Damion was not this skin and bones saint. He was not the ascetic he carved himself out to be. He did not exist in a vacuum consuming and being consumed by only art. He was not all these things. And he was not always so painfully sober.

Puddles—not his real name, as you’ve probably gathered, but the kind of nickname a fat kid got tagged with in our neighborhood—kept stopping short, picking underwear out of his ass or taking a breather. This had the unfortunate byproduct of my crashing in