I was excited at the prospect of seeing him until a few moments later when I received another phone call from his mother who used the redial on the phone to call me back. She told me that she remembered me, and liked me, and did not want to see me hurt. Seems that this dear old friend of mine had been having his psychotic episodes closer and closer together, and that lately he seemed to be trying to recapture the happiness of his youth by going out with old friends. All of the previous encounters, however, had gone horribly wrong. Everyone had changed and grown and evolved, and he felt lost and betrayed and disoriented when he could not use the encounters to return to his youth. He would grow angry and lash out, and had hurt three old friends and hospitalized a fourth. And, she warned me, his violence seemed to be escalating with every encounter.

I decided that as a matter of honor, I had to keep my word. And who knows, I thought, maybe I can help him somehow. Still, I had to protect myself. I called several male friends, friends who were big, friends who could fight, and asked them to make a point of going to this movie also, and to keep an eye on me and my old friend, in case he got too upset.

I went to the canal and, along with other movie-goers, I gingerly leaped from floating barge to floating barge to get to the tiny Cinemaplex Island in the middle of the straits where the movie was playing. I met my friend in line, and noted with relief that all of my other friends were in line ahead of us. Each person bought their ticket, was handcuffed, and went inside the theater to be chained to their seats until the movie let out (this prevented gang violence in the theater, and was proving to be a very popular measure among California voters.). Then as my large and reassuring friend James, the last person I knew in the line was being escorted to his seat by two armed guards, the film sold out, and huge, massy, iron doors slammed shut behind him, and the giant combination lock in the middle of the door spun with a chilling and final "Whizzzzzzzzzzz!"

So there I was, without backup, with a psychotic, who was disappointed and growing agitated. So I said "Oh hey, it's no big deal. We can see the show another time. Let's go to a cafe'." (Thinking that at least a cafe' would be public.) So we hopped the barges back across the canal to a cafe' called "Beast Row" in the Little Serbia section of San Francisco and ordered latte's. It being almost Halloween, there were little decorations on wooden picks sticking out of the coffee, and I got him to relax by having a little Punch and Judy puppet fight between his skeleton and my witch.