There's nothing to change the spirit like a summer crossing

'Yet there was little flamboyancy in either attitude; indeed, the house of their hostility was modestly furnished with affection, [...]'

Truman Capote, 'Summer Crossing'

[Capote was a genius]

***

The last time I saw Truman alive was at a restaurant opposite his apartment at United Nations Plaza in New York, where we often met for lunch. As was his custom then, he arrived early and the waiter put before him what he claimed was a large glass of orange juice but what the waiter and I both knew was a glass half filled with vodka. And it was not his first. I had asked rather urgently for our meeting because the doctor who treated him when he had passed out in Southampton, Long Island, had called and told me that unless he stopped drinking he would be dead in six months and that in fact his brain had shrunk. I reported this directly and pleaded with Truman to get back into rehabilitation and stop drinking and taking drugs if he wanted to survive. Truman looked up at me and there were tears in his eyes. He put his hand on my arm, looked straight into my eyes and said, 'Please, Alan, let me go. I want to go.'

Alan U. Schwartz
October 2005