Since he got out of the army, my friend Tony has been getting by wheeling vats of boiling liquid from one tank to another in a plastics factory in Long Island’s Denton Avenue industrial park. He played drums with the New Generation, in high school, where he usually slept before leaving early for his job at the Big Apple supermarket on Hillside Avenue. Tony was a pretty neat guy, even if his grades weren’t so hot. By mid-October of any given school year, his locker was so filled with empty terpinhydrate bottles there was no room for books.

A few weeks ago Tony was driving home from a party in his green 1963 Ford Falcon, tires bald, brakes sometimes. He had taken two reds and a sopor, a pretty regular dose for a weekend night. Then, the way he tells it, “that fuckin’ caveman song came on the radio.” He grunts out the words — “gottafindawoman, gottafindawoman” — like a baboon in heat.