Apologies

Having this website has proven to be more than just a way of promoting my books. It has brought me back into contact with people whom I hadn’t heard from in years: Old friends from New York, from Vermont, from Cleveland, from Paris, from the Peace Corps, from Togo, from Quebec, and from people I have worked with in my various incarnations in Hollywood. The collateral damage is that I am now a target for the very small group of people whom I don’t want to hear from: people I owe money to, the attorneys of people who think I’ve libeled them in my books, people who have misconstrued my dark sense of humor. You know who you are. My apologies. Please don’t sue. I have no lawyer on retainer.

Anyway, I invite you to browse through this low tech site and read about my books and what’s going on in my life. In the Fiction section of the site I am posting a new story every month, some published, some not. Or go to the Discussion section and express your opinion. Or contact me and let me know your thoughts.

Meanwhile, I’d like to make some specific public apologies to the people I have injured over the years, at least those whom I can remember:

Bob Zimmerman, I’m sorry that I didn’t think you had any talent and called you a “Road company Woody Guthrie” when you came to play a gig at the Cafe San Remo in Schenectady, New York, in the winter of 1962.

 

Karen B, I am sorry about that night in August of 1966 on the Staten Island Ferry. I was very drunk.

 

Vladimir F, I didn’t really have a flush in that big pot you folded out of in the game at your apartment in Quebec City in 1971. I had a pair of threes. I thought that after all these years you could handle it.

 

Jean Pierre S., Je suis desole que j’ai vole les 40 francs de ta porte feuille rue des Francs Bourgeois a Paris environ 1978. J’etais fauche et je crevais de faim. Si tu veux, je te les remettrai.

 

To the cabbie in the immaculate Checker in New York, circa 1980. Sorry about barfing in the back seat of your cab. I’d had the house red along with an undercooked shrimp scampi at a soon-to-be-condemned Sicilian restaurant on Ninth Avenue trying to impress a woman who had no intention of going home with me anyway.

 

Joan Collins, I’m sorry I refused to write more dialogue for you in 1986 when we were filming “Monte Carlo” in the south of France and you told me that you were the star and wanted more lines. You had to bring Leslie Bricuse over from London to punch up your scenes. I’m sure that was humiliating.

 

To Patricia R., my ex-wife’s divorce lawyer: I regret calling you a parasite in the corridor outside the courtroom of the Los Angeles Superior Court in 1992, where you were taking me to the cleaners. Like Adolf Eichmann, you were only following orders.

 

To Kato Kaelin: I’m sorry for writing your role as Brian Kerwin’s pool boy out of “Beggars & Choosers,” but we needed the money to hire Ivana Trump.