3-13-98 12:55 PM F
From on one of the school toilets.  It's Shirelle's 26th birthday.  I'm supposed to go to Santa Monica today and pay my insurance.  What else?  I did a water color of a lighthouse from out of a calendar.  It came out so-so, but the kids were calling me an artist and oohing and aahing, and that was good enough for me to frame it in construction paper and find a place for it on the wall.  My vision is limited.  I can't see beyond the next few minutes.  After insurance, I'm supposed to drink with Tim.  Wouldn't that be cool if Gabi Limon came, too?  Gillespie asked me how she could get some of that when she saw me, maybe I should ask her out.  Shirelle made me mad yesterday, and I bailed on her.  Now she's called twice crying she wants me back.  It'll never make any sense. 

5:45 PM 3/11/98 W
I'm at a desk in one of the empty evening classrooms.  It's still light outside.  Kids were skateboarding in the parking lot.  My class begins in about seven minutes.  I drove to school tonight.  I was--Tracy, the teacher next door, came into the room singing about a nightingale.  She started playing the piano.  Sheryl walked in now, too.  They're talking.  I don't know what about.  Something about getting numbers for downloading that I don't understand.  The page is a little orange now, my hands look a little Flemish neo-classical in the light coming through the window.  I still imagine dread possibilities of last journal's loss: terminations and public humiliations.       What else?  ...stop by the nursery some day, the pawn shop...     Ate donuts today, most of a jelly and parts of a fritter.  I shared with my class.       I collapsed in on myself and lost Catherine the other night.  Of that I'm sure.  I wasn't hired.  I blew the interview.  I'm too embarrassed to do call-backs.      I'll put some phrases on the board.  I guess I better get over there.  It's after six.  Sheryl and Tracy are still talking, though, with Jim, who has now arrived, and they haven't started teaching yet.  What about doing something after class tonight?  Naw.  Treadmill.  Read.  Write.  Paint.  Practice.  Go to bed.  Mike said Palm Springs was awesome.  I'm thirsty.  I smoked some after school today.  I was painting a pile of rocks.  It wasn't easy.  It took a while.  An hour or so.  It looks amateurish.  A lady blabs next door now in Spanish.  Jim still hasn't started teaching.  After class tonight, I will...what?  Read.  Tread and read.  Have a Harvest Burger.     That Lucia inflames me.  Au.  What else?  Back straight.  I need a shave.  There's a button missing off this shirt.  What else?  The janitor popped.  He told me Tone-Loc was here.  What else?  Talentless.  The pawn shop.  The nursery.  Three hundred bucks at Aaron's Art Mart.  What's up with Shirelle and her birthday?  Do I call?  Do I call Cathy?  Dizzy's been after me lately.  I'm ten minutes late now.  I have to write a letter to Idaho.

Blew That

Mon 3-9-98 12:45 PM
In my classroom.  The kids get out early this week because we have parent conferences.  I already have two no-shows.  After work on Friday, Tim and Candoll King and I went up to El Coyote for margaritas.  I had three and a half doubles and a beer.  Then we went to Candoll's place on Orange, a few blocks from my place, on the little hill the other side of La Brea with a fine view east and north of downtown and Hollywood.  Her father and her boyfriend are both artists and her place is colorful and homey.  We smoked a j and drank some wine in the backyard.  Then  we walked up to LACMA and met up with her dad and sat at the tables in the courtyard talking and listening to a woman do scat jazz.  I said we needed to put the chill back in children and everybody laughed.  I think Mr. King was trippin' on me because I was so high and drunk and trippin' on the handle-less faucets at the bathroom sinks with no hot or cold knobs that with a light sensor that activates the water when you put your hand under the spigot, hi-tech, but you can't control the temperature.  Tim and I went back to my place when Candoll went home with her dad.  We were going to go to Renee's in Santa Monica, but we both passed out, I discovered, when I woke up on the couch at 1:30, Sahara-dry.  I drank a gallon of Gatorade and went to bed. 
The next morning Tim went to his class, and I read the paper and went to Bob's Big Boy.  Cathy Howrad was coming.  I bought juice, vodka, Clamato, flowers, a fern, crackers and garlic herb spread at the Ralph's at Third and La Brea.  I bought an iron and some Drum tobacco at Sav-On.  Howrad and my mom and John and I went up to the new Getty.  It was a perfect day.  Crystal-clear 360 of LA, Catalina, snow on the San Gabriels, Santa Monica Bay.  The location and company were superb, the collection is good, the grounds, I thought, so-so, though everyone else was raving.  Witty repartee, stories of what a jackass I was in college.  Mexico trips Howrad and I have been on.  How she was the one who got me good and drunk for the first time.  After, we went to the Bel Air Hotel for drinks.  Kahlua and coffee, couple of Jameson's.  Toured the grounds.  Catherine took my arm while we walked. 
My folks dropped us back at Keniston and left.  Howrad and I smoked a j.  She criticized my roll and began to complain about the cold.  I called a cab, but I didn't know where to go.  We tried Jack's Sugar Shack, but it was lame.  So we went to Bob's Frolic Room, but it was scary.  We took another cab to Tom Bergen's.  Edginess and silence and confusion fell in on me.  I couldn't understand our relationship.  I think I made her uneasy. 

A Strange Morning to be High

3-6-98 7:50 AM F
Fog enshrouded half of the Hollywood sign, the "-wood" side, as I was walking on the sidewalk down the hill to school this morning. Storm gone, but still dripping everywhere, I gulped the chill air to try to ease the sad in me. I was beginning not to care when my apple fell out of my bag and rolled down the sidewalk into the gutter and down the hill before coming to rest under the tire of an old Oldsmobile. I thought of washing it off when I got to school, but by the time I got to it, an apple in the gutter didn't seem worth the effort of stooping.  There the apple would decompose, I supposed.
Then I spotted Big Ass Holtz marching down the street in even more of an officious rush than usual.  A crowd was gathering on the corner of Sycamore and Olympic.  Looked like someone was down.  A boy had been hit by a car.  It looked like Holtz had everything under control.  She was telling onlookers she knew CPR. The boy was trying to sit up, and she was telling him to stay down.  I felt like telling her to let him stand up.   Betty the secretary was there.  "I already called 9-1-1," she said.  I thought of walking by, started to keep on going, but then I thought I better see if any help was needed.  I stood by trying to think of how to be useful, but I just felt like another looky-loo.  I started sidling away.  Then Betty said to me, "Maybe you better direct traffic." 
The traffic on Olympic was slowing down before the light on La Brea to have a look at the commotion.  On Sycamore cars were waiting for the Olympic traffic to clear so that they could turn right.  It wasn't entirely clear to me what I could do, but I took off my backpack and leaned it against the signal pole and waded out into the traffic on Olympic and held up my hand to stop cars from coming forward and waved the traffic off of Sycamore to make room for the fire truck which was now approaching.  I waved one car past.  The next one stopped.  Through the open window, a concerned motorist informed me she had witnessed the whole incident, gave me her card, and tried to tell me what had happened.  She was holding up traffic, though, so I took her card and said I would give it to the principal.  I waved her on, and the rest of the traffic, too.  The paramedics had arrived now, though, and I took the opportunity to get my stoned ass out of there. 
In my class, the kids were all talking video games.