jopson friday

It was on one of these lonesome Friday nights that I came across a small man I’d come to know as Cornelius. The dusk light was low, and I had yet to acquire an appreciation for small men - I disliked how tall I felt alongside the ones I’d been with before Cornelius - so I might have kept on walking if not for the way the cigarette clenched between his lips illuminated his features. He had a face like the work of some mad artist who had set to recreating James Dean with only a variety of triangles and a pair of bright eyes at his disposal; a slender profile that appeared both roughish and delicate at once.

Haight-Ashbury, spring 1966. William Gibson gets acquainted with a handsome stranger.