Gary is a prude and is worried because Summer used to go out every night after her broken engagement, angrily picking up sailors, seminary students, and assorted Mr. Goodbars. She sounds like a mental basket case. The poor sap – he’s heading for yet another romantic disaster with this woman.
I’ve always considered myself a pragmatist, yet I’ve been acting like an ostrich. I claim to be a student of demographics and the future, but I can’t read the graffiti that’s as plain as TAKI 183: There is no future for me in academia.
The Esquire piece on Miami, “The City of the Future,” convinces me that if I don’t get a really good teaching job this year, South Florida is where I’ll stay. Growth will continue as Miami becomes, like New York, a truly international city. There’s still time to get in on the ground floor here.
Now that I’ve experienced a loving gay relationship, I feel more alone than I did before I knew what I was missing. Not a day goes by that I don’t think of Sean; I’m surprised how affected I am by losing him. There’s no one I can talk to about it, and my letters to Susan, Stacy and Miriam have all been perfunctory. Denial, mostly.
As we got into bed, Sean took off a high school ring and put it on the night table. I asked if it was his, and he said, “No, my boyfriend’s.” Sean never did lie to me, I know that. I always knew he was seeing other guys. I just feel foolish for thinking I was more important in his life than I actually was/am.
This fall weather reminds me of the rough times I went through breaking up with Shelli and with Ronna; I’m annoyed with myself for being so vulnerable to Sean. Yet I’m also pleased, in a way, for this means I’m not yet dead emotionally – not if I can still feel these crazy feelings about Sean.
It’s 4 PM on a gorgeous, warm afternoon. I guess I don’t often enough record how happy I am, how much I love life.
I’ve sold over $200 worth of books in the past week. In terms of finances, being on The Neil Rogers Show was the best break of my career. Obviously, I do well on radio.
At the banquet, I sat with four of my fiction workshop students, all Carolina ladies of middle age (three white, one black), very cultured and refined. The meal was surprisingly delicious, and the conversation over dinner was stimulating. What a nice change from teaching grammar at BCC!
The class seemed quiet until Benett and his friends started shrieking “Gay power!” and other chants I couldn’t make out. I went on with the punctuation lesson except for a comment about Tourette’s syndrome victims; Robbie caught my eye and smiled. Later, I told him I’d see him in the play he’s acting in.