This is a true story, though in many ways I feel like I should start it off with, “Once Upon a Time…’ mostly because that part of my life really was like a fairy tale, full of magic and adventure and many, many lessons.

I was twenty-two years old, and I had been living in New Orleans for a little less than a year when I decided it would be a good idea to move to San Francisco. I was very wrapped up in Beats at that time, and I wanted nothing more than to be the new and improved female Jack Kerouac. Moving to San Francisco seemed like an essential step toward achieving this goal. Furthermore, it had been a dream of mine since high school to stand on the corner of Haight and Ashbury, the very bosom if you will, of the entire counter-culture movement. I still get chil...

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