Sorrow had skipped out on his rent and i began to miss him. The town i had run away to had also turned out not to be big enough to keep me out of even the most avoidable trouble. If you can believe this i had gotten involved in a mutualy destructive relationship with a lady state trooper I had met while getting Sorrow's motorcycle out of the impound lot. We loaded it into the back of the van owned by the disaster of a music group I was playing in. But not 6 feet outside of the gate Sorrow decides to start the thing up behind me and we were pulled over with motorcycle exhust pouring out of my driver's side window like a scene from some stoner comedy. Is it illegal to have a running vehicle inside another running vehicle? well it took a long time to find that out and that's how i got to know Louise. She had me walk the line of a drunk driving test and i guess i was pretty attractive. She was too. I told her the name of my band was M.D.C. . She already had my address so getting my phone number wasn't a problem and for a while we were hanging out. I still suspect that it was one of my room mates who told her that MDC did not only stand for "Multi Death Corporation" but by that time our forbidden passion had kind of run it's course anyway and when Louise dropped by now in the middle of the night it was to place speeding tickets on my parked car. Soon I had so many points on my lisence that i was risking serious jail time if i was pulled over for anything at all so it seemed like a good idea to head out of state. Sorrow had made himself comfortable on the Lower East Side of New York City. He was living with this rock band who were spearheading an exciting new sound known as "grunge" who got pretty angry when i asked them if it wasn't really lame how much they sounded like Neil Young but for a short time i crashed on their sofa, and earned walking around money hustling pool at local bars. I would accomplish this by going to warm up at a pool hall over on broadway called "Le Q" before hitting the bars, and then not drinking untill i had a pocketful of bills. Le Q was run by Vietmanese immagrants whose Occidental language of choice was French and who took a shine to Sorrow and I. They would let us play in the afternoons free of charge and give pointers on our game. One older guy who ran the counter had this trick where he would take a running leap from across the room on the break, invariably finishing the game of nine ball, which is all they played. "Nine Ball strategy." was a catch phrase. The evening crowd at Le Q were young Vietmanese kids who would speed up on roller blades together around 7 or 8 o'clock. They all had tall laquered brush cuts, black long filtered cigarettes and an inordinate fondness for the singer Morressey. Bootleg Cd's in the Jukebox, immaculate tour shirts worn prominetly untucked, His face stitched onto the back of their Bomber jackets, whole bit. This fascination with the former singer of The Smiths at first caused me to not take the Vietmanese Roller Blade Gang very seriously. The utter wrongness of my very naive and foolish stance concerning the matter was driven home to me very quickly one early summer evening when the end of Sorrow's que stick inadverntantly grazed the bum of one the roller blade gang's girlfriend (this is not a metaphor). Out came the butterfly knives, the breaking of que sticks into sharp and dangerous points and even unholstered were the small automatic pistols which were then waved under my stunned snout and in front of Sorrow's watery blue eyes. Luckily for us our french speaking friend from the afternoon shift was still hanging around, and after some furious yelling and clicking and unclicking of automatic pistol safety latches we were allowed to apologize for our great oafish clumsiness and agree that yes in the future if we are ever to return to the pool hall, which was generally thought to be a bad idea, that we should definately take a table in the basement preferably in a corner far away from more civilized peoples so that such an outrage might never happen a second time. Later that night taking a dollar a ball from some guitar player from Los Angeles over at Sophie's on 5th, I made sure to play the Smiths on the juke and was heard to observe loudly that Morrissey had every right to look as smug as he does, which prompted the guitar player to call me a fag. Is it any wonder that touring bands get beat up in New York City bars so often? But I just smiled and let it ride, it really is best to avoid random violence if you can, you never know who you're dealing with on any given night.