My path in writing has been slow. The first step, maybe, began when I purchased a notebook to keep as a journal -- the kind with wide-ruled pages and a school schedule stamped inside the mottled cover. My initial entry on New Years' Day 1997 described a walk I took with my dogs -- I had two then -- and worrying over the upcoming bar exam.

A good six mottled-covered journals later, I'm still at it...

Another pivotal step was signing up for a creative writing class. The class, meeting one evening a week at a downtown community college, had the cumulative impact of reinforcing the Hey, maybe I can do this! and to zap the brain awake where it had long been dozing. There were about twenty of us in the class -- all ages and walks of life -- and we quickly meshed; some of us continued to meet after the semester ended. What a great experience!

I need to talk about someone. I'll call him Tragic Lion. He was instrumental in encouraging me then. We took the creative writing class together. At one point, we had never spoken to each other; the next, suddenly, we were friends. This is how we met.

Back then, I volunteered for the local AIDS organization. I coordinated hikes. In the hallways, a shadow fell past light or lurked in yellow smoke in corners. Tragic Lion.

Tragic Lion wore his past and you could not avoid him. He forced you acknowledge his presence. His shirts were gauzy, always brightly patterned; his silk pants clung to bone. He wore enough jewelry to make Mr. T jealous: A ring on every finger, thumbs included, many with huge gemstones; a good half-dozen rope necklaces. He shaved his head except for a fringe of bangs, dyed canary yellow. He shaved his eyebrows, glam David Bowie style. You will not ignore Tragic Lion.

And the tattoos. I first noticed the stands of out-sized tibetan symbols marching black up inner arms, side by side to lesions, both more permanent than the translucent skin. It is the beginning and the end. Tattoos on legs, chest, stomach and back, across the shoulders. A garden of flowers, heraldic lions, a butterfly. On his face, the most remarkable -- turquoise tears sliding off one eye.

I heard Tragic Lion's voice at a Reading. It was a fundraiser, a cabaret style, seated at a stage-side table with my then boyfriend and two of my best friends. The event was tiresome: I'm not into show tunes; I didn't know a lot of the songs. (Having seen for the first time recently the 1954 Judy Garland version of A Star Is Born, I now recognize one of the songs: "I was born in a trunk in Pocatello, Idaho.")

Against a curtain, a silhouette appeared. The clapping died and in the lull, a full spot caught head and shoulders. He blinked. He stood before a laptop. Two flanked him, poised. Tragic Lion.

And then he began to read. He read from the laptop, using it like a prompter. And like a keybord: The laptop had sound and he played keys as he read. It gave out groans, wails. Words as whispers, gasps or echoes. The silhouettes moved behind the curtain. It was haunting.

"That was awful! Shoot me before I attend another event like this," said my friends. "And who was the freak with the laptop?"

The next time I saw TL, I attacked him with questions. I asked him about writing and how he had developed it. In addition to a studio space where he wrote every day, he took creative writing classes. We became friends. A new semester was starting soon, and we agreed to sign up for the next class together.

Tragic Lion is not much older than me -- less than five years. But that five year difference is that of a generation. It is the difference between the heat of a disco and a nuclear winter.

One time, he showed me a scrapbook. San Francisco, 1978: A blond John Travolta, 20 years old and confident with looks -- stunning, jaw-dropping looks. In a parallel universe, Hugshyhermit delivers the paper in a small pre-dawn Ohio, coughing on cigarettes and crawling with zits.

One time, he showed me a death certificate. "I never expected to live this long." He smokes two packs a day; he drinks to get comatose. He doesn't take, or takes too much of his medications and he washes them down with alcohol. He blows smoke in people's faces, he throws drinks on them. He walks down streets past clumps of frat boys or the churchgoing righteous and if they look at him funny, he tells them where to go.

He lives. Oh, he's spent a bit of time in the pokey: Public Drunkenness, that kind of thing. The saturday night fever has become a never-ending sunday hangover. But he lives and I admire him.

"Do you think you should be driving in this condition?" I support him as he totters and attempts to light a cigarette, appearing to burn his hand in the process.

"What are they going to do? Take away my license?" He slurs. "And if I take a few with me, I'll be doing the world a favor!"