Richard Grayson

It’s nice to be able to spend time in the Grove and the Gables among the kind of people I might see on the streets of the Upper West Side or Lower East Side. My class at Coral Gables Senior High went well today. After a brief lecture on the history of computers, I had the students use an Introduction to the IBM PC disk tutorial.

At times, as Ronna noted, her grandmother would make spoonerisms, but she’d also substitute one word for another – like “wall” for “porch” – and at one point she referred to Billy as “she.” This morning, as Ronna and I walked along with her for a few hundred feet, she introduced us to a neighbor as “my granddaughter and his friend.”

What prospects did I have in the summer of ’68, when I graduated from Midwood High School? If my classmates had known anything about me, I probably would have been voted Mostly Likely to End Up in a Mental Institution.

After the Inner Circle dinner, Frank called Teresa into his office and berated her for being “a floozy and a flake.” He said she can’t keep her mouth shut and has to change her personality if she’s going to stay in P.R. and politics. Teresa was very upset and said she couldn’t help it if this married guy latched onto her.

The worst that can happen is really what I think about myself. I hate to let myself off the hook, but I also understand that I didn’t act dishonorably. The road to hell, of course, is paved with good intentions, and it’s going to be a long while before I get over this.

The callers tonight were moronic, as usual, and as I was driving home from the WNWS studio, I heard one guy make fun of my nasal, high-pitched voice. Sometimes this voice problem bothers me, but then I think if I’ve got an easily imitable and distinctive voice, it may be an advantage in getting public attention. Who knows? But I enjoyed doing the show.

When Bert told me he was into klezmer music and had attended a five-day klezmer festival in the Catskills, I knew he’d know Dave Tarras’s name, and of course Bert said that Uncle Dave is revered as a god in klezmer circles.

At the party to celebrate Kalikow’s buying the Post from Murdoch on Friday night, Teresa got very, very drunk. The lawyer started coming on to her, and Teresa says they were nuzzling and petting at the restaurant. “It felt good,” she told me. He took her home, where she got violently ill and couldn’t remember anything the next morning.

Gwen, Crad reported, died when she choked on her own vomit in her sleep following a combination of alcohol and barbiturates: “I think she pushed me out of her life because she couldn’t stand me anymore and felt I was making her sick. Her last note to me was completely free of rancor, however, so I prefer to think that she harbored no bad feelings toward me at the end.”

We had the buffet Sunday brunch at the Yuppified, Soho-ized, gentrified Carlyle. To me, it was dreadfully expensive, but I did enjoy the view as we sat outside. South Beach attracts an arty, gay, European and New Yorkish crowd, and I suggested to Teresa that she might enjoy living there.

If this works out, the thing I most wished for in 1988 has come through. It’s scary, and I feel stunned. Part of me feels they’ve made a mistake and I’m not up to the job. The other part of me is so thrilled at this opportunity, I don’t know whether to scream or eat a banana.

I’ve always thought of Pete as the quintessential East Village writer, but he’s decided to move to Park Slope. He can’t get any writing done because the neighborhood truants are always singing “We Are The World” or some rap song. Pete is also tired of the invading Yuppies and the drug dealers and all the NYU students.