For reasons that will become obvious， I find it difficult to write about<br >Stewart. Well， I find it difficult to write about anything， God knows.<br >But Stewart presents special problems. Do I speak of him as I later<br >came to know him， or as he appeared to me before I learned the truth，<br >before I stripped away the mask of normalcy he hid behind? For so<br >long he seemed nothing but a footnote to my life， a passing reference<br >in what I had imagined would be the story of my swift rise to literary<br >stardom. Ibday he not only haunts every linc of this statement but is，<br >ill a sense， its animating spirit， its reason for being.<br > We were roommates. I moved into Stewart Church s New York<br >apartment in the fall after my graduation from the University of<br >Minnesota. In his Roommate Wanted ad in the Village Voice， he had<br >described himself as a "First-year law student at Columbia Univer-<br >sit> ，" and he looked every inch of it: tall and thin， with a doleful， high-<br >cheek-boned face， carroty hair cropped closc against the sides of his<br >narrow skull， and greenish eyes that seemed rubbed to dullness from<br >the hours spent scouring the microscopic print of his casebooks. Not<br >that any of this was exactly a bad thing. It was just that Stewart did not<br >fit my initial idea of the kind of person I would end up living with in<br >Mallhattan. I was an aspiring author and thus viewed my every action<br >;l，ld utterance with an cye to how they would appear whcn fixed in<br >imperishable print. As such， I considered myself to inhabit a highcr<br >piano of existence than people like Stewart. He so clearly belonged to<br >the trudging armies of nonartists， of mere human beings: the workaday<br >drones who live out their unobjectionable lives， then pass， unremem-<br > 103"JOAtISeIJgq3 MMM<br > uJo3"lOAIJSepwq~@oiul<br > XVt 9LOO O~L [LOL)<br > OOiO OtL (~BZ)<br > elrOlO VW tueq~UlH<br > I mHns "oAV llu~Oo 0z<br >Vlg]fl IItAIIt S]lilVH3<br >| leuulOlg<br >Ulq|WUJllt<br > :llXel<br >:OUlAIOqS<br >iI s! atls sa!ioul pue<br >la U，l{i pro aa.3npoad<br >.o; ) ，qlU ~U!llaS-asaq<br >l J:l t l~S) ~uo I u~lt<br >Oltl HO H，.LflV<br >q ll!~a ，，，##p~ pug<br >，IJadxa tie/，praalr<br >uqdxa If!，~ ~Iooq<br > aa ira/， ，aqlaq~.<br > a^!suaqaadtuoa<br >: s! aaaq.L GAG<br >，~ papuedxa pue<br >~(ud A(I lea!d~<br > m!pa ~au s!q.L<br > tuoaj ssaaoad<br > ) aleaodaoa aoj<br > q~ual-ameaJ<br > fox 8utqakaaAa<br > tuoa anoX pue<br > !aea~a UgS ura<br > noX 3! ua~<br > a~ ~oqs ~u.~<br >~puadapu! ~<br >tsotu l n.~!G<br >