This is the first place I ever lived on my own, in this three-bedroom house in the darkest parts of the Athenian ghetto. I worked at a place not far from it, called DialAmerica, and I would walk home each night tired and worried about getting robbed. I remember the first time I got a paycheck, I went to the nearby Shell station and bought Winston cigarettes for the first time, they were $3.75 at the time.

Anyway, I used to smoke pot with my one roommate, and out-of-work construction worker. He used to bring over these old prostitute-like women. They were so ancient and often ugly, but one of them, Julie, she was lovely and paid me a visit I'll never forget one night without him knowing. But that's not the story I'm here to tell.

So, there was the one roommate who moved in shortly after I did. He was an old black man and it soon turned out that his primary ambition in life was to smoke crack all day. And that's exactly what he did. You could smell the stuff when you came in.

I was living on pretzels and coffee. I remember the pretzels cost 88 cents at this drug store on the way to the library, where I spent a lot of time using the internet.

So one day this guy got me to try crack. I felt invincible, but it was no better than a pot of coffee, and I never really got into using it.