When we sat stone faced and were solicited by prostitutes, one after another in some neon lit, Puerto Rican strip club dive, I felt a certain brotherhood that did not evaporate when the Professor tried to trade narcotics for sex. Later on, driving and swerving with the utter conviction that the next moment would be our last, together, I was only depressed because I knew it would end, no matter what.

Even when we busted into the wedding banquet, cranked up on the intoxicating effects of a hotel room filled with scotch, two ounces of mushrooms, a salt shaker full of cocaine, fifteen hits of E, three hundred dollars worth of imported hash, five men, one asian girl and sexual urges so polymorphously perverse that I won't ennumerate them here, the whole place was filled with nothing but joy.

So who cares that the come down was brutal and paranoid and would not completely stop until I plunged into the pacific waters, freezing at sunset, weeks later. Who cares if life is short and nights like these are few, and tedious days long and friends inconstant and unreachable? Who cares as long as some traces of beauty exist, on the beach with the five us alone staring at the waves and thinking of other oceans? Who cares as long as we could find it, even in these late days, in the five cent slot rooms and empty bus stations, deserted WASPish resorts, and gas station candy stores?