Within a few months, I said goodbye to my recent traveling companion and moved into a storefront on the Lower East Side to begin spending the next 2-1/2 years with this young whirlwind. While he painted on a huge easel at home, I went off to work at the United Nations English Typing Unit on the swing shift and in the mornings wrote poetry and made ink drawings. Through his mother's connections we both landed jobs modeling for Moses and Raphael Soyer, twin brothers famous for painting New Yorkers of that time.

The next several months as fall wore on into winter were increasingly emotional. We began to fight as his barreling-forward nature collided with my more cautious approach to daily events. I felt like a moth drawn to a flame, bashing against it till I was bloody. We drank some and even experimented with codeine cough syrup, but it wasn't chemicals that were to blame. As in my marriage, I felt somehow less qualified for life than he was. Near Christmas I turned myself in to Bellevue Hospital's Psychiatric Ward one evening, imagining a warm bed to sleep in and a warm counselor to talk to. By morning I knew I didn't belong there and made my one allowed phone call to get sprung that afternoon. In the midst of this volatile state of affairs, his visa was running out and with passion and immaturity we made a decision to spend the next nine months on the Balearic islands off the southern coast of Spain, to be paid for by his mother who had married into money the third time around and could afford to let her son concentrate on painting. In her European way, she thought it was good that he had a slightly older woman in his life for ballast.