I’m still not too happy about Will.  I did e-mail him today at work — he learned how to check work e-mail at home when he was out, plus he apparently had been in the office two days last week — and said I liked the band and the show, but whether he was at work or at home, I had no response from him.  And yes, I was rather surprised to learn that he had been at work two days last week and hadn’t called me, but neither had he called me when he got home from the hospital.  He just called me to cancel his whore the morning after he was injured.  We have a book coming out soon about dealing with “the narcissist in your life,” so maybe I’ll get a clue as to how to rid myself of Will.

I’m still unhappy about the stuff we lost from storage.  So much of it seems like evidence of what I’ve done and where I’ve been, and now that evidence doesn’t exist.  Poems I wrote and some that were published, mementos of jobs I’ve worked (for some reason, I was thinking about the issue of my old radio station’s program guide that had a little profile of me, from 1977 or such), everything concerning the magazine I edited and published and the magazines  wrote for, all my my vinyl, my mother’s wedding dress, forty years of journals, letters I received from friends over a 30 year span…it makes me ill.  I really thought I had kept the journals here but I guess not.  School books.  College texts, not to mention all of the extremely expensive books I bought on mythology and symbolism and hero myths.  The copy of I Robot that Isaac Asimov signed for me at the first-ever Star Trek convention.  Summer camp literary magazines that I edited and wrote for.  I feel like I’ve lost the proof of my past, or the past itself.

The good news is that for my one-year anniversary, I got a promotion and a raise.  I’m now an Associate Publicity instead of a Publicity Assistant, and my darling publisher somehow managed to wangle me a 10% raise.

I finally, finally went to see Will play last night, first time in eons.  Sherry was nice enough to sit with me, since I didn’t really know anyone there.  It made me a little sad that Sherry thought I had met all of the musicians on stage and various other musical people who were there, but I knew none of them.  I said, “Peter hasn’t invited me to anything but gigs for a long time now.”  She said, “I was sure you would have been at some rehearsals.”  I said, “No, he doesn’t ever invite me to rehearsals.”  She made some noises about how she would invite me the next time, how nice this group of musicians is and how much I’d like them.  She said that Will is just absent-minded and hasn’t excluded me on purpose.  I think differently.  I never hear from Will until there’s something he wants from me.  He never even let me know that he was back in the office for two days last week.  I didn’t get horribly depressed at the show but knew I’d been left behind.  The band only played one set; it’s a largish ensemble going very heavy on the Harry Smith Anthology stuff.  I left after the set and before I could see Will.  He never wants to talk to me at these things.  I told Sherry I had to leave right away because I had to take the subway and didn’t want to linger late.I’m really not sure why he’s so invested in my coming to these things, but I feel like I did the right thing by going.  I’ve been trying not to be resentful and to be kind and loving as much as possible, but I feel really used/discarded/neglected by this former friend.

On top of everything else, that asshole Kirk was at the club — Will has nothing to do with him any more, but this particular club is still Kirk’s spot.  On my way in, I just didn’t meet his eyes and zipped on past, but on my way out, he was stationed at the door and called my name loudly, yelling, “Come on, say hi!” I actually ran out the door.

Leo and I took my bonus yesterday (the company recently distributed $425 to each employee, owing to a profitable year; after tax, I had about $230) and bought two pair of sneakers for each of us.  Our podiatrist insists on New Balance, so we went to a discount sneaker store and got him two pair of NB and I for one NB and one Nike.  I still have that freakin’ fungal thing on my right foot, which hurts on and off, so sneakers it is.

It’s time to get back to the gym again.  My eating isn’t too bad but I’ll never lose weight if I don’t work out.

My dear mother-in-law, tough and loving, died on Sunday morning.  She was just too worn out to get well, and too uncomfortable to stick around.  Because yesterday and today are the last two days of Passover and considered a holiday, we had to have the funeral, with a graveside service, on Sunday afternoon.  (Relevant Jewish facts:  any Jewish holiday has similar restrictions to the Sabbath.  Jews do not embalm and funerals are almost always the day after the death.)  On top of that, you can’t start sitting shiva (seven days of ritual mourning) on a holiday; usually, it begins immediately after the funeral.  So what this meant for us was that the funeral was on Sunday, there was one hour of shiva afterwards, and then shiva was suspended until sunset tonight (the end of Passover).  But since we mostly spent those last two days of Passover at Pop’s anyway, it’s kind of like an extra-long shiva.  (Shiva, which only applies to immediate mourners — Pop and Barry, in this case — has it’s own prohibitions in addition to the Sabbath-type ones:  you have to cover the mirrors in your home as not to promote vain thoughts, for instance.  And a few that have to do with making yourself less comfortable so you’ll remember that you’re in mourning:  you are supposed to sit on low, hard benches or boxes rather than a comfortable seat, men can’t shave, you’re not supposed to wear leather shoes, and so on.  Mourners are supposed to stay at home for seven days sitting in their uncomfortable seats while friends and family come to visit and take care of them, which usually translates into bringing food.  Mourners of course cannot cook during shiva, nor can they handle money, use the phone, etc.) 

So now we all know more about Judaism. 

Everyone cried plenty, not just when Mom died but in the several rough days before, and everyone worries about Pop.  Although we also worried about Pop all of the time that Mom was in the hospital because he was pretty lost without her at home.  65 years with a stay-at-home wife will do that to a person.  Actually, Pop is mighty good at housework, but can’t cook at all.  So he not only had to be kept supplied with food that required little or no heating up, it had to be kosher-for-Passover food.  My sister-in-law Elise and her sister Evette had come over before the holiday to get his house ready for Passover (short version:  you have to get rid of anything leavened or anything with legumes, and change to an entirely different set of dishes, pots, dish drainer — everything around food has to be changed to a set of stuff that you only use for Passover.  Paper plates and plastic cutlery make this is a little easier.  The everyday stuff has to be stored away.).  Anyway.  Elise stayed with Pop on Sunday and Monday nights (because she couldn’t drive on the last two days of Passover), and Leo’s staying with him tonight and tomorrow night.  Elise and I have to be available to do a lot of errands during shiva but of course most of the religious-oriented stuff she’s had to do.  (She arranged the entire funeral on her cell phone.  She’s fairly amazing.)  I had other kinds of errands the past couple of days, like going into Leo’s office to get his pay because we were flat broke.  And today I went back to Manhattan to buy pot because we were totally out and this was not the time to be out.  (Leo will be going without tonight and tomorrow since he’s staying at Pop’s — he even has to go outdoors to smoke a cigarette — but will be ever so glad for it on Friday night.)

It’s crazy, our heads are spinning, that apartment is so empty of Mom, and Pop is just making lists and doing chores in a rather obsessive way, though his short-term memory is weak and maybe he doesn’t realize that he’s talked about how he has to take his pants into the tailor NINE TIMES ALREADY THIS MORNING.  I love Pop, he’s a fantastic guy.  But he gets very involved in planning and talking about these tasks and chores and won’t let it go at all until that mission is completed…I’ve probably spent more time with him in the past few days than I had in the past few months, and spending long stretches of time with him, Leo and I can see why Mom used to complain that he drove her crazy, before she got sick.  Leo was there at ten this morning, and by the time I got there at five, his eyes were rolling in his head, and he has a long stretch ahead of him. 

Pop’s long-term memory is still pretty good, though, so we’ve been hearing a lot of his old stories for the 30th and 40th times.

More later. 

Why are these people smiling?  What’s it all about?

Not a bad picture really, though I’m wearing a “dress-up” top that I don’t really like.  It’s the one I always wear with my black suit, except it was too hot to wear the suit, so I wore it with a black skirt.  David looks just fine.

I’m just kind of maxed-out on stress and worry, between my own ongoing health saga and my mother-in-law’s continuing problems.  And then throw in work.  I’m liking and understanding work better and working harder and getting along with Tina…but I never seem to feel refreshed enough to really attack it hard every day.   I need better-quality down time.  Maybe that means getting to the gym, just getting my body in a healthier state.  Or maybe it means writing a fucking novel.  I dunno.  Maybe I have to give up smoking pot.  I’m not even sure what makes me feel good any more.

I think I did find a way to be okay about Will; I’m really trying to let go of anger.  It’s something of a plague.

I saw the GYN this week, for the first time in something like ten years.  I was a GYN avoider.  I lucked into a good one this time; she was very kind and it was all very easy and comfortable.  And I asked her a gazillion questions.  One thing that I told her was that my nipples were sore a lot lately, and she said, “That’s common in menopause.”  I had told her that I hadn’t had a period in over a year, and I knew that this basically meant I was in menopause, but hearing her say the word really made me realize that it was true.  I really have to read up and pay attention and ask the GYN some more questions, but I bet there’s a lot going on with me, especially some of the moods, that may be attributable to that.  But why the hell haven’t any of my other doctors brought it up?  why didn’t my psychiatrist ask me about it when my mood problems got worse?  I’m thinking seriously about a new psychiatrist, because I’ve never adored the old one 100%, but he always gave me the meds I seemed to need. 

But I want more from my doctors these days.  Even though I adored my cool Deadhead podiatrist Doctor Debbie, I’ve switched to a new guy who’s giving me better care.  He was at the office health fair and I showed him the foot fungus that Doctor Debbie had been treating for three or four months, and he said, “I hate to see something like that,” and seemed genuinely distressed.  So I went to see him.  I’ve been with him almost a month now and the fungus is about 70% gone.  Plus he’s taking care of some foot pain I have, and is getting me orthotics.  Much more thorough.

The GYN wrote me a prescription for Valtrex, something I’ve wanted for a long time (suppressant therapy for genital herpes).  But I truly hope that when I learn TM and start meditating regularly, I can get off some of the other meds:  the ones for blood pressure, for instance.  The clonopin for anxiety. 

TM brings us back to the topic of Lynch, who leaves New York tomorrow morning after two days here.  He’s absolutely fascinating.  It was really lovely to get right back into that exact same friendly, fun space with him and Bobby, just picked up where we left off.  Bobby and I talk and e-mail a lot, but it’s not the same.  Thursday night, there was a small prospective-donor event in the city (small meaning about 40 total guests), and Bobby said to me at one point, “It is so great to be back here with you.  We missed you so much in Washington!  It really wasn’t the same without you!”  We just all three fell back into that nice cozy space.  And yet it’s a totally unreal relationship; easily 75% of it has taken place in a car service car, and it’s highly affectionate without necessarily being romantic.  My old boss Ben used to say, “Never talk to authors about yourself.  No one wants to know anything about the publicist.”  I’m not sure if that’s really a good rule; working with my new boss, Tina, has me seeing Ben as less than perfect in some ways.  Plus Ben’s bad at the social thing anyway.  Whether it’s a good rule or not, I could never bring myself to pass up the chance to be friendly with someone like David.  And maybe the fact that I’m casual — as well, I must say, as funny — is why I have such a nice relationship with those guys. 

Today I went with him to tape a syndicated NBC TV show called Your Total Health, and NBC is a class outfit; the producer who was my contact there was young but very professional, friendly but with a slightly slick veneer.  I could never do that little artificial bit; my undeniable old-hippieness wouldn’t ever let me. 

I don’t know how I ever got the nerve to treat David like a regular guy and pretty much be myself around him.  Maybe Bobby sort of eased the way for me before I met David, always telling me how great and sweet and wonderful David is.  So I certainly let David know that I was a fan and an admirer, but then I moved on.  I guess I sort of acted like I do with Will; not too different.  Maybe what I learned from Will, over these many years (this month is 30 years since I first met Will!), is that a marvelous, charming, brilliant, talented person is also a human being.  Being famous is the least interesting thing about David. 

Anyway, yeah, I’m still pretty hyper from these couple of days.  It started at the reception last night; someone was interviewing him when I got there (Tina was with me, and her boyfriend met us there; Tina is a TMer from a TM family that lives in Fairfield, Iowa: TM Central).  But when he was done with the interview and came over to us, the first thing he did was kiss me on the lips.  I don’t know how it sat with Tina (I think OK), but it sure did please me.  And from that moment on, I was right back in Lynchworld.

Again I feel that, beyond the book, I may well stay connected to him in some way.  Is he going to call me for lunch every time he’s in town?  Nuh-uh.  But if his art show comes to New York, will I get invited to the opening?  Possible.  Will I end up finding some way to give back to the Foundation after they cover my TM training?  Yep.  Will I ever take him to see the Japanese garden at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden?  I doubt it, but you never know.  When I very gently reminded him about it this visit, he liked it and brought it up again later.  He does kind of light up sometimes.  It happened after the reception last night, after the talk, and all of the people who wanted to talk to him, and get something signed, fifteen minutes, half an hour, he’s trying to edge toward the stairs from the second floor to the first, trailing people who wanted to talk some more, and I leaned over and whispered to him, “You must be dying for a butt!”  That lit him right up; he looked at me and smiled and I saw him remembering that I was funny and that I “got” him.  He had to remember who I was a little bit, I think, and why not?  he meets and talks to an awful lot of people all over the world (he just came back from a month in Europe:  art opening in Paris, something in Denmark that included a reading and signing, back to Paris to shoot a TV commercial — European TV commercials is where he earns his real bread — and I’m not sure what-all else).  But our little New York triumvirate clicked right back in.  Bobby sits back a bit when it’s the three of us, just as I sit back in a larger group to let others have their time with him.  Bobby’s something of a facilitator; also at times a filter and moderator.  Good audience, too. 

Anyway, anyway.  The episode will be shown in May, mostly likely; David is off tomorrow for a day in Dallas (film) and then back home to LA.  He’s back to Europe in May, for another commercial, Cannes, and then some big arts event.  Oh — and I did finally have a photo taken of David and me (Bobby refused to be in it), which is digital and should be in my work computer Monday.  It’s on Tina’s camera.  If you’re really nice to me, I’ll post it here.

Tina, by the way, has turned out to be all right, I think.  More than all right; a couple of her suggestions have really taken my work to a whole other level.  I needed a push to be a little more proactive with the media, and the results, with two books I didn’t have a lot of faith in, have been awfully good.  I really kind of stopped the learning process when Ben left and maybe I forgot that I wasn’t done learning, but Tina has certainly restarted it — and there’s a lot I can learn from her.  I usually don’t make such sweeping statements, but some of my absolute best and absolute worst bosses were women, and I’m always apprehensive about them, because the bad ones were SOOO bad.  Maybe the first few bad ones shocked me so badly because it was so unexpected, and I had different expectations of male bosses.  I was rarely shocked when they turned out to be assholes.  Anyway, I think I was braced so tightly against Tina being awful that I anxietied myself into a state.  Tina’s not micro-managing — she’s looking over my work to learn what I do and don’t know, and stepping in where I need correction.  That’s her job.  She may be 20 years younger than me (I think I’ve figured out it’s about 18), but she has some solid publicity experience and even teaches classes.  She’s actually very nice.  She took each of us out to lunch separately (on the department).

Now I’m really quite tired.  Hell of a week or two.  There’s probably more — nice talk with my brother tonight — but I think I’m out of brain for now.

I’ve thought some about finding a way to be okay instead of pissed about what Will asked me to do.  I have a tendency to get angry, almost as if I am eager to be wronged, and I’m wondering how I can do things differently.  I’ve been pretty tolerant about Will of late, that and a little bored, and why, really, should it piss me off that he booked a date with an Asian call girl, or that he hadn’t told me about it?  It could actually be seen as kind of a bonding thing, because I am actually the only person he could have called who would and could take care of such a chore; it does say something about trust and intimacy.

That’s one thing.  Another is that I haven’t heard any more about/from him yet.  I had asked him to call me when he could after the surgery (which I understood was to happen some time on Friday), but when I’d heard nothing by 3:30 this afternoon, I called and left a message for Sherry at home.  I should have tried a little harder not to have an attitude about not having heard anything, but may have had a bit of an edge…anyway, I never did hear from her and it’s past midnight.  That’s a drag.  Anything with hospitals and surgery, I want to know things are going all right. I am certainly prepared to visit tomorrow if possible and appropriate.

Even if I feel that Will and I have been distant and somewhat grown-apart over the past year or so, we’ve had so many years of closeness, and there were so many more when he was part of my consciousness.  There were the four years before I met him that I was a crushed-out fan.  The nearly ten years when we hardly ever saw each other, but a month never went by when I didn’t think about him and I always remembered him as someone very special, above and beyond all others.  It took me a lot of years to drink my fill of him and a few to knock him off the pedestal I’d had him on all these years, but there’s an intimacy remaining, and a very permanent love, whatever our connection is from hereon in.

I had some incidents at work last week that also brought out that angry/hurt reaction in me, and I know that I often overreact and I usually chalk it up to the portion of my mood disorder that is not under control.  The blood test my psychiatrist took that turned up the extremely high blood sugar in October was supposed to be checking my liver function to see if I could handle lithium for the mild bipolar I was sure I had, and the doctor was willing to treat.  What he did end up doing was prescribing me some clonazepam because I admitted that I sometimes used Leo’s when I caught those bad crying jags (with Leo’s knowledge). 

But I’m also seeing that in some ways I choose these situations to be bigger bumps than they have to be; I may finally be starting to understand what it’s meant all these years that people have told me, “you take things too personally.”  I never felt I had a choice about how to “take” those things, but I’m really starting to think that I do, and that I’d be a lot happier if I chose some other way to understand them and react to them.  I know that part of this is about creating drama and being able to play a victim, which seems to come out of plain old insecurity and fear of failure.  I’m also determined to get to the bottom of my procrastination, and I’m actually publicizing a book right now that might just do it.  I’ll report in detail if it seems to work.

I also really do hope that the TM thing comes through.  I think Bobby still adores me but I also think Bobby is something of a smoothie, a high-level publicist *and* a guy who drank the koolaid…I like him anyway but I know he has his priorities.  But I think meditation might help me with my moods and with my stress.

Which reminds me…we went to the company’s annual results meeting yesterday, me and Lee and the new boss (I’m thinking she’s okay so far), and the only Tarcher book mentioned, amid the sea of lavish attention to all of the company’s many many award-winning books and many many many bestselling books and many many many many New York Times bestsellers…yeah, you got it, the Lynch book. 

I may not have anything as huge Lynch or Pinchbeck through the end of ’07, though I’ll be doing a big paperback launch for Pinchbeck (very unusual for us, anything beyond a mailing for a paperback), and decent-sized launches in paper for Black Like You and The Power of Kindness. 

The new boss took the Judy Collins book.   Yay! 

I’m tired now.  Should write more often.  And about a lot more than Will.

I had a dream last night that Will and I were somewhere with a group of people, somehow stranded overnight, and a bunch of us had all crashed to sleep together in our clothes, all kind of in a heap.  Next to Will was a nice young woman to whom he was clearly attracted, and in fact he stayed up all night talking to her, which did not permit me to sleep and made me upset.  At one point, I embraced him, and he threw me off.  The next morning, we were about to leave, and he followed this woman into a bathroom where she was showering, and came out naked and with a hard-on.  I left without him.

This morning, Will called me from St. Vincent’s Hospital.  The street elevator to his basement storage space at home had given way with him on it, and he broke his thigh.  But the real reason he was calling was that he wanted me to go into his office, find a copy of Screw under his desk, and call a hooker to cancel his appointment on Monday.  I did it, but, you know, that’s it for me. 

I guess this means no convention, but even if somehow we can go, it’s over with him and me.  That’s all.

Though I should add that hearing him sounding so weak and hurt, I did automatically say “Love you” at the end of the call (which I had sworn never to tell him again), and he replied, “Me, too,” which was a new one on me.  Apparently it’s something he just plain doesn’t say.

And I don’t know if it’s really all over, but I’m not happy about being asked to call his ho to cancel an appointment, especially since he told me recently that he wasn’t using pros.

I decided that if I was going to get together with Will this past Friday, that I would give it a chance to work.  The last couple of times, or at least the last time, I think I went it expecting it not to work out, or not wanting it to.  But I did want it to be worthwhile this time, and at least some fun.  One thing I did do was to take a clonopin before going to meet him.  (I’ve had a prescription for them, for anxiety, for a couple of months.  I was a little afraid I might abuse them, but I’ve actually only been taking them as needed, usually when I’m feeling overwhelmed at work — like when I’m about the burst into tears — and they’ve been useful.) 

Also, I’ve pretty much resigned myself to the fact that if some love and affection does exist between th two of us, sex is not where it’s going to be expressed.  Will keeps that all good and separate. But what we did have, and it was very pleasant, was a deep knowledge of each other’s sexual selves. 

We had decided sometime back that the next time would be done as ourselves, without any scripting, which seemed to work just fine.  It was a lot like dancing with a familiar partner, each of us knowing where the other would move next, and rising to connect with that movement.  So it was pretty well smooth and pleasing to both of us. 

The weekend was pretty quiet; really cold out, and I mostly stayed in.  It’s even colder today.  I’m going to the doctor this morning, a check-up I’m a bit late for, and I’m somewhat toying with the idea of not going in. I have to go to the doctor, but it’s seven degrees out.  Feh.

I dunno how much of a friendship I struck up with David.  I dunno how attached I am to Bobby, who says very openly that he considers a friend, but when he says that, I feel like it’s something more.  I dunno how I feel about Will at this point; we’re making plans to go to the convention in March, and are having our first assignation in quite a while later today.  I dunno what kind of shape my sex drive is in, but I guess I’ll find out.

Leo and I are up and down…he’s stressed about work (as usual) and also about his parents, who are both clearly starting to decline.  He’s had to take more responsibility for them, making sure he calls every day and gets over there at least once a week to help out with some chores and shopping.  Responsibility is something he doesn’t respond well to.  He’s a worrier, very neurotic in that respect, not unlike his mom.  But now that he’s on my insurance, he’s taking some steps to get back into therapy, plus made a lot of positive noises when I talked about TM.  (This led me to ask Bobby if Leo could possibly be comped for training as well, and it looks like that’s going to happen.)  But he also hasn’t stopped smoking cigarettes yet, and is getting generally sloppy about taking care of his health.

I’m mostly good about my health:  avoiding sugar, staying hydrated, taking my meds, taking care of my feet, etc.  Haven’t been getting to the gym much lately, and haven’t lost much weight.  (The latter, I think, is largely due to the fact that in the absence of sweets, I tend to snack on nuts.)

Laurel got caught by her husband, as I may or may not have mentioned.  She was having an extramarital affair, but not in the smartest way:  the guy was her boss (tho he’s since left the workplace), and she really convinced herself that she was being careful, but she absolutely was not.  She had gotten a web-based e-mail account to exchange sweet nothings with her BF, and left an open window on that account minimized on her home computer when her husband was at home.  Duh.  That’s how she got caught.  Now they’re doing counseling and she’s terribly unhappy.  She seemed to have convinced herself that her husband had practically given her permission, which was of course nonsense. 

Work goes well, it seems to me.  I’m playing catch-up with all of the books I set aside when I was working so intensely on Lynch.  Lynch has gotten ridiculous amounts of press and the book is selling quite nicely.  Unfortunately, the New York Times decided to track it in “advice and how-to” rather than general non-fiction, so we’re not going to chart there (although we don’t yet have near-chart numbers even for general non-fiction).  But we’ve been charting in the LA Times for two weeks now (#8, then #6).  Amazon numbers are good.  I can’t complain. 

Plus, David has agreed to do more book publicity when he gets back from Europe (about 4-5 weeks), so it looks like we’ll do a mini close-to-home tour to Portland, SF (again) and LA.  (The nice pic of him is a self-portrait, which has been our jacket and publicity photo.)

I’m getting to be a pretty good publicist, I think, learning more stuff all the time.  I’m still a mite shy about cold-calling…I’m so much more comfortable using e-mail than making a phone pitch.  But the phone pitches tend to go well, when I get get myself to do them.

So I met this guy and we were kind of working together for a couple of days and he was really interesting, and seemed really interested in me, and we kind of hit it off.  We didn’t spend all that much time together, but I really enjoyed it, and wished we could spend more time talking and getting to know each other better.

But the work together was over and he went home, across the country, and he’s a famous guy and really busy, and I doubt I’ll hear from him again, and I really, really miss him.  I just really wanted to continue what we were doing, just having a talk and getting to know each other.

This is so stupid.

The good news is that it seems like I’m doing my job really well, or at least getting good results and things look good for me and good at my imprint.  But it so sucks that I miss him so much.