IF I considered it, which I didn't often because I had and still have an almost paralyzing fear of death & my own mortality, I didn't reckon I was gonna live too far past my 20s. With a few exceptions, anyone over the age of 30 was very suspicious to me. On top of that I have terrible organizational skills, and in those days I drugged and drank way too much. Consequently, I was not the world's greatest archivist. I found these negs in the spring of '97 in a mystery box of stuff I'd put in storage in the mid '80's. This single cardboard box contained pretty much all that was left of my life from the days before I finally got clean. There were many more photos taken, but who-the-fuck knows whatever happened to them--sold by some ex or another at a yard sale after I was gone...left behind or forgotten in one of my many "I've gotta get outta here, this place is bumming me out" sudden and rapid departures...

The greatest thing about being a photographer when you've lived a life like I ended up living is that even a few slim binders of negs contain so much more of your life than a house-full of stuff, which I didn't have when I found these. I was seriously loaded. I lived in a tiny single in Hollywood that seemed cavernous in its emptiness. Aside from trips to the liquor store and elsewhere to procure "supplies" (and, occasionally, food), I'd left the room exactly 7 times in 3 years. These photos brought back a flood of memories of happier times, and at that time I had no recollection of having ever been happy. All I remembered was being miserable and dopesick, like I'd come out of the womb that way...Finding these photos motivated me to get clean.