I'd camped out in the basement of a Seattle anthropologist with a remarkably hospitable nature--so hospitable, in fact, that the basement's opposite end was occupied by a charming drag queen who could have given Josephine Baker lessons in haute couture. Somehow, this master of the plumed gown and feathered boa had no influence on our host. But apparently, I did. In fact, I accidentally became our housing provider’s spiritual master.

 So the anthropological type decided to abandon his mortgage, forget about his teaching job, leave his unfinished Ph.D. thesis about decorative penis cones in the South Pacific, grab his girlfriend, and follow me and two of my friends to California.

  Our arrangements for departure were all set. We would head for the nearest freight yard and catch a box-car headed south. Unfortunately, I got a cold, and my followers left me to catch up with them when I could get better. Not a nice thing to do to your spiritual leader.

 But they weren't heartless about it. They found me a room in one of those environmentally-conscious University of Seattle off-campus hovels where no student has washed the dishes for six months and every platter and fork is turning mossy in the ecosystem of the sink. I had a mattress of my own on a nice, hardwood floor. The boards were biodegradable. You could tell--they were rotting. And my acolytes had provisioned me for my convalescence with a leaking pitcher of orange juice, a pile of sandwiches, and the company of a remarkably sympathetic horde of cockroaches.