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in the livingroom where poor Lex Pascal is holding forth yelling, it reminds of the time a year ago when Jarry Wagner's future wife got sore at Lex and threw a half gallonfull of tokay across the room and hooked him right across the eye, thereupon sailing to Japan to marry Jarry in a big Zen ceremony that made coast to coast papers but all old Lex’s got is a cut which I try to fix in the bathroom upstairs saying “Hey, that cut’s already stopped bleeding, you'll be alright Lex”—“I'm French Canadian too” he says proudly and when Dave and I and George Baso get ready to drive back to New York he gives me a St. Christopher medal as a goingaway gift—Lex the kind of guy shouldnt really be living in this wild beat boardinghouse, should hide on a ranch somewhere, powerful, goodlooking, full of crazy desire for women and booze and never enough of either—So as the bottles crash again and the Hi Fi’s playing Beethoven's Solemn Mass I fall asleep on the floor.

Waking up the next morning groaning of course, but this is the big day when were going to go visit poor George Baso at the TB hospital in the Valley—Dave perks me up right away bringing coffee or wine optional—I'm on Ben Fagan’s floor somehow, apparently I've harangued him till dawn about Buddhism—some Buddhist.

Complicated already but now suddenly appears Joey Rosenberg a strange young kid from Oregon with a full beard and his hair growing right down to his neck like Raul Castro, once the California High School high jump champ who was only about 5 foot 6 but had made the 58