He never names names, and he makes up locations, and he says that what he has maintained is the kernel of truth. He is a fiction writer.
You speak to him and you wonder, especially if he glazes over and tunes you out, am I becoming grist for the mill?
Is he ever really in the moment? Did he carpe the diem?
Did you not spot some part of yourself Frankensteined together with a piece from your brother last time he put something out? Ity pays not to think about it sometimes. Sometimes you will see something that is unmitigated flattery, and other times the monster in you has been laid bare.
You’re a friend of a momentary vampire who turns blood into ink like Jesus did with wine. It doesn’t detract from the friendship, it just means that its different, and that things crystallise in a different way.
He is in his fiction too, and he is as unflattering and complimentary to himself as he is to others, so that lessons the weight of the blows that land on the tip of one’s nose, and take them by surprise.
You have coffee. Ten years later you have breakfast. You read his books in between. You write letters to him