After the ceremony she wanted to go back to the room for a moment before the reception, which was going to be held in the master ballroom. She needed to freshen up, she said. Just go ahead with out me. But he had his suspicions so he trailed along after her, against all of her protests . . .
The road to Vegas is its usual Friday afternoon parking lot. We are meeting friends and plan to do mushrooms—as in those kind of mushrooms. It’ll be my first time. . . .
I feel myself drift away. My body is no longer mine, and the words coming out of my mouth sound foreign and out of character. The car starts to pick up, and my friend’s laugh sounds as though it is light-years away, even though she is so close her hand is on top of mine . . .
I had talked myself into a luxurious three-bedroom apartment in a classic Tudor building in Jersey City. It was 1969. Back then, a suit and a little grooming would suffice if accompanied by a few months’ rent . . .
The American walked the ancient Italian countryside on unsteady feet. It was a familiar path, but he had been up very, very late with guests from the States, toasting to liberal optimism with liberal quantities of Tuscan wine. They had, essentially, drunk all night, waiting for election results from the States, which didn’t report until three a.m. Italian time that Barack Obama had become the forty-fourth president of the United States . . .
Johnny was barely fourteen when he started drinking . . .
Philip buys an ounce of smack. Craig and I don’t even know what smack is until he brings it over—we thought it might have been food . . .
I don’t understand cocaine
philosophically . . .