Tu 9-7-99 1:55 PM
I'm at Wilshire Crest.  I just got back from Carl's Jr. with Maria and Florelle.  Ugh.  I've got to straighten out a few things here, and then I can go.  I've got to call the DMV and Gorlitzki.  I thought I brought the phone numbers with me to call from school here, but I put them in the teleportation device that is my backpack, and they must have made the jump into the fifth dimension.  I never read the Bible Sunday, so I've got to read the first seven chapters of Corinthians when I get home.  I wrote a pantoum this morning.  I'll type for fifteen pages after my Bible reading.  There's a faculty meeting for adult school at four thirty.  Then I've got to ride over to Pio Pico to teach night school.  Ugh.  I was reading a 1968 National Geographic about passion plays in Czechoslovakia.  One was about the devil trying to tempt Jesus on the mountain.  It was funny because the guy who played Jesus got lots of chocolate and sausages from the nuns, and the guy who played the devil got nothing.  The new principal seems cool.  We'll see.  I read the newspaper today.  I should try to put together a lesson plan for the next three days.  We won't get our lesson plan books til later in the week, though.  I have to cut my fingernails.  I have to return this cart to room one.  I'm fat.  I've got to put a couple of lines to Jim.  I could go for a smoke.  What else?  The sky is pale and dull today.  I've got to take some of the Bahama negatives to be enlarged.  I should try to write a travel story for the Times or something.  What else?  I hope I get good kids [pencil sketch looking out the window of an airplane at the wing above the clouds and their shadows on ocean] tomorrow.  Smart ones.  I can't think of anything else except that I want to be done with this so I can work on other things.  Tomorrow, we'll go over the class rules.  Make apples for the calendar.  Pass out books.  Make "Who Am I?" posters.

8-27-99 5:30 PM EDT F

The hurricane canceled our booze cruise and snorkeling. Yesterday we ate breakfast at Water's Edge, a sort of pavilion with high glass walls overlooking a shark-filled lagoon into which a waterfall tumbles. I ate bacon, eggs, sausage, waffles, French toast, a bagel, orange juice, and coffee. Shirelle complained about the restaurant being too cold. Afterward, we walked around the grounds on rope bridges over tropical streams and through glass tunnels into aquariums teeming with grouper, barracuda, triggerfish, tarpon, and hundreds of other species of fish. We went to the beach and swam across a lagoon (not the shark-filled one) to another waterfall and a set-piece portcullis supposed to evoke a palace of fabled Atlantis. After our swim, I lay on a chaise-lounge and read The Miami Herald while Shirelle complained that I was reading. I battled my hangover with a gallon of water and two fruit punches. Then we came up to the room and showered and dressed and walked down to the wharf to see about a charter. We got some numbers and then walked over the bridge from Paradise Island to Nassau proper. Shirelle was crazed with fear because there are no sidewalks on the bridge, and you have to walk along the side of the road with rum-drunk bus drivers flying by, but the locals walk along fearlessly. We saw a picturesque old stone church with a graveyard overgrown with Caribbean-looking jungle. The walk was longer than I thought, and Shirelle's bitchiness compounded with each step; that the streets were filled with lusty-eyed, beer swilling negroes pushed her to the brink of terror, never mind that she is black herself. We finally found a pub called The Drop Inn and went down the dark stairs, got her a soda, and me a beer. We argued about what a vacation is and is not supposed to be, and the difference between safe and dangerous. I insisted we see more of the town, and we set off in search of Rowson Square and The Green Shutters Pub, Shirelle walking grimly behind me. We found the old building, and inside met a couple who said they saw us walking on the bridge. They were agog over the fact that we were there as part of my "Jeopardy!" winnings and offered us a ride back to the Atlantis. There was more I wanted to see of Nassau, but I knew Shirelle would go berserk if I turned down the ride. They were there to get married and invited us to their wedding after a few more drinks together. They were from Newport, Rhode Island and obviously wealthy. He looked like he had a good chunk of Teddy Roosevelt in his bloodline. We stopped at a liquor store on the way back, and I got a case of Kalik beer and a bottle of rum. Back at the hotel, we had a fancy seafood dinner alongside a big tank on which lobsters were pulling a sex train in the sand along the bottom. Back in our room, we drank and farted around and watched dire predictions of Hurrican Dennis's path across the Bahamas. It had already started raining like crazy and the wind was blowing, but we decided to go out to the famed Zoo Cafe, Nassau's hottest night club, according to Fodor's. It was a sixteen-dollar cab ride and ten more to get in, and the place was bumping with tropical humping. I was the only white boy in the place, and Shirelle was freaking. Rain was dripping through the roof in places, and women angled to dance under it. I shot pool with a toothless old cocaine gangster while Shirelle tried to get the brute bartender to poor her champagne in the rowdy madness. We stayed a couple of hours but left when Shirelle's fear hit a boiling point because a guy hit on her while I was at the bar. We caught a cab to the Crystal Palace at Cable Beach where I drank and played blackjack while Shirelle played the slots. I started with a hundred bucks and cashed out two twenty-five an hour or so later. Yippee. Shirelle lost as much. I found a cab driver and told him we had to go because my girl was getting cranky. He understood the nature of that beast and sprang into action.