September 20, 2019

Sitting in Flanagan’s Bar on 14th Street, having a $6 vodka tonic, and who should walk through the door but Lynda Sarver Gaug, whom I have not seen (though we have corresponded) in forty years? An amazing moment. We caught up as much as we could, then off to the reading at BGSQD on W 13th. There’s a church nearby, and every niche and stairwell was filled with homeless people claiming a place protected on at least one side for the night. The reading was in a little upstairs bookstore, and though I thought I’d come a long way for so small a venue, it proved convivial, and the praise from the Red Hen people for my book was gratifying. I believe I was triumphant. Walked Lynda back to Penn Station, where she caught her train to Babylon. Along the way we filled each other in on mutual friends who have died or otherwise been subtracted. I keep to myself the conviction that I am just now–as my peers retire and fade away–beginning my proper career. Dragged myself to the Marriot lounge, where I sat beside Pat, who is here to start a cruise up the Saint Lawrence. Her family has lived in Florida since the beginning of the 19th century.

Writing in the lounge in the morning. Just now met JP, a dead gorgeous brute of a man who used to work in secret government ops (I guessed that from the look of him before he told me) and who is now an official with the VA, on the phone with urgency in his voice at the crack of dawn. He asked why I was in town, and I told him, and this elicited the information that he, too, was writing a novel, and would I like to look at the first few pages? I did, and somewhat against expectation they were very good, exciting, intriguing, like the opening of a better-than-average best seller. I said, “If I were an editor, I would read on.” I hope that’s what he wanted to hear.  I gave him a copy of Wyona, though his style and mine could hardly be more different.

Subway to the Battery, where I sat under the sycamores at a table where I could see Ellis Island, and could have seen Liberty without the big fat loading cruise ships.