Potato chips, the perfect food

My mother wouldn't let me play with Rimbaud. She said he came from a Catholic family and was a bad influence, so I had to sneak out to see him.

Rimbaud always had cigarettes. He stole them from his uncle, one at a time so his uncle didn't notice. His uncle it turns out was a gay man, which is the real reason my mother wouldn't let me play with Rimbaud, but I didn't know it at the time, I thought it was because he was from a Catholic family.

We were just kids – what did we know about religion or homosexuality or cigarettes for that matter.

'The purposeful disordering of the senses'? Maybe it's traceable to the fainting game we used to play on the lawn behind Hillary Thornburg's house, or those long unfiltered Pall Mall cigarettes Rimbaud would snap in two to share that would make me dizzy with one drag.

The last time I saw Rimbaud he was sitting on a stool at the counter of the local drugstore, drinking a cherry Coke and eating potato chips. He wasn't supposed to be there, he was supposed to be in school. Then he just sort of disappeared from my life altogether, went on to bigger and better things I suppose, and my mother quit telling me to stay away from him.

There was a rumor that he became the road manager for a famous rhythm and blues band, traveling the world in the sort of exciting luxury we all dreamed of in those days, but it was never confirmed.