More from 1992:

That weekend, P. and S. from Chicago turned up asking us to go to dinner with them. We ended up at the Tibetan restaurant for a long, conversation-filled evening. S. and I shared kimchi, gossiped with some restraint about the school paper, and weathered P.'s classic digressions, such as "Why fire engines should be red."

The previous weekend we had been to a party filled with old hippies. One of them told us how he saw an alien under some chemical-induced circumstances. "I was walking down the street, and it was on fire," he told us. "A dog was barking at something behind me, and I turned and saw a little man with pointy ears and no elbow joints, like a cartoon, running into a bush." It was trashy, yet compelling, and we all huddled around a candle outside in the darkness of the back yard. E. and T. got into a hysterical conversation, during which T. referred to someone as a "raving solipsist". Behind him lay his girlfriend, silent, face down in a lawn chair.

Tomorrow, the conclusion.