Prologue
The year is 1999.
I’m perched atop the hood of one of the used cars in Munson’s lot talking into a small tape recorder and staring at the intersecting signs across the street. That’s the corner, 5th and Vanguard. That’s the liquor store I was standing in front of a couple of months ago thinking how stupid it was for a girl to be out so late, for anybody really. But I couldn’t sleep that night, so I took a walk.
The biography I’m compiling now will be the first thing I’ve written in almost three years, a combination of self-loathing and sobriety having frightened away my muse. Seems she was tied up with a drug habit of mine and once I conquered it, I lost her, as well. That’s the way I’ve rationalized it, anyway.
But sometimes second chances are issued without solicitation and without being earned. Circumstance can turn on a dime, which is what happened to me in front of that liquor store on that corner. That night, as I had for several nights, I’d taken a walk in pursuit of something nameless that wouldn’t let me sleep. And whatever it was, I was ready to confront it somewhere on the concrete streets of Berle, my hometown.
