We got together to play like we usually do but we were seated around a dining table. I was trying so hard to remember this one tune I’d learned that I was going to play that night. It was a fun tune, interesting, somewhat unexpected; those were the contours of it in my mind but I could not grasp the title. Someone laid out a huge pile of blow. “Whitey,” I stated, remembering what those California people called it. Lines were cut and a fussy little strip of paper, not quite wide enough to roll into a proper straw, was passed around. There was sugar everywhere, too, mixed up with the coke. As I got ready to do mine I wondered if it was OK if I snorted all this sugar. Was it bad for you? For the delicate tissues of the nose and sinus? I still couldn’t remember what the song was but I remembered it after I woke up, a song I planned to play in real life: Sultans of Swing.