“So how’s this end?”, she wants to know.

I tell her, “You’ll find me in New Orleans.  Shacked up with a whore named Suzy, 25 years my senior, and she’s 2 days dead (and smells like it) with the rig still hangin’ from her arm.  The money is g-o-n-e gone.  I got what looks like leprosy and smells like a 2 day dead whore on my breath and my soul.  The cops that helped find me have a cavalier attitude ‘bout my presence that can only mean I don’t matter and never did.  They warn you to get home and forget about me.

After considerable more time and expense and 3 or 5 more treatment centers and dead whores, you have become brittle and mean, and you tell yourself you like it that way, and don’t even wonder how you got to be on Social Security in Louisiana with no one left to blame.”

to be continued