I do have a few friends at the homeless shelter actually, and they sustain me: One, John, understands music; one, Jim, is Tibettan Buddhist; one, another Douglas, is gay; one, Rembo, is a warm-hearted Samoan ex-con; one, Ben, is a light-hearted Chippewa Indian with a passion for movies; one, Timothy, is a half-Italian, young (thirty-something) San Franciscan, literate, well-read, polite and fair-spoken as only the natives of San Francisco are polite, urbane, masters of the Standard American Dialect of English--music to my ears. I have enemies too, of course--almost as many as I have friends, now't I think of it--but I don't think about them much, and certainly don't worry about them; although, as occasion prompts, I am sometimes amused or intrigued by their awful wickedness.

So talking with Timothy, like I like to do (How is it that denizens of The City know how to converse, to talk [oh so correctly, oh so clearly] about things [of general interest], while other Americans talk only of themselves?), during and after lunch, about the signature aspect of the murders of Robert Kennedy, John Kennedy, and John Kennedy Junior, and about the signature aspect of Bill Clinton's dirty, and dirtying, little massacre of the civilian population of Serbia. He understood immediately. And when I said, a propos of the so-called Security Agencies of the United States, "The essence of tyanny is having a secret budget," his fine Italian eyes flashed with startled wrath.