I was working on Wall Street on the Over-the-Counter markets when it happened. I went out with Coonie and Andrew and drank dark and light beers at McSorley’s until it got dark. Then I went around the corner to the place that had no name under the stairs on St. Mark’s and drank some more.

I staggered to the last train with a paper bag in my hand. I remember the sick yellow light of the car as it lurched out of the station and then the next thing I knew the conductor was calling “Dover! Last stop!”

Dover? I don’t want to be in Dover I thought. But it was the last train and I’d missed the place where I needed to change trains.

I called Mom.

I’m not coming to Dover for you. You figure out what you’re doing.

So I wandered around in the dark and growing summer cold until I found a park and laid down to sleep.

When I woke up I found myself in gravestone mason’s yard, surrounded by blank tombstones.

And that’s what it was like. I was falling asleep and missing all the stops in life that mattered, waking up instead at the end of the line in front of a tombstone with nothing on it.

It took another 15 years to realize that I didn’t want to live that way.