He apologized and asked you out?

D: Yeah.

M: Barb delivered the note and probably read you the riot act. You know Barb. She wouldn't pussyfoot around, she'd just let you have it. She would be like, "What the fuck is wrong with you?"

D: Oh God, no doubt about it. But, Mer, I think I knew where Barb was coming from when she said, "You've got to meet this lady. She's incredible." And that's what I was responding to, for whatever reason.

M: But then he called and said, "I'm sorry, and I want to take you out and wine and dine you."

Did that happen?

D: Oh yeah. I remember going to restaurants. I don't remember where we went on the first date, but I do remember looking into her eyes a lot.

M: I seem to remember wine at the table and French food. And I think it was then that you said, "I have a being travelling with me — and I have for a while — that wants to come through." There was a lot of magic in it.

And this "being" was me?

D: Yes, it was.

M: We had a contract to have you, right from the beginning. I mean, Doug probably said that to me on our first or second date.

D: To tell you the truth, I'm wondering how long it took before we got into the sack. I don't think very much time passed. It was the seventies.

M: Yeah, I think that was pretty quick. Maybe after the date where we had French food.

That was my next question. The first time you had sex was unusual, right?

M: Yes.

D: Oh. That. And in fact, that happened at your house, didn't it?

M: It didn't happen at my house, but I can't remember where we were...

Let's get to the juicy stuff! Come on!

M: The juicy stuff is, in the middle of the night, your dad had an epileptic seizure and I didn't know he had epilepsy. And it's right out of a sound sleep. I had no idea what the hell was going on. I'd never seen a seizure. It was dark in the room, and the bed was shaking violently, and I just remember thinking, "Geez, what a rough sleeper!" In the morning, that's when he said he'd had a seizure. I had no idea.

D: I think I peed in the bed too.

M: Maybe.

D: Because I usually did, when I had a seizure back then.

What sort of impression did this leave you with?

M: Still really liking him, being very sweet on him.

Did the seizure make him somehow more mysterious?

M: I'm compassionate. It just sort of woke up my compassion. I was like, wow, that's a drag to have to deal with that. That's challenging. It made him seem more vulnerable and more real, in a certain way.

What did you think about the pot-brownie bakery?

D: What I remember is that I did more drugs in the first week of being with your mother than I had ever done in my life previously. And it wasn't just more quantity, or more quality, but also more kinds of drugs. I mean, the memory that I have, in the midst of coming out of a stupor or whatever, was lying on the kitchen floor, just unable to move from laughing so hard. I think we were making brownies or something. Whatever it was, I just was so overcome, I couldn't move. And I was just laughing and laughing and laughing. It was so much fun. But I'd like to say something about this drug-intake thing. You know —

M: I wish I had something to intake.

D: The drugs were just like one of the rooms in the house that was the complete relationship. Sometimes we went to the drugs, and it was a very rich place from which the rest of our lives together would be affected. But we weren't just in a drug stupor; that's not how this relationship began.

M: I'd say that's true. It was more the spiritual stuff and the art. There was a lot of magic in it, and for me that was very strong. I had been with a lot of men, but there weren't a lot of men who could handle my intensity. Doug was just as intense.

D: The fact is, your mom and I were both two odd ducks. Neither of us knew what crowd we were supposed to swim in. We were drawn to each other like two magnets. There wasn't anybody else out there like us, and we seemed to work well together. We definitely had problems and things that didn't work. I could be extremely direct and hurtful at times. I've known that about myself. We weren't perfect. But we were so much more compatible than anything else out there.