Rome, March 1973. I’m thinking very seriously of abandoning my magazine career, wife, and daughter in New York. Dropping out, disappearing. Starting an entirely new life as a street beggar or hustler or gigilo in the city that was not built in a day. Why? Because I know in my gut that nothing ahead will turn out well. It’s going to be the screaming banshees, writhing snakes, blindness, paralysis and suffocation of a never-ending nightmare. Does my beautiful little daughter have the same dark premonition? Sometimes I think I catch a glimpse of it.
