As 'Bill', I was a friend of Joe's - an 'intimate', I suppose - from the time of his stay at the University of Michigan (in Ann Arbor) forward, our relationship becoming somewhat unresolved and vague as years passed; maintaining an essence of warm soul, but with resigned awareness of time passed, of change and increasing distance, each time further that we met. His woman-friend, girl-friend then, was called Dottie - Dot also a young student at UM. Sometimes we shared a house, with various other occupants; friends, including my own girl-friend Rita, Matty - a fierce Jewish genius with whom Joe played mental chess while one, the other, or both washed and dried dishes - and Agnostopolos, a Greek painter-student. You'll see that I 'm not using any last names but my own. (To not embarrass anyone ... )
Why Joe chose to study at that huge University, one of the Big Ten, deep in middle America, I'll never be able to claim, surely, that I know. But suspect that, fairly
closely, I do understand. One of the reasons has, I think, to do with the history of what became a ferocious overt conflict between his parents, ending finally in divorce, compared with the security and an environment so easy for someone of Joe's perceptions to get on in. It was, after all, a University with a high reputation, centrally located, and with a high reputation. And Joe played guitar and sang, with a
French mathematician-friend, Alain G., at an Ann Arbor coffee-house. (I remember fierce arguments: Alain, a romantic, wanted to donate his classically-trained playing, and songs; Joe, as a worker, demanded they be paid.)
I'm much less certain why, as a friend, Joe chose me. Suddenly I have an image, a memory of lights, riding at night my first night in Parisbehind Joe on a Lambretta, on the Champs Elysee, singing the mariner's Heave away, Santayano! at the top of our lungs ...