Ronna does want to get married, but while she obviously loves Jordan, she worries “because in the last two years, I’ve made him into a mensch and then he turns around and tells me I haven’t grown.”
We stopped at the West Fourth Street Bookstore, where Artie picked up a load of little magazines. At Joe Papp’s Public Theater, we saw an interesting film, Over the Edge, in which spaced-out, bored teens vandalize a sterile Sun Belt planned community. Walking back to the subway, we passed the Guardian Angels’ Curtis Sliwa and his girlfriend and an actor from Another World.
A Japanese lady sat next to me at the counter and expressed amazement at how many hamburgers Americans eat.
I went out to the Broward Mall for dinner and then took a long drive up to Parkland and back. The phone was ringing as I entered the apartment. It was Jonathan. “I have bad news,” he said.
We went down A1A. I find Miami Beach magical on a cool night when the hotels and apartment buildings are all lit up and the bay is inviting; it’s kind of a kitschy paradise. The Theater for the Performing Arts was swanky, with an upper-class crowd of professionals, gays, and rich Cubans.
There are more good-looking boys on campus than I’ve ever seen in one time and place. Sometimes I have to try not to stare at my students, especially when they come in wearing shorts, tank tops, and shirts cut off at the ribs.
At the Miami Waves Festival, held at the Koubek Center in Little Havana, Glenn Terry was trying to break the (Alec) Guinness record for lying in a hammock with his clothes on backwards. I read some of my stupid South Florida stories which seemed to stupefy the crowd.
I was in bed late last night and I called out, “Hey, Miriam, I really like you . . . I just wanted you to know.” She came in here – she stayed in the living room the last two nights – and touched my shoulder, kissed my cheek, and said, “You’re a peach.”
I got a beautiful ten-page letter from Elihu, all about how he feels about turning 30 and visiting San Francisco (he didn’t fall in love with it) and working on Wall Street (he’s been at Goldman, Sachs a year now) despite still being a radical at heart.
In the Village Voice, I caught a personals ad from a guy in Flushing who has to be Brad. He said he was 28. Somehow he went from being five years older than me when I was 18 to two years younger now. Poor Brad: he’ll never grow up.