Gus: My wife and I broke up and I came to L.A. with my friend Art Cover, who's a science-fiction writer.  We came down and we hung out and we sponged off of and roomed with our friend Harlan Ellison, another s-f writer, who was gracious enough to put up with two 22-year-old twits who had nowhere to go.  Harlan took us in until we could afford a place of our own . . . I found an editorial job with an outfit called American Art Enterprises, which was then California's largest publisher of--how can we term this?
    Grover Lewis:  Pornography?
    Gus:  How about racy material?

    Snuffiebob:  when gus first moved down to california from washington he hung out with a lot of broke writers.  he lived in a place in venice for a while.  a REAL rundown apartment.  when i'd go to pick him up there'd be addicts lying in the hallway with needles still stuck in their arms.
    everywhere73:  I remember when I met Gus, he said the neighborhood he was living in was so bad he just left his door unlocked because he was tired of having it broken.
    Snuffiebob: ha!  i think that about sums it up.  the cockroaches held major maneuvers in his place. and it didn't help the situation that gus was such a pig.  he tried combatting them by nailing a pest strip along the baseboad.  then when he ensnared one he'd hammer a nail through it to "scare off" the others. i'd told him a better tactic would be cleaning up all the empty mcdonalds cartons more than once a month.