Shall I compare thee to a zombie? Nay,
Thou art more lovely and more temperate.
Rough skins do shape the rotting brains of May,
And zombie’s lurch hath all too short a gait.
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimm’d;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance or nature’s changing course untrimm’d;
But thy eternal hunger shall not fade
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st;
Nor shall Death brag thou wander’st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou grow’st:
So long as men eat brains or eye candy,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

Mind you, I only changed about ten words from the original…

Wow.

I’m really looking forward to the movie.

Since I know who’s being referred to, I think it’s possible but unlikely that you ever met him.

I’ve known enough sociopaths that I can feel sympathy for them in the abstract. They’re unable to form any genuine human bonds. An ultimately futile, empty existence.

And they don’t get better, IMHO, despite what some of the sites on the web might lead you to believe. There’s a piece of them missing, and I don’t think there’s a way for them to regain it.

…I just saw episode 2. Which is streaming gracefully from the primary server. It’s fucking-wonderful-squared.

I’m loving Joss’s music, and ‘It’s a Brand New Day’ gets into rock ‘n roll territory.

It’s fucking wonderful. This is pure, uncut Joss. Funny, poignant, and twisted.

http://www.eonline.com/gossip/kristin/

I just tried to hit the Dr. Horrible web site, and it’s timing out.

Family Connection - yes; that was it.

I guess that you must have come along afer 72 or 73; if not, you’d have remembered Nancy.

She and Vicky were both OT’s (Occupational therapists) and they WERE Inlet. Susan and I brought up the rear on he group, and then David Swift (who’s brother Tom Swift, still lives in Houston, I think).

Drugs were already nasty in 71.
Lots of OD’s and lots of violence (thus, the needy for Sandy).

We all stayed longer than we should have, I think. Still, I don’t regret anything except losing touch with Nancy, Vicky, Susan and David. We WERE Inlet.

My time took a huge toll on me, at the time. In retrospect, though, if not for that time, I wouldn’t be the person I am now. At first, I wasn’t equipped to do the job, but Nancy and Vicky soon fixed that; I think it only took them a year!

Some of my best memories are of all of us sitting around a candle made in a Baskin-Robbins container (about a foot high), in my living room, tripping and discussing the heady issues of existence - while killing the roaches that were attracted to the light.

Naturally, we had a rule about having to have been down for at least 12 hours before going back on duty.

The toll was especially heavy on Vicky; she had a psychotic break for a couple of weeks, then moved to Dallas to be with James. So, I moved in with Janet, who was still around. I don’t remember much about her, though, except she was gorgeous inside and out.

Ah; the days before rampant STDs.

I had already started back to school part-time; when I quit Inlet (after I left Janet), I finished my degree in Elem Ed at the UofH (1976). Taught 4th grade in Houston and Denver.

One thing that Inlet did for me was to imbue me with a view of ‘choice’ that is at odds with what society thinks that ‘choice’ is - even though society can define it without using self-referential statements.

Yeah; I’m defensive of that time. Like I’ve said, I’ve run across posers who’ve claimed to have been a ‘founder’ of Inlet. To have been a founder meant blood, sweat and tears; it meant living on $25/month (which we did, thanks to our association with The Houston Food Co-Op and cheap rents; my house - a 5 bedroom, 2 story, was $85/month). We earned the right to say that we formed the foundation of Inlet, and I resent pretenders.

When I moved back to Texas in 2000, I went by the old house. It had just been repainted yellow, and while I was looking at it, a resident of the neighborhood walked up and we started talking.

When I mentioned that it used to be a crisis center, he asked, “Inlet?”. When I said, “Yes”, he said that Inlet was a Montrose legend. Suprisingly, when he asked my name, and I told him, he said that Nancy, Vicky, Susan, David and I were still talked about among the older residents on the rare occasion of Inlet being mentioned. Hard to believe. Still, he did know Nancy and Vicky’s last names, so he couldn’t have been completely making things up. Synchronicity, eh?

Strangly, when the new oner re-did the house, he stripped out ALL of the closets; the house had just been finished and had no window coverings, so I could see into it.

Wow; the house was WAY smaller than I remembered.

I think the think I miss most is the spirituality. Sandy’s friend, Elsie Secrist, would come over. In case you’re unfamiliar with her, she went to head up the Casey Institute in Virginia Beach, VA.

Everything, I think, happens for a reason, so I would disagree that you stayed to long; perhaps you stayed exactly as long as you needed to.

Thanks for the stroll down memory lane; I haven’t written or talked about Inlet this much in over 20 years.

Again, if you ever learn how to contact Nancy or Vicky, please let me know ASAP. I’ve written various things, searching them out, but have never had any luck.

If you need my regular e-mail, just ask.

And yes; we did a good thing - for the clients and for us.

In any case, it’s been a blast hanging out here with you tonight. Serious nostalgia rush. Hope we didn’t bore everybody else to death.

It sounds like we both just missed each other by a couple of months. Or were stoned…

I’d love to hear from Vicki again, too. Incredibly bright wonderful lady, and I was a little in love with her for a couple of years.

I doubt that I’ll ever hear from her again, but if I do, I have indeed picked up your e-mail from your posting here. Feel free to e-mail me at eatourbrains-dott–com at gmail and I’ll give you mine, if you’d like to chat some more.

And ALL of my memories of that time, with a few shiny exceptions, are fuzzy.

First — I’ve never claimed to be a founder of Inlet, here or elsewhere. I frankly can’t imagine why anyone should feel the need to b.s. on that issue. Inlet was great and incredibly difficult, and important to me for more years than it probably should have been. But it’s history, and likely trivial at best to anyone who wasn’t deeply involved with it. Why lie about it?

I volunteered there after it started, and if you say it was 1970, or even 1971, I’m down with that.

And, like I said, I don’t remember your Nancy or you. Maybe you guys had moved on by the time I was there?

…Yeah, years later, the house was tiny. And the porch was gone…

I do remember an Elaine. Thick glasses, big teeth. Smart and good and warm.

And I’m pretty sure that Vicki and James were on and off again multiple times, and that at least part of that time was well after I was at Inlet.

I never heard a word about Sister Lewis Marie. That part sucks, big time. We did do a lot of work with Father John Minter and Father Dave, from Metropolitan Ministries, though. Amazingly good, kind, gentle people.

Runaway home? — was that Family Connection? We always hung out with them a bunch, and were already doing so by the time I got there. I ended up working with Roger and Jim and Tee and Susan at Sand Dollar, which was another runaway home, many years later. Sadly, I was completely burnt out by then, and shouldn’t have still been trying to do that sort of work.

I’m still conflicted and sorrowful about a lot of that time. I stayed longer than was good for me, and watched the community crash and burn around me, when the sub-culture died, and the drugs got nasty.

Anyhow, Larry — I hope I’m not over-interpreting from a couple of posts here from you, but it sounds like you’re pretty protective of that time in your life and the memories of it.

Me, too. We did a good thing. It just didn’t last.

If you were a director, it was after Nancy, Vicky and myself had left, and that would have been late 71 or early 72 (my memory is a bit fuzzy, as well)

I could look on my college transcripts, as I’d started by to college before I quit the center. I had 1 year at OU, then the Navy (out in May of 70), then hooked up with Nancy and Vicky at the runaway shelter, then was with them at the start of Inlet. Inlet was never in operation in the 60’s.

I was a bit flustered and came up with a quick, funny response, but the next day - I moved in.

I don’t think Nancy would mind me repeating this; she was not ashamed of anything she did; she accepted it all with a quiet grace, and was not shy in repeating the story to people.

I heard from another music compatriot of mine - my best friend fron high school, Jim Ross (now lives in Austin and plays there) that Don had died in the 90’s. Many times, Don would come to Inlet or to my staff house and play. I don’t know whatever happened to his self-published ‘white’ album, but I’ve often wished I still had it. He passed a few of them out, but I’ve never found one for sale.

Townes died a few years ago, and a movie was released, last year, about his life. I wrote a piece about him for another acquaintance of mine, Eric Alterman (Altercation on MediaMatters.org - but he was still on MSNBC at the time). The movie painted him as a real ass, but he was always gracious to Nancy and myself.

RIP, Townes and Don.