In San Francisco twenty-five years ago on a Friday night my antiquarian friends took me along with them to the Antiquarian Book Dealers Banquet Cruise aboard the SS Harbor Prince, an unremarkable but no doubt picturesque vessel whose captain had resigned himself to circling San Francisco Bay in ever-diminishing spirals for the rest of his professional life, drawing ever nearer to the historical island of Alcatraz, only to have to draw away again without ever touching it. As the antiquarian book dealers began toasting each other in the drafty, linoleum-floored ballroom of the SS Harbor Prince, I drank three fast whiskeys out of a plastic cup while standing up at one end of the bar. Then I sat down on a bench by the window and began drinking whiskey at a more delicate pace. The antiquarians, many of whom were clothed in tweed jackets and blue jeans, had formed into knots here and there, some standing, some sitting, some breaking off from knots to form other, new knots here and there, or to attach themselves to more knots forming across the dance floor. All was flux, for the first hours of the Antiquarian Book Dealers Banquet Cruise, and perhaps I was the only one who noticed that if you stared out of the portside windows you could observe, without losing sight of it for a moment, the legendary prison from which no man had ever escaped with his life Then a woman from Indiana, whose small round eyes I can still remember, addressed herself to me by making a remark that I have long since forgotten. She said that she was from a small town, a hick sort of place to be from, and that she was exhilarated to be in San Francisco, at the centre of things, where the action was, and where the future lay glittering before her. She seemed to want me to know that she was determined to "go" places, to "arrive" at some place metaphorically not the place we were occupying at that moment; she had youth & vitality and she was willing to invest those assets in the future, by getting a job on the inside--which she had already nearly succeeded in doing--and staying there until she knew everything she had to know about the inside, the people on the inside and their idiosyncracies, favourite watering holes, brands of whiskey, bridge playing abilities, etc; then once having gained this information, along with (unspecified) "necessary skills," that she would move out on her own, to create another pocket of activity, excitement and energy, with herself at the centre, and novices from hick sorts of places would be coming to her for a glimpse of the glittering future. I found that I had little to say to this and no reply came to my lips. She exhibited two rows of clean, large white teeth, and went on to qualify what she had just said by allowing that one could not expect something (or was it everything?) for nothing, that a certain amount of "very hard work," self sacrifice, and real learning would have to take place during her apprenticeship if she were realistically to expect to get anywhere personally, to be a success in fact; and that, further, if she were not a success, she would not be able to exist very long at the centre of things, success being the only acceptable style at the centre, all other styles signifying at bottom nothing but failure & death: failure & death then were the gamble that she would take, was taking that moment, in fact, on board the SS Harbor Prince, the gamble that everyone on board had taken: it would not be worth talking to any of them (I presumed she meant the antiquarians) if one were not embarking or had not embarked on just that gamble; nevertheless it was terribly exciting to be young, and taking that gamble, and wasn't it silly, cruising the bay on this tacky little boat, going around and around Alcatraz? I found myself in that moment to be wholly in agreement with her.

Stephen Osborne for real.