When he was 18 he dated two different Jessicas, though not at the same time. One of them left school and the other one didn’t.

A year later he was sitting on a bluff overlooking a south Texas beach. He was reading the Dharma Bums. Everyone in the valley below had taken acid and was wandering around and building sandcastles or roasting hot dogs. One of them came up to him and sat down next to him.

“Are you reading?”

“Yeah,” he said. “I’m reading the Dharma Bums.”

“I can remember more than you can. I can remember every word of every book I’ve ever read.”

He just laughed, and kept reading his book. Three people had wandered out into the ocean until it came up to their knees. They turned slowly in place, trying to tell the difference between the sky over the sea and the sky over the land.