Red Autumn Leaves: Elvis Has Left The Building

Even when I was a puppy, friends, family, acquaintances, strangers and so on, encouraged me to write about my life. I would smile internally knowing there is no way I would do such a thing. I had too many sensitive secrets. It just was not going to happen.

Decades later I find the proposition of an autobiography in my breakfast burrito smothered in green chili. Now, I laugh out loud at the thought. It's just not going to happen; or is it? My spine twitches.

How would I remember everything when so much of it is a blur? Do I tell about the time I set my furniture on fire in the middle of the street or keep it trendy and only tell stories of famous people and places? Should I mention being stranded in Haiti without money or identification or maybe living in LaPark, in West Hollywood, a few doors down from the African musicians who where playing in Paul Simon's band and occasionally seeing Ozzy in the parking garage? Do I call lovers by name? Now, that would be rich. And why write such a thing now? I am far from gnawing my life line in half.

The last few days I have been down with a cold, which should be called a hot. Fever will make a man think funny. Not clown funny, abstract funny. I will write this book and keep it in a secure place. All my life I have been flirting with death, as the book will testify. When death finally winks back, someone will find the manuscript. You can't put a dead man in prison.