It seems to me now that the plain state of being human is dramatic enough for anyone; you don't need to be a heroin addict or a performance poet to experience extremity. You just have to love someone.
Poverty of young men alone behind the stairways, who practice alchemy inside bottle caps, who know the altruism of a last syringe.
Ros was dead. He had loved heroin more than it loved him. I was shocked beyond imagining; he was the first of my friends to fall.