My friend D recently moved back to San Francisco from Boston. We had worked together when we both lived in San Francisco, in that faraway time called the 1990s. She had been sort of drifting along in those years, like me but a lot younger, and now I'm still drifting and she's returned a registered nurse. She has a career now, she helps people, she's there for them when they moan or cry out or collapse or expectorate or suppurate or evacuate or fibrillate or seize or wheeze or sneeze or crumple or drool or quiver or shiver or code or demand or overdose or whinny or shriek or leak or reek or thrash or bleed or plead or perspire or expire or ooze or mumble or vomit or blanch or redden or worsen or sicken. She's a custodian of human misery, she holds their hands before they succumb, she's where the action is, Painopolis, the arena of the unwell, the realm of suffering and illness and physical complaint, providing succor to the needy. Well, to the needy with sufficient coverage anyway. She gives comfort to the sick, the dying, the recovering, the convalescing, the lingering, the terminal, the hypochondriacal, the fragile, the immobile, the febrile, the presurgical and the postsurgical. How can this be the same person I so often got baked with as we listened for the shimmering transcendent moments in Stereolab records, or got hammered with as we did incredibly fun things I now cannot remember but still treasure nonetheless?