January 28, 2019

Good class on Pepys. They forgave him his boyishness, as some classes have not.

Maud and Circe have returned to their old ways, hiding in the old places, seeking the old indulgences, cuddling the old cuddles. When I think that the changes in their behavior– which made them miserable and me discouraged for months-- were probably brought on by fleas, a condition which I noted but did not dedicate myself to addressing, I become frantic with impatience at myself. It’s true that I associated taking a cat to the vet with being told she had some horrible terminal disease, but it was not so in this case, and I was a coward not to put it to the test. I took Circe to the vet to have her put to sleep, because I couldn’t stand her behavior anymore. The vet saved her. I apologize every day. I think she has forgiven me. I don’t know what lesson is in this, except to try no to assume the worst thing first. Actually, now that I’ve written it, that is good advice for the whole of my life.

The evening is an odd green-gray. Meant to be mortal cold tomorrow.

January 27, 2019

Great progress on Sam-Sam, complete proof-reading and editing of Tub last night. Have not left the house.

January 26, 2019


Des Pres on Spotify.

The many-headed illness lifted in what seemed a single second last night. Suddenly I was light and full of purpose again. That was the exact second when I realized I was sick of the intellectual cowardice of my students, their learned dependency, that a new testament of my life was able to begin. With health comes revelation? It is dark morning and I’m feeling the same.

And I want to report the gush of inspired writing after I thought that might be gone. I was just sick. Maybe one looks back on every bad patch and says, “I was just sick.”


Creepy boy from last semester complains about me for using the word “faggot” in class (reproducing a contemporary Dubliner’s reaction to Hugh Lane) My response:

 Since I came to Asheville, I was a member and, for a while, a leading figure in Asheville’s first gay organization. CLOSER. I was a founding member of SALGA, the Southern Appalachian Lesbian Gay Alliance, a far more activist and political organization, which grew out of CLOSER.  I was SALGA’s Hate Crimes Coordinator, and took calls and made reports when a gay, lesbian, or transgendered person reported crimes or discrimination against themselves. In this capacity I was SALGA’s unofficial liaison to both the police and the Citizen Times. In a time when “gayness” was far less acceptable and far more dangerous than it is now, I was a constant respondent to hate letters in the local media, to the point where the CT or WCQS would actually ask me for a response if I hadn’t volunteered it. For this I received hate mail and death threats. Some came to me and some, embarrassingly, to my chairman or the Vice Chancellors, who were the Provosts of the time. Asheville has had 3 gay print publications and I have written, under my own name, for all of them. I am a founding member of Cantaria, now called the Gay Men’s Chorus of Asheville, with which I have performed publically for twenty years. I performed with “Asheville on Broadway”, a gay theater enterprise seeking to raise money for AIDS patients. This lasted, I think, about four years. It was pretty much expected that everyone on stage was gay.  Twice I won the Gay Playwrights Prize given by Sunnyspot Productions, and had my –yes, gay– plays produced successfully in New York City. The next year my gay take on Abraham Lincoln– The Loves of Mr Lincoln–was produced in New York. It is likely this will be done in Asheville in the coming year. My gay play Anna Livia, Lucky in Her Bridges opened the Chicago Theater season one year. I was Board Member of the Arch and Bruce Brown Foundation, a national group based in New York which doled out money to gay theater projects. A collection of gay poetry, A Dream of Adonis, was published by Pecan Grove Press in 2012. I have TWO gay novels coming out this year. Night, Sleep, and the Dreams of Lovers springs from the artistic life of Asheville in the ‘80's and early ‘90's. The Falls of the Wyona won the prestigious Quill Prize for Queer Writing and appears in May from Red Hen Press. The cover features two boys holding hands in a forest. Have I made my point? I have earned the right use the word “faggot” whenever and however I see fit. 

Yet one wonders how long the Adolescent Inquisition will go on. Probably until someone says, “You know, your feelings are not actually the most important things in the world.”

Cold mostly gone, but lingering is a titanic cough that sometimes doesn’t allow you to inhale, so you cough again and again, hard, without any breath in you. It’s horrible.

Forgot to mention the purple eyes of crocus opened in my yard a week ago.

My God! I don’t love my students anymore. Not blindly and corporately, as I always have. I’ve stopped making excuses for them in my heart. It is the turning of a great tide.

January 25, 2019

Red Hen sends me a draft of the cover of The Falls of the Wyona. It’s pretty. Very green. I was expecting something not quite so on-the-nose. The book is about boys holding hands in the forest, and the cover features boys holding hands in the forest. But, I’m sure they know their business.  If someone wants a book about boys holding hands in the forest, they will buy this. Actually, I am just so happy to be part of a process, any process, moving forward.

Urgent digestive issues send me to the bathroom after class. While seated, I was seized by muscle cramps, which grew into side and chest spasms so tight I could barely breathe. It’s agonizing. I can neither move nor stay still. I’m crying out, but there is no one else in the room. Cannot move. I’m a pretzel of quivering agony, unable to clean myself, unable to breathe or stand or move my arms. Finally, in terrific pain, I do manage to get myself together and out of the room, sucking down water at the fountain. This morning I go to leave a prescription at the drug store, and a cough in the car convulses me again at the same muscle in the stomach. I stagger into the store, seize a Gatorade and down it, walking through the aisles, gripping my stomach and groaning. When I get to the checkout I hand the lady the empty Gatorade and she says, “Do you want me just to thrown this away?” I come in later to pick the pills up, and the clerk says, “Are you feeling better?”

 My students, finally, are cowards. They must have learned this somewhere. Their entire support system encourages them in it, makes them think that cowardice is a kind of right.. I don’t think I can overcome it. Finally it is time to back away.

 

January 23, 2019

First meeting with Ann’s class went well. About half of them have had me before, so took the bump gracefully. Gratifying flood of my old students to my office, wanting me back.

Cancelled class today because of a grueling cold that, because of a variety of other ailments-- and because of not having had a cold in living memory– I ignored or mis-diagnosed. I’d schedule a dinner party for last night, and getting ready for that was a study in will and concentration. Was asleep on my bed when the door announced the first guest. The Moseleys and our new Visiting Assistant Rachel. Rachel learned more about the past of the university and the department than, I bet, she could take in. Everyone knows more gossip and personal detail than I do. Served coq us vin (overcooked) and mushroom casserole (perfection) and a lemon cheesecake.  At the end I did something I had never done in my life: I left the clean-up to the next morning.

January 21, 2019

Brilliant moon on snow through the night. Circe climbed back into bed and we had our first sleep together since her sickness.

In fact taking over Ann’s American Lit. Her syllabus is as far as can be imagined from what I would do, so I must spend part of my MLK day figuring that out. Part of it too must go to dealing with the plumbers, who warn that they might be tramping through the house all day. I’m like some burrowing rodent from Wind in the Willows, hating upheaval and disorder so much.

Cleaned out the pond and the drain, oddly unable to remember if the water was cold. The world is cold now. The radio says it’s 11 degrees F outside my door. I think of those bulbs from Eden Brothers, hidden in the earth just in time.