about

1.) 1 963, —  Came a day,  I’m ten and riding shotgun in the Chrysler the color of vomit.  Ma’s in the back and we are on the way to D.C. to visit my brother Laurie in college.  Three quarters of the way there and we’re still tuned to New York radio and on comes the news — “Police are investigating the mysterious death of Burton Linter who fell fourteen floors to the street at 46th and Madison.  Dad starts wavering the Chrysler to the emergency lane.  Ma doesn’t seem to have heard but senses enough to be crying:  ”What happened!  What happened!.”  My Dad stopped the car, took dead aim into my eyes; his eyes, desperate, begging, funally a stone no bullshit demand (subtext:  :”Son, don’t let me down.”) that I tell him”What did they say?!  What did they say!?”  My Dad needed me, that’s all I knew  To tell him the worst thing fucking possible,  that his baby brother who he adored had committed suicde.  So, I say in absolute pitch perfect, note perfect fashion, exactly what had been said over the radio.  Just, brilliant.  grace under pressure, and so I was marked forever to deliver the news, even when it ain’t all that great.  But my role was defined as was my fiction to come:  I was the unreal guy who had to keep it real.

2.) 1983 — My  mum was arguably the nicest person, I ever met –beautiful woman, beautiful human being.  Generous, a genuine mother, if you will),   Kind.  In love with her baby boy, (that’d been me), and she’s bumping sadly towards an untimely, premature death and I’m late thirties.  She says one day to me out of nowhere — “You know, I never would’ve married your father if I were born into your generation……I’d've run naked on the beach……”  Well, thank you mamma, like my Oedipal knot wasn’t already choking me to death.  But alas, the beauty of her confessing such intimacy to  her very own imagined romance poet; still aches me heart.

3.)  2009, my odd,  beautiful brother Laurie dies at 63.  Dismantled in vicious bits over four months.

4.)  1971.  Losing my virginity to a great, gorgeous girl I loved and who loved me, too.

5.)  1978-79 — Making love chronic with a  beloved soul rebel finally in the woods near where Dante began his descent. When the rain began to fall, we carried on and watching her belly button fill up with rainwater while holding on to each other for dear life. Drinking up the water.   Still in love to this day, as it should be.

6.) 1977-present.  Loving and being loved by brilliant  Sheila K.  Still loving to this day, as it should be.

7.)1988-present.  Loving and being loved by an angel — Dena, who literally saved my life by insisting that my apartment door be broken into because she knew I was in trouble.  Trouble?  Yo, fuck me, I’d been lying dead on the floor for three days when in came the possee led by my beautiful baby Dean.  Still in love today, as it should be.

8.)  Loving and being loved by Berengere who folklore has it I likely saved from suicide when we first met and who I knew instantly was simply too magnificent a creature not to to save.  I did pretty okay by her, I wish I done better:  Berge took six months from her life in Paris and came to me in New York City and looked after me until I was ready to get on.  A  stunning act of love,  As my friend, French Director Dennis Berry once pointed out to me — ” You and Berengere,  you’re Sartre and de Beauvoir, (both whom he knew well), you have an insane love affair of the mind.”   Eternally in love today and so on.

9.) 1988-2007 — writing the novel, GREAT! My first (of three) moments of genuine visionary divine) followed by years of brutality in not seeing it in publication.

10.)  1988-2001 — living in Paris, writing the novel, “Restoration Schwartz”, my second inspired literary moment, followed by more brutality from my inability to see it into publication.

11.) 2009 — writing WRECK, a novella — not a great book, but a neccessaey companion to what came next in “No Hard Feelings.”

12.)  1984-1986 — sharing a letter-writing correspondence with Federico Fellini, who was so kind and generous to me and seemed to sense I was something to behold.  Sadly, I was so far out to lunch, I never knew what to make of it.  Not even when he suggested that maybe he and I collaborate on an English speaking film.  Was I on a plane to Rome the next day?  Alas, how do I explain?  Another wrong turn made in the middle of the night.  And so it goes.

13.)  2010 — writing the novella, <em>NO HARD FEELINGS which oughtt finally put all my publishing life into some proper order re:  the scheme of things.