hen the book tour passed through San Francisco, Scott and Dirk and I had been up drinking and driving for three days. We were creepy and kind of weird. I remember that I threw up in the bookstore, in the cookbooks section. I guess Frank was there. You see, I gotta go back to before this all started, back when Scott and Frank and me were in school together, and Curtis White was teaching us how to be a writer. It was hard work, the writing part, well, okay, not exactly what most people would call “hard work,” but it was clear that it wasn’t worth it. So we decided to just go ahead and become celebrities. But the life had been taking too much, too, too much. So by the time we reached San Francisco, we were ready for some time for introspection, some meditative calm. It was at this point that Dirk first aired his intention to become the leader of a charismatic cult.

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