My friend Rick used to rent a studio apartment on the fifteenth floor
where his kitchen, living room, bedroom and bathroom all were one room.
(He had a top bunk for the bed, and curtains hiding the kitchen and the bathroom
' though there was no privacy unless he was alone.)
He used to open the big picture window, and look down on the yard below
while he drank gin and smoked pot right in front of the playing kids, or
the neighbors looking out from the windows of their bordering row
houses - thick with paint, devoid of trees.
One day he got so stoned he fell out of the window right onto
some politicianšs kid; neither one got hurt, but Rick went to jail
for a very long time and he lost the apartment which was too bad
cause he was grandfathered in and the rent was cheap for an apartment
one block from the Capitol. They wrote about it in a tabloid '
I mailed him the article, and he put the headline up in his cell.
