It's around midnight, and I'm in the lobby of a loft building in SoHo, waiting for Lenny Kravitz, and I'm feeling savagely insecure. We're to go to a nightclub, GoldBar, and in my mind, I'm doing that old high-school composition thing, compare and contrast, and the subjects are Kravitz and yours truly.

Black metal gates swing open, and I steer my car up Marilyn Manson's driveway. It's a small hill, and there are odd, looming trees on both sides, forming a canopy, a scary dark tunnel. Manson lives in Chatsworth, a suburb of Los Angeles, it's around 9 P.M. on a moonless March night, and I feel like I'm in a goth version of Sunset Boulevard.