Edmund White novelist, with his second novel in front of the Oscar Whild bookstore in the west village NYC in 1978 and at home on Astor Place.

My artwork was going to be in a show with the legendary erotic artist Tom of Finland. I was compulsively obsessing on whether to use a phony name on my sexual imagery.

Ed praised my work, and boldly told me to diminish my fears and anxieties, and that the art was great: and 25 years from now you’ll hate yourself for not signing it." he said.

I never thought I would be alive, 28 years later, but here we both are. Thanks Ed

I met him in a sleazy bathhouse in Chicago. He was working on a book called "States of Desire," and as he writes in states "I left the baths with a sexy illustrator who was fed up with Chicago’s lack of style, its failure to keep pace with the dynamism of New York and Los Angeles." Sure sounds like me and my cynical attitude at the time. A year later we became neighbors in New York, running into each other often on St. Mark's Place.

Recently, I was able to thank him for some great advice he gave me one night standing in front of the huge cube sculpture at Cooper Union 28 years ago.