12:05 AM Atlantic City

Wife and child sleeping in hotel room. Taking notes. No stopping for fifteen minutes. Where do I start? I'm in a casino bar. I think I got high on the boardwalk walking here. Stopped for an iced coffee with Bailey's and Jameson's first. I'm thinking of trying my luck with the cards. A gal just started singing her love has come along. I rearranged the chairs so as not to have my back to her. A guy--whatever. I got quite a few minutes left. They showed Bernie Williams playing guitar here in AC on TV. There's no sports betting here. I sense people see me writing and think I'm a reviewer and not just a weirdo. I feel conspicuous. Six minutes to go. Fake laughter. Got a bourbon spasm in my right arm, and I haven't even had any bourbon today. I got money at Ceasar's, minus three bucks for the ATM fee. A waitress is coming round. I got a water from the bar. What should I get next? "Crazy" they play. It seems uncoincidental. In another minute, I'll put this thing away. Five diamonds on the video poker game at the bar. $1,000. They programmed that. "You gotta wait twenty minutes," says a large redhead at the bar. "Oh, do you work here?"  asked the winner. I gave up listening because now I'm done.

 8-17-01 F 7:45 PM Atlantic City

Some boardwalk dive called Dukes. I'd like to shoot a game of pool, but wife and baby await me back in the room. I shouldn't even be stalling for this, as it's dinner time. Where'd I leave off? I tried to type 15 minutes in the dead of night on the plane, but some laptop snafu left me with no better choice than to write it in my travelling notebook--which is actually better, I guess. I slept maybe thirty minutes or so on that plane. The little dipper hung on the horizon to our left all night, framed perfectly by the window. Mountains of dark cloud flashed occasionally, and a sliver of new moon appeared ahead in the east, it's dark orb glowing with a faint ring of light. It was weird as the dawn approached to be so clearly flying out of the night; the gradations of light seemed clearly defined, delineated, demarcated--take your pick. We landed six AM eastern time, three Pacific. My nose ran. We wrestled our shit to the rental place. The baby, who slept cherubically all flight, played cherubically all the while we waited on bags and car. Negotiating Newark airport exit is not unlike the Tijuana border crossing--we eventually got going south on the Garden State Parkway after a missed turn off while I tried to figure out how to unlock Rochelle's window and feared we get stuck on one of those 25s-mile-without-an-exit expressways. We took a local route into the collapsed economy of Asbury Park, its fallen fun palaces leering post-apocalyptically alongside porno-converted theaters and dilapidated skate halls. We picked our way down the coast and stopped at a good omelet joint in Pleasant Point, where in 1980, I'd once weathered the stinging sands of a tropical depression, swaying signals, God's-might thunder, lightning flashing and cracking. The baby elicited the admiration of random patrons with her unequivocal joy. Roach switched seats with me at a tollbooth because I'd have blacked out in the next mile. More later. I've got to bring beer to the room. Wish I'd brought the camera.

8-17-01 F 2:27 EDT

First class baby! Going to Newark--Hoo-yah! Actually, first class isn't all I thought it would be. I was expecting a swim-up bar in a fern grotto, thought we'd be issued togas, be hand-fed grapes by topless broads, thought they might have some stewardesses fan us with palm fronds. Anyway...I think the wine's free. They didn't have any brandy. The kid's sleeping comfortably on her momma's shoulder. I hope to be as lucky some day, either way.

I'm not sure when or what I last wrote, but this is going to have to be my fifteen minutes because that dammed laptop is acting like it's got no charge. Muffhugger. Oh, well. I wanted to fill this notebook with travels anyway. This notebook has stuff three-years-old to the day--the East Coast Stadium Tour of 1998.

I think I didn't finish a third-person page when the laptop was plugged in last night at class. I left class early to pick up wife and babe at LAX as they returned from Idaho. I stopped in a Ralph's and a Vons on the way to buy flowers, but neither of them sold flowers. Rochelle and Ava had already deplaned by the time I got there. The kid looked alien for a bit. I was joyed to see them. JOYED. Filled with LOVE. We drove home, the kid cooing in the back the whole way. Picked up a twelver and some flowers for the wife on the way home. Played with my sweet little girl. Played with my sweet big girl after my sweet little girl went to bed. Neither one of us could sleep. I got out of bed after a 3 AM hump session to email my aunt and cousins of our imminent arrival. Called a sub for Wilshire Crest. Slept until about eight.

8-16-01 Th 11:27 PDT

 

8-14-01 3:08 PM Tu

Augh. 6:01 PM. Ugh. I typed fifteen minutes at Wilshire Hill this morning. Read some more Lord Jim. Went home for a bit. Had a smoke. Drove up to LACMA. Found a metered spot on Ogden. Or is it Nash? Jogged through the Winslow Homer exhibit, intensely distracted. I don’t remember a thing. I was expecting it to be morally facile and a poor match for the moral complication which has been preoccupying me with my wife and daughter having been away so long now. This amid the optimsm of children playing wildly, sailing happily. In one painting, though, boys eat watermelon in a field, a stolen melon it seems, two of the boys are black, one pinkish, and one of the black boys stares over his shoulder nervously, fear writ on his face. When I got home, I got a BBQ going. Fucked it all up. Pork, burnt on the outside, raw in the middle. I chewed most of the grease out of each piece and gave mouthfuls to Lulu. Talked to my stepfather, my half-sister, my mother, my wife, and my grandmother. Omar and I were going to go out tonight, but he pussed. I don’t know what I’ll do now.  I should clean the house and get a good night’s sleep. We’ll see. I’ve also got to call Getoff when I get home. I’m at LA High. I showed my class how to play Scrabble and Monopoly. I’d have liked to have invited a few of them back to my place to keep playing, but I guessed that wouldn’t be kosher. I have to work eight to twelve twenty again tomorrow. I haven’t been teaching them crap lately. I just tell them to write in their journals or write a book report or rad a book and Mrs. Manson attacks them fi they do not. Sometimes we watch videos. I’ll have to make sure the place is presentable before eI go to night school because there won’t be any time after that.

Seattle 8-97

 

8-11-01 Sa 9:46 PM

Dublin’s. It’s my sister Bernice Zurn’s 28^th birthday. The Angels held onto their tie with men against them thanks to a nice pickoff play at second. Shot two games of pool and drew. Thinking I should get home and rest for tomorrow’s baseball game. Long black waves fall to Earth, a dark eye lies behind them. It’s time to go, but let’s see how the Angels do. Gypsy eyes. I’m in headlights. I hear the words “ass” and “sick and tired.” So, eventually, maybe soon, maybe next, I should get in my car and drive home. I have a wood-bench erection that belies how jacked out I am. No D in San iego. A pretty girl sat down. She says her name is Cherise. She asks, “Are you working?”

“Working?” I repeat.

“Working,” she affirms.

I have no idea how to answer. “I don’t know,” I say. “I’m kind of broken. I guess some of me works still.”

She left. A girl too innocent-looking to be smoking a cigarette took her place. Her name is Annie. She’s purdy. She got on her cel phone. Time to go. If I wasn’t writing like a geek, I could talk to her, but what would be the point. “Okay,” she says to the phone and the conversation is that short. She sounds vulnerable. I thought of writers with mistresses and the Ten Commandments and the meaning of adultery. She is still there. I begin to appreciate the boldness of the “working” girl. Where’d she go? Whatever. What else? What in the Hell else? What in the Hollywood else? A guy cam out at ten o’clock and announced that no more drinking is allowed outside tonight. City ordinance. Take it inside. Mine is empty. I slide it to the busboy when comes. Everyone’s wearing black tonight. Everyone. What if I say hello? Some chick in a fish-scale bustier gets a look on her face like I look familiar to her, and she points at me, airily waving her finger. Still there. A closeup billboard of the eyes of an ad oversees us. Gatsby, anyone? He died around her somewhere, Fitzgerald. If you could get another drink out here, I would. I suppose it’s a blessing you can’t. She’s still there. Just sitting there. A Charger/49er preseason game is on the TV behind me. I go the Dan Jenkins book, Dead Solid Perfect for my brother. Still there. The traffic on Sunset keeps going, not going. My pouch of Samson tobacco is empty. Still there. I’m stiff. In all the wrong places. Rochelle says the baby has been crabby. The car’s with a valet. I think I’ve spent about $25. Now what?

 

8-9-01 5:53 P Th

I wrote one of these pages this morning in notebook #57. I’m at LA High right now waiting for my class to start. I took a nap for a couple hours I got home from this morning’s class. Around four, I got up and made coffee. Left a birthday message for my sister. Spent half an hour or so trying to list for flight Back East, on the phone to some computer that’s supposed to understand your voice, but it couldn’t spell my name right. At one point it had me flying from Gold Coast, Australia to Bangkok. I finally did get it from LAX to Pittsburgh and DC to LAX, and then I figured out the Pirates aren’t in Pittsburgh that weekend, and now I’ll have to reroute everything through Newark to try to make the trip work, but I didn’t have the heart to tackle that bastard again. I’ll save it for another day. I emailed the Lochwoods and the Carmens what I was trying to do. I have to arrange for a rental car still and call Mac’s lawyer to arrange a visit. I’m supposed to go to the Kibbutz Room to see Kelly’s boyfriend’s band tonight after class. I’ve got to go to the post office to mail Mac a book tomorrow. I’m mailing him Heart of Darkness. I don’t know if that’s fucked up or not, to mail a guy who’s in prison Heart of Darkness. I’m going to Pasadena tomorrow. See Mariachi’s new baby, Antonia. Got to happy hour with Getoff and get plastered like bachelor. I should try to arrange a date with the mother-in-law for Saturday. My baseball game is at nine this Sunday. I’ll read and write and rest after that.

 

8-9-01 Th 8:30 AM

I’m at Wilshire Hill. The kids are proofreading papers they wrote about eh desert. I typed fifteen minutes at night school last night. Jeff came over when I got home, and I showed him the Lassen tape while we had a little Tullamore Dew.  I drove us to Thing’s place downtown. We went to a little old bar on Grand around Third named Hank’s, after the prizefighter that once owned it. Men sat the length of the bar and the only female was a Vietnamese hooker with a heart of gold named Lani Li. She was in her forties, fishnet stockings, short skirt, nice tits, and very persistent. She must have been a refugee. I asked her if she had any kids. She did, and I told her about mine.

 8/7/01 6:27 PM Tu

I'm at L. A. High. Rochelle and Ada have gone to Idaho for the week. I'm still trying to get my head around that. I typed fifteen sloppy minutes this morning. It was hard to sleep last night. I showered, put in a load of wash, drank a cup of cold coffee and drove to school. I got the kids busy and sped-read the four days of newspapers I hadn't read while Rochelle was sick with strep. Then I typed that haphazard fifteen. I thought today might be the free day at the museum. I called LACMA. It's tomorrow. I drove to Vonn's. I was already parked when I remembered I didn't have the coupons. I was in the store when I remembered that. I was supposed to try Smart & Final. Two hundred bucks later, I drove home with no T-bones, nor chicken--the prices were fucking insane. I was unpacking when the Borracchon showed up. He drank all my beer while I did the dishes, the laundry, the washing, the ironing, the folding, the putting away, the taking out the garbage, the straightening up and so on. I spent hours, and I've only just gotten to the pile of shit on my desk. I told Borrachonito about Ada's ordeal at Cedar's. He told me he had just been released by the LAPD after a child molestation accusation. That made me uneasy. I'm sure he wouldn't do such a thing, I tell myself. Bastard must've drunk seven beers, at least. I found May's and Abel's phone number. Gave a call. Filed a few papers. Then it was time to come here. Borrachonito talked about going to the Brass Monkey tonight. 

I said I'd call.

I was so relieved last night when Rochelle called and said Ada had been a perfect angel for the four-hour flight. I had prayed it would be so and dared to believe it could be but feared that it would be miserable. I worried about ears popping and flight delays and being stuck in Boise, and I had forgotten to give her cash.     When I get home, I'll call Rochelle and make something to eat. I'll read some of the agents book and call Borrachonito. I'll email Jeff. Start a third-person page and head out to the Monkey for a while, I guess. I'll leave before closing. I'll sleep 1:15 to 7:15. Go to work. Finish that page. Haven't seen Mr. Kuhl's new movie. Supposed to go downtown with Thing tomorrow.