[Note: the locations in this diary are in Indianapolis, where I live. I work in Muncie.]
The alarm goes off at 7:15. Classical music. I hit the snooze twice. I had been dreaming: an earthquake was forecast; we were at the baseball game in Pittsburgh, and I thought, this is a good place to be, we can just run out on the field. But then I had to go to our second-floor apartment (a dream apartment only) to get clothes, and was nervous. Men were there robbing the apartment. I took a gun away from one of the men.
Thinking about this in real, conscious life, I brush my teeth and put on gym clothes and make a chicken sandwich and coffee for breakfast. I eat and drink this, and a banana, sitting on the couch. I pick up The Best American Poetry 2018 and start to read a poem. C. tells me it’s already 8:10, and I have to go. I thought it was only 8: I’m late. So I gather my things and at
8:20: drive to J’s house for our weekly meeting of our men’s reading group. We read self-helpy and philosophical or spiritual books and talk about them. Or, sometimes, mostly talk about our lives, our aches & illnesses, our weeks, our marriages, etc. NPR news is on in the car as I drive and is about the judge in Texas who ruled the Affordable Care Act unconstitutional. I listen and get the details. Outside the car it’s a gray day with mist and I’m going past subdivisions with their pines and green-brown lawns. Despite the gloomy light the world looks good to me. I’m in a very good mood because I finished writing a book last week and sent proposals off to a few publishers. I want to stay in a good mood so I turn off the radio and drive in silence, thinking about this and that. There’s been a vituperative argument between a young trans scholar and an older queer theory scholar that’s been all over my Twitter Feed. I read the main documents yesterday and am still puzzling over them…
At 8:40—about 10 minutes late, I get to J’s. We talk about our friend who is in the hospital; about my trip to New York last weekend, and then the book we’re reading The topic is consciousness—staying conscious in the everyday. Timely for diary day! We chat till 9:40, then I leave & drive towards the Y, stopping to pick up a water bottle at the Walgreens. (I forgot my reusable water bottle at the house.) Water is in the back of the store, and I walk through 10-foot-high walls of junk food—candy, crispy salty things—to get to it. Human beings were not meant to live like this, I think. At the checkout there is more candy and rectangular, plastic-coated cardboard boxes of wine: Chardonnay and Cabernet Sauvignon. The woman in front of me, in black and purple tights and a bubble jacket, is negotiating some complex discount situation concerning hand cream.
At 11:05 I get to the gym. At the doors I see K., one of my friends from tennis class, who gives me a big hello. I take off sweats and sweatshirt and get on a stationary bike and ride, doing a random hill workout, for 25 minutes. I feel sluggish—maybe from having four drinks last night. My mind is active but muddy & very scattered. I’m listening to The Essential Duke Ellington on my phone; thinking about like 100 things; and watching people: a tall, bulky, elderly African American man with a grey beard is pulling a rope on a pully towards himself; beefy young white guys are making bird-flight motions with their arms, holding disks of free weights in their hands; a tiny old man with a white pompadour of sorts, in a purple track suit, is doing tai-chi on a matt; a slim, muscular, tattooed young woman is pulling down on some heavy weights on a pulley toward her feet; now, the old African American guy is throwing a heavy ball off a trampoline and catching it. And I think, if the aliens invaded today and came here they would think… what? That this was an insane asylum; or a very inefficient factory; or a combination? And I think of the Black Mirror episode set in a dystopian society where people work on treadmills all day to generate electricity.
Looking past the young woman I see that, far across the huge room, I’m facing a mirror, in which I look like an old guy with knobby knees slowly peddling a bike. I think, uncharitably, “Who wants to see that?” Then I think, “Well, I am getting a good workout anyway.” I can tell because after 10 minutes I’ve gotten that prickly feeling in my forehead and then started sweating copiously. This is what happens. After about 20 minutes my mind quiets down, and I start having ideas for my grad class in the spring. Then after 5 more minutes I switch machines and alternate brisk walk/run on a treadmill for 20 minutes.
When I’m done I sit down and put my sweats and sweatshirt back on; in my ears Duke Ellington’s band is playing “Jeep’s Blues.” (Perfection, that.) As always, I feel amazing now that the workout is done. On my way out I see J. S, an old racquetball partner whom I haven’t seen in a few years. I take out my earbuds and we chat for a few minutes. He’s retired. I tell him I’ll probably play racquetball at one of the pick-up hours sometime soon.
Outside it’s raining harder. I drive home, turn on music (a spin of 5 jazz CDs) and write this. C. comes to the door with groceries, which I help her carry in and put away.
Shortly C. and I will go out to have one of our periodic retreats. We do this every 6 months or so. We get a room in a coffee shop or the central library and do a bunch of medium- and long-term planning: finances, travel, social, etc. After that tonight is date night.
Now it’s 11:59 a.m., Bud Powell is playing on the stereo, C. and I are both tap-tapping on our computers on the couch.
12-1 Showered then goofed off a bit, reading this and that. C. showed me pictures from Facebook of her nephew’s new baby. At 1 we go to Shoefly and eat lunch and start working on our list—talking about saving for retirement and setting aside money for travel and for our families for next year. I ate roasted rutabagas & a rocket salad; C. gave me one of her sweet potato fries. Then we got up and went to the Central Library and got a study room and continued planning, moving on to how to get things done and manage time when I take on my new job—an intense administrative position, in the fall. We talked for a long time and took breaks (I got a foul-tasting English Breakfast tea at the café downstairs). Then we went home at about
5 p.m. and goofed off some more. I read 20 pages or so of a bad Swedish crime novel which I’m not enjoying but which I’ve invested too much time in to put down. Then I looked at the New Yorker for a while. Around 6:30 I put on some music and we got dressed and at a little before
7 p.m. drove towards Oakley’s Bistro. We took a side trip through Meridian Hills to look at Christmas lights, including that crazy over-the-top house with the 20 Christmas trees and the falling star effect on the one big deciduous tree and multiple Santa Clauses &c &c &c. Then we headed to Oakleys and got there at
7:25. The restaurant was as crowded as I’ve ever seen it but we only waited about 5 minutes to be seated, on time for our 7:30 reservation. This restaurant has been a special go-to place for us for years and years—like almost 20 years. In a way I feel like I learned to eat really good food here. I get a glass of Cava and C. gets hot tea, then we split some short-rib dumplings, and she gets meat loaf and mashed potatoes (this is one of Oakley’s things—fancy takes on very old-fashioned straight-ahead food) and I get “duck and duck”—duck confit and seared duck breast with tiny little vegetables and little spots of mustard and plum sauce around it. Delicious, with a quartino of cabernet. Service is a little slow I guess because it’s unusually crowded, but it’s nice and relaxing. We talk about this trans theorist/queer theorist conflict that I’ve been stewing over; and various little ethical quandaries that have been coming up in our work. We’re in the restaurant for about two hours—this nice relaxed pace is one of the things I like about eating in places like Oakley’s. And I feel grateful to be able to afford it and a little guilty of course, with my working-class roots and leftist politics. But not very guilty, honestly.
Driving home (still raining; it’s been raining non-stop all day) we make a couple circuits up and down the streets in Meridian Kessler, looking at Christmas lights, including another absurdly over the top one on New Jersey Street—with six-foot nutcrackers on the front porch. We’re home at about
10 p.m. and sit on the couch and watch an episode of the Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, which is not as good in its second season—this is quite a weak episode overall. By the last 15 minutes I am starting to nod off, and when it ends we go to bed.
It was a very relaxing and personally productive day of being married, in short. I’m a lucky fellow.