When Manny approached me about “doing an interview” for Donald Goines I was clear with him that I was only interested in interviewing him about Goines. “But, I mean, you wrote it,” Manuel said and I said, “Yes. But you agreed to publish it.”
Manuel relented and agreed to an interview that met my own idiot guidelines. I asked that he join me on Discord where we could just talk about my book and I could ask him questions and he could maybe ask me questions and we could “see where it goes.”
Friday nights were bass night at Charlie’s Arcade. You waited until the last customer left then Charlie opened the back of the Street Fighter 2 machine. Instead of a computer board and assorted wires, inside was a tiny door. Open the door and there’s a spiral staircase carved into the earth. Go down that and you come out in a massive room, lined with egg cartons to reduce the noise.
My companion and I were somewhat “hard up,” as the saying goes, not having had a good case in months. I of course could economize, yet the profound boredom and lassitude of my friend’s soul, his ennui as the French call it, had reached a breaking point. His original vice of cocaine had picked up, now progressing to smoking crack, and we were forced to pawn some of the furniture.