My Near Drowning

Last Thursday, September 15, seemed like any other cloudy warm day.  It was almost the day I perished.

I'd just finished writing my new nonfiction book after 2 months of heavy work.  I'm not used to that much hard writing at a shot, and it wore me out mentally.  I was exhausted; got up at 3am Wednesday and finished the last bit by 6am.  At 7, The Crazy Canuck and I went off to a yoga class.  He'd stayed for another week after Baby Doll left to go back to work in central Mexico.

The class was uneventful, although, as with every new class, there were some new stretches, and angles.  I hit the weights afterward but not too much.  So when I got up Thursday morning, I had a couple of sore spots.  Canuck was sleeping in so I went off to try the pilates class.  It was uneventful, but some of the exercises hit muscles I don't usually hit, and in different ways.  Afterward, I hit the weight circuit a bit again.

That afternoon, Canuck was up for a workout so we walked to the gym and he did some spinning while I did weights; he did some stretching and pushups and I stayed in the weightroom. Afterward, he wanted to take a dip in the cold Pacific -- it's great for the post-workout muscles, and we'd done it a couple of times since he arrived, which was more times than I'd been in that water all year.  It's just too cold, and the beach isn't so nice.  But the sunsets are gorgeous to look at.

I donned my short wetsuit, and he was still looking to buy one, so we stopped in at a used clothing store on the beach.  No wetsuits, so we walked down to the beach, set our things down, and he grabbed his goggles.

We waded in---oooohh, damn it was cold!  I got the first splash in, spraying Canuck with cold droplets while my wetsuit fended off his return splashes.  The water got deeper and we dove in.  I'd told him I wanted to get a good workout, try to keep moving for 20 minutes, so I was running in the water, taking bigger and bigger strides to stretch out this hip muscle that's been bothering me.

When my a-hole high school track coach had me run a pre-season race my senior year after I'd already injured my back with another of his stupid ideas (doing field events indoors, since it was raining, and I missed the high jump cushion, landing with all my weight on the hard floor and jarring my back hard), permanently injuring it then - running in the water was the only way I was able to get back on the track and even then, I was never the same.  Like Bo Jackson.  Um, sort of.

So I'm running, and paddling some, and the waves got bigger, and bigger, and I was leaping off the ocean floor high to the top of the waves, all the while, laughing, playing, and joking with Canuck. It was invigorating.

Suddenly -- and I mean within seconds, I turned and we were separated, he was 40 or 50 yards away, and I was going further out, so I swam as hard as I could, looked up, and I was even further out.  I tried again and was going nowhere.  Then all the things they tell you about drowning started to happen. I was confused.  Fatigue set in.  Things weren't right.

I could see Canuck making his way back to shore and I could see a yellow truck and red lifeguard suits.  Something was being barked through a megaphone.  One of my contact lenses came off and the whole scene went blurry.  I was panting for air, really tiring, and it got serious.

Here's a poem I wrote a few nights ago (between sobs):


MY NEAR DROWNING

by Robert F. Smallwood

A cloudy September day over the sea
ordinary, gray;
vast, sleepy waves
surging

Rolling surf nears the shore
growing, gaining power

we wade in
BRRRR! It's cold!

Colder than it should be
  on a warm day

SPLASH! A playful volley

SPLASH! SPLASH! It's returned
laughter
bounding in, jumping,
  squealing like kids
embracing the cold
Pacific waters
 loving them
 refreshed by them
foamy gray waves
   rise crash and fizz

I leap in rhythm
bounding high
buoyed by the surf
kicking as joyously
as a little boy
Again.

A wave rises
  and rolls in
I spring up
off the ocean's floor

leaping high
like Superman!

running and kicking
salty cool waters
welcoming waters
as if I can fly
in the Ocean

A few more seconds of joy

Then, so fast it was a blink
I see my friend
halfway to shore
struggling
and me
pushed out to sea.

The shore seemed
   too far off
Something wasn't right
I looked for the
   next wave
Tried to launch with
my legs
kicking maniacally
head down, pumping
arms overhead
putting all my strength
into battling back
to shore

But when I looked up
gasping for breath
the shore was farther
than before

So I swam
harder, this time
as fast as I could
pounding
those monstrous
                         waves

Slapped in the face
  with a crest
  lungs burning
  panting hard
  heart pounding full force
another crest smacks my head
from the other direction
like a right hook from a boxer
to finish me off

I lose a lens
and things become blurry
    and worse

Struggling more
   paddling arms and legs
   almost flailing
   gasping, panting
now wheezes

There isn't enough air

My limbs become leaden
Heavy and tired
 in the icy waters

Heart is leaping out of my chest
there is no Rest;

I look to the shore
  and see a small blurred crowd
    gathering to watch
I see a truck
I see the red blot
of lifeguards
I hear garbled noise
  from a megaphone
It's loud
but I can't hear
what they're saying

I am so tired
There is no Rest
hard to breathe
not enough air
water everywhere
I can see the shore
  with all my effort
all my Strength
all my determination
I cannot beat it.
Failure.
I am fighting
for my Life
wheezing and coughing
and splashing
I wonder
'Why don't they help me?'
'Where is a jetski?'
'Why don't they help me?'

I'm confused
exhausted
tired as I've ever been
I raise my hand slowly
      in defeat

"help" comes out of my mouth
It's not a word I've used
It seems foreign
traveling through my brain
and out of my lips

"Help!" Again, a little louder
but weak
I knew they couldn't hear
I hoped they could see
I was in Trouble
'Why don't they help me?'

my hand dropped into the water
to help the other
I was in real trouble
and I knew it

I paddled and panted

Suddenly a voice, close
right behind me
Words, fast and unintelligible
Spanish
I turn
A brown-faced teen
with big shoulders
threw a float over me
He went to work
   securing the harness
Rattling off more words
  I didn't understand

But that thin yellow float
a beautiful bright yellow
  was the best thing
   the most cherished thing
I'd ever laid my hands on.

Some relief,

He ducked his shock of raven hair
underwater
and I was pulled,
propelled quick
with animal power

Like a porpoise
with a purpose

as if a dolphin
were towing me
the kind of strength
I no longer had
   Maybe never had
I tried to help
kicking, flailing
hoping the joint effort
would help us both
Survive.

He moved swiftly
diagonally
through the sea waters
toward the shore

He popped up
and said something
It didn't register
He went back to slapping the waters
Powerful, brave
Otherworldly strokes
of marine power
that few humans
ever possess

We got nearer
a foot touched down and skidded
I'm panting harder
as hard as ever
He drags me
I try to get to my feet
I stumble
He keeps dragging
I stagger
Like a roped steer

finally get my feet
under me

The current is only
knee high now
but it's still strong
trying to pull me into
the rip current

I'm staggering forward
He's pulling the rope
we make it to shore - unsteadily

My friend is there
I'm still alive
(I'm supposed to be here, for now)

I feel feeble, never so feeble
Weak, tired, old, depleted, grateful,
humbled, tired, scared, happy,
thankful, regretful, tired

and so very stunned.

That Impending Feeling..... Change is in the AIr

Tomorrow I'm moving to a new place: in more ways than one. I came to Cancun last October and made several trips to Playa del Carmen, Tulum, and Puerto Morelos, trying each one on, to see if it would fit, if it could be a place where I could live and write. Cancun is too much concrete and plastic; Puerto Morelos is too dinky; Tulum has beautiful beaches and oceanfront but it's isolated and has a dinky, cheesy nightlife scene. PDC is super gentrified and commercial in the main tourist area, and beyond that, in the Mexican neighborhoods, it's not much to look at. Nothing like the beautiful Spanish architecture and balconies in San Miguel de Allende.

But I came to the Yucatan for the ocean, and to write.

The Caribbean Ocean is probably the most beautiful I've seen, with those warm turquoise and electric blue waters that you can see through to the sugary-white sands. And I suppose I've always had this sort of tropical fantasy, this dream in my mind for as long as I can remember. Like "Gilligan's Isle" only with electricity, cold beer and restaurants not far off. So I'm going to try it.

I have trepidations, and there is this uneasy anticipation and dread that is filling me; the fear of the unexpected, the excitement of a new place, new people, fresh salty air. Before I moved to San Miguel I was even more worried, since I sent off money and didn't have anything in writing and I was moving my life there. It worked out great! Beautiful mountain views, new friends, good restaurants, bars, parties. But the main thing was that I did what I planned when I moved there: I finished my novel.

I'm hoping these new Caribbean views are inspiring and relaxing and my new place will be a good place, and most of all, a good place to write. It doesn't makes economic sense to move here during the high season. But all I know is I cannot live if I cannot write.

The Great Abysss: Post-Publication Depression

OK, I've finished it, gotten my novel out there into a few Barnes & Noble stores and on Amazon; I've sent out sample copies to a few friends and prominent New Orleans folks; I've sent copies to newspapers in four southern states; I've started to set up a European book tour and sent out a press release.

But nothing.

It's silent.

Books aren't selling.

No one has noticed; no one has said, "This is a great book. A must read. A New Orleans classic."

Nothing. Nada. Zip. Zed.

I flip through the pages wondering, really, was the seven years and thousands of hours and thousands of dollars really worth it? Did I write something of note? Or, at the very least, a 'good' book?

I don't know. I can't judge. But maybe someone, SOMEWHERE will pick it up and rave about it.

I suppose I need to be patient. Some books take 20 years to arise from the heap of pulp.

It's moronic to worry about, since it really doesn't matter. What matters is that an artist does the best work possible at that point in their life.

And I do know that I have done that.

It's Tough Serving Two Masters

Chekhov started his career as a doctor. When he began to write, he was pulled in two directions until his short stories started selling and he was able to be a full-time writer. Later, when reflecting on that period, he wrote of how difficult it was to "serve two masters."

To keep things going economically, to provide capital and time to invest in my writing, I research and publish information technology reports. It's been my primary career for over 25 years, but I really wish I could devote all my efforts to my novels, plays, screenplays, essays and poetry. (yes, poetry, but I will not publish it until I'm dead and gone!).

I was complaining about how serving two masters scatters my mind, how it frazzles me and prevents me from going all out as a writer. But a friend of mine listed all of the horrific life situations many famous writers overcame, and as he went, I realized, really, I ain't got it so bad. I mean, I live by the Pacific Ocean and also have a place in the beautiful mountains of central Mexico. In the last year or so, I've been to three Cuban cities, seen plays on Broadway, went to Las Vegas, San Felipe, La Paz, Cancun, Puebla, Chouloula, Ensenada, and seen bullfights in Tijuana, Mexico. My compatriot writers had it pretty tough: John Fante went blind and dictated his last few books and screenplays; Thoreau and Walker Percy had tuberculosis, which weakened them, causing Percy to write mostly lying down, and sending Thoreau to an early grave; William Burroughs was a lifelong heroin addict; Carson McCullers spent her life in depression; Hemingway was most assuredly bi-polar and an alcoholic, as was Faulkner, Fitzgerald, Bukowski, Capote, Tennessee Williams, Kerouac and many others; Poe was a flat out nutcase; Wilde was sent to a cold, damp prison, even Shakespeare was a pothead.

So you just have to play the hand you're dealt, and do the best work you can. And the craziness, the strain, the strife and struggle can be a great influence on the art itself.

Success, One Step at a Time

This morning I awoke early to call London. Finally I got through to the right person at Waterstones, and he is taking steps to introduce my novel to the UK market, and to set up some promotional events. I also called Prague, (or Praha as the rest of the world calls it), and tentatively set up a signing event to kick off my European tour -- after nearly a dozen previous attempts. So now I have Prague, Berlin, and quite probably London. How about Paris or Madrid?

Then I took my morning walk on the beach and I felt I am making progress, one step at a time, and soon others will see my footsteps, before they are washed away by the tide of time.

That Incubation Feeling

The best part of writing a book is in those first days when ideas flow freely and you are not constrained by such bothersome things as plot, character development or proper grammar. An artist friend of mine in New Orleans called it the "incubation" phase, and I suppose it is common to most all creative processes.

It's when an artist or writer is most alive, when new territory is charted, when there is a sense of total freedom and the only thing that matters is the pure joy of creating something unique and new.

I can't wait to get started on my next book. That's the fun part!

What a Writer Really Needs is Time

Some writers are afforded long lives and therefore have the chance to develop and contribute over a long period. Others have died tragically early, perhaps having penned one or two great ones, but they weren't able to gain their proper place in history. And there is some luck, good fortune that plays a role there.

Back when Faulkner and Hemingway were around, it wasn't so uncommon for men to die in their 60s (they both did) and still have lived a full life. Burroughs and Mailer lived to their 80s, but some of the real, real greats, like Fitzgerald, Kerouac and Oscar Wilde died in their 40s. So did Carson McCullers, who was pretty amazing herself. And then there's John Kennedy Toole, who offed himself in his 30s because he couldn't get A Confederacy of Dunces published -- and it was subsequently awarded a Pulitzer.

Wilde particularly got screwed. After his fiasco with that royal boy and hard prison time, he was finished, only writing a few sad and dark pieces and then dying in Paris. He was on track to surpass Shakespeare, I believe, and also, I don't really believe Shakespeare wrote everything he's given credit for -- not even half (and there's tons of evidence to back that).

My hope is that I am granted the time to do the work I know I can do.

Technology and Writing

Technologies impact what is written, what gets published, and even impacts the characteristics and content of the writing. Novels used to be shorter, due primarily to the arduousness of writing and proofreading by hand, and the cost of typesetting the book. Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men is just over 100 little pages, and Fitzgerald's Gatsby isn't much longer.

Today, popular writers churn out books using pretty standard language. There's a lot of copy-pasting going on, a lot of formula writing that is pushed on the public. Basically, popular novels today are like watching TV. Pretty canned. I believe writers in the past created works that were more like watching live theatre where there is spontaneity and risk.

And I wonder if writers like Chekhov or Oscar Wilde would have made it today or if they would have labored in obscurity. I like the purity in their works, untainted by technology (although I know I am losing something with translations of Chekhov).

Technology of the times affected other writers. When portable typewriters became available, Hemingway had one, Tennessee Williams had one, and it changed their lifestyle and made writing just a little bit easier, and more portable. A laptop computer today provides amazing advantages.

But I wonder what is lost by not writing by hand and crossing things out. I don't usually do that, unless there isn't a computer available. But when I started my Katrina book, I wrote on the back of an envelope, then re-wrote that and continued writing in a journal. When I finally got to a computer, I was zooming out 3,000-4,000 words a day, and I was able to edit and improve the work on the fly. Of course, there were many edits after that, but they were rapid-fire, since I completed the book in less than a month.

Technology allowed me to publish my first book, and it is allowing me to post this from Mexico, while listening to the local New Orleans radio station.

But I still wonder what is lost with the rush of technology we have available. Certainly that combined with the oligarchic mass media cuts out many true artists, those who are on the fringe, are being muffled or trampled, depriving the world of, perhaps, some great works.

Art Forms

I was in Havana last week at the national art museum, and I was reminded about the various characteristics and advantages of different art forms. Musicians and singers have it the best: some great songs have been written in five minutes, and they last lifetimes. With modern recording techniques preservation is assured. Also, music is portable, and so when I hear Louie Armstrong playing in various countries all over the world, it still amazes me. I liked a local band in Havana playing at the Hotel Inglaterra a few nights a week, so I bought a CD and brought it with me back to Mexico and I can see the artists and I am there at the outdoor Havana cafe when I listen to it.

Painters and visual artists have it pretty rough: they may work for years on a piece and the very nature of art limits it's portability. The only thing that can be done is to make copies in poster or print form, but still, distribution is limited. Today most art is preserved, but in centuries past we have lost many art pieces.

Writing books allows people around the world to enjoy them, but there are translation issues that may slightly transform the interpretation and it also stifles distribution.

I pondered which art form was the most important, which has the most impact on the world. Music helps shape the world, and can provide a common experience for listeners, but I don't think it changes the world much in real terms, although it is possible to change the music world with a breakthrough sound. I love music. Especially live performances.

Visual art is heralded, coveted, even stolen, and it also shapes and reflects our experience, but it's importance as a historical record faded when modern photography became popular. That said, I love visual art too. I know what I like and just enjoy taking it in and trying to understand what the artist was trying to convey.

Words. Words can change the world. Writers can be heralded but also they can be jailed or killed for their words.

I enjoy trying to be artistic with words. Sometimes that means simply using them in a way they have never been used, such as turning a noun into a verb, sometimes it means creating a sequence of words that have never been put in that order, and sometimes it means trying to invent a new word. A good writer can create "music" with their words, and it can be presented on the page in an artful way, so yes, writing, I believe is the most important of all art forms in my world, although I enjoy and embrace music, art, dance, even a well-presented meal, and all other art forms, with the possible exception of opera.

Can you imagine a world without art?

Neal Cassady and the Beats

Last Saturday evening in San Miguel de Allende I attended a celebration of the Beat poets. Neal Cassady, the catalyst who changed the direction of Jack Kerouac's writing -- to the more free flowing, stream of consciousness Beat style -- breathed his last breath here. He'd been to a wedding and probably took some downers that night, where he expired by the railroad tracks.

His son, John Allen Cassady, was named for Cassady's two best friends, Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg. Kerouac's first name was actually Jean, pronounced almost like 'John' -- so why didn't he name him "Jack Allen Cassady" you ask? Well, Neal Cassady said, "If you say Jack Cassady fast, it sounds like Jackass-ady; and no one is going to call my son a jackass!" John Allen Cassady, who is now in his late 50s, returned to grace the local literary group with some funny stories of his father, who died when John Cassady was just 16.

The evening began with a couple of speakers providing a summary of the history of the Beats, and particularly the development of their friendship and writing, and their ventures to Mexico.

"Don't do what I did, 20 years of fast-living and my kids are all screwed up," Neal Cassady had said. But his son, John, a blond-haired man with a beard, bushy eyebrows and a sunny disposition, has nothing but fond and humorous memories of his father. When I asked him about what his father had said about screwing up his kids, John said, 'Well, my dad was very protective. He cared for us very much."

John Cassady went on to talk about the funny things his father did to entertain the kids, and how he never said an unkind thing to them -- or anyone else. On one trip to Mexico he brought back a small wooden pig that had a removable plug for a tail. "Watch this!" Neal said to his kids. He went and got a flyswatter, and swatted a fly, not killing it, but just stunning the fly. Then he pulled the tail-plug from the little toy pig, inserted the dazed fly and replaced the tail. As the fly came to, the pig's legs started to move and soon it was dancing on the table. The kids were delighted! John said, "That was funny, but what's even funnier is, 'Who is the Mexican who thought of this in the first place!?'"

John's mother, Carolyn, was left to be the disciplinarian. You'd think that a kid who smoked mota with his father and accompanied him to the bars while still in elementary school would be all messed up. But John Cassady is a happy man, a shining, jovial light who is and always was, very proud of his parents.

I approached John after dinner with his mother's book, Off the Road: Twenty Years with Cassady, Kerouac & Ginsberg. Before he signed it for me, he flipped to a picture of his dad in his prime and said, "Look at my dad. Look what a handsome devil he was!" Then he flipped to his mother's 1946 picture, a stunning profile of a classic blonde, and commented boyishly, "Look at how beautiful my mom was!" John was supposed to be shuffled off to speak on the closing panel, and the event organizers were getting impatient, so I took a picture of John signing my book, we shook hands and I left, treasuring the moment.

Seriously, John had the experience of learning the guitar from Jerry Garcia (Garcia credited Cassady for the formation of the Grateful Dead), he knew Kerouac and Ginsberg as his father's friends, so how cool is that? In one aside, John said that Garcia told him as a teenager not to use a certain album as a guide to the Grateful Dead's music style, "We were speeding and played the whole thing in triple time!"

Also speaking that evening was George Walker, one of the Merry Pranksters whose nickname was "Hardly Visible." He's a colorful man, wearing bright hippie colors topped by a knit skullcap, and he had some colorful stories about LSD-laced cross-country bus rides and wild trips to Mexico. Mostly the stories had to do with getting high, having fun, and barely escaping the Mexican police!

A Day with F. Scott Fitzgerald and "Gatsby"

Yesterday I walked to a small Mexican cafe and had "huevos Mexicana" with beans and potatoes, sitting next to two Mexican police. I had a book with me so I figured they'd think me harmless.

Then I walked to the local coffee shop and and read a couple of chapters of "The Great Gatsby," by F. Scott Fitzgerald (he was named after his famous relative, Francis Scott Key, who wrote the words to "The Star-Spangled Banner," but he was called only "Scott"). Turning each page I was just awed by his lyrical prose. It's so deft and smart and pleasant to read that "lyrical prose" doesn't do it justice. And Fitzgerald wrote this in his twenties! He died at 44 and I just kept thinking how far behind I am, how I will never catch up, and how, maybe, I should just forget about writing at all.

Walking home I thought that if I work at it hard, things will be different in 10 years.

Most people don't know that Fitzgerald lived in New Orleans for a while. In 1920, he took a room at a cheap boarding house on Prytania Street, in the historic and grandiose Garden District. With $600 from winning the O. Henry Prize (by the way, short story writer O. Henry fled to New Orleans to avoid embezzlement charges from a bank in Texas) he bought his future wife Zelda a platinum and diamond watch and went to Montgomery to propose. But she wouldn't marry him until, "This Side of Paradise" was published the following spring.

Fitzgerald and Hemingway were ex-pat friends in Paris, and Hem had great respect for Scott's writing. But they argued, as writers do. I heard a story that after Fitzgerald wrote a long written critique of a new Hemingway novel, Hem scrawled, "Kiss my ass," after it. But I'll bet he re-read the critique and took it to heart and improved his writing.

Later Hem wrote elegantly about how natural and effortless Fitzgerald's talent was. He wrote this in the preface to, "A Moveable Feast" one of my all-time favorite books:

His talent was as natural as the pattern that was made by the dust on a butterfly's wings. At one time he understood it no more than the butterfly did and he did not know when it was brushed or marred. Later he became conscious of his damaged wings and their construction and he learned to think and could not fly any more because the love of flight was gone and he could only remember when it had been effortless.

Fitzgerald was destroyed by drink and his crazy wife Zelda, who was in and out of mental institutions, and who encouraged him to drink and write short stories for fast money, rather than to focus on novels (a source of contention between Hem and Scott). Zelda was a Southern Belle, the daughter of an Alabama Supreme Court judge, but a real firecracker who later was recognized as a leader for women's rights. Scott called her the"golden girl," and "the original flapper."

Scott and Zelda were always drinking and fighting. Tennessee Williams wrote the play, "Clothes for a Summer Hotel," about Scott and Zelda's tumultuous relationship. It takes place when Scott takes a visit to see Zelda at a mental institution in North Carolina, where she later burned to death after Fitzgerald's untimely death of a heart attack. It was Tennessee's last play to debut on Broadway but was a critical and financial failure (although it sounds interesting, doesn't it?)


Back to my day: After a stop at the grocery, and few glances from Mexican housewives, I walked home and took a short nap.

My neighbor, a defrocked lawyer (who is just another one of the miscreants who have landed in Tijuana), stopped by and brought a quart of beer so we split it. We talked about how he's been working hard on his Spanish and meeting a lot of girls and that I should learn more, and he taught me a new word. Then we talked about how crazy it is that they caught the leader of the big drug cartel, and that 150 people had been killed in TJ in the last 2 months. But that it doesn't affect us here at the beach. In fact, it doesn't affect anyone unless they are in the drug or police business, except that fewer people go out to nice restaurants after a recent slaughter (of drug runners) at one.

He headed back to cook dinner for his roommate, and I went over to the local seafood restaurant to watch the sun set over the ocean and return to "Gatsby." I read while I drank a few more Tecate beers and ate three shrimp tacos. I didn't bother with telling them that I prefer them not to be fried, since I was pretty hungry. I read as much as I could, between glimpses of the salmon-pink sunset and shimmering waves, and then I just closed the book and thought.

After a short stop at home I walked up to a little smoky dive bar, had a couple more beers with limes, ate some peanuts and looked over at the two incredibly cute and young senoritas.

"I really gotta learn Spanish," I thought.

Drinking with Codrescu

In New Orleans when I decided to get serious about writing I started hanging out at the Goldmine Saloon in the French Quarter. Every Thursday night Dave Brinks hosts the "17 Poets" poetry readings. Sometimes it's spoken word, sometimes it's performance art and sometimes a musician will accompany a reading, which can make for a dreamy experience. You should go, it's great, and there's a surprising amount of talent.

That's where I met Andrei Codrescu, the Romanian-transplant poet who comments on NPR in his inimitable tone. He also teaches at LSU. His readings are riveting, and when he's in the audience he's about the most enthusiastic supporter of the artists, especially if it's one of his students.

Over the next 3 or 4 years I'd run into Andrei in the Quarter, we'd chat a bit, maybe have a coffee or a drink or two if we were at Molly's (probably his favorite bar). I used to get some cache by introducing literary wannabe women to him. He'd humor them and they'd fawn and giggle.

When I was in San Miguel de Allende a few weeks ago at the Tom Robbins workshop I ended up relaying messages between Andrei and Robbins in between workshop sessions. "We used to run around together a little," Robbins said. "His essays on NPR are great. I love listening to them. Does he still drink J&B?"

Robbins eyesight is going -- he can only stand to read or write for about 20 minutes at a time now -- so Andrei is sending Tom a DVD of his latest work.

Andrei's real funny in person, and, of course, real smart and witty, and his dry humor cuts through the syrupy New Orleans air like a cleaver.

And he's a lot of fun to drink with.