We’d been living together for oh I suppose about a year or so at that point and of course my parents had disowned me, cut me off without a penny and quite angry they were, too. Of course I didn’t mind, being young and energetic enough that going out and getting a job as a docent or a receptionist seemed like a perfectly acceptable way to make ends meet. How his parents felt about things I couldn’t say. They never talked about it though I think they approved of me well enough in a quiet sort of way. That was how they were, taciturn I mean stolid even Midwestern. I think they were Catholics but that might just be the quaint streak of elaboration that he’s always had and not any real part of his upbringing. I don’t know for sure. I never asked and they never said which suited me fine.

But like I said I got a job as a docent leading people around a small art museum stuck in between Hamilton and 23rd and telling the most atrocious lies when I got bored. They didn’t know any better though once or twice I got kind of a funny look from somebody and whoever it was would ask some questions that let me know I hadn’t put anything over on that one. But mostly they swallowed whatever I fed them no matter how ridiculous it was. I invented painters like Mee or Carrow and really pretty complicated histories for them tragic affairs consumption dropsy and like that. I kept notes. Someday I’ll go through them and put them all in order. Maybe print it as a pamphlet, An Art History of the Unreal, with a foreword by Henry Darger, maybe, or Emperor Norton I.