The tire is still there.

Two memories:

1.Turning 14. My mom commutes to graduate school. She is never home. My father is in production week for a play. He is never home. Oliver takes exquisite pleasure in tormenting me through the closed door to my darkened room where I lie curled on a mound of clothes. Where I have lain for months. My father brings cake home, but I refuse to leave my room. I refuse.

2.Turning 21. We live in the second floor walkup on 47th St. Blythe makes me a cake of strawberries and whipped cream and she buys a kiddie pool and sets it up out back and she spends 2 hours filling it by herself, using a soup pot, walking up and down the back stairs. We are all tan and fit and stoned and drunk and in love. Sfitz takes me on a ride on his motorbike. Oh capricious joy. Later: Midnight at the 9:30 Club. Fishbone plays �Party at Ground Zero� and I think they play this just for me.

I�m leaving town. I can�t bear the thought of the coming days. I can�t.

Look for me, Father, on the roof
of the red brick building
at the foot of Green Street --
that's where we live, you know, on the top floor.
I'm the boy in the white flannel gown
sprawled on this coarse gravel bed
searching the starry sky,
waiting for the world to end.

--Stanley Kunitz