©1999 Richard Avedon (continued from previous) So I wrote my father and explained this whole thing. Well, the next time I came home-my father has this friend, another man who's also very intelligent-and my father had evidently let him read my letter. You know, "Look what Janis is going through." They were proud of me because I was a thinker and they liked that because they were thinkers. So when I got home, this guy comes up to me and he says, "Well, I hear you learned about the Great Saturday Night Swindle." That's what he called it. The realization that there isn't going to be any turning point.... There isn't going to be any next-month-it'll-be-better, next fucking year, next fucking life. You don't have any time to wait for. You just got to look around you and say, So this is it. This is really all there is to it. This little thing. Everybody needing such little things and they can't get them. Everybody needing just a little...confidence from somebody else and they can't get it. Everybody, everybody fighting to protect their little feelings. Everybody, you know, like reaching out tentatively but drawing back. It's so shallow and seems so...fucking...it seems like such a shame. It's so close to being like really right and good and open and amorphous and giving and everything. But it's not. And it ain't gonna be.