"One wild and precious life", he says as he shows me the skull he had impulsively tattooed on his ******* as a symbol that things should not be taken for granted. I’ll sit with him in a diner as he sips his weak lemon tea and talk about the reasons stars twinkle up in the sky. Some made-up story I’ll likely believe about constellations and moonbeams and how nothing is what it seems. And when it’s late, he’ll call me and tell me he needs to share something cool he just read. I’ll wonder if he ever sleeps as I doze off listening to him drone on and on and on about poetry, social revolutions, communism and the art of keeping sketchbooks. And in the morning I wake to a phone under my pillow hoping I didn’t embarrass myself by saying something I shouldn’t have. I’ll bump into him in the library reading some tattered old manuscript and he won’t mention anything about last night. He’ll just look up at me for a brief moment, smile because I did say something embarrassing then quickly bury his face back into his book. Red faced I’ll sit beside him and slap him on the arm as we burst into fits of uncontrolled laughter, hidden between rows of books.