New York

John had completed his required coursework and needed only a few marking periods of electives before he graduated from Michigan State University. He planned to travel the world upon graduation to expand his perspective and broaden his base. He had watched men wearing three-piece suits wiping antacids from their faces and decided early on not to become one of those guys, racing through American society to keep everyone but themselves happy. He had run the gauntlet of absorbing what others thought was important. Vietnam and Kent State turned him from pre-law to something less conforming in his early years of college. Law was too narrow a focus and was perceived as part of the problem, and John was solution driven. From now on John wanted to read what he wanted and study what he wanted. So, with his remaining coursework, he dove into preparation for his next part of life: choices for himself. He thought that adventures of the world would be fun to record and there was a two-sequence creative-writing course at the university. He also took an intense Chinese history course to reach toward a philosophy he knew very little about. Again, to expand the base of his thinking.

John met Marc through a high school friend who attended the same university to study film. John adapted one of the Canterbury Tales into a plausible screenplay for one of this friend’s film projects, and Marc was the lead actor. Marc gained acclaim when singing rock and roll at college parties. Quite talented as a performer, Marc could wail and gyrate electrically. He also had tremendous command presence. He had the knack of expressing each musical note through his facial features, keeping the beat with head and body movement or maybe even a twitching eyebrow.

Writing had always been a passion beyond John’s reach, a less-tangible path in a world tugging everyone toward conformity. Writing what others wanted was easy but putting his own emotions onto paper was different. Nowhere to hide if success isn’t reached. Marc turned out to be in the same writing course as John and was a true fiction writer. They read each other’s stories before turning them in and reading Marc’s work made John aware of what writing could be. Marc could write. Fluid. Colorful. Magical. John was embarrassed to have Marc read his struggling attempts. One night over beers John described his travel plans to Marc and had to step back when Marc exploded into excited youthful travel tales and adventure stories about his high school years in Turkey. His parents still lived in Ankara, Turkey, where Marc attended school at an American school on a nearby U.S. Air Force base. Marc’s dad was a collegiate professor of education at Michigan State and in charge of screening young Turks for admission for study in the United States. Turkey was reasonably close to where John was heading, so they decided to team up for the trip.

John’s home was a mere fifty miles from the Michigan State,