"Joe had just been released from the Ohio State Penitentiary after serving eight years of an armed robbery conviction. And that was seven years and eleven months too long. All Joe had done was gone into the liquor store drunk and allowed his Jimmy Cagney routine to take over. He was teasing the man behind the counter, as usual, but on that day nobody was laughing..."

"It was one of the worst days in my life, contemplating suicide from the roof of a four-story building I rented in 1979. Worse still I didn't even realize that I was attempting to kill myself. I imagined instead that I could lift myself gently off the roof, catch the wind and casually coast down to the grassy knoll some four stories below on the opposite side of the street, landing light as a feather, without incident, a brief hallucination that I didn't see any problem with implementing..."

"What happened to me in the early 80's as I worked diligently at divesting myself of alcohol and drugs is as strange as any story ever told. I had lain for several days without food or water, alone, deranged, detoxing, dehydrating and definitely dying. When I finally came out of it I ran into Judy. We were no longer `betrothed' but the alcohol often kept us running in the same circles, or at least into one another. For some unknown reason, we went together to a cornfield where we began to argue. As usual. It wasn't one of those petty lover's quarrels though, but this time something more substantial. Crows began to form out of nowhere, collecting overhead and mimicking our yapping. In no time their screams became overwhelming, finally mixing with voices and shouts that were no longer coming from Judy or me..."

"Photography and drawing are worlds apart. They represent two different ways of looking at the same world. Before I met Sherman I had a limited concept of the world, like Beckett's disembodied voice before encountering Pim. I knew about comic book heroes and movie stars and even a little about my missing parents, but nothing in my experience paralleled Sherman's perception of the world..."

"...That first year in the middle class proved to be my undoing. Not only did I have to start playing a part other than the one I knew by heart - that of hermit's protégé - I was also deprived of my birthright. Because of a power play by my new parents I was forbidden to visit my grandfather except on special occasions, one being the Christmas of 1949. He was a poor man, but he managed to bring me one small gift that year. Nearly blind he couldn't clearly see the paint-by-number kit he pulled off the shelf to bring to me. Imagine everyone's horror when I unwrapped my gift to find the gaudy Reclining Nude inside. Grandpa had of course meant to select The Lord's Supper..."

"After reform school had exhausted the possibilities of a traditional college education I sought out alternative teachings from behind the closed doors that I knew fronted forbidden streets. Even a stranger could see the depravity leaking from within the shuttered windows of the racially mixed apartments and rented rooms at the dead end of Elm Street. It was in such a set of grim rooms long before the days of political correctness that the Muted Asshole held court over a young, fierce pack of queer, black deaf mutes..." CLICK HERE TO CONTINUE THE STORY

"The black man Carl sits in a populated doorway along the route to Wrigley Field, plying the young white drinking-age college kids and yuppie fanatics with a dollar bill, clenched between his eternally decaying teeth. It's easy to imagine the dollar bill laced with a disease like anthrax and him defying death like a circus sword-swallower. On other occasions he props his beaten carcass up against the corner intersection of an alley and the main street, with its overhead train tracks sheltering his parched skin from the smoky sun. Even in the shadows he remains highly visible, continuing to entice strollers off of the beaten path into unlikely and forbidden encounters with dereliction..." CLICK HERE TO CONTINUE STORY

"The Revolutionary Communist Party was planning to march on downtown Cincinnati as part of their annual May Day Celebration. Only a month earlier they has managed to secure a storefront for the purposes of opening a bookstore. Traditionally they have done so here in the good old USA as a front for their nefarious deeds. But this time they made the mistake of settling into the ground floor of the very building wherein I had maintained three floors of living art ecstasy for the past several years. Ironically, the building also housed the Baskin and Robbins ice cream parlor. How American can we get here!"

"Early One morning before dawn, towards the end of a 28-year drunk, I found myself on a grassy knoll overlooking the University of Cincinnati, sitting on the wet grass staring blankly at the big red four-story Baskin & Robbins Building across the street. I had arrived at this spot by rote early one morning before dawn. The saloons had all closed down for the night, and although I was no longer allowed in any of them, I could still have a good time just hanging around the perimeters, panhandling and fighting off the arrogant college kids who accosted me on a regular basis..."

"I first met Eddie Balchowski in 1963. At the time I has just gone 'underground,' to mourn the death of my grandfather, moving into the ground floor of a soon to be condemned building on the edge of Chicago's Old Town. The move paralleled my life in a striking way, as I moved into secondary stages of an alcohol and drug addiction that would drag me even deeper underground as the years turned into one another..."

"In the summer of 1988 the controversial movie “The Last Temptation of Christ” played in theaters across the country. By the evening of the first day, the line of protesting Christians at Chicago's Biograph Theater had reached a thousand strong. At curbside, the police had cordoned off a two-lane corral to restrict the flow of Christians, who they deemed to be violating the speed limit of light. At the sight of this I was moved to throw in my lot with the Chosen Ones, jumping into the fray with my crucifix-shaped-like-an-ordinary-camera."

"I nearly killed the Dracaena Marginata, one of the plants that live with me in a room that was vacated by everyone else years ago. I was only reaching over to adjust one of Heather's nipples, as she lay naked for me, posing on the bed for a drawing I was making, as I sat there beneath her body on a tiny chair my daughter left for me. Heather's touch proved so electric that it knocked me back onto the table where a dozen candles burned, in fact, upsetting them onto the plant, which dripped red with wax from its leaves, like my cock dripping hot and red as I fell backwards onto the floor while she laughed at me. I was only trying to maintain my 60 years as an artist, I suppose, perched precariously beneath the wilting leaves of Adam and Eve's deceptive tree called knowledge..."

"My portrait of the firefighter known as “Stash” is unique in that I not only didn't know him but it was also my first night in town and I didn't know anyone else either. That lonely combination produced a picture with a lot of my own personality in it..."

"To the Venice Beach of the Sixties, Eddie and Freddie were a Beat Version of Batman and Robin, wearing their Blankets like Capes that hung loosely from their shoulders. At night, the same Blankets served to help stave off an occasional Rough Draft of Cold Air blowing in from the Mighty Pacific, as the Men sought Shelter under a Stairwell or in some Invisible Niche in an Alleyway. Indeed these Men slept wherever they could: under Fig Trees, in gutted Automobiles, on the Porch of a Designer of Lear Jets. Everywhere that is, except under the same Blanket. Theirs was a Great Relationship, as they pursued their Art in Tandem, tracking down their Drugs and Panhandling in the Open Air. They frightened the Tourists, teased the Body Builders and drank the Derelicts' Wine. Recently they'd even gone so far as to Smoke the Hippies' Pot. Shit... these Two were a Piece of History in the Making: a Modern Day Version of Vincent and Gauguin..."