Walter walked out of another shady adventure in California into Champaign
the other day. He had been shy and quiet and attractive; now he was
brash and confident and gloriously ugly. His massive cheekbones and
solid jaw protruded and pushed out in fascinating angles as he talked,
his thin pale skin stretched tight, straining to contain the restless
structures beneath. His sparse stringy blond hair hung over his
too powerful forehead like a clown's wig; his huge eyes rolled and
jumped and held contact (whereas before they had always avoided
scrutiny). His teeth were small and sharp and uneven, like the
necklace of shark's teeth that he wore.
 
Walter wrote poetry, terse sinewy strings of sounds and images that
twisted and contracted and spasmed as he mouthed the lines. He and
his girlfriend were holding two ends of a kite-string. He told me he
had been preaching to visiting parents about the follies of sending
their children to college so they could take lots of drugs. Walter
always claimed to have taken drugs recently whenever I ran into him.
This time it was LSD in front of the TV. Perhaps I looked like the
type who would be interested in people's drug experiences, since I'd
never had any myself. He promised to be at the radio station on
time to read.