A Weary Desperado

One afternoon at a party in the West Village, I drank a few beers, ate a brownie laced with hashish, and saw later, from the corner of an eye, a view of San Francisco Bay I’d seen before while visiting friends on the coast. Somehow the view had lodged itself in my brain and followed me home to New York. It vanished when I turned to confront it, though, and left me staring at a snowy street scene. That night I slept in a chair and dreamed I was chained to it, but I woke up feeling good, oddly refreshed by the ordeal, and decided on the spot to quit my teaching job in June and move to San Francisco. This was in 1969. I thought I’d cast a vote for revolution or evolution, but I was only in love with another man’s wife.