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Paul and his sister in my driveway in the summer of 1962 after they biked up from White Plains for a visit.
Paul Berger was my friend. He was my roommate in 1961 at Michigan State when the university made an effort to recruit a large number of freshman from New York with its excellent secondary education system because, frankly, they wanted to raise the academic level of the students.
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Paul was from White Plains, 10 miles down route 22 from Mt. Vernon where I lived. Paul was a lingust who was already fluent in five languages. He was on the swim team. He was also a confirmed non-conformist bordering on an anarchist who before long was a frequent guest of the Dean of Students who warned him that his behavior would get him expelled.
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He flouted every rule, although he never hurt anybody, well, reconsider that: his behavior with women was Trumpian -- he would sometimes just walk up to a woman and embrace her and kss her on the lips. This never got him in trouble with the authorities.
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The things that got him in trouble were along the lines of sitting down at empty table in the Union grill and eating the leftovers. He called this progging, a word he coined.
I was pretty naive in 1961. Paul was reckless in his risk taking. I remember he once had sex under a blanket with a woman acquaintance in the lobby of the dormitory dining room. By 1969 my wife-to-be were living together in an old farmhouse outside Mason, Michigan.
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Eventually he was not only exprelled but had a no trespass order so he couldn't cross Grand River Avenue, the street that seperated town from gown.
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Paul then went on to wander around Europe where his language skills were put to good use. He told me he slept under bridges in Spain and, although always attracted to women considered himself bisexual and said he “turned tricks with men” to make money.
Eventually Paul moved to New York City.
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Once when my wife to be and I were living together Paul came to visit to get away from the lure of herion. He said he'd been "chipping." By that he meant he wasn't using it that heavily.
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We talked about what the experience of being on heroin was like and I will never forget what he said: “it is like being totally loved.”
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This fits with what Richard Farrell wrote in Huffington Post:
There is nothing on this planet more euphoric than sticking a needle into my vein, watching the blood register like a snake slithering quietly before it strikes its prey, slowly pushing down on the plunger, feeling the warmth moving up into my shoulder, exploding into a head-to-toe rush the instant the white liquid hits my heart. It’s without a doubt, a hundred times more exhilarating than that millisecond right before you explode in a massive orgasm.
I’m in love. Nothing can stop me from getting heroin. I will rob you. I will manipulate you. If my mouth is moving, I am lying. I don’t care who you are or what kind of history we had together. You are nothing to me. Heroin is my god.
Paul stayed with us for a month and without too much physical discomfort kicked the habit.
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As far as I know he stayed clean and when he went back to the city he got a job as a cab driver, married, and had children.
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Tragically his I.V. heroin use caught up with him and when he was in his fifties he died of hepatits C.