a portrait of the artist as a young man

Appearance: He is slightly under 5'8'' with longish golden hair,
which is carefully conditioned but never trimmed. His face, as his
entire body, is dotted with small-dark moles. He is usually smiling and
carries an average of two days' stubble. He usually wears a white shirt
with a medieval red lion and the logo of the local Shakespeare theatre;
he once picked up ten at $3 each. If he's in a good mood, you'll also
notice a longish silver chain his brother gave him. When reading,
writing or driving, he always wears glasses but almost never does so in
public. His gait is just slightly ackward but he has excellent
fine-tune coordination; if you toss something at him, he will
invariably catch it. In social situations, he is either suave and
charming or ackward and solitary; he is rarely in the middle.

Economic Status: He is a college senior in his final term; his major is
literature. His parents pay his bills and his school expenses(with the
exception of an academic scholarship.) He is given a modest spending
allowance but he has expensive tastes, notably a persistent espresso
habit. For most of his school years, he has also been fond of beer,
weed and harder drugs(all of which he has tried once but none more than
once.)
He hasn't held a job since high school and he only held that for six
months, during which time he was stealing from the company. He
occasionally finds jobs(once as a kitchen worker, once as a postal
worker) but they don't fit his skills and he invariably quits.

Favorite Color: He doesn't believe in favorite colors but thinks that
different colors suit different scenarios. Should the questioner be a
child, however, he replies: "Purple," which is the color of royalty.
For a long time, he loved the combination of dark green and lilac.
Whenever something came in this color, he believed it came from
destiny.

Favorite musicians: He loves Tom Petty, Nirvana and Jay-Z. In recent
times, he doesn't really enjoy listening to Nirvana. But since he's
loved them since he was twelve, he feels they must be great. In the
past, he's found that old favorites invariably regain their charm.
Besides, abandoning such a long-time favorite would be admitting much
more fallibility than he is prepared to. Like Julius Caesar, he sees
himself as the fixed Northern Star.

Favorite Authors: Shakespeare, Herman Hesse, and Ernest Hemingway. He
has a firm conviction that Hesse's slightly obscure "Narcissus and
Goldmund" is a great masterpiece and must be raised to the level of
"Hamlet" and "Paradise Lost."

Ambitions: To go with the flow as intelligently and safely as possible.
He is unsure whether to pursue an M.B.A. and incur student loans, to
join the NAVY, or just to hang around and look for a job. He badly
wants to get to a warmer climate. Southern Oregon is dry and cold and
sunshine is music to his soul. He also wants to develop his upper body
more, which is rather thin compared to his sturdy legs. He is waiting
to learn whether he managed to help impregnate a lesbian friend. His
ultimate goal is to run an "art tank" where he guides various
under-artists in the production of works in fields as diverse as art,
music, literature, theatre and philosophy.