I shuffled along to Finnerty's, a pub with the ideal funereal atmosphere. Seamus Finnerty uses low-wattage light bulbs and economizes on window washing detergent. To add to the gloom, some of the regulars always look as if they just came from a wake.

The pub is around the corner from a warren of peace organizations, and I was hoping to run into someone who would cheer me up. I was sitting at the bar brooding with Seamus when Michael Hutchinson came in. He wore an Afghani sheepskin coat, a Palestinian scarf, and one turquoise Navajo earring. The guy's a walking tribute to Third World cottage industries.

He's also my best friend and one of the few people with whom I become something close to a human being.

"I just ran into Jake Levy," he said. "What shit. He told me Amethyst broke up with him. She said he had the right to do whatever he wanted, but she didn't have to go along with it. I never would have thought she had that kind of fire. Weren't you counseling him?"

My failure button bleeped again.

"I blew it."

"You weren't working with great material. Jake was a nice kid who went to demonstrations to meet girls. He would have folded in jail."

"No, I mean I really blew it. He came to my apartment and told me he'd reported for induction, and I sat there like a marble statue. He cried, Michael."

"We know how you love that. Seamus, I think this man needs a whisky."

"Right you are."

Drink in hand, I moved with Michael to a table. "Listen, Eli," he said. "I'm your friend, maybe your only friend."

"I have lots of friends."

"You have colleagues, intellectual counterparts, big minds who discuss the economic and geopolitical ramifications of practically everything. Who else knows you have a heart?"

"Rainbow? Mary?"

"They suspect its existence."

He's right about me, and I can't excuse myself by saying that he doesn't know what it's like to have your heart broken. We're talking about a former junkie. I saw him through withdrawal, and, believe me, his heart was scattered in bleeding pieces.

But maybe I'm a junkie, too, hooked on distance and living in my head. What would it take for me to go cold turkey?

"I think I should give up draft counseling," I said. "I can trot out the facts and figures, but one tear unhinges me."

Michael, of course, had the answer to my problems.

"Hey, man, don't look so gloomy. Go for a bigger change than that. Join the commune."

"Right. We've all been hearing about the commune for months. When will you admit it's never going to happen because you're wired to this city? What would you do anywhere else?"

Here's the great thing about Michael. He cops to his deficiencies with more ease than anyone I know.

"Carry this secret to your grave, but I'm half-sorry I got the idea. Rainbow has latched onto it, and whenever that happens, I can forget about any other plans. She wants to raise kids in pastures with daisies and stuff and little Bambis coming up to play. And she's determined to start an alternative school."

"And you?"

"I'm supposed to find something to do. And I will, I guess, but it's going to be a lot easier if I have my friends with me. Come on, Eli. It would be a humanizing experience for you. You need to wake up, all grubby and fuzzy-brained, and have to deal with people."

That would definitely qualify as a cold turkey experience. "I don't think so."

When Michael is in full drive, nothing can reverse him. "Besides, you're a writer. You need new experiences to enrich your brain. Communal living, that's a mother lode. All the freaks will flee. Important things will happen in the hinterland. It's time for us to claim this country, at least whatever bits of it we can. Tell me you'll think about it."

I muttered something noncommittal and walked home, my eyes on piles of dirty snow. Back in my underheated apartment, I looked at my dying cactus. Someone who can't keep a desert plant alive has no business moving to the country. Communes are all about living off the land. They have gardens, and the thought of gardens tortures me.

Long ago, before I'd learned that I needed a big mind to get through life, Dad went to work, and I hung out with my mother, who was very big on gardening. She taught me when a tomato was ripe, how to pick snap beans, and how to mulch. To this day, if I pass the produce in a vegetable market, I can tell if the squash was picked too early, and I identify weird herbs no one else has ever seen.

The technical memories are harmless. What kills me is remembering the pungent smell of earth, gritty between my fingers, the sun's heat a kiss on my forehead, and, most of all, my mother smiling, her face opening like a flower. She was an ordinary woman. She was beautiful.

Nothing will return her to me. Nothing can bring back that happy little kid. I don't believe in gambling my life away for the long odds of recapturing a taste of that happiness. But what is that life? My rent-controlled hovel? New York? Privacy? Loneliness and self-loathing? The alternative is communal living, sharing bathrooms, and looking at the same faces day after day.

I sit here, weighing tough choices, knowing something has to change if I'm not to become a grouchy old man well before my time. I do have a heart. It may be a shrunken, dried-out specimen, but perhaps all it needs is a little rich soil, water, and tender hands to pat it into life. If I don't take this chance, I'll never know.

Maybe I should go back to Finnerty's and talk about it some more with Michael. I think it's going to happen. The commune idea is gathering momentum. I'm at the top of the rollercoaster, and there's no way to get off. I don't know whether to laugh or scream.