When he's not wrecked, he's really smart. He comes from a bad background. I mean, not bad, really, just his father was this tough guy or something and he was always the kind of kid wanted to dream all the time, couldn't play sports worth a damn, that kind of thing, and his father was always on him, calling him names, that kind of thing. Plus, he was always small, well not small, five-nine or so, but certainly not a big guy; and in Brooklyn where he grew up the way he tells it the street's not kind. He says it's not that he wasn't big enough it was that he had no self-confidence because his father was always tearing him down, humiliating him. Mostly, he doesn't like to talk about all that. He got into reading Greek tragedies when he wasn't even thirteen yet, and he's like, unbelievable. You name it, he's read it. Poetry, novels, history, science––anybody says they read something by someone and he's always, "Oh, yeah. That was whatever and have you read this by him or that by somebody else" and then he's off and it's like a seminar or something. Pretty much everybody's impressed by him, but he's a freak like all the rest of us, getting high all the time, and when he's high he's like this different person altogether. He's a total moron when he's high. I'm like, I'll say a book, and he's like "huh?" Or I'll refer to some poem everybody knows and he's "What?" Get him high and he's like I don't even know him. He gets, you know what it is? He gets dopey. It's like all of sudden I'm with that Seven Dwarf character, Dopey.

I've already decided I'm not going to let him smoke in the van on the way back. I don't care if I have to throw the stuff out the window. We've got Linda's parents' place all to ourselves. I want to do something cool. I want to pose for him, I think. He's a good photographer. He's got so much talent. He's really special. He's really a very cool guy. I just have to keep him from smoking so much.