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What prospects did I have in the summer of ’68, when I graduated from Midwood High School? If my classmates had known anything about me, I probably would have been voted Mostly Likely to End Up in a Mental Institution.

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The worst that can happen is really what I think about myself. I hate to let myself off the hook, but I also understand that I didn’t act dishonorably. The road to hell, of course, is paved with good intentions, and it’s going to be a long while before I get over this.

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At the party to celebrate Kalikow’s buying the Post from Murdoch on Friday night, Teresa got very, very drunk. The lawyer started coming on to her, and Teresa says they were nuzzling and petting at the restaurant. “It felt good,” she told me. He took her home, where she got violently ill and couldn’t remember anything the next morning.

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Gwen, Crad reported, died when she choked on her own vomit in her sleep following a combination of alcohol and barbiturates: “I think she pushed me out of her life because she couldn’t stand me anymore and felt I was making her sick. Her last note to me was completely free of rancor, however, so I prefer to think that she harbored no bad feelings toward me at the end.”

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Robert came in late and said, “So I won’t see you again?” I just smiled.

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At City Deli in the 163rd Street Mall, the turkey on rye was really good, but I lost my appetite as I glanced at a USA Today article about the parents of an AIDS patient who died in March. Suddenly I put their last name and the face of the guy in the photo together and realized it was Lance! He died at University Hospital in Irvine just after his 31st birthday.

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One of the students gave me an envelope with my name on it, and when I peeked inside, there was a thank you note and what I thought was a $20 bill. Embarrassed, I said, “I can’t take this.” “We are Cubans,” one said, “and we will be insulted if you don’t take our gift.”

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Time will tell, but even I – a friend of the law of gravity, probably one of the few Americans who rooted for the Dow to fall – am shocked by the swiftness of the crash . . . It’s unclear exactly where we’re headed, but one thing seems certain, and that’s that the mood of the nation and the world has changed.