Robert Levin
A former contributor to The Village Voice and Rolling Stone, Robert Levin is the author of When Pacino's Hot, I'm Hot, a Miscellany of Stories and Commentary (The Drill Press), Against Mental Health: Short Stories (Cyberwit) and A Robert Levin Reader: Fiction • Commentary • Jazz (Cyberwit). He is also the coauthor and coeditor, respectively, of two collections of essays about jazz and rock in the '60s: Music & Politics, with John Sinclair (World Publishing) and Giants of Black Music, with Pauline Rivelli (Da Capo Press). Robert recommends PAWS NY.
Since I’d always eschewed social media and had given no hint of my intentions to anyone, I knew there’d be puzzlement about my purpose. Had I come from some twisted ideology? A grudge against the club? People would look for a rationale that, however demented they’d deem it, was comprehensible to them.
The reason for this circumstance is not so mystifying once we are prepared to acknowledge that the apprehension of death, and the necessity to mitigate that apprehension, always has and always will prompt and shape virtually every human activity.
I remained as afflicted by self-deprecation and most of the maladjustments that attached to it as ever—I had, with her assistance, finally stopped trying to go down on myself. And for helping to rid me of this hazardous, independence seeking compulsion—it had already resulted in a couple of blown-out discs in my lower back and several hospitalizations—
