore.  "It's pretty dirty," he said.  The girls got ice cream cones.  A mob waited at the window.  The man asked, "Who's next?"  Glorious said, "Two vanilla cones, please."  The mob was mad because they'd waited longer.  "To the swift go the spoils," I said.  We walked up above the cliff and looked back down past prehistoric yuccas onto the pier with its rollercoaster and Ferris wheel.  I was crabby and making an ass out of myself, I think.  Glorious said I was too negative.  Today's word for the week, which the principal announced over the loudspeaker this morning, is "Positive."
What else?  What should I do for lunch today.  My night school attendance?  Read some more of this dreadful Mailer bio?  Eat when I get home today.  Pasta or bagel or P B & J or grilled cheese or fish.  I'm going to skip reading the newspaper today, I guess.  I guess I better call Shirelle today.  What else?  Mailer went to Harvard and got involved in literary groups and publishing.  Why didn't I at UCI?  I was more concerned with perptuating the legend of my drunkeness.  Gladys said there's no school on Wednesday because it's Rosh Hoshannah.  I hear kids laughing on the playground.  I hear the tetherball chain clink on the pole.  I hear the gears in the clock.  I can't think of anything else.  I've just got to keep writing, though.  What else?  What else?  I hear a kid making airplane noises.  I walked out to the playground to pick up my kids with my fly down this morning.  Dijonia pointed it out.  I beat before walking to school this morning.  I puffed some, too.  I heard a woman in an old house scream, "No! No! No! Get away from there!"  A cat with gold eyes stared at me as I walked by.  A woman was sitting in her car with the door open, but closed and locked it as I walked by.  I felt like I must have looked fierce as I walked across the playground to the office.  Tim asked if he left his sunglasses at my house.

Pot Farmers?

9-25 8:55 AM Thursday
The kids are writing cinquains about the rain. 
"I was frumpy, now I'm fabulous" is the subject on "Sally" today here in Tam's Chinese Garden right next to my school and Choe's dry cleaners.  Cars splash through the rain on Olympic.  I bought a newspaper.  I'm supposed to go out for a Mexican food with Sheryl Powers and Stacy McDowell after class tonight.  I figured I better get lunch since I won't be eating again until nine.  Still, if I had any will power, I would have skipped lunch, had an apple after school, and waited until dinner.  I'm tired.  I can't think.  I'm a loser. 
This has gotten so hard to do lately.  There's nothing to say.  Who cares that I'm sitting in the dark waiting for Stacy to finish up her class so I can see if we're still going out now that Sheryl didn't come to school tonight.  I wanted to ask them both about how they get by only teaching nights.  I want to see if I can make it viable for myself to stay home all day and write.  Give up my day job for a few years.  Fantasy.  There's a puddle under my feet left from the edge of hurricane Nora, though it's no longer raining.  The power was out when I got home from school today and stayed out 'til I left for class tonight, so I didn't get to type.  Wouldn't have stopped Mark Twain.  I was thinking I should get a typewriter and type one do-or-die, no-going-back page every day, like the old masters used to do it. 
We're at El Cholo now.  I was asking Stacy how she manages on a night school salary.  I was telling her how I was making massive credit payments to offset "the reign of terror".
9-29 M 10:30 AM
Just dumped a smelly load into the commode here at Dublin's.  Still sitting here with a Camel and this notebook.  I wonder how many gallons of puke have swirled out of here?  Tim Modchill just smoked my ass in three straight pool games.  He wants me to go with him to Howard Hughes old house in Marina Del Rey to meet his friend and do drugs in the basement of a bar called Renee's on the Westside.  My plan was to sit home, drink beer, smoke pot, write, and monitor the Dodger/Rocky and Giant/Padre games.  Tim's a new teacher at Wilshire.  He went to Humboldt State.  He said his girlfriend tried to commet suicide and he had to have her airlifted from his house.  I said, "What's the Humboldt mascot?  Pot Farmers?  Skunks?"
He said they're the Loggers.

9-23 Tu 2:15 PM
Another hot day.  Nine kids didn't do their homework.  They all whined and moped through softball.  I walked to school again this morning.  I had waffles and eggs for breakfast.  I had carrots for lunch.  I'm considering calling in sick tonight to stay home and watch the Angels try to stave off elimination against Randy Johnson and the Mariners. 
I'm in the school auditorium now waiting for the faculty meeting to begin.  Someone served some walnut brownies.  I had one.  It was delicious, but now I'm jonesing for milk. 
I pulled the
9-24 W 12:40 PM
Ugh.  I f*cked off my diet with three slices of pizza dipped in Alfredo sauce and five buffalo wings at lunch.  I didn't walk to school today either.  I feel all bloated.  Tonight I'll tread forty-five minutes.  Tomorrow, back to the diet and walking to school.  The Dodgers are on at five tonight.  I have to go to class at six.  Actually, I need to get there early to prepare chapter two.  I guess I can listen on the radio while I set up.  The Giants are playing in Colorado right now.  Getoff came up for a little bit while I ate my lunch.  I told him how my school sucks.  I told him I was reading the Mailer bio.  He asked me if it was inspirational.  I said, I just started, but yeah, a little.  Mostly it just keeps whispering in my ear to quit my job and write all day.  Marlin keeps asking me to pop a zit on his head.  We're going to some presentation from the Cabrillo Aquarium in about fifteen minutes.  Getoff said it was hot about seven different times.  I'm tired.  I'm going to have to nap after school before class today.  I went to bed an hour early last night, too.   

9-22 Mon 2:10 PM
I'm sitting at a table with Damnesia Harkins, 9, Tera Pascascio,7, Dijonia Victor, 8, Jeancarae Sullivan, 8, Alana Johnson,8, and Marlin Manchester, 8.  Marlin informs me that he will be nine next week. They are writing sentences with their vocabulary words.  I've got to go to night school early enough to get the kits for the second unit set up.  I guess I'll have to leave the house around five.  Turn in my attendance and time card.  We'll be introducing the past tense this afternoon.  I guess I'll make a grilled cheese sandwich for dinner.  I walked to school this morning.  I had an apple for breakfast.  I had some baby carrots for lunch.  Today I started writing about a party at Pocahontas' house that Jim and Aaron go to.  I'd like to work on that more tonight.  Didn't smoke yesterday.  Wheezed all night anyway.  Dreamt about being stuck with a group waiting for a bus in the hills around Universal Studios.  Someone else was in charge.  I sneaked away over a fence and jumped off the steep hill into a tree where I was swinging around on a vine and couldn't find a way to get down.  I was worried I would fall.  I couldn't see the ground below through the leaves.  The city on the valley floor spread out in the distance.  Then I woke up.  Shirelle shaved my face in the shower.  I wore a tie today.  She reminded me not to wear my white shirt because I don't want to mess it up before the wedding.  I have to go to Payless Drug today or tomorrow to pick up my prescription.  Still need to find out about the Rolex.  Still need to get vitamins and shoe polish.  What else?  I've got a short story to read today.  It's called "What the Thunder Said" by Janet Peery, and it's from The Best American Short Stories of 1993.  Julia and Kathleen and I decided to bring updated plot outlines to workshop in three weeks.  What else?  I hope my Visa bill came today.  I see the back end of a yellow bus out my back window.  I wonder how much longer the leaves will be on that sycamore.  The Dodgers are off tonight.  The Giants play in San Diego.  When I get home, I'll type for fifteen minutes and do my '92 page.  When I finish that '92 journal next month, I ought to try some new routine.  I don't know what yet, though.  I want to check out Leimet Park one day.  I want go back to New York again soon.  I want to go to Chicago.  London.  I should talk to Jim. 

Stoner Camp

9-20 1:15 AM Sa
He wouldn't smoke a bowl if it wasn't garden fresh.  The fire's crackling, duh.  Someone's whistling across camp.  Maybe it was a bird.  Claudia's sitting on the ice chest next to me.  Peach's playing his guitar.
 "A thousand hits on the internet." 
"Dude, I'm all over my vendor's page." 
"I remember when you ate my dead pot plant."
"No, we didn't.  We made tea from it." 
"You know what?  I found out why it died.  Scott put chlorine in it.  I think he was mad we weren't doing our dishes.  I swear to god sometimes he would stack dirty dishes on our beds."
"Wait.  He killed it with chlorine and you guys drank it in tea?"
"Huh.  Yeah."

"How did it stretch so wide."
"Ha ha."

Peach and Crusoe spent about an hour cutting out their favorite pictures from Playboy and made a collage that Crusoe hung over his bed.  When his girlfriend came over they had a two-hour discussion about him taking it down.  Chicks. 

Baby cries.  Girl yearns, knocks back beer she was barely sipping the first hour.  "What came first, mastery of fire or mastery of language?" 
"The first time I ever saw fire I probably would have tried to touch it."
I said they probably saw it first after lightning storms and it would have been a significant event that would have caused a common involuntary exclamation.  "Hot!  Hot!  Wow, that's hot!"

9-18 12:32 PM Th
Got the Dodger game on here in the classroom.  I need to think of something for the kids to do that will keep them busy.  Bonds is having trouble with the glare in left field.  The kids are doing a pretty good job of reading.  Mullholland is throwing against the Dodgers.  Eric Young just struck out.  I'll do the dishes and ironing when I get home.  I guess I'll have some peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for lunch then, too, one hour and forty-five minutes from now.  I'll do that '92 page before class.  I'll stop by the store after class.  I'll treadmill for forty-five minutes tonight.  Tomorrow after school, I'll clean the bathroom.  Bonds just tripled and scored on Glenallen Hill's grounder up the middle.  Some boys are cutting out pictures they like from the newspaper.  Dijonia and Ashley are doing Cezanne imitations.  Jenny is playing teacher at the chalkboard.  I ate a Yoshinoya teriyaki chicken bowl at Wilshire and Arlington last night. 
I started boucing a beat with my feet under my desk and Marlin, Damnesia, Dijonia, and Ashley started funking out.  They were doing the tic and the booty hump.  This room is f*cking mess now.  Newspaper and crap are scattered all over.  Forty mintues until I can get away from these kids.  What else?  Fucking Bonds just homered.  Five to one, the forces of evil are winning.  Twelve minutes until I can bail.  Karros just knocked in a run.  Zeile just doubled in Karros all the way from first. 

[Pencil line drawing of a Hopi Kachina doll] 

 I tawt I taw a puddy tat. 

[Pencil sketch of Sylvester the cat, rigid with dismay]  Dijonia says if she gets a Lamborghini she "gonna be drivin' on the freeway drinkin' soda and talkin' to Barbie."  Marlin said his mouth is getting watery for a pickle.
They're gone now.  Piazza hit a two-RBI single to tie the game.  What more?

9-17-97 Splotches of America the Beautiful

9-17-97 12:19 PM W
Went to Bob's for breakfast before school today.  It sprinkled a little.  Who cares what my fat-ass ate?  My kids make fun of my fat stomach.  Night school hangs over me.  Dodgers at Giants tonight.  Call it a showdown.  I'll miss the first three innings because I'll be in school.  I have to go to the library.  I have to clean my desk.  I'm a loser, baby, so why don't you kill me?  Seemed like Ms. Shapiro was giving me a smile, or maybe she was just trying not to laugh at this belly.  Still more high clouds.  Got to read Kathleen's excerpt.  Friday I'm scheduled to have writer's group.  Go camping and to the Dodger game.  They're sand-blasting the house next door in preparation of weatherproofing in advance of El Nino, I guess.  The noise was unreal, an apocalyptic sucking that consumed the neighborhood.  It was so loud and steady, I was knocked unconscious. 
What else?  Slept alone last night.  Couldn't type one page.  Have a ton of e-mail to reply to.  Jencarae and Alana may use the computer.  The tradewinds blow through the room so that every loose piece of paper must be weighed down with a stapler or a can of paintbrushes or a tub of cookies.  Damnesia has shit all over her shirt again, pink spilled down the front, accompanied by splotches of brown.  I hung the kids water colors for "America the Beautiful". 

Mon 9-15 9 AM
Let's see.  What?  Hurricane Linda wimped out. 
It turned its impassive eye to Southern California, blinked, and looked away bored.  Scattered showers, high clouds, no gale-force winds, no torrential downpours--shucks.  The kids are writing in their journals.  I need a grade book.  I'll walk around and help to do a little editing when I get to the bottom of this page.  Never-ending blue between the clouds.  By this time last month, I had already filled my book.  I went to the market at lunch today and spent sixty dollars on groceries.  I ate a corndog and a chicken leg and thigh from the deli at Ralph's today.  I have ribs and chili and mac-and-cheese waiting at home.  When will I start exercising again?  I have to get my night school attendance squared away this afternoon.  The Giants against Glavine will be on TBS today at 4:30.  Dodgers on the radio from St. Louis at 5:00.  I have to meet with Ms. Steindiner and Marlin's mom tomorrow at ten.  One of my kids smelled like shit.  I sent her to the nurse.  I hear them screaming on the playground.  I hear balls bouncing rhymically on the handball court.  A large horsefly comes barging in.  Spiders in the corner distract us both.  Feels like my life is not happening any more.  If I could close my eyes and sleep forever....I have to get my planning for the week done.  My school desk is starting to get as bad as the one at home.  I wish my Visa bill would come so I can pay a big chunk.  I wish I would take a Ucla class and a U. of Phoenix class.  I've got to call someone from Sharp who knows.  A parent who cannot find a child has decided to honk her car's horn interminably.  Probably Damnesia's mom.  What else?  What about the weekend?  I need to call a boat.  I need to get shoe polish.  Tim Modchill, a new teacher, just came into commiserate with me on how bad this school sucks.  I have to get a wedding present for Hep Bretlers wedding.  Should I camp this weekend?

Fri. 2:10 PM 9-12 The last hour of school each Friday is what I like to call "Lord of the Flies Time".  I try to let the kids interact however they will, short of violence, without interference from me.  When they come to me with questions and complaints, I ignore them.  There's a group playing "school" right now.  Steffanie's the teacher.  She's doing a pretty deft impression of me.  Steve e-mailed me today.  His wife is going in for a c-section at nine this morning.  I don't know what I'll do this afternoon.  I guess I'll do e-mail.  I read the whole paper.  I read a Didion essay ripping the intellectual vacuousness of Hollywood in 1964.  I typed fifteen minutes of my mundane life before school this morning.    I ate two apples for lunch. 
"How's that shit-hole of yours doing anyway?"
"Which one?  My house, my car, my son, or my wife?"
10 PM  What was it?  Something I was thinking that I wanted to write, but now I don't remember.  What the fuck. There's a woman on public access in a black bra and skirt dancing with a long-haired singer guitarist.