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I walked through a heavy thicket of transvestites on province town's commercial street to get to Mailer's house at the other end of town.

You obviously quite like transvestites despite his image. The first time I

went to see him, he recommended I go to a bar that had a Judy Garland impersonator. When I got to his

house this second time, Norman was sitting at his dining table looking wiry and small. He walked with

two sticks and was six months from death. He was

reading the New York Times and circling things. He had on one of those armless fleecy wind cheaters

and a pair of ugg boots. When we sat down to talk, he told me to let him have it. Both barrels. I told him I was there

strictly on pussycat duty. The parish review loves you, I said, and so do I. But we get into a few

things all the same. In the evening, we headed off to Michael Shea's, a restaurant not far from Norman's house that

specialised in oysters. He liked to collect the shells. I have one here as I write. He drew on them

with a pen to reveal the faces of Greek gods in their crevices. Norman knew everybody in the

place and he asked for a kind of vodka punch.

He always drank horrible drinks.

At one point back at his house he asked me to make him a rum and grapefruit

and another time he asked for a red wine and orange juice.

When we sat down he said something nice about a book of mine.

It was a trick he got from Kennedy,

always praised the book by an author that other people find difficult.

I'll never win the Nobel Prize, you know, he said. Why are you so sure? Because I stabbed my

wife. Oh. No, they won't give it to me. He wanted to talk a lot about age and he told me I should

look after myself. You know, he said, when you get to my age, you have to pee a lot. There's no distance

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