One of my many transformations. In early 1966 and about to turn twenty-four, I had recently finished four years in the military and was living with my first wife, Lee, in the Brooklyn Heights apartment of the backer of a new magazine. The woman editor had offered to be my patron while I wrote "the great American novel" as she put it. This situation lasted about four months until Lee became too jealous of the editor and then my mother died (I shaved the beard that night and vowed to never grow another because she hadn't recognized me as she passed) so we moved to Jersey to take care of my father. The novel was deemed too "experimental" by my patron and was never published.