Dearly Departed

When I started working on HEART OF GLASS, I was struck by the number of people who appear in the book who are no longer on this earth. There was the old boyfriend who I discovered had died of the flu at the age of fifty-one, and two close friends who literally dropped dead of heart attacks in their forties. Last week my wonderful old pal Morris Lafon went the way of the angels much too soon. Mo was a true artist, who moved to New York to work in downtown experimental theater in the seventies. He was friends with Janis Joplin, threw Alan Ginsburg out of his house for hitting on his friends, and snuck a bottle of vodka to Nicholas Ray in the hospital when he was dying. I will never forget Mo’s marvelous laugh, hilarious stories, his zest for life – and the time we danced the Lambada at my thirtieth birthday party. I love you Mo and you will always be with me.